How We Change the World

In this episode, CEO Josie Naughton shares the incredible story of how she and a few friends started helping refugees arriving in Europe in 2015 by posting a social media post for donations, and how that small act of kindness turned into a full-fledged organization that has raised over 100 million dollars in just eight years funding over 400 partner organizations who help millions of displaced people. 

Josie Naughton is the CEO of Choose Love, a British charity and now US non-profit dedicated to providing aid and support to displaced individuals and families in 34 countries worldwide. From lifesaving search and rescue boats to food and legal advice, Choose Love provides whatever it takes to support the lives of those fleeing war to those experiencing massive earthquakes or other disasters. 

“The mission of Choose Love is to work toward a world that chooses love and justice every day for everyone.”

With an incredibly lean team and hundreds of volunteers, Choose Love finds local, community-based groups able to provide help to those who suddenly find themselves without a home and often, without a country. Josie and her team determine what the immediate needs are, finds a way to fulfill them, and then goes to work fundraising to pay for it all. In just eight years of their existence, the Choose Love team has raised over $100 million dollars, an unheard-of figure for a new organization.

Check out the Choose Love innovative online store built to help support refugees: https://choose.love

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 MORE ABOUT OUR GUEST JOSIE NAUGHTON & CHOOSE LOVE

Josie takes listeners on a journey through some of the places where Choose Love is making a difference, from Syria to Ukraine to Afghanistan to Mexico, and explains how they work with local groups to identify the needs of displaced communities and then fundraise to provide the necessary support. She also talks about the challenges that she has faced in her work and how she stays motivated and

It is clear that Josie is a woman with a huge heart and an unstoppable spirit, dedicated to spreading the message of choosing love as a way of life. Her

✨Website: https://chooselove.org

✨Instagram:  ⁠https://www.instagram.com/stories/chooselove/3088316788243638001/⁠

✨ Choose Love Online Store: https://choose.love

✨ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chooselove✨

✨ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@choose-love

✨ Twitter: https://twitter.com/chooselove

Madhvi Chittoor is a 12-year renowned climate activist and UN child advisor. In this episode Madhvi shares her inspiring journey of working for a sustainable world since the age of six. In addition to many other accomplishments, Madhvi was successful in eliminating styrofoam from her school district’s cafeterias, and highly instrumental in getting state legislation passed to eliminate plastics and forever chemicals known as PFAS from our soil, air, and water.

Madhvi shares her experiences meeting with government representatives at all levels including two Colorado governors, congressional leaders,

As a UN Child Advisor representing North and America, Madhvi meets monthly with other child advisors from around the world to discuss, raise awareness, and make recommendations about climate dangers impacting youth globally.

We also talked about Madhvi’s passion for composing and playing music, writing books, and winning two Guinness World Records.

Learn more about Mahdhvi, and her non-profit, at https://www.madhvi4ee.com.

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In this episode, we talk with Michael J. Kline, a Master Trainer, Retreat Leader, and Firekeeper who helps individuals and coaches develop the skills to overcome emotional blocks that prevent them from leading more productive, happier lives and showing up for the world in meaningful ways. Michael believes that if individuals are going to change the world, we must be emotionally capable.

“We can advance ourselves so much more than we thought we could to be free to handle this world is which we live. The overwhelm of seeing mass shootings on tv every night. The overwhelm of the political craziness that we see. Being able to show up in the world with any sort of strength or capacity to make change requires us to be able to get up in the morning and lead ourselves. That overwhelm that just hits our body, the anxiety or the stress, all of that is more manageable than we thought."

Michael is hosting a retreat July 12-19th in Costa Rica for therapists, social workers, coaches, trainers, and others who want to deepen their work with clients using a powerful technique known as RIM, or Regenerating Images in Memory, developed by Dr. Deb Sandella. In the podcast episode he shares details about what participants can expect at the retreat, including workshops, guided meditations, and other experiential learning activities.

SEE MORE BELOW _______________________________________

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MORE ABOUT OUR GUEST:

Michael shares his journey from Directing Training and Development in the corporate world to becoming an entrepreneur and opening six successful businesses before focusing his life on learning and teaching emotional healing. He talks about his own experiences with emotional blocks and how they led him to seek out solutions that ultimately led him to discover RIM (Regenerating Images in Memory), a powerful technique for accessing and transforming deep emotional blocks.

To learn more about Michael J. Kline and his work, visit his:

✨Website at https://www.michaeljkline.com

✨Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Entreprenologist

✨Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/entreprenologist/

If you're interested in attending the retreat in Costa Rica, you can find more information at ⁠https://www.michaeljkline.com/rim-training-costa-rica.html⁠

A Conversation with Finley on the Challenges of Being a Transgender Individual

Host Deborah Rohan speaks with Finley, a transgender, non-binary individual, about their experiences as a trans person navigating today’s

Deborah Rohan Shares Her Own World-Changing Experiences

Deborah Rohan, co-founder of Meet the Middle East, shares her journey from studying international business to working in international relations. She discusses her two books, The Olive Grove: A Palestinian Story and One Person Acted and Everything Changed, and how her experience of the pandemic inspired her to start a podcast.

Inspirational Book and Movie Recommendations and Raising Monarch Butterflies

Part three of the podcast includes a discussion of her daughter, Jessica’s experience raising monarch butterflies⁠, noting it can be a small yet impactful and joyful way to make a difference in the declining numbers of monarchs.

Jessica’s detailed blog-post on the topic provides instructions and photos of the process, meant to help shore up the dwindling Monarch butterfly population. You can find the blog here:

https://thetreekisser.com/wildlife/how-to-raise-monarch-butterflies-at-home/

In this episode, we celebrate the life of a ninety-year old change maker, Hamzi Moghrabi. A Palestinian refugee since age fourteen, Hamzi found his path as an engineer, building infrastructure across the Arab world, from Abu Dhabi to North Africa.

When civil war in Lebanon drove him to take his family and seek safety in the US, he became a warrior for social justice, fighting for the rights of Arabs in America. He would also become the President of Arab- Anti-Discrimination Committee in Washington DC, advocating for social justice before returning to Lebanon building zero-waste plants that produce energy and recycle materials.

Read Hamzi's family story: The Olive Grove: A Palestinian Story

Social Activism, Environmentalism, Peacemaking

Email Hamzi: [email protected]

In Episode #12 of How We Change the World podcast, I talk with Zainab Salbi, the celebrated humanitarian, author, and journalist Oprah Winfrey identified as one of 25 women changing the world and Foreign Policy Magazine called one of “100 Top Global Thinkers.” ⁠

Zainab is an Iraqi American woman who grew up in Baghdad in an atmosphere of peace and prosperity until the age of eleven, when two simultaneous events changed her life forever. First, the Iraq-Iran war exploded around her family, and Saddam Hussein directed Zainab’s father to oversee Iraqi civil aviation and serve as Saddam’s personal pilot, thrusting her unwilling family into the dictator’s inner circle. She writes about these harrowing eight years in her riveting memoir, "Between Two Worlds: Escape from Tyranny:Growing up in the Shadow of Saddam Hussein."

The trauma inflicted by these conditions inspired Zainab to spend her life helping women survivors of conflict through Women for Women International, a non-profit organization she founded at the age of twenty-three. Women for Women has reached nearly half a million women and raised 146 million dollars in aid and micro-loans to help families rebuild their lives.

In early 2022, alongside Jody Allen, Zainab co-founded Daughters for Earth, a new fund and campaign that aims to inspire all women to engage in climate change action by mobilizing $100 million for on the ground, women-led efforts to protect and restore the Earth. (See more below)

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MORE ABOUT OUR GUEST:

Zainab Salbi has frequently been named as one of the women changing the world by leading publications ranging from Newsweek to The Guardian. President Bill Clinton identified her as one of the 21st century heroes to Harper’s Bazaar. Watkins Magazine identified her as one of the top 100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People in 2020.   

She is the author of four books, including her most recent: Freedom is an Inside Job.

Zainab has been Chief Awareness Officer at ⁠FindCenter.com⁠, and host of Redefined podcast. Zainab is also the author of ⁠Between Two Worlds ⁠and her latest ⁠Freedom Is an Inside Job⁠. She is also the creator and host of several shows, including ⁠#MeToo, Now What?⁠ on PBS, and ⁠Through HerEyes⁠ with Zainab Salbi at Yahoo News.

In Episode #11 of How We Change the World, lifetime humanitarian and CNN Hero of the Year finalist for 2022, Teresa Gray, shares her experience founding Mobile Medics International to serve the hard to reach and unserved victims of natural disasters and refugee crises.

Teresa and her volunteers have visited five continents and over thirty countries since starting Mobile Medics International in 2017. When catastrophe strikes, they pack their gear and fly to search for "the need" not being met by other aid groups, wherever they are. 

 “Human suffering has no borders. People are people, mothers are mothers, fathers are fathers, and love is love.” -- Teresa Gray

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MORE ABOUT OUR GUEST, TERESA GRAY: After thirty years working as a paramedic in a variety of settings including on SWAT teams, in medical helicopters, and in fixed-wing emergency aircraft that land in remote villages across Alaska, Teresa finally decided to semi-retire to spend more time at home with her two youngest children. That plan changed in 2015 when Teresa saws news coverage of Syrian refugees suffering and dying as they tried to cross a narrow part of the Mediterranean to reach Greece. She knew she could help.  

She quickly volunteered her medical expertise to an Irish NGO providing aid to refugees in Greece. After later helping in Haiti and the Philippines, Teresa formed Mobile Medics International to better reach hard-to-reach spots where larger NGOs didn’t venture. Now, Teresa and a handful of volunteers arrive with a mobile ambulance in their backpacks, dropping into far flung parts of the world where no expects help to show up.

Links to sites mentioned in this episode:

✨Mobile Medics International: http://mobilemedicsinternational.org

✨CNN Tribute: Teresa Gray: cnn.it/3LoL4tz

✨CNN: Mobile Medics Help Ukrainian Refuges: cnn.it/3Tk9M0m

✨CNN Heroes: Mobile Medics in Turkey's Earthquake Vone http://bit.ly/3JEZ15r

In this episode of How We Change the World, pioneering environmentalist Eric Lombardi discusses the importance of using Social Enterprise to usher in a Zero Waste world. As the Executive Director of Eco-Cycle (www.EcoCycle.org) from 1989 to 2014, Eric transformed the fledgling, Boulder, Colorado non-profit into the world’s largest Zero Waste Social Enterprise. Along the way, he discovered that while recycling is an absolute necessity to protect the planet, it was only the first step in our long journey to reuse, recycle, remake, and compost literally everything we use on the planet, or “darn near.”  

In his 24 years directing an organization focused on creating a social good, Eric discovered that pure capitalism has become a hindrance to achieving our goals of reversing global warming and regenerating the planet. After leaving Ecocycle, he chose to focus his energy on growing the global Social Enterprise Movement. Social enterprises are public or private businesses that address social and environmental issues, yet still have access to investor capital. While still finding lukewarm acceptance in the US, the Social Enterprise Movement is growing quickly around the world, helping foster green economies.  Now, as President of Buy Social USA (https://www.buysocialusa.org), Eric encourages government to “increase opportunities for US social enterprises, fair trade organizations, impact networks, and other initiatives that prioritize people and planet over profit maximization." 

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MORE ABOUT OUR GUEST, ERIC LOMBARDI In addition to protecting the environment, Eric also has passion for mentoring youth. He encourages young people to choose public office or business as powerful careers to create positive social and environmental change. Eric quotes environmental leader Paul Hawken, who wrote in his book, The Ecology of Commerce: "It isn't the earth that needs saving, it is business, because business is killing the earth."  Eric believes local governments around the world are frozen in place, unable to make the changes necessary to create Zero Waste/Zero Carbon Communities. Thus, he advocates for double bottom-line business hybrids to partner with government and become the implementers of change.  

Links to sites mentioned in this episode:

 Buy Social USA: https://www.buysocialusa.org

 Ecocycle: https://ecocycle.org 

Eric’s interview on the Remake Podcast: https://www.remakepod.org/episode/032-a-world-without-waste 

Groundbreaking report on Zero Waste and the Circular Economy: “Stop Trashing the Planet”. https://ilsr.org/stop-trashing-the-climate/

Listeners will be uplifted and inspired by the ancient indigenous wisdom shared by my guest, Dr. Anita Sanchez, on Episode #9 of the How We Change the World podcast. Anita is the author of the internationally best-selling book, "The Four Sacred Gifts: Indigenous Wisdom for the Modern World,” which draws insight from indigenous elders in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas (learn more at 👉🏼 https://bit.ly/3SJbU1m).  Anita has spent four decades sharing this wisdom with executives and their teams all over the world through coaching, workshops, and speaking engagements teaching "humanity to remember how to work and live together."

🗣 “It is my passion and mission in life to share the wisdom of The Elders and the Eagle Hoop Prophecy. I invite you to join me in discovering how this wisdom can serve you and all of those whose lives you touch." -- Anita Sanchez

Anita and her husband, Kit, in conjunction with the Pachamama Alliance, are leading an extraordinary trip to the sacred headwaters of the Amazon in June 2023, where travelers will learn from indigenous communities living in the rainforest. For more information visit: www.anitaandkitamazonjourney.com

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 MORE ABOUT OUR GUEST, DR. ANITA SANCHEZ In addition to authoring the international bestselling book, “The Four Sacred Gifts: Indigenous Wisdom for Modern Times,” Anita Sanchez, Ph.D., Nahua (Aztec) and Mexican-American, is a transformational leadership consultant, speaker, coach. Dr Sanchez was named Conscious Company Magazine’s 2020 World-Changing Woman, and Woman of the Hour - #SheismyHero, along with Jane Goodall and others, by the World Woman Foundation. She bridges indigenous teachings with the latest science to inspire and equip women and men to enjoy meaningful, empowered lives and careers. With four decades of experience coaching and training executives and their teams in dozens of Fortune 500 companies, governmental groups and non-governmental agencies, Anita is an established leader in global organizational change initiatives. She is a member of the Transformational Leadership Council with luminaries such as Jack Canfield, Marianne Williamson and John Gray, as well as the Association of Transformational Leaders, the Evolutionary Business Council, and serves on the Boards of the Bioneers organization and the Pachamama Alliance. Anita holds a Ph.D. in Organizational Development from the University of Colorado, Denver. The mother of two sons, Anita resides in the mountains outside of Boulder, CO.   

For more information and to download the free song that is based on the book, visit www.FourSacredGifts.com. For information on Anita's diversity, inclusion, and unconscious bias training, see consulting website www.SanchezTennis.com.  

CONTACT ANITA SANCHEZ   ✨ Website: www.SanchezTennis.com ✨ Facebook: facebook.com/AnitaSanchezPhD/ ✨ Twitter:  twitter.com/DrAnitaSanchez ✨ Linked In: linkedin.com/in/anita-sanchez/

Episode #8 features two guests, both impacted by the same mass shooting. 

Colorado State Senator Tom Sullivan began working to end gun violence in 2012 after his son, Alex, was murdered along with eleven others in a mass shooting in a movie theatre in Aurora, Colorado. Tom and his family’s lives were torn apart, forever altered by the loss of such a beloved and vibrant young man. Fraught with grief and consumed by a desire to make change, Tom retired from a nearly 30-year career with the postal service to run for office in the Colorado House of Representatives. His driving mission was to work for tighter gun safety restrictions so others would not have to endure the excruciating loss he and his family live with every day.  After serving two terms in the Colorado House of Representatives, Tom was elected to the State Senate in 2022. In this new role, he continues the tradition he began in the House: every Friday­­­­­­—the day of the week Alex was killed­—Tom stands on the floor of the Colorado Senate and announces exactly how long it has been since he lost his only son to gun violence: 

 “Today is the 552nd Friday since my son Alex was murdered in theatre massacre on July 20, 2012… I want to remind you that many in our communities are repeatedly faced with acts of violence…I would ask you to do what you can and be the change.”

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Jordan Witt was watching the same midnight movie in the same Aurora movie theater when Tom's son and eleven other victims were murdered.  She had graduated from high school just two months earlier, and was eagerly anticipating her freshmen year of college. Jordan describes the incident from which she escaped physically unharmed (her friend beside her was shot in the leg) as one that especially traumatized her family who knew how close they came to losing her. 

A month after the shooting Jordan began her freshman year at the University of Denver, where she joined the ROTC. Her journey to healing was uneven. Eager to attend college, she often felt alone with her trauma, not wanting to bring up the event with new friends. She did not seek counseling, gaining solace by relying on her family and friends, including survivors of the 1999 Columbine High School shooting. She says she thinks the time may be coming when she will seek counseling, albeit now eleven years later.

In her sophomore year, Jordan transferred to the University of Colorado in Boulder on an ROTC scholarship, majoring in Asian Studies with a focus on the Middle East. In 2016, she graduated from CU and was commissioned as an officer in the Navy. She moved to Pensacola for flight school and met her now-husband, Arthur, who is also a Naval Officer. 

Jordan is now a Navy Lieutenant and serves her country as an instructor pilot flying the P-8A.

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· New Town Action Alliance: https://www.newtownactionalliance.org

· Everytown for Town Safety: https://www.everytown.org

· Mom’s Demand Action: https://momsdemandaction.org

· Giffords: https://giffords.org

· Brady United: https://www.bradyunited.org