As a child I played with National Geographic magazines. I cut the photos carefully from their binding and positioned them on my bedroom floor. I stood in the center of each photo and communed with the imagined essence of another world. For as long as I can remember, the power and mystery of place captivated my spirit and shook my bones with a voracious sense of wonder.

In 2005, when I was 22-years-old, I landed in Rio de Janeiro with a large university grant. I carried addresses and phone numbers for various nonprofits where I’d been contracted to teach hip-hop and English to Brazilian youth. In my mind, I had plans to study dance all around the country. As a taxi drove me at a furious pace through Rio’s tangled maze of steep hillside cobblestone, one clear thought rang out.

“I’m too sensitive for a city like this.“

I was right, but I’d soon learn I didn’t care. I cared about discovering how my sensitivity interacted with this new world. I wanted to see where the path of contradiction would lead me.

It first led me to a brown-eyed man who stalled my heart when his smile carved two dimples beside the corner of his mouth. The enchantment I felt on the nights I walked arm and arm beside him wasn’t simply the magic of being young and falling in love in a foreign country. It was the sensation of being in the presence of a gatekeeper. The one who stands on the threshold of where you’ve been and where you are going. The one who beckons you in such an alluring way you have no choice but to cross over, regardless of whether or not they follow behind you.

At 22-years-old, travel shattered my compass and my direction became suddenly, terrifyingly fluid. That transformative year, finding love and discovering my calling happened in tandem.

On one typically sweltering Rio afternoon, my Brazilian boyfriend invited me to meet him at a beach side park where his dance company rehearsed every day. The company consisted of a dedicated crew of teenagers with a shocking well of talent and a profound enthusiasm for hip-hop dance.

For the first month I sat mesmerized and watched them rehearse. They trained and created movement, yelled out to keep going when they were exhausted, and celebrated each other’s growth. For the second month I stood in the back row of their concrete stage, dancing alongside them. The third month my Brazilian boyfriend broke my heart. I debated ever returning to that park where I had spent the last 60 days humming with a familiar sense of wonder shaking in my bones.

“I’m too sensitive to handle this,” I thought.

Yet I found myself back at their concrete stage, terrified and uncertain. The community of dancers I’d been spending everyday with didn’t care where I’d been or who I’d dated. They only cared that when we danced we sought entry into the same unspeakable passion. Echoing every day around the park was the soundtrack of their excitement and it created a new compass within me. My brown-eyed ex ignored me, but one day it finally stopped mattering.

On the other side of the threshold the view was different. The narrative had changed. It was no longer about falling in love with a man. It was about falling in love with the story of a group of people. I began coming to practice with a camcorder in my hand. The first time I pressed record my breath stalled and my heartbeat quickened. The earth pressed into my feet. I felt certain I was exactly where I needed to be.

Since that initial discovery I’ve been growing into the craft of filmmaking, following this community of dancers around Brazil and other parts of the world as their story widens. I’ve made a hundred amateur mistakes and another hundred skillful, intuitive choices. I’ve kept myself in the center of my sensitivity even when the pressure mounted because that sensitivity is ultimately what makes me an alert storyteller. I have cherished every moment with the community I’ve filmed. I’ve fallen in love over and over and over again.

My editor and I recently put the finishing touches on Believe The Beat, the feature length documentary that began eight years ago, when a sweet boy asked me my name after a dance class on a clear night in a loud city. There is sometimes a voice inside me that yearns to omit this piece of the story.

“I went to Brazil to make a film,” I hear myself think. “I researched and I planned my strategy. I was intentional and grounded and focused from the start.”

Then the rest of me rushes in. I am reminded of the little girl who stood on photos of foreign lands with the unknown looming. Who closed her eyes and said yes to a million possible truths.

This is what the world asks us to do. Follow the winding, complicated path toward voracious wonder. Say yes to the moments that enchant and challenge and surprise us. Walk across the threshold when the gate swings open and keep moving forward as it shuts.

Jocelyn Edelstein is a Portland filmmaker, writer, choreographer, and founder of the Urban Body Project, a multimedia collective that explores the relationship between dance, culture, and community. Her writing has been previously published in Best Women’s Travel Writing 2011, Volume 8, and will be upcoming in Volume 9. When she is not making films or writing stories she is performing and teaching dance at Polaris Contemporary Dance Center. 

Propeller: A Force for Social Innovation is a New Orleans-based nonprofit whose mission is to tackle the city’s toughest challenges by supporting the creative solutions of its community members. Guest blogger Julia Stewart talks about community-focused ways to finance your nonprofit or social venture when you’re just starting out. 

Here at Propeller we emphasize a double bottom-line—that is, social impact and financial sustainability. Whether you are a for-profit or nonprofit, you must ask yourself: What is my business model? What is the market demand for my product or service and how will I generate revenue?

Selling your services to your community and beyond

Almost all of the nonprofits in Propeller’s Social Venture Accelerator have means of generating revenue. Here are a few examples:

• Smiles2Geaux, a mobile dental clinic, earns revenue through Medicaid reimbursements whereby a percentage of the cost of each dental service (cavities, fillings, etc.) is paid back to the provider. 
  
• VEGGI Farmers Cooperative earns revenue by selling produce to New Orleans’ restaurants.
• Youth Rebuilding New Orleans (YRNO) restores blighted houses and sells them at a profit.
• The New Orleans Master Crafts Guild sells membership in their Guild.

How could you leverage your services to raise money?

Show your progress and ask for people to invest in you

“Fundraise, fundraise, fundraise,” is often the go-to mantra for nonprofits. Yes, donations and grants are important, but how can you engage your community to secure funding?

If you aren’t sure how to raise revenue through your services, but want to work closely with your community to support your idea, consider these small-scale (under $10,000) opportunities.

• Crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and Crowdfunder. Propeller alum Tippy Tippens raised almost $6,000 on Kickstarter to launch the BirdProject, for example, giving her supporters everything from mac-n-cheese to a soap and ceramic keepsake. Keep in mind there’s usually a charge of 4%-9% of total funds raised.
  

• Microfinance platforms like Accion and Kiva. These are perfect if you are considered low-income or don’t have access to typical banking services. Kiva New Orleans, for example, has 226 members who have loaned $27,025 across 930 projects since 2009. Keep in mind interest rates can still average 36% or higher.

Of course, if you’re seeking more money, there’s a whole other world of program-related investments and venture capitalists and angel investors to consider. But if you look to your community first, you might be surprised at the support.

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Keep up to date with happenings at Propeller by following them on Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to also reach out to Julia if you have more questions about both small and large financing options: jstewart@gopropeller.org.

 

Inspired by the honor killing of her good friend when she was 16 years old, Pakistani activist Khalida Brohi set out to challenge this practice in her village through several campaigns over the years. Yet she was faced with death threats, both to her and her family. Torn between wanting to change her culture while embracing it, Khalida had to create a whole new way of working. Here’s how she tapped into her culture’s strengths to create the Sughar Women Program in 2009, which empowers 800 women in 23 learning centers across rural provinces. As told to Celeste Hamilton Dennis.

 

How it all began

I’ve never been able to say how much I adore the place where I come from. I’m from a village in the mountains of Balochistan. I was the first person in my family who went to Karachi and got her education. I got to see two very extreme worlds.

Honor killings are a tradition in Pakistan, and they come from a really, really old custom in Saudi Arabia. Women, money, and land: these three things are the property of man, and they can do anything they want with them. They can kill a woman for doing anything they judge brings dishonor to her family.

When I was 16, a friend of mine was killed for wanting to marry a boy she liked. As soon as I learned about her death, I went into a crazy state and decided I was going to stop this. I did the WAKE UP Campaign. [An online media campaign that set out to raise awareness about the issue through sharing women's stories.] It became really big. But the more I worked, the more I realized I was trying to fight the entire system in Pakistan, and that’s difficult because different tribal communities have their own laws. Every time I went back to my village, nothing had changed.

I started getting many death threats from men who were angry I was going against the traditions. I went back to Karachi, and into hiding for six months. 2008 was a really bad time.

In hiding I started thinking about what led me to this failure. Why did I get these death threats?

Then I realized that I never said there were good things in the rural, tribal traditions. I never involved the village women in the campaign; we only had urban activists involved. So I decided to take a new approach.

The birth of the centers

After the failure and all the problems I had in the Wake Up Campaign I thought nobody would support me. But we had these 13 urban youngsters who said they would do anything to come back and help me.

We went to villages in the Balochistan province, where I grew up, and found the tribal leaders were who were against us. We said we were very sorry about protesting openly against you, we’re here to make it up to you, and we have some funds which we are going to use to promote your traditions. We said we were going to focus on three: language, music, and embroidery.

Turns out tribal leaders are always looking for ways for traditions to be promoted. Elders are dying without telling their old stories, and they’re afraid for that. Embroidery is something women have been doing for centuries. Every day, all the women from the local havelis get together and sit and make embroidery while singing. My own aunties do that.

When we did the embroidery part, we established a center and selected the women. One woman from every house would come to the center every day for two hours. The men were like, Wow, that’s great, women wouldn’t have to go anywhere else.

So now, here’s the trick. Instead of embroidery, the women in the center go through life training, and also learn little bit of embroidery so we can show what’s going on in the center. We start with really small things like: women cannot speak loudly, women cannot say their names, women cannot laugh. We start by changing this week by week, day by day.

In two weeks the husbands find out because they’re acting so differently. Their first reaction is, My wife is not going to that center ever again!

We knew that when the men found out it was going to to be a disaster, so we had do to something to keep them happy. We launched Pakistan’s first ever tribal fashion brand. We did a fashion show. The top models wore clothing made by the village women. It became a hit, a cool thing, because nobody had seen anything like it before. Our product went from very cheap to very expensive in Pakistan. The fashion brand took off and so did the prices and income for the women.

The men were like, Oh my God, she is actually bringing in a lot of money which I really need. I can’t stop her from going. For six months, these women end up learning so many life skills and bringing in much needed income.

Why respect and forgiveness are key

We have to show the men that without them we cannot do anything at all. We have separate people on our team who mobilize: one is a man, another is a woman. They are accountable to go in, talk to the tribal leaders about promoting their traditions, and get them on our side. Sometimes it takes three or four months because you have to learn their values, respect them.

Respecting others is key. I mean, I had to forgive those people who I knew had killed their daughters. I was sitting in front of the tribal leaders who were involved with honor killings. The day I learned how to forgive them, and give them respect and let them work for me, was like a key in my hand.

It’s so hard. Forgiving them for who they are is one of the most emotional things for me. The main inspiration I got about how to forgive was when I learned that the mothers who cannot say “Don’t kill my daughter” because it’s a custom, live inside the house with the person who has killed their daughter.

The hate they would feel all their life I think is very difficult. And to know them and to see that everyday has been a struggle for me in the forgiveness process. But I have to keep going.

The fight continues

For me it’s compulsion. I still live in two worlds. I have my home in the mountains, and I have my home in Karachi. When you live inside mountains and places where women are suffering domestic violence and inequality, anyone would’ve done what I’ve done. I still go and sit with my cousins who are making embroidery and I know about their lives and the women’s lives in my community. I still feel there’s a long way to go.

Remembering the person who I started this whole thing for, my friend when I was 16, I feel like if we reach one million women then maybe I’ll feel like I did something for her. Because my limited ability, the helplessness I felt at the time makes me feel so guilty. It’s something I will never get rid of.

Recently I went to visit one of the centers. Someone was like you have to meet Zeena, she’s amazing. When I went to meet Zeena, she said come sit beside me. I sat beside her. She took my pen and the paper I’d had in my hand, and she started writing her name on it, pronouncing it with her whole heart and spirit. Zeeeee Naaaa. She had this beautiful smile on her face and I couldn’t stop crying.

That’s the reason I’m working. I go on and on because I know how proud she felt, seeing her name emerge on that page.
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To learn more or get involved, follow Sughar Women Program on Facebook and Twitter. 

Khalida is graduate of The Unreasonable Institute, an accelerator program that strives to get entrepreneurs who are solving social and environmental problems the resources they need to scale their businesses and impact.

 

 

Everywhere you look you see entrepreneurs: your neighbor who’s the CEO of a tech start-up, the woman who owns the small store down the street, etc. But what about the intrapreneur, an entrepreneur’s oft-overlooked cousin?  Guest blogger Katharine Bierce tells us what they’re all about- and lets us in on the secret of becoming one.

Sometimes, the hardest part about becoming an intrapreneur is just getting started.

Intrapreneurs improve existing systems by advocating for CSR, sustainability, shared value, or engaging with the community. They are internal innovators who innovate within a larger company or organization, as opposed to within startups – which are generally expected to be more innovative.

I’m one. I’m a full-time Operations Associate for a 700-person data analytics firm. On evenings and weekends, I coordinate volunteering events where employees participate in fundraiser walks and park cleanups, as well as advise low-income and student entrepreneurs on their business strategy.

From my experience, the main characteristics of intrapreneurs are passion, persistence, patience, and resilience. You have to care about making a difference to be an intrapreneur. You have to be persistent in following up with busy executives who could be sponsors of innovative projects. You must be patient with the pace of progress in a larger organization, and remain resilient in the face of setbacks.

It can be challenging.  There are not many places where it’s your full-time job to come up with innovative ideas for multi-stakeholder issues. So a large part of intrapreneurship is understanding your organization, its values, and the people, as well as the larger intrapreneurial landscape.

Do you want to become an intrapreneur?

Here are my tips:

• Set your intention. Start by identifying your values. What principles do you want to live your life by? Then, define your skills, and brainstorm ideas about the kinds of challenges you might want to work on that align to your combination of strengths. Where do your values, skills, and market needs intersect?

• Build your network at your organization. Learn as many of your colleagues’ names as you can and build your personal brand. The more people with whom you discuss your idea, the larger your support base will be. When the conversation over lunch,  conference call, or email turns to “What do you do outside of work?” discuss your intrapreneurial ideas. In this way, I eventually found several dozen like-minded people who also lead volunteering projects in offices around the world.

• Expand your network outside your organization. A few months into my first full-time job, I attended the StartingBloc Institute for Social Innovation. StartingBloc provided inspiration that I could make a difference in the world (no matter my job title), and connected me to a network of like-minded changemakers.

• Iterate. If one particular approach doesn’t work for you, try another. Maybe you don’t actually need a budget to get an intrapreneurial project started. Maybe you can use a budget from an existing project or business line to start a pilot project. Be open to experimenting with different ways of meeting or engaging supporters. If you get told “No,” re-phrase that in your mind as “Not yet.”

Next steps

• Be inspired to take the risk by reading “The Case for Stealth Innovation.”
• Check out the winners of Ashoka’s League of Intrapreneur competition to see what other intrapreneurs are up to.
• Get involved with like-minded organizations like NetImpact and StartingBloc.

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Katharine graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Chicago with a degree in Psychology. Over the last few years, she’s been thinking about what makes organizations tick and how to connect people to career development opportunities.  In 2012, she was a finalist for the Net Impact “Impact at Work” award for intrapreneurship. In her free time, she enjoys yoga, reading, cooking, and meditation. Follow Katharine on Twitter @kbierce or send her a message through Idealist.

Propeller: A Force for Social Innovation is a New Orleans-based nonprofit whose mission is to tackle the city’s toughest challenges by supporting the creative solutions of its community members. Guest blogger Julia Stewart talks about the successes they’ve had in bringing healthy food to those who need it most.

While New Orleans is known for being one of America’s most vibrant, fun, and culture-rich cities, it’s also a city that struggles with health and food challenges. There are approximately 30 grocery stores for New Orleans’ 350,000 residents, a statistic that marks the city as one of the nation’s worst food deserts. We also have one of the highest obesity rates in the country.

But it’s not all despairing. One area Propeller has made substantial investment in is healthy food access. By the end of May this year, we’ll have incubated 21 new ventures, both for-profit and nonprofit, in our Social Venture Accelerator Program. A little more than half have missions related to public health and food access.

From production to distribution to consumption, each venture offers a solution to gaps in the local food system. Here are a few we’ve helped get off the ground:

• VEGGI Farmers Cooperative, VertiFarms, and Sheaux Fresh operate aquaponic, hydroponic, and/or traditional urban farms that grow produce for grocers, community members, schools, and restaurants.
• Jack & Jake’s food hub connects local growers with large-scale buyers such as public schools and the New Orleans Convention Center.
• James Graham of KIPP New Orleans brought one million healthy lunches to 20% of public school children in New Orleans in our first year, revolutionizing cafeteria food.
• “Get Fruity About Trees,” a fruit orchard in the Lower Ninth Ward, recently won PitchNOLA: Lots of Progress, our competition that sources innovative strategies to utilize the city’s vacant properties.

Collectively, in just ten months, they’ve grown over 11,300 pounds of produce for the community.

It’s been our experience that to truly change our city’s dismal health statistics, cooperation is required at all levels from policymakers to grassroots groups.

Propeller is helping by doing what we do best: incubating new ideas, identifying the roadblocks to change, and connecting the players who can make real and lasting improvements.

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To learn more about Propeller-led initiatives, visit www.GoPropeller.org. Like what they’re doing? Visit them on Facebook or follow on Twitter.

Think these food solutions can work in your community? Reach out to Julia Stewart to learn more: jstewart@gopropeller.org.

Julia feels fortunate to be situated on the front lines of social innovation, helping New Orleans’ entrepreneurs transform their ideas into reality as Propeller’s Communications & Programs Manager. Julia received a B.A. in International Relations from Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. In the past, Julia has worked on organic farms, and has written for several environmental publications including The Bear Deluxe, Table Magazine and Edible Vineyard.

We often talk about the value of failure but what does it mean to create an organizational culture that embraces it? Rachel Jansen, Writer, and Ashley Good, CEO and Founder of Fail Forward, a project of Engineers Without Borders Canada, talk about how to move past the fear of failing.

Most of us have thought of changes we’d like to see to make the world a better place. But the first hurdle many of us face is the fear of failure.

We’d like to suggest that getting over that fear starts with accepting that, no matter how smart, well-intentioned, and hard working we are, failure is going to happen because almost everything we do has elements of both success and failure.

Our organizations tend to be set up in a manner that discourages open communication about tough issues; open admission of failure comes with risk and poses a threat to our self-esteem and worth in the eyes of others.

How can we change this? How do we accept failure and allow ourselves to step outside of the box and try new things?

Embrace and share your failures

Engineers Without Borders Canada has been publishing an annual Failure Report since 2008. From the very beginning, they’ve strived to encourage a culture of learning through open communication and transparency. Employees and volunteers are expected to share their failures all year round.

With such a viewpoint in mind, there are many ways to encourage communication about failures, support collaborative learning, and break down much of the fear associated with taking action. Here are a few:

• Start with managers. Management should role model the behaviour of speaking openly about their failures. Top-level buy-in is essential as it develops trust, and communicates that we all fail.
• Gain permission from those involved in a failure before implicating them with your story. This prevents hard feelings and encourages communication between all parties involved in a failure where the various perspectives can lead to deeper insights.
• Face failures head on. Try not to euphemize or avoid the big issues by tackling less important ones.
• Recognize and emphasize that just because a person failed does not mean they are a failure. It’s important to separate ego from activity if we are to feel safe sharing our stories.
• Never blame. The failures that teach us the most tend to be the result of multiple factors and are rarely caused by a single person or error.
• Build the conversations about failures and learning into formal structures such as team meetings or project reviews to make sure everyone is encouraged to share. The idea is to turn the idea of failure on its head by implicitly saying “If you do not have a failure to share, you’re either not being honest or you’re not being innovative.”

These initial steps are only the first building blocks in creating an environment where it is okay to discuss failures, and more importantly, to learn from and adapt to them.

What barriers do you, your team, or organization face when talking about failure?  Have you used any of the strategies above to overcome them?

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Learn more about building resilience to failure at Fail Forward or by emailing ashley@failforward.org. 

 

 

Each year on Martin Luther King Jr Day, people across the country volunteer in their communities to celebrate Dr. King’s legacy of service. But what do you do after the day is over?

 There are tons of fellowships and programs to help you get more involved in your community while pursuing a social-impact career, but how do you find these opportunities?  What challenges might you face in your journey? To get a better sense of what it looks like to cultivate a public-service career, we asked Ryan Wilcox, an AmeriCorps Alum and Mentoring Specialist for Whetstone Boys Ranch, to share his experiences.

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By Ryan Wilcox

My desire to serve others has always been driven by my faith. In high school, I went on several mission trips with my church, including to Rio, Bravo, Mexico—where I was part of a work team that built a cinder block house for a family. These mission trips were my first experience with true poverty. Later, in college, I served as camp counselor at a camp for teenagers with epilepsy. I credit these initial experiences with shaping my passion for missions and service I hold today.

After graduation, I was looking for a job in the non-profit industry. Like many recent graduates, I struggled to find a job right away. After an extended search, I investigated public service programs, and AmeriCorps stood out to me. AmeriCorps offered much of what I was looking for: a 9-month to 12-month commitment; an opportunity to leverage my Advertising/Public Relations degree; and potential placement in my community. I chose to serve as an AmeriCorps VISTA, a program that requires a 12-month commitment, and focuses on fighting poverty by building the capacity of the host non-profits.

 

Gaining life-long skills

During my 12 months as a VISTA, I served with Cornerstone Assistance Network, a non-profit that works with people below the poverty line, in danger of becoming homeless. As a VISTA, my primary focus was communications and outreach: I helped establish and manage Cornerstone’s social media presence, and was a key member of Cornerstone’s website development team. In addition, I worked to manage and recruit volunteers, attending recruitment fairs at local colleges. These responsibilities helped me develop skills in managing people, building relationships and establishing goals. As a mentor, I use these skills to encourage the boys at Whetstone to grow.

I also learned, inevitably, how to live on a tight budget. I received a small stipend, at the time about $800/month. My VISTA position did not offer housing, but it was close enough to my home that I was able to live with my parents during my service year. I deferred my student loans and elected to receive the Eli Segal Education Award at the end of my term, instead of a cash payment. As a recent graduate, I had student loans, so I appreciated the help!

 

Coping with challenges

While I learned a great deal in AmeriCorps, some challenges did arise, primarily with transitioning out of the program. I wasn’t prepared for the end of my term, and did a poor job of planning my exit. I didn’t begin job searching seriously until it was too late. As a result, the end of my service arrived, and I didn’t have any prospects for full-time employment.

After leaving AmeriCorps, I took a series of part-time and contract based jobs. The experience was a lesson in perseverance, and a chance to seek guidance on my career direction. I accepted a part-time position with an after-school program. This job gave me the skills I needed to be effective in my current role. It also showed me that I have a heart for mentorship.

 

Tips for you

Dr. King once said, “Everybody can be great, because anybody can serve.” I wouldn’t trade my service year for anything. I gained pride in serving my country and community. It also changed my perceptions on poverty, a big social problem facing the United States.

Are you ready to serve? Here are a few things to keep in mind, if you want to pursue AmeriCorps, or any public-service program.

1. Figure out what matters most: Do you want to travel outside of the country? Do you need to make a certain amount of money? Are there skills you want to develop? The answers to these questions will determine what public service program is right for you. For example, while I chose AmeriCorps, I also looked at the Peace Corps. I knew I wanted to stay close to home and commit for one year, instead traveling abroad for two years.
2. Do your research: It becomes easier to find programs to get involved in once you know what you need. I attended a Peace Corps information session before deciding that AmeriCorps was the better choice for me.
3. Plan ahead: AmeriCorps provides resources to help with your transition. However, I’d advise you to begin to plan for life after AmeriCorps early in the service year. This applies to both graduate school research and job searching. If the end of your service year arrives, and you don’t have a job or graduate school offer, consider serving another term.

Good luck!

Connect with Ryan on twitter and on his blog.

When was the last time you took a vacation? While it can be hard to step away from your desk, a little time away can do wonders for you professionally and personally. Read on to learn how to get away.

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By Eleanor Whitney

When I worked at a New York City museum I was surprised to learn that some employees who had been working there for years had amassed months worth of unused vacation days.  These same colleagues felt burned out, jaded and disengaged from their jobs.  At another organization where I worked, there was a policy of mandating that all employees use their vacation days within the fiscal year after some workers went years without taking a vacation.

This reluctance to going away is understandable: many nonprofit employees are invested in their work and might feel too overwhelmed to take a vacation. However, spending some time away from work can have distinct benefits that actually make you more productive and effective.

Why you should take a vacation

Let’s start with the physical and emotional: several studies, reported on by the New York Times and the Harvard Business Review, find that taking vacation lowers stress levels, the risk of heart attack, promotes good sleep, and encourages family bonding and overall well being.

It never hurts to come back to work happier and healthier. Additionally, in my own experience, one of the greatest career boosting elements of taking a vacation is the clarity you develop around your work:

• You can reflect on your accomplishments and identify next steps for yourself
• You gain perspective and new ideas by trying something completely outside of your daily routine
• You can find new ideas or solutions to an old problem: Ideas often appear when you are relaxed and your mind can wander

So how do you set yourself up for vacation success?

Plan before you go

Before stepping away, prioritize essential business, delegate tasks that still need doing, and communicate where your colleagues can find any information that they might need while you are away. Trust your colleagues to handle situations that come up, knowing that you would want them to put the same trust in you.

Start small

If you are traveling, chose a trip that has a low stress level. For example, unless you are an adventure seeker, traveling to the wilds of Alaska in winter might not be for you.  If you are traveling with family make sure you have time to bond and do things together, but also make time for yourself.

Limit connections

If you just can’t cut the chord on your smart phone, set a limited time each day to check in, say 15 minutes to skim your emails and check your voicemail and respond to whatever is pressing, and then leave the rest.

If you take the risk to let go, you’ll find that your break, whether its several days or several weeks, will enable you to come back to work energized and refreshed, with greater perspective, new ideas, and perhaps an improved attitude that your coworkers may appreciate as well.

What are your strategies for preparing to “get away from it all” and what are some benefits that time away has brought to your work? 

Eleanor C. Whitney is a writer, arts administrator and musician living in Brooklyn, New York. She currently is a Program Officer at the New York Foundation for the Arts and is the author of the forthcoming book Grow: How to Take Your Do It Yourself Project and Passion to the Next Level and Quit Your Job, which will be released in the spring of 2013 on Cantankerous Titles

In October, Curtis Chang at the Stanford Social Innovation Review shared a few management tips for nonprofit leaders based on lessons taught in MBA programs. While he notes the challenges in pursuing an MBA – including cost and time – we know that many people are considering graduate school to help them develop these skills and we are excited to see that MBA programs are expanding their offerings to include a greater focus on social impact. To explore this topic more, we’ve invited Net Impact — a nonprofit that helps business school students and professionals leverage their talent for social change — to share more about the growth of these programs and how we might use them to increase our impact.

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By Kyle Skahill

If you’ve never really thought an MBA could help you amplify your impact, consider this: more and more business schools are restructuring their programs and incorporating sustainability and social impact issues into their curriculum. In fact, the number of programs featured in Business as UNusual, our guide to impact MBA programs, has grown 170% since we first started publishing it in 2006. That means the tools, opportunities, and connections you gain from today’s impact MBA programs offer newfound potential to create the change you want to see.

Here are a few other ways an MBA might help you advance your career and ability to make a difference:

1)     Expand your impact opportunities

Innovative cross-sector collaborations are opening new avenues for change, so a working understanding of other sectors may be an eye-opener. Business models are changing rapidly, from the rise of B-corporations to unconventional start-ups to cross-sector partnerships – so options abound post-graduation for nontraditional integration of business skills into your career for good.

Who knows, you might even discover opportunities you never considered. Kirsten Tobey was a teacher focusing on experiential education when she realized her interests were increasingly drawn to the bigger-picture issues around food accessibility. So she enrolled in business school, attended a cross-disciplinary product design class, and graduated with the idea for Revolution Foods, which has now served more than 50 million healthy meals to school children nationwide.

This year’s Business as UNusual suggests Kirsten isn’t alone: while entering MBA students came largely from traditional corporations and nonprofits, students’ aspirations post-MBA shifted markedly to include start-ups, social enterprise, and other mission-driven companies (see graphic). It’s clear that the MBA experience opened students’ eyes to a wider set of paths toward making change.

2)     Build your impact-making skills

Nonprofits demand leadership, innovative thinking, and responsive problem solving skills if they expect to make progress on the world’s most serious issues. And they need hard skills like project management, finance, and strategy to galvanize that progress. MBA programs incorporating social and environmental issues give students the chance to develop those skills, while applying them to the issues they care about most.

As one Business as UNusual student respondent wrote about his program, “a deep dive into sustainability through all sectors of the curricula, as well as leadership development, prepares one to implement social and environmental policy in business, one’s community, and our planet’s future.”

But in addition to your own skill building, an understanding of the models and language fundamental to the business sector will be an asset in conversations with partners, sponsors, and stakeholders. Dan Winterson, program director at the Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation, describes his work on initiatives like the foundation’s Forever Costa Rica effort involving multiple funders and NGOs. “We talk about applying Wall Street principles to conservation because it’s a big project to finance,” he explains. “It’s a big ‘deal,’ essentially, where there are number of conditions that need to be in place before the deal can close. That’s an example where a business background and financial skills are crucial. And I think you see more and more of that in the environmental conservation field.”

3)     Build a network for lifelong impact

The fact remains that a large part of business school’s clout rests on the students and alumni you meet and the doors that this cadre of professionals can open for you. And if you’re an aspiring impact-maker, you’ll find more like-minded students in your MBA cohort than ever before. In this year’s guide, 77% of business students reported that their peers are also prioritizing impact careers in their post-graduation job search. These contacts often translate into future volunteers, partners, employees, and donors instrumental to your organization’s continued viability.

On the first day of that cross-disciplinary product design class, Kirsten Tobey had already started thinking about how to get students eating healthier. So when a classmate – who would become her future business partner – held up a less-than-nutritious lunch she’d just purchased and wondered if there was a better alternative, it was kismet. “We looked at each other across the room,” says Kirsten, “and that was the beginning of a great friendship and partnership.”

With so many MBA programs addressing social and sustainability issues (Business as UNusual 2012 features more than one hundred) to choose from, it’s safe to say that business school is no longer the exclusive domain of the corporate world. The b-school now offers social sector professionals a way to build valuable networks, hone critical skills, and discover new opportunities for impact – and that is a change for the best.

Kyle Skahill is the Community Program Fellow at Net Impact, a leading nonprofit empowering a new generation of leaders to work for a sustainable future. Business as UNusual, the organization’s annual guide to impact MBA programs, can be downloaded free at: netimpact.org/bizschoolguide

On Friday, we shared a list of opportunities and organizations to explore in human rights, in honor of Human Rights Day. However, breaking into this field can be a bit challenging, so we invited Akhila Kolisetty, a law student and blogger who has worked at various human rights organizations, to share a bit about her journey and experiences.

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by Akhila Kolisetty

I first developed a passion for international development and human rights as an undergraduate at Northwestern, where I studied economics and political science. My time studying development economics in London and working with an international access to justice NGO in Geneva hugely influenced my worldview, convincing me to work at the intersection of access to legal services and women’s rights in the global South. After graduation, I chose to work at a civil rights law firm and also to fundraise for a start-up NGO in Afghanistan that sought to open legal aid clinics promoting rule of law and women’s rights throughout the country.

Having spoken with women and girls in Washington D.C., Afghanistan, and Bangladesh, I’ve noticed the interrelated nature of poverty and violence against women and the impact a passionate legal advocate can have on the lives of the poor. And yet, legal services work remains underfunded in the international development realm. This interest has eventually led me to law school, where I’m hoping to develop the skills to be a better human rights advocate not only through fundraising and running an NGO, but through direct representation of the poor – especially women, girls, and refugees.

Is a career in international human rights for you?

Getting into international human rights can be a challenge; it is a difficult field to enter and can be especially competitive, particularly in today’s economy. In addition, there are many things to consider: how willing are you to travel abroad, live away from your family and friends, acclimate to a completely new and unfamiliar environment, and sometimes live in rough environments? The more flexible you are, and the more passionate you are about living abroad and learning from poor communities, the better chance you’ll have to breaking into this field.  Here are a few tips to help you get started.

1. Volunteer and intern as much as possible

Unpaid internships are essentially a requirement to get into the development and human rights field. Check out a start-up social enterprise’s website and email them offering to contribute something: a social media presence, website development, event planning or grant writing. These things can go a long way for a small NGO! In fact, small organizations can actually be more receptive to your help, and more willing to give you a significant role than large NGOs. At the same time, internships with well-established NGOs can be vital in giving you credibility and valuable experience. Try everything you can to gain experience, skills, references, and a strong sense of what work setting you thrive in.

2. Learn and think critically about development and human rights.

If you’re just starting out in international human rights work, educate yourself! Even if you’re not majoring in international relations, development studies, human rights, or a related subject, you can still learn by reading relevant books (check out works by Bill Easterly, Paul Collier, Dambisa Moyo, and Amartya Sen – among many others) and useful development and human rights blogs (such as A View From the Cave, Chris Blattman, and How Matters). More than anything, I think it’s valuable to think critically about your involvement in international human rights, and about how you can realistically contribute and best make an impact as an outsider in this work.

3. Study or intern abroad as an undergraduate, and learn other languages.

Studying and interning abroad can give you critical “field” or in-country experience that can help you get your first international human rights job. Studying or working abroad can give you a much better sense of the issues facing the country or region you live in, and can also impart valuable language skills. Knowing another language and having the ability to speak thoughtfully about the politics and economics of a region can be a real asset. Spending time abroad will also give you key contacts; maintaining these contacts can help you find a job down the road, or perhaps even apply for programs such as the Fulbright, which allow you to devise your own research project.

4. Learn concrete skills relevant to NGO management.

Most NGOs appreciate skills such as grant writing, fundraising, research and writing, communications, program implementation, and monitoring and evaluation. If you can develop concrete skills in writing grants, hosting fundraising events, researching and writing human rights reports, or marketing organizations effectively through web design and social media, you will be able to contribute concretely to the needs of most non-profit organizations. Learning valuable skills in school – such as strong writing, research, and economic analysis – can also be very useful.

5. Blog, write, and engage in social media.

Personal branding can be useful in the development and human rights field. Starting a blog and contributing your thoughts on human rights and social justice work can be a useful exercise in honing your knowledge, increasing your awareness and understanding of key issues facing your field, and also getting your voice heard. Combining blogging with social media such as Twitter can be extremely useful in making connections that can eventually lead to a job, considering the importance of networking.

6. Have a specific goal if possible, but also be flexible.

Focusing on a specific subject matter area – such as women’s rights, environmental justice, refugee rights, economic development, or post-conflict reconstruction – can be helpful, although it is not necessary. Having an area of focus, however, can allow you to develop particular expertise and knowledge in one area. At the same time, flexibility can go a long way. If you’re willing to take on a lower salary or relocate to a new country or city, for instance, you’ll have a lot more opportunities available to you.

7. Consider graduate school, but be careful about the cost.

I chose to go to law school because of my particular passion for the intersection of law, human rights, and development and my desire to learn direct client representation. A Master’s in International Affairs, an MPP, or even a Ph.D. from a top school can also be helpful in breaking into the field. However, many graduate degrees are extremely expensive, and you should consider carefully whether the degree will be worth the cost.

Ultimately, a career in international human rights can be incredible; it is deeply inspiring and energizing to see grassroots movements, the positive impact of aid and development, and small victories that add up to broader social change and justice. At the same time, it can be truly frustrating and challenging, with constant international travel, time away from family and friends, and the seemingly slow pace of change you want to see happen. Following these tips will help you break into the field – but it’s up to you to decide whether this is the right path for you, and the right way to make an impact!

 

Author Bio: Akhila Kolisetty is a first year student at Harvard Law School and a graduate of Northwestern University. She has worked with human rights and legal non-profits in Washington D.C., Chicago, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan, and is passionate about issues of gender-based violence, access to justice, and rule of law.