Jennifer Connelly in charity: water Public Service Announcement from charity: water on Vimeo.

I was able to take my first trip to Guatemala last week.  I have heard the stories, talked to some of the people involved, but never been able to be apart of the work that Plywood is involved with in the actual country of Guatemala.  For a week I spent time helping build a couple widow homes, meeting the women who make the bags and wallets we sell, spending time with a great friend, and gaining more insight and understanding into the purpose we serve.

I was moved by the level of gratitude the women had as we would present them with the keys to their own home.  They were so gracious to host us while we barged onto their land, getting their children and grandchildren all wound up, all the while they fed us full of crackers and coke, learned to use electric drills, and then wept with us as we stood with them in their new house.  The second home we built, there was a huge dark ominous cloud, and sure enough it would have soaked us had we not gotten the roof on the house just in time.  We all huddled inside trying to stay dry, and enjoying spending the first hospitable moments with Manuela in her new home.

Meeting the women who make the bags and wallets we sell was also an adventure!  It’s Guatemala’s rainy season, so it rained on and off through the course of the week.  The morning we were headed the factory, we had to drive through a river to get there.  The streets were all pretty severely flooded.  Every time we’d meet another car, waves would roll onto the hood, but we got there.  The women shared how much it meant that we shared their story and helped to provide work for them. They had watched the video of them making the bags, and loved it.

I wanted to share with you one of my most favorite moments.  It’s the picture of the boys in the bottom picture playing with bubbles.  We had fun chasing them through corn fields and trying to teach each other words we’d understand before the rain rolled in and we were all huddled inside the house to stay dry.

“Ideas can be life-changing,” said Jim Rohn, world-renowned business entrepreneur and considered America’s foremost business philosopher. “Sometimes all you need to open the door is just one more good idea.”

Early last month approximately two hundred social entrepreneurs, creatives, and local business professionals were exposed to a wealth of good ideas at Plywood Presents: Making Ideas Happen; ideas that without a doubt have since been opening up doors both here in Atlanta and across the country. The day featured best selling author Scott Belsky, a local city planner, Aaron Fortner, and four other local Atlanta change makers, all of whom are currently in the process of making their ideas happen in extraordinary ways.

We Are the Process, a local clothing design firm made up of Georgios Saliaris, Larry Luk, and Jorge Menes, is all about the idea making process as their name suggests. Unlike some design firms, We Are the Process strives to see all of it’s designs through to fruition, understanding that in order to see their ideas happen they need to be involved in the process from start to finish, from initial design to production to marketing and sales. Their firm is continually informed by the surrounding culture and their own ethnic diversity, with each individual bringing a different perspective to the job and task at hand; sometimes a difficult thing to do, but they admit that the strength of We Are the Process comes from their ability to bring opposed ideas into play. Relying heavily on their local Atlanta followers, We Are the Process puts a lot of faith in their tribe and eagerly shares their products with those who they believe will continue to gorilla market We Are the Process in the way that has already brought their line to the pages of The Wall Street Journal and onto the stage of the BET Hip-Hop Awards. As Georgios, Larry, and Jorge continue to produce great ideas, and great designs, they will continue be the taste makers of a region, a generation, and the thriving city of Atlanta.

If you have heard of Scoutmob, then you have Michael Tavanni and his team to thank for that. If you have not heard of Scoutmob, then you are apparently not from Atlanta. A new movement that is sweeping the city, Scoutmob is crowd sourcing at its best as it daily generates great deals at local eateries and shops around Atlanta easily accessible through a simple to use iPhone application. In one creative way Scoutmob is meeting two needs, by providing local businesses with a “flash mob” of customers almost immediately through their application and by encouraging spontaneity in consumers to try new places and get to know their local city better. Michael, the financial director of the young but rapidly growing company, strives to balance the creative idea of Scoutmob and actually being able to pay the bills each month, especially since the company decided to make its services available for free; they lost revenue in the decision, but the Scoutmob team wanted to be the best experience for the consumer as possible and that meant costing absolutely nothing. With Scoutmob bringing in up to 4,500 hits per day, Michael and his team have their work cut out for them as they continue to daily release a new local deal and are regularly working on expanding Scoutmob to other cities across the country. We can’t help following Scoutmob as they continue sharing great ideas and great deals with all of Atlanta, and are eager to see what city the mob will hit next!

The King of Pops is another trend taking Atlanta by storm, and a tasty one at that. Steven Carse is the King of Pops, the owner and creator of the city’s favorite popsicle stand, who daily makes his all-natural popsicles, often from local produce, and sells them without fail on the corner of North Highland Avenue and North Ave. A year ago Steven was in the process of being laid off from his job and instead of taking that as a cue to mope, give up, or get angry, he decided to get creative. Steven had for quite some time had the desire to open his own popsicle shop, so he began to test his flavors and market; but soon summer was on it’s way so Steven skipped the store front and head to the streets. At first the refreshing treats of the King of Pops and his popsicle cart was spread only through word of mouth, but soon he caught the ears, and taste buds, of Fox News, CNN, and most everyone in Atlanta. With flavors like Grapefruit Mint, Apricot Mojito, and Mexican Chocolate who wouldn’t be tempted to join in Steven’s enticing idea and the creative process that led him there.

The closing speaker of the day may well have been the most powerful, with the attendees of Plywood Presents: Making Ideas Happen having the honor of hearing from Luma Mufleh, the courageous founder and no-nonsense coach of a local soccer team, the Fugees Family. A number of years ago, Luma was driving through her neighborhood when she discovered a group of local refugee boys playing soccer and, a lover of the sport herself, asked to join in the game. As she began to build friendships with the boys, she was heartbroken to learn about the hard conditions many of their families were living in as they struggled to make ends meet. Impassioned to help these boys whom she already considered family, Luma sold her own business to start a fair-wage maid service to help employ some of the mothers of the refugee families, and soon after turned a parking lot soccer team into an after-school program, a mentoring organization, and darn good soccer team. The Fugees Family, made up of boys from war-torn countries from all over the world, aims to strengthen and empower the boys, help them with their studies, and teach them life skills as they daily learn from Luma what it means to put others before oneself. Luma’s humility and hesitancy as she spoke only added to the warmth of her account, and serves as a needed reminded that our creativity and good ideas can be used to create needed change in our own neighborhoods and cities.

As the day came to a close and two hundred individuals parted ways, they each left with fresh insight and a few good ideas. But as Jim Rohn points out, “Ideas can be life-changing,” so let’s take these few good ideas, from local creatives such as Georgios, Larry, Jorge, Michael, Steven, and Luma, and let’s not be afraid to make our ideas happen. We might just change some lives along the way.

Photo Courtesy of Above the Grey Photography.

Claire Carpenter is founder of The Melting Pot, a co-working environment focused on social and environmental innovators and workers, based in Edinburgh, Scotland. She founded The Melting Pot in October 2007to provide affordable, shared, serviced office space in the heart of the city for social innovators, ethical businesses, charities and others who are working for more than profit. The slogan “inspiration at work” sums up The Melting Pot and Claire perfectly.

Duncan McFadzean: The Melting Pot is a bit of a unique space in this city, and of great value to this particular community. How did you come up with the idea?

Claire Carpenter: I had a long history in the social and environmental arena, and of being focused on “more than profit”. This included personal engagement, and professional and organizational exposure as well. It’s always been a values driven pursuit, and when you combine that with a family background that included self employment and periods where I worked from home, it was something that fitted well. I love face to face networking and human contact, as well as sharing resources to help the environment and providing accessibility to others. We started on 1^st October 2007, after a period of fitting the place out with the help of a lot of great volunteers.

Duncan: It’s a co-working space and people can sign up for as little as 10 hours over 6 months, or 24/7 access every week. What sort of people come here and what do they get for that?

Claire: We’re a social enterprise, and we’re proud that we’ve recently achieved the Social Enterprise Mark. So we focus on people who are working for social or environmental well being, people who share the same values and are working to make the world a better place, or business services who complement the people who are in here. We do, on occasion, point people to other places when we feel they’d be better suited elsewhere – like the person who said his business was marketing and he’d “market anything”! We’ve got all sorts here – sole traders, social enterprises, charities, funders – we use the space for public meetings organized by these people also.

Duncan: It’s a nice space with lots of plants which I love! But what other benefits are there to people to co-working in a space like this?

Claire: The list could really go on and on here, there’s so much. We do offer what you’d get in a serviced office – fully serviced, meeting room for hire, a professional environment, but we also find it helps people be more motivated, removes isolation, creates more efficiency, leads to greater productivity and you get cross-fertilization of ideas. There’s free tea and coffee (Fairtrade) and milk (organic). It’s also easy to add or give back space as you expand or shrink, which creates great flexibility. We’re massively convenient, just 1 min walk from the center of the city. Obviously there’s also wi-fi, printing (2 shared printers to reduce too much printing), and phones.

Duncan: Social Enterprise is all over the UK news these days with the UK and Scottish Government spending being cut and new ways of providing services being looked at. Do you think Social Enterprise is just hyped up, or is it really game changing?

Claire: To me it’s definitely game changing. It’s amazing to have a model that can deliver sustainable social or environment benefits independently of grant funding, so that needs to be encouraged. Definitions are talked about a lot, and it is important because of the tax breaks that are and will be put in place to encourage this area to grow further. I don’t think it will have a negative impact on charities, or kill the charity model, there are still too many needs that could never be viable any other way.

Duncan: So what’s on the radar for the next 12 months?

Claire: We’ll be focusing on rolling out more public member’s events, as we seek to develop a stronger community amongst our members. We hope that these will stimulate social innovation. We’ll be consolidating for a period, but we also have a major web development project under way that will showcase our members, and allow them to interact with one another as well. More of the same as well! We’re pretty active online and you can follow our story via Twitter @TheMeltingPotEd.

L’Arche communities have begun springing up around the world.  In 1964 Jean Vanier invited 2 men with disabilities to leave the institution they were living in, to come live with him.  He shifted his perspective from being able to help the men, to being able to learn from them and enter into true community with them, and it changed his life.  Vanier still makes his home in a L’Arche community in France, and other communities have followed because the power behind the communities.

L’Arche communities are family-like homes where people with and without disabilities share their lives together, give witness to the reality that persons with disabilities possess inherent qualities of welcome, wonderment, spirituality, and friendship.

Perhaps an extraordinary notion in our fast-paced and consumer-driven society, L’Arche believes that these qualities, expressed through vulnerability and simplicity, actually make those with a disability our real teachers about what is most important in life: to love and to be loved.

From the first community begun in France in 1964, many communities have developed in various cultural and religious traditions around the world. The first L’Arche community in the United States was founded in 1972 in Erie, Pennsylvania. Today, L’Arche USA has 16 communities and two projects nationwide.

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Not-for-profit and cause-related marketing campaigns are having to fight hard in the current economic climate to stand out from the crowd in order to raise awareness of and support for the causes they promote. That is not to say, however, that many are failing to do so. In fact, arguably some of the most creative, effective and mission-focused communications out there today are coming from the nonprofit sector. It is becoming a great passion and interest among talented designers and marketers to champion campaigns that benefit causes. “Designing for the Greater Good” by Peleg Top and Jonathan Cleveland is an excellent book that captures many recent creative approaches to design for cause-related projects.

The book is split into seven sectors: Family and Community, Animals, Health and Wellness, Human Rights, Environmental Awareness, Spirituality, and Arts and Culture. Interspersed in the snapshots of designs within each sector are 24 more detailed case studies about creative problem solving through the collaboration of certain firms and nonprofit organizations. Actually, one of the case studies is of the design for an organization Plywood People recently featured on our blog: Project 7. The study details how Project 7 came out of Tyler Merrick’s Texas-based firm 29Agency. And with the firm’s focus on environmental and social concerns for Project 7 in addition to their ability to think creatively about product package design, they came up with really simple design ideas that make a good impact: from different materials for shirt production to the water bottle and box designs that fit more product to allow for more efficient shipping.

The book is very approachable for those not trained in design; it is by no means a technical examination of cause-related design, but instead a showcase of inspiration for communicators wanting to visually display messages in the nonprofit realm. I would recommend it to leaders in social innovation everywhere. But more practically, the book prompted me to wonder, “What am I doing for the ‘greater good’?” Sure, I’m a designer, and so the easiest answer is that I can continue to design things for nonprofit, do-good organizations like in the subject matter of the book. But I think that the question can go deeper than that, if we so desire. How can we leverage our talents on a regular basis for the benefit of the greater good? What unique skills, abilities, leadership positions, or relationships do we have that could be powerful opportunities to contribute to the gain of our communities – locally and globally?

What are your talents? What are you doing to use them for the greater good?

Jeff and Andre Shinabarger started Gift Card Giver 3 1/2 years ago based on a great idea they had.  They collect unused or partially used gift cards and then give them to people in need!  This year $50,000 should be given in gift cards based on this simple concept!

For Gift Card Giver, since they deal primarily with gift cards and not cash, they think of innovative ways to collect actual dollars so the work can be continued.  For every $1 collected, they are able to turn that into $4 in gift cards to help people who are in great need!

This is why they have an annual Silent Art Auction! They’re getting all ready for it again! Last year it was a great time getting to know artists in the city, viewing and bidding on amazing pieces of artwork, and spending an evening with friends!  On GiftCardGiver.com they’ll be posting information about contributing artist and businesses who are being very generous to give to the cause.

The event will be on Friday November 12, 2010 beginning at 7:00 PM at The Solarium in Oakhurst.  Please put it on your calendar, and plan to join us!

If you are an artist, know an artist, or have other silent auction items you would like to contribute, please contact info@giftcardgiver.com!  Pieces and silent auction items are still being collected!  It would be great to have you apart of the event!

We found out about this unique artist on Facebook!  A group of friends were all talking about his talent, and the great cause he supports.  David Ilan’s artform is called pointillism.  He creates entire drawings one dot at a time.  He is a celebrity artist, who has chosen a unique way to raise awareness about sexual abuse and exploitation.

If you have been raped or sexually abused you can join the project here (It’s free), giving your real name or an alias, and have the option of sharing your story. There is also a place in the drawing for people who want to support survivors. David adds one dot for every person who joins until the drawing is complete. The final drawing will be of a woman looking confident, proud and beautiful. By joining the project, thousands of people with a shared tragic experience will work together to form a work of art meant to show others who go through similar experiences that they too can feel confident, proud and beautiful again.

Every person involved will have a dot drawn to honor them.
Up close we see individuals with a story.
From far we see a woman who has overcome and grown.

Kelly Rook is the Operations Coordinator of Street GRACE, a non-denominational alliance of churches dedicated to the eradication of the commercial sexual exploitation of children in Atlanta.  As such, she provides logistical support for advocacy and awareness events along with administrative support to colleagues, board members, and donors.

Prior to working with Street GRACE, Kelly worked at The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society in Patient Services.  She also has years of experience working in Health Education at local Atlanta hospitals.  Kelly did her graduate research work with World Relief in Mozambique and studied how church-based networks assisted people living with HIV/AIDS and orphans and vulnerable children.

Kelly holds a Master of Public Health in Global Health from Emory University and a Bachelors of Arts from Furman University in Health and Exercise Science and Spanish.  She enjoys traveling and spending time with family and friends.

Plywood People: What is Street GRACE doing in Atlanta to address the issues of human trafficking?

Kelly Rook: Street GRACE is a non-denominational alliance of churches, community partners, and volunteers dedicated to supporting, enlarging, and allying with those individuals and organizations working toward eliminating the commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC). Street GRACE mobilizes the resources within the community — financial, human and material — toward those organizations and individuals who have demonstrated effectiveness in battling CSEC in the areas of advocacy, aftercare and mentoring.

Our ultimate goal is the elimination of this problem in the city of Atlanta and duplication of these efforts in other cities across the United States.

Plywood People: To some it comes as a huge surprise that sex trafficking is actually a problem in our country.  Would you share some statistics of how this issue is affecting our children?

Kelly:

• The average age of child sexual exploitation appears to be 14, but girls as young as 10 and 11 have been exploited. Source: Hidden in Plain View, 2005 Mayor’s Report.
• Approximately 500 adolescent girls are commercially sexually exploited every month in the state of Georgia. Source: Georgia Governor’s Office for Children and Families, February 2010
• An estimated 7,200 men knowingly or unknowingly pay for sex with adolescent females in Georgia each month. Source: The Shapiro Group, Inc. in conjunction with The Women’s Funding Network and A Future. Not A Past., 2010.

Plywood People:  Could you share a story with us that has especially impacted you in the work you’re doing?

Kelly: One of the first large events I was a part of was Lobby Day this past February. Over 400 college students, church members, community partners, and other interested individuals rallied together at the Georgia State Capitol to provide a unified voice against CSEC in Atlanta. For many people, it was their first time at the Capitol and the first time they had spoken with their legislators. It was inspiring as people figured out what district they were in, who their representatives were, how to submit their requests, and finally getting to speak to their legislators. Outside the House and Senate chambers, the hallways were lined with citizens expressing their concerns to their legislators and speaking with one unified voice about the importance of protecting Georgia’s children. It was an exciting day and I think everyone walked away feeling empowered to make a difference!

Plywood People:  Could you talk a little about the short film Street GRACE is helping to create and what you’re hoping to accomplish through the release of the film?

Kelly: Approximately 500 adolescent girls are commercially sexually exploited every month in Georgia and those who abuse them often refer to these children as “candy.” Street GRACE, in partnership with Whitestone Motion Pictures and 12Stone Church, is part of a project that gives a voice to the voiceless. The Candy Shop is a modern-day fairy tale which speaks to the social evil of child sexual exploitation through a film that can be viewed by children and adults alike. This 30-minute film tells the story of a girl who is changed forever by evil, a man who’s not really a man, and a boy who becomes a man as he uncovers and fights a terrible wrong. Save the date of November 8 (7-9pm) at the Fox Theatre for a public screening of The Candy Shop.

Despite the sickening reality of this evil, there is hope: raising awareness of CSEC may decrease demand based on a recent study conducted by The Shapiro Group in conjunction with The Women’s Funding Network and A Future. Not A Past. This film will be an opportunity to raise awareness and mobilize individuals to get involved.

Plywood People:  It feels like such an overwhelming task given the numbers.  What is something we can do to engage in this issue?

Kelly: Everyone can get involved in this issue and make a difference whether it is through hosting an awareness party, donating to the cause, running a race, talking to your state legislators or volunteering your time. Street GRACE has over 45 community partners around metro-Atlanta who serve children vulnerable to this issue. Volunteer opportunities include everything from landscaping to mentoring. Visit www.connectstreetgrace.org to sign-up and learn more!

We are back with our Social Innovators List.  It was hard narrowing it down, but we have chosen 5 people who  are actively working to address issues that have previously either not been given attention or have been ignored.  These are people and organizations that have inspired us, and spurred others to action by their innovation.

Davis Guggenheim // Director and screenwriter of Waiting for “Superman”.  This documentary discusses the education crisis and gives a name and a voice to children with big dreams and a desire to learn.

Mike Foster // Co-Founder of People of the Second Chance. They are a community  challenging the common misconceptions about failure and success and stand with those who have hit rock bottom in their personal and professional lives.

Darrius Snow // Winner of TeenNick Halo Awards.  The first in his family to graduate high school, he is currently in his freshman year at Voorhees College. He was the President of BTEAM (Bankhead Teens Encouraging Action by Motivating others), a group of teens organized to transform their neighborhood into a positive environment.

Daniel Lubeztky // Founder of Kind and Peaceworks. He has not only started a successful and delicious snack line, he also is actively seeking to promote peace through business partnerships around the world.

Levi Maestro // Founder of Maestro Knows.  Maestro Knows is an online show documenting life through his eyes and experiences.  His travels, friendships, and interests take him to some fascinating places!