Homegrown Solutions for a Patchwork World - The Skills, Talents, and Mindsets of Changemakers

Garland Smith is one impressive entrepreneurial changemaker!  I was fortunate to meet Garland and his family during his childhood schooling at Margaret Beeks Elementary in Blacksburg, Virginia where I was principal in the late 90’s and early 2000’s.   I hadn’t seen him or talked with him in years until I saw a recent ad for his socially-minded enterprise, The Omushana Company.  As soon as I saw this inspiring video, I knew I had to talk […]

I was fortunate to meet Boston history teacher, Kim Young, first as an online classmate in World’ Savvy’s Global Competence Certificate (GCC)  program for educators.   When I first laid eyes on this world traveling teacher, she was propped up in a bed with a computer on her lap tuning in from Palestine.   A year and a half into the GCC program, the group met up in Ecuador for a field experience working in an Afro-Ecuadorian […]

I was fortunate to meet Dr. Liovani Nazario during an immersion experience at the River Phoenix Center for Peacebuilding in Gainesville, Florida in October 2019.    As you’ll see and hear, Liovani’s story is a unique and inspired example of “Homegrown Solutions for a Patchwork World”.  Her life resonates with clear themes of fairness and inclusivity.  With a strong role model  in her mom,  she starts by telling us about her roots in Puerto Rico that […]

In Part 1, Dana shared her upbringing and learning experiences that led to the founding of World Savvy as well as how that work unfolded from the early days to include a broad range of work with people across cultures.  In this second part of the conversation, Dana updates us on World Savvy’s growing influence and includes a reflection of her hopes for education as the world recovers from the Covid-19 pandemic in full swing […]

Dana Mortenson is Co-Founder and CEO of World Savvy, a national education nonprofit committed to “building inclusive, adaptive and future-ready education systems” for over 18 years. World Savvy’s overarching goal is to integrate “cultural and global competence into the ethos and foundations of what we define as quality education.” I can draw a direct line from my first association with World Savvy as a participant in their Global Competence Certificate Program to the work I’m […]

You’ll likely be surprised, as I was, to learn the number of homeless youth present in a community like Montgomery County, Virginia. Two thriving universities welcome students and faculty from all over the world into small towns that sit comfortably among the Appalachian Mountains in an almost idyllic environment. In this setting, homeless and unaccompanied youth are almost “invisible” to most of us.  Dr. Wendy Eckenrod makes us aware of the reality and shares her […]

In Part I, we considered the first two quadrants of the Changemaker Journey “Homegrown Solutions” in light of current recommendations to stay at home as much as possible. In this second installment of “How to be Homebound Changemaker, we are thinking about the “Patchwork World” described in the 3rd and 4th quadrants of the Blue Roads Changemaker Journey.  Here we are encouraged to think beyond our personal experiences to engage with others  from a more […]

At Blue Roads Education, we’re defining “changemakers” as those creating “Homegrown Solutions for a Patchwork World”.   This gets complicated when we are ordered to stay home and away from our usual efforts at changemaking.  Many of us are trying to figure out how to remain effective changemakers while staying within the four walls of our homes. We are doing our best to practice physical distancing as we attempt to remain socially and ethically engaged.    While […]

Today’s Changemaker conversation features Nicole Mignone who can count attorney, photographer and coach among her many specialties.  Please tune in here via video, podcast and/or print to learn how she nurtures her own changemaker light and the lights in those around her. Nicole says that it can be complicated to explain what she does because she’s a bit of a “Jane of all trades.”  Among other things, she’s been a yoga instructor, an English as […]

This is Part II of my interview with author and nonviolent trainer and activist, Rivera Sun.  Please listen in on how her novels promote nonviolence and for more of her powerful guidance on how to begin taking nonviolent action in the real world.  This episode also includes great advice about how to engage with diverse others to bring on her optimistic predictions for our collective success as a human race.

RIVERA'S SOLUTIONS (continued) When we left off, Rivera was talking about her advice and experiences helping people create nonviolent solutions to injustice.  When people seek Rivera’s advice on how to use nonviolent action to solve a problem plaguing them, she guides us to begin by looking around the community and seeing if there are others already organizing on the issue of concern.  By pooling energies and resources, nonviolent action can be even more powerful. She advises doing research to discover what others have already done. Looking into nonviolent leaders throughout history, like Dr. King, we have the opportunity to rely on tried and true processes that work.  Dr. King’s four steps to nonviolent action include 1. Collection of the facts, 2. Negotiation, 3. Self-purification and 4. Direct action (https://medium.com/@revlmorris/what-martin-luther-king-jr-said-about-civil-disobedience-9f935f60dee6).These steps can be applied to most issues in almost any setting. By first finding out everything we can about the issue, the conflict surrounding the issue and about potential solutions, we set ourselves and our issue up for success.

Rivera advises establishing the “non-negotiables” early on reminding us that Gandhi teaches us that if we give up on our fundamentals during negotiations we are not negotiating, we are losing.Where are you able to negotiate and where must you stand firm?  These are critical questions for every issue requiring action.  When protesting about water, is drinkable water really negotiable?  If you’re a teacher on strike, an ideal raise might be negotiable, but a living wage is probably not. Before diving into direct action, Rivera suggests starting with dialogue whenever dialogue is possible. She says that, while most groups have tried that step before moving to active nonviolent strategies, she’s been surprised that this step is sometimes forgotten. In her Maine hometown, there was a man who posted an offensive and discriminatory sign at his home reading “No ‘this kind of person’ and no ‘that kind of person.’” Many community members were angered and wanted to start a letter writing campaign to force him to take the sign down.  Rivera recommended a conversation with the man as a starting point. Her sister soon reported on what she discovered during a forthright interchange.  The man’s intentions from his point of view had been to protect and make peace, not to offend.  Once he recognized his goals were not being met by the sign at all, it was removed before her sister even had time for the return phone conversation with Rivera.Nonviolence International's website. https://www.nonviolenceinternational.net/ comes highly recommended by Rivera who refers to it often for fundamental concepts about how to organize, how to use a set of actions to “build cumulative campaigns to achieve your goal” and how to understand the, sometimes subtle, differences among types of actions.“A protest is not a strike is not a blockade and they all act a little bit differently.