Be the Change

Changing the world seems to be the fulltime occupation of many of the world’s inhabitants.

Think about it: Nicholas Kristoff and Sheryl Wu Dunn, who started the Half The Sky Foundation, want to change the world by improving the education, health and safety of women. The organization Global Partners for Afghanistan wants to change the world by teaching Afghanis better agricultural and horticultural techniques so that they have sustainable incomes. We all know individuals who have started nonprofits for the purposes of helping some disadvantaged or at-risk group. Like my friend Oraia, who started Right Rides for Women’s Safety, which late at night when public transport has stopped, gives women free rides to their front doors in 35 neighborhoods of New York.

Last night, here in Warsaw, I met an entrepreneur who has turned his talent for making money toward creating a sustainable philanthropic model, a venture capital fund that reinvests a portion of its profits in a foundation that supports LGBT causes. And I talked with a corporate leader who wants to adapt a micro-credit model to support gay and lesbian entrepreneurs in South Africa. Or consider the now famous Nathalie, with whom I am working in Senegal, whose goal it is to build small and sustainable hospitals in areas where there are very limited health services.

When I was growing up, Dad often said to me: “If you don’t like it, change it.” There are many parts of my own life I haven’t liked, and I’ve worked to change them. There are many things about the world that I don’t like.

Isn’t it great that there is an army of change agents working to make it better?

Emerging

For the next week, I'll be in Warsaw, where I'm moderating the 3rd International GLBT Business Leaders Forum. I get a triple bonus out of this trip:

1. Being with friends who are flying in from all over Europe to discuss workplace diversity issues
2. Being at EuroPride in a Warsaw where gay and lesbian people are not safe and not accepted, which is why EuroPride was planned for Warsaw.
3. Being in a beautiful old city where there is less humidity than Dakar, which may seem like a really lousy bonus but it's not.

Had a great rest. Practiced my presentation. And now, I'm ready to meet the press!

Educating the media about GLBT workplace issues and marketing opportunities is critical to building support. It always has been. If the media understands that corporations value a segment market, whether women or Hispanic or GLBT, then reporting on it takes a different tone. Once the media get interested in a story, they become one means by which acceptance spreads.

The other channel is corporations: They invest in research, diversity education for their own employees, policies that protect their employees from discrimination, marketing programs to the segment consumers. And eventually, all these activities result in an increase in social acceptance. We saw it happen in the US starting in the early 90s. As corporations introduced diversity programming, tolerance spread throughout the culture reaching the point where today, nearly 90 percent of Americans believe that all people should have equal workplace protections, 75 percent believe that Don't Ask, Don't Tell should be repealed because it discriminates against GLBT servicemembers, and more than 50% of the US believes that same sex couples should have equal legal protection for their relationships whether they're called marriages or civil unions or .... fill in the blank.

The point is, diversity and inclusion in the workplace changes the way the world outside the workplace thinks and behaves. I'm glad to be here in Poland working on change.

Ba

Tonight Nathalie and I were talking about our impending move to another part of town. Of course, Ieta and Suzette, the nanny and housekeeper, are going to be working at the new house. Also going with us is Ba, who is the gardener and security guard here at La Virage.

Ba came to our collective attention because Seal discovered him…Seal just love, love, loves Ba. He just wants to hang around with him. It’s one of those unexplainable kid fascinations. Maybe it’s the way Ba smells. Maybe it’s the way he sounds. Maybe it’s his unfailing patience.. If Ba is working in the yard, Seal wants to be with him. If Ba is washing the car, Ba wants to help. When Seal hears Ba’s voice, he lets out a sequeal and heads for the terrace so that he can play with Ba.

Ba’s current compensation for working six days a week is 50,000 CFA per month, which is about $100. He sleeps in an exterior room big enough for a mattress on the ground, a small table and his prayer rug. When we learned that Ba only eats breakfast, we started sharing our evening meal. Please understand that Ba is not destitute, although by Western standards, his means seem scant. Ba has a wife and five healthy children, the eldest of whom is now 19. The kids are all getting educations. He owns a home and has a fairly good-sized herd of cattle. Clearly, Ba knows how to manage his resources.

Life is going to get better when we move to the new house. There, Ba will have his own room, a real bed and a toilet/shower. He will eat three meals a day with us, inside, family-style. His income will double.

There are some realities to life in Africa that require thought. Initially, they are hard to accept because the inequity is great, in this case, the difference between Ba’s circumstances and my own. What I need to see is being revealed to me slowly, perhaps at the speed that I can absorb them. I’m learning about the historical roots of the cultural. I’m seeing the racism. I’m beginning to understand that treating others with dignity is important in the process of change.

GSD!

This day was a 10!

Wasn’t because of the breezy, moderate, humidity-free, totally comfortable day, although those would have been wonderful reasons to call it a great day. Wasn’t because of the lovely lunch, although Ieta and Suzette fixed a pretty good one. It wasn’t because Seal said “bonjour” and “voila” and “Fany,” which is his version of Ste-fany, although that would have been good enough for me.

Today, we Got Stuff Done! GSD!!! We finished a grant proposal for our solar energy equipment and installation. We wrote a kick-ass presentation for the foundation board of directors that is meeting with us on 21 July. We completed a detailed revenue and expense project budget. And we met with a structural engineer who is providing us with independent estimates on the cost of the hospital construction. Oh yeah…and I provided the final copy rewrites and photos for the Hospital of Hope website, which should launch by the end of the month.

I like to be busy…perhaps not this busy…but I’m leaving on Monday for Poland, so what were the options? It’s comforting to know that my six months out of the formal-get-paid workforce hasn’t affected my ability to produce. That feels good. Also feels good to know that I’m leaving Nathalie with the materials she needs to move things to the next step.

It’s wonderful to work with someone who has the unfailing capacity to move projects to the next step. I know that when I return, we will have a new round of meetings and new prospects for helping us realize the dream of the Hospital of Hope.

A Hot Day for Business

What a day! We had back-to-back meetings this afternoon that made all the research, all the reaching out, all the politics, all the posturing worth the time and effort that’s been invested.

The first was with a foundation for a financial institution, i.e., a bank, that has turned the banking model upside down here in Africa. In the interest of teaching Africans to trust and use banks, this institution will open an account for no fee; take every deposit regardless of size, even as little as 200 CFA (African Francs), which is the equivalent of about 40 cents; and charge nothing for ordinary transactions like deposits and withdrawals. They are interested in the Hospital of Hope because they believe in affordability. Just as we want to make healthcare affordable, they are doing the same with banking. Just as they want to educate their customers about banking, we want to educate our patients about their own healthcare.

Add to our amazement that this financial services group has even created an innovative health insurance program, that offers coverage to anyone who can afford 250 CFAs per month. That works out to about 60 cents. It covers 70 percent of any hospitalization costs. [OK, this is making the US healthcare reform look worse and worse to me…and it also makes the financial services industry look pretty bad too…don’t ya think?]

Our second meeting was with a health economist at the World Bank, who immediately saw and understood what we want to accomplish by opening up healthcare to a population is too remote from the facilities in Dakar and could never afford the services that are available. Engaged completely from the beginning of our presentation, he immediately began to identify resources that could help us strengthen the business analysis and model of the project. As with the financial services company, the energy around the project was kindled by the alignment of our values…a belief that everyone should have high quality healthcare…that good quality can be delivered affordably...that the business model for healthcare delivery can be sustainable.

We have a lot of work to do as follow-up from both meetings. So do they. But follow-up is a good thing, an indication of seriousness and commitment to move forward.

A meeting like minds and like hearts. It was a very good day.

Using Your Head

Spain needed a boost. Making it to the finals of the World Cup is certainly that.

I don’t think Prime Minister Zapatero will take the credit for the win, but you couldn’t blame him if he tried. On his watch, the financial markets imploded, the housing and banking industries crashed and unemployment hovers around 17 percent, so when something good happens, maybe the guy should get a bump. He did, after all, predict at the G-20 Summit in Toronto that Spain would make it to the finals.

Cool Culture

I promised to report back about the Cape Verde Independence Concert at the French Institute. A few adjectives come to mind: festive, folksy, kinda funky. The house was packed. The evening was ideal for an outdoor concert. The day was remarkably not-humid. A breeze blew all day. The temperature stayed in the low 80s. It had been a beautiful day and was an even more beautiful evening. The house was packed and the crowd was in excellent spirits, assisted some by the bar that was serving bissap and booze concoctions.

I was so happy to be there because now I know Paul’s music. Now I know that he has pushed way beyond his Cape Verdean roots. He gets people out of their seats and up on the stage dancing. He’s charming. He’s friendly. He’s talented. He’s passionate. The other musicians liked playing with him as much as the audience liked listening to him and dancing to his music….especially the five women who got on stage and danced the batuko, which is a sexy ass-shaking, women’s dance that gets a lot of audience interaction. It's also known as a "forbidden dance," and when you've seen it, you understand why. [I tried to find a photo of the batuko...pages and pages and pages of images and none of them tell the story. I guess you had to be there.]

There’s a repetitive, simple, flat sound to most of the music I heard. It’s not so interesting. Don’t need to do it again.

Of the other five acts, only one created the kind of excitement that Paul elicited from the audience. It was a larger group of seven musicians with two sexy female vocalists. They were good. So were the 15 women who started the evening with a performance of tradition yela, which is a combination of vocalization with minimal harmony and drumming on calabashes.

It was a cool cultural outing, and what I liked most was Paul's music. Paul was completely there for the audience and they knew it. I also have to admit that I liked that the concert started Sat 9:05, five minutes late and it ended at 11, because everything at the French Institute ends at 11:00. In a culture where time is often unimportant, this was a real plus for me.