Category Archives: Local Programs

In Search of Role Models: we find them among one another

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franklin

John Hope Franklin, Solutioneer

After today we will miss John Hope Franklin, a legendary public servant, historian and a representative of equity and scholarship to the world. In his passing  he remains one of the most admired, relevant and influential historians of our time. Among his broad report Dr. Franklin is a James B. Duke Professor Emeritus of History, and was Professor of Legal History in the Law School at Duke University for nearly a decade.

Throughout his endeavors Dr. Franklin, who I never had a chance to meet though have admired throughout my formative years, has successfully married scholarship and public service with ease, character and grace.

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How I want to create solutions

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I like thinking of myself as a solutioneer.  I feel like part of a network of people spread out across the world, who share a commitment to create a better world.  I’ve always liked diving into problems, being the underdog, finding systems where a subtle change repeated hundreds of times results in a transformation

Ben Franklin, Solutioneer

Ben Franklin, Solutioneer

I grew up playing in the woods of the Adirondacks in New York.  My family’s house is filled with my kind of toys – books from all over the world, Legos (technics, the kind that can actually make machines) and a basement with tools and materials galore.  If I wanted to do something, whether it was building a racecar, making a tree fort, reading about Africa or creating tramlines to carry rocks out of the basement, I did it.  There was always something that required thinking and hands and a bit of work.

Most of my time at Williams College was spent building organizations.  Getting people together, defining a goal and then finding the pieces we had at our disposal to make something happen.  I’ve felt an interesting contrast between the satisfaction of building organizations with people, and building furniture or machines or forts out of wood and rock and metal.  One is exciting because of how many people it involves and the transformative process that working in a group can have on individuals.  The other is exciting because its precise and tangible and will continue to exist and serve a function even when no one is paying attention.  Continue reading →

Journey along Salted Earth & Struggle

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I don’t think that struggle, or having a struggle, is a sign of weakness. I think that struggling is, like so many other less sturdy things people associate with leadership, the capital achievement of anybody living the robust life of an American citizen.

My name is Seth, and I am trying to build the model for the world’s next great discovery. It’s not an engine that turns water into fuel, but ‘struggle’ into ‘triumph.’

Cover of Farmers and Fisherman

Cover of Farmers and Fisherman

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One hot solutionary summer!

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I have become an organizer first, and then a student. Over the past term I have struggled to keep up with the normal cycle of homework, class, work, and the small social life I can afford time for. Papers stack up, grade points slip down, and my general health and happiness has felt the toll of the average and everyday workload of a student in America. I know that by the time I earn my degree, there will be thousands of other young, unemployed degree holders competing in the job market. I also know that there will be tens of thousands of dollars of student loan debt looming over my head like storm clouds. I have experienced firsthand some of the difficulties associated with the tough choices being made by our generation. When I chose to move to Arizona to help my brother pay for school, I was making a tough choice to help a loved one get ahead. This choice set back my own struggling education by two years. When he chose to use his degree get a job in Baghdad that would allow him to work limitless hours in a war zone, he was making a tough choice to sacrifice his safety and happiness in an effort to live the majority of his life debt free.

Compared to the choices like those, that young Americans are making every day, the choice to sacrifice some of my grade in a couple of my classes to take a group of students to Power Shift was an easy choice to make. I had already dug a deep hole in a couple of classes, having also spent many volunteer hours this term helping a group of students with shifting the OSU Green Energy Fee toward a model that would also address energy efficiency on campus. I knew that attending Power Shift would spell almost certain failure in a couple of my classes. I also knew that the challenges facing my generation are bigger than maintaining a robust GPA.

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This is just the beginning…

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Call me Tyler, (I’ve been reading Moby Dick too much lately)

Spring is just starting here in Washington. The birds are out, flowers are blooming and I can feel the Earth getting ready to jump out and say hello! The cycles of nature really amaze me. One day it can feel like winter will never end and then the next screams that spring is here!

For the past few months I’ve been working non-stop on building the infrastructure for a bunch of empowered youth to help facilitate community growth in Omaha, Nebraska. Unlike other organizing I’ve been involved in, this program – called Summer of Solutions – has not worn me out or stressed me to the point of breaking. On the contrary it has helped me fall in love with the people, places and things I am working with and for. Building sustainable forms of action (ways to be an activist with out burning or flaking out) seems far more important, in my humble opinion, than building sustainable communities, but if we can do both at the same time… wow!

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Welcome to Solutionaries

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Timothy speaking. I’m a very long way into a dark and confused something-or-other and I’m in the long process of real-izing vision. You’re here in this very dark and confused space with me. Let’s figure it out together.

It’s March 6th 2009, I’ve just come back from PowerShift 09, and am trying to launch this program called the Summer of Solutions while keeping track of all my classes and all the other things I have going on. The world is pretty hectic these days: the economy is tanking – another 4% drop in the Dow Jones today, the Obama administration is planning withdrawal from Iraq and a focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan, and with little notice, methane – a greenhouse gas 21 times stronger than carbon dioxide – is bubbling up from thawing Arctic permafrost. This sounds big and vague, but it’s also about where my friends and I can find a job, real people in Gaza picking up the pieces of their lives, and real leaders working across boundaries to build a green economy.

The global gets personal fast. Untangling the self means untangling the world. No more band-aids. Just solutions.

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