This morning I am happily unplugging from my devices and taking a field trip up to City Island, a tiny fishing village in the Bronx.
Did your face just crinkle in confusion? You read that right – a small bucolic fishing village is nestled into the shoreline of the Bronx. I’ve been fascinated by its existence for several years and I finally blocked out the time for a visit. My friend, Moya, is joining me for the adventure.
I’ll be taking pictures and noting points of interest that we find during our day of meandering. Tomorrow you’ll have the full scoop. Get out there and enjoy your Sunday!
We need to create our own solutions. Technology gives us a way to rise up and speak for ourselves.” ~ TMS “Teddy” Ruge, Co-Founder, Project Diaspora
TMS created the rally cry of the passionate individuals who are coming together from all over the world for the Social Good Summit. The first day of the event brought a giant wave of excitement and possibility for the use of technology to solve the world’s greatest social challenges. From health to education to environmental conservation, enthusiastic and insightful individuals across the globe are banding together with others to conceive of solutions and bring them to life.
Data is only useful when applied for the public good
With election season upon us, we’re bombarded by sparring matches, claims of past actions, and future promises. Here’s my biggest question: Where is the innovation in government? And today I got my answer.
In Washington, Todd Park, U.S. CTO and Assistant to the President for Tech, is leading the passionate charge by unlocking previously unusable data and making it downloadable by third parties who use it to build, in his words, “awesomeness”. The federal government is hosting hackathons to ignite and unite appliers, people who want to take that data and build something that helps others.
The innovations coming from these hackathons are incredible and you can take a look at the examples at data.gov. My favorite example is iTriage, a mobile app and website that gives users the ability to plug int their symptoms and their location, and find out the closest place for them to receive the right care at the right time. The results: it’s saving lives, creating jobs, and improving healthcare delivery, all from publicly available data filtered for individual use.
Women and girls get a voice and advocate Jill Sheffield of Women Deliver made the case that supporting women and girls around the globe isn’t just the right thing to do, but the smart thing to do. Globally, we lose $15B of productivity every year because of unwanted pregnancies and pregnancy complications. Nearly all of this expense can be eliminated by utilizing technology to teach reproductive education to the 3 billion young people around the world who are under 25.
If women can’t plan their fertility, then they can’t plan their lives. How they plan their lives affects how the world evolves. By making women and girls the center of the development conversation, we can craft policies, programs, and actions to alleviate poverty more effectively.
Google Earth to the rescue
If a picture is worth a thousand words and knowledge is power, then Google Earth is the greatest powerhouse for social change ever created. Rebecca Moore brilliantly and expertly illustrated how Google Earth is being used to remove land mines, help indigenous tribes protect the rain forests, stop dangerous mountain top mining, and end genocide. It is used to influence policy, empower local communities, and raise philanthropic funds on a global scale.
If you thought Google was just for search, think again. It’s fast becoming a synonym for conscience, safety, peace, preservation, and community. In Rebecca’s words, “It’s going to be a great adventure.” More info at Google Earth Engine.
Tomorrow the Summit will kick off at 1pm Eastern. View the livestream here and follow the conversation on Twitter with the hashtag #SGSGlobal.
A buzzing street market in Sunset Park’s Chinatown. Photo by Michael Vito
Michael Vito is a dear friend, Compass Yoga board member, and all-around rock star advisor. When I founded Compass, Michael was one of the first two people I consulted to read my 5-page plan. (The other was Lon Tibbitts, another dear friend, Compass board member, and rock star advisor – I am a lucky girl!) Michael very honestly supported my vision and laid out about 100 things that needed fixing in such a way that I felt even more motivated rather than crushed. His ability to weave a tale is pretty darn extraordinary.
In a way, we took the big Leap into working for ourselves together, several weeks apart after about a year of seriously talking about how on Earth we were both going to do the work we love and get paid for it. I’m very happy to share Michael’s story below, in his own beautiful words. To learn more about him, check out the Third Place Media site and his personal blog, Like a Fish in Water.
Michael Vito’s Leap
About two and a half months ago, I decided to take my list of “stuff I want to do when I have the time and money, someday” and just do it. I left my research and communications position at the Corporate Eco Forum and launched my own business, Third Place Media.
The name is based on the term of art used by urban planners to refer to settings other than home and work that support civic engagement and help build social capital. On top of this concept I’ve layered transit oriented development and walkable neighborhoods, two related forces that work best in tandem to reduce dependence on automobiles. I think the combination of the three creates more diverse, economically vibrant and environmentally sustainable communities that address the needs of a broad group of stakeholders.
I place myself in the role of 21st century storyteller. In order to help drive more of this kind of land use and development, I think there’s a need for rich narrative content to help communities understand what is at stake and what tools are available to create change. Armed with cameras and a keyboard, I plan to get down in the trenches with local governments, planners, economic development organizations, community leaders and businesses, supporting their efforts to build better places. I will be offering both content development and communications strategy consulting to tie things together.
I’ve designated the first six months to be focused on pilot projects, designed to both get a feel for workflows and methodologies I’ll be using, as well as create a portfolio demonstrating the concepts. So far, I’ve spent plenty of time camping out in train stations and exploring of the communities built around them. I produced some prototype Third Place Media content that will be used by the newly formed South Orange economic development organization. I just wrapped up principal photography and will shortly begin the editing phase of a miniature documentary on 热闹 (rènao), the Chinese cultural affinity for noisy, rowdy, lively environments. Next month, my wife, daughter and I will visit our family in China. Both while there and during a short side trip by myself to Tokyo, I plan to photograph, film and document transit infrastructure, mixed-use development, and social phenomena in public spaces. All of these are things I would have done anyway, for no other reason than pure curiosity. Such is the magic of choosing one’s own path.
Looking back on the summer, it’s a little bit unbelievable to me how much ground I’ve covered, both in terms of the actual work and the emotional distance I’ve traveled since making my leap. I would never have anticipated how much and how intensely I could work (and still want to do more) after immersing myself in all of the things that really light me up. I’ve also lost what remained of my tolerance for the kind of uninspiring leadership and poor behavior to which I have been subjected in previous stages of my career. In my own approach to management, it’s my goal to make sure that the people who work with me never have to don the hard shell I needed to preserve myself. Regardless of position and level of experience, everyone deserves no less than complete respect, to do work that inspires their curiosity, and to be empowered to take risks and explore their creative potential. The great challenges of our time are too interesting and too complex to not bring everything we have to bear.
My friend, Blair, sent me this photo and I promptly printed it out to hang at my desk. Plans are important – they give us a guidepost and help us bolster our sense of determination. They help us to persevere. However, if we never give ourselves the flexibility to change and alter them, we run the risk of missing out on something wonderful.
Life has many twists and turns. We receive information and insight all the time, and those insights can bring about wonderfully unexpected and unplanned opportunities. The joys of life are often coupled with surprises and adventures we never saw coming. Don’t miss out on them; they arrive at our doorstep for a reason.
A seed that I found in the spice forest when I visited Munnar, India earlier this year.
“The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
“I don’t try to guess someone’s ceiling.” ~ Marcus Samuelsson, Yes, Chef
It’s easy to look at something, project our own experiences and opinions, and pass judgement on how it will unfold. We look at students and employees that way. We think we have the ability to determine someone else’s potential, that we can somehow determine how far they can go and what they can do. There’s a danger in that. The human brain is a wondrous piece of machinery, but it is a horrible fortune-teller.
Take a look at an acorn or any kind of seed the next time you’re out walking in the woods, planting in the garden, or strolling through the park. The seed is a humble looking entity and yet there are worlds buried inside it just waiting for a bit of Earth, a sprinkle of rain, and a few rays of sunshine to cast their gaze in its direction.
We are seeds, too. We cannot look at others, we can’t even look at ourselves, and know exactly what we are capable of being. Get some wilder dreams. Aspire to something beyond your own comprehension. Imagine that you have no boundaries, that there are no limits. Chase down that vision, confident in the knowledge that you have everything you need within you right now to bring it to life. If the acorn can do it, so can we.
“He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.” ~ Albert Einstein
I spend time with my nieces, Lorelei and Aubree, because I love them. I also spend time with them because I am incredibly selfish. They are a constant reminder to me that life is filled with the exciting, the unexpected, and the unprecedented. There are millions of surprises just waiting for us. The world wants to astound us, to make us wonder and wander. It wants us to be free and open to its magic, to follow its lead into the miraculous and previously unimagined. My nieces remind me of all of that whenever they see something I have seen a million times before and regard it with amazement.
Show up with a full heart, open eyes, and perked up ears. You won’t be disappointed. You’ll be inspired.
“Life offers its wisdom generously. Everything teaches. Not everyone learns.” ~ Rachel Naomi Remen
No matter what’s happening to us, we have the opportunity to learn. Good times teach us gratitude and generosity. Tough times teach us about perseverance and dedication. Confusing times teach us about our priorities. Moments of clarity teach us that life doesn’t have to be as difficult as we make it.
Around every corner, there is a chance to meet wisdom, to take her into our lives, and make her feel at home. Just let it happen.
This photo was taken by my yoga teacher, Arturo Peal
“It may be that when we no longer know which way to go that we have come to our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.” ~ Wendell Berry
It feels good to have direction, to feel confident in the decisions that lie in our past, the choices of our present, and the road of our future.
But what about the fork in the road? We stare for a long time down the path to the left, then pivot to stare an equally long time down the path to the right, and don’t know which to choose. We are keenly aware that with a single step, we are changing our future. We don’t know how it will unfold, but we know that there is no going back. With certain decisions, there’s no way to retrace our steps and make another choice. Things will be forever different.
When the going gets tough, we find that in that moment we actually get going. The Hero’s (or Heroine’s) Journey lies not in choosing between good options and bad options but good options and equally good options. That choice will allow us to clearly see our own priorities. We will finally know what’s most important to us, and very often it will surprise us and those around us.
Surprise and realization keep life interesting. They keep us engaged. They keep us growing and evolving. Confusion is a good sign that we are getting down to the real work of life – to decide what truly matters and why.
My friend, Blair, posted this picture on her Facebook wall and it perfectly sums up how I feel about getting more creative outlets to more young people.
“Art is the only way to run away without leaving home.” ~ Twyla Tharp
We all want to be high. Once we feed the soul, once we know that feeling of being truly alive, we will crave it more and more often. The happy soul is a hungry beast, and eventually it will require your full attention.
It is heartbreaking to see someone, especially a young person, turn to chemical means for that high. My dad suffered with addiction for most of his life, and our family felt those effects in dramatic and tragic ways. What helped me come to terms with my father’s decisions was to feel that high – after running, yoga, writing, or creating a piece of art. It is a delicious feeling. My father didn’t have those outlets so he turned to other means. The same thing is happening with so many Americans today, particularly those still making their way through school.
We ask young people to say no to drugs, alcohol, and other habits that will eventually destroy their health, but we don’t do a sufficient job of recognizing the need to feel that high. We strip schools of art and music programs. We cut physical education. We prioritize testing over emotional and mental development. We’re creating a generation of very good test takers but we are doing a poor job of helping our young generations grow into healthy, happy, productive, and creative adults.
We need to do better. Is art the answer? For some, yes. Is physical activity the answer? For some, yes. Is a creative outlet of some kind that is supported, encouraged, and celebrated by society the answer. Yes, for all of us.
“To be human is to be aware of the passage of time; no concept lies closer to the core of our consciousness.” ~ Dan Falk
August 7th?! We have less than 5 months left in 2012.
Every year, time is picking up speed, or rather I am becoming even more acutely aware of its passing. Time has always been at the forefront of my mind for several reasons. My father and 3 of my 4 grandparents died when I was very young. When people responsible for my very existence left this plane, it made the reality of my own mortality a very palpable thing.
I’ve come up against my own mortality several times in my short life. In college, I was robbed at knife point in the subway station on the University of Pennsylvania campus. In 2009, I was almost trapped inside my apartment building after a fire broke out on the first floor. The only things that saved me were my unconscious intuition that something was very wrong with my kitchen floor heaving up and down (the fire was raging in the apartment below, unbeknownst to me at the time) and my will to live beyond age 33. In 2010, I was on a flight when my plane was struck my lightning. We made a frightening emergency landing in Syracuse, New York, and once we hit the tarmac, the wing of the plane promptly fell off.
How’s that for a series of wake-up calls? Universe to Christa – LIFE IS SHORT!
Once you realize your own sense of mortality, one of two things happen: you either go into a deep sense of denial or you realize that you better make the most out of every single moment because the next moment is not guaranteed. By some great miracle I was born without even a hint of the denial gene, so I had the latter reaction. Once you stare death in the face several times over, and live to tell about it, there isn’t much that’s going to scare you away from doing exactly what you want to do with your time.
This causes me to have a trait that people either love or hate – I call it as I see it and play it as it lies. I’m not saying I’m right, but I’m always honest and try very hard to remain true to that honesty while upholding the rights of all people to believe something different. I don’t beat around the bush in any area of my life. I believe in ripping off a band-aid when it’s outlived its purpose. I don’t have time to live any other way.
And you don’t either. No matter how long our lives are, in the grand scheme of things they’re very short. Whether you realize it or not, time is ticking away and your opportunity to have an impact goes right along with it. Time is a resource you can’t buy and once it’s used, it cannot be replenished. It’s the most precious thing you have; use it to the best of your ability. Make it matter.
This morning I am happily unplugging from my devices and taking a field trip up to City Island, a tiny fishing village in the Bronx.
Christa Avampato 