Modus Vivendi

npr: In 1996, after 12 years living in the foster care system,...

Sat, 11 May 2013 09:20:05 -0400

In 1996, after 12 years living in the foster care system, Melissa Rodriguez recorded a diary about getting pregnant and becoming a mother. Now, her son Issaiah is a teenager, and she shares her teenage diary with him and reveals things about her past that she’s never mentioned.

— Teenage Diaries Revisited: Mother And Son Listen To The Past

Also, check out earlier parts of the series: Teenage Diaries Revisited

three radio stories of enemies turning into friends

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 10:53:20 -0400

three radio stories of enemies turning into friends:

#1 The Rabbi & The KKK - on a change of heart

#2 Two Enemies, One Heart - an Iraqi & Iranian in the First Persian Gulf War

#3 Mary Johnson & Oshea Isreal - on true forgiveness & their unlikely relationship

via third coast international audio festival website

"‎Differences will always exist, but division doesn’t always have to be the result."

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 10:47:15 -0400

“‎Differences will always exist, but division doesn’t always have to be the result.”

- Beth Moore (via kristensaid)

Shine Your Corner of the World: Love

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 09:55:39 -0400

Shine Your Corner of the World: Love:

parleypine:

I want to tell you about my favorite meditation. Maybe you will try it.

I imagine people that I know really well and I picture them smiling. Then I imagine more people, distant acquaintances and strangers smiling.

I go back and forth between one face and the next, and I begin to feel happy for…

npr: good: WATCH: Strangers Philosophise in a Ball...

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 09:12:51 -0400

npr:

good:

WATCH: Strangers Philosophise in a Ball Pit
- Pete(r) Karinen wrote in Living, Creativity and Soul Pancake

The fine folks over at Soul Pancake find yet another unique way of spreading joy, connecting people, and tackling life’s big questions.

Who doesn’t love a good ball pit convo? -L

I would really like to see more of this.

africaisdonesuffering: Ignorance is not Bliss. Educate...

Sat, 23 Feb 2013 22:35:09 -0500

africaisdonesuffering:

Ignorance is not Bliss. Educate yourself.

When things aren’t working, it’s easy to try to shift the blame to something or someone else. In the case of matters pertaining to Africa, many of us still blame colonisation for our present situations. How much longer will we continue to do so? I am in no way undermining the impact that colonisation had on different African countries, neither am I implying that we should forget that it happened. I am simply saying that we should not continue to use that as an excuse to stay in the same position. If we continue to reduce ourself to victims, we will continue being treated as such. Yes conolisation happened, yes some effects are still being felt today but it is time for us to start working towards solutions and leave the excuses behind.

continue reading

africlecticmagazine: How Oliberté, the Anti-TOMS, Makes Shoes...

Tue, 30 Oct 2012 19:04:03 -0400

africlecticmagazine:

How Oliberté, the Anti-TOMS, Makes Shoes and Jobs in Africa

‘Why or how could anyone want to make shoes in a place full of so much poverty and corruption?’

That’s the question many people asked Canadian Tal Dehtiar when he founded Oliberté Footwear, the first company to make premium shoes in Africa using African materials and explicitly linking shoes sold by Western retailers to job creation on the continent. Dehtiar started the Toronto-based company in 2009, and sales increased from a mere 200 pairs initially to 10,000 in 2011. He projects sales of between 20,000 and 25,000 this year.

“At Oliberté, we believe Africa can compete on a global scale,” he says, “but it needs a chance. It doesn’t need handouts or a hand up. It needs people to start shaking hands and companies to start making deals to work in these countries.”

Oliberté shoes are stitched and assembled in Ethiopia with leather sourced from local free-range cows, sheep, and goats—the default in a country with many herders whose livelihoods depend upon ranging wherever grass may be. The livestock haven’t been injected with hormones to speed their growth, a common practice in other parts of the world. The result is a light, limber, yet sturdy upper.

The shoes feature crepe rubber soles made from natural rubber processed in Liberia and lined with soft, breathable goat leather. This spring, the company will expand its line to offer leather bags and accessories, some of which will be sourced in Kenya and made in Zambia. It produces woven labels and other branding materials in the African island nation Mauritius.

Oliberté—the name melds “liberty” with the “O” from the anthem of Dehtiar’s home country—employs workers at factories selected because they pay relatively high wages, provide employee benefits like subsidized lunches, and employ women as about half of their workforces. The company plans to open its own factory in Addis Ababa in March while maintaining production at its existing third-party plants. It distributes across North America and Europe and sells online.

The best-known footwear brand with a humanitarian bent is TOMS Shoes, the Santa Monica, California-based company that gives a pair of shoes to a child in need for every pair it sells. From Nicaragua to New Orleans to Niger, TOMS has distributed shoes to more than a million children through “shoe drops,” when staff and contest winners travel the globe to hand out shoes. In addition to helping prevent soil-borne diseases, the donations help recipients attend schools that in many places forbid bare feet.

“With TOMS,” Dehtiar says, “the best thing is the awareness they’ve created.” But he’s skeptical of the company’s one-for-one model because he believes the donations can pressure local shoemakers and vendors, in addition to reinforcing stereotypes about the developing world.

“TOMS Shoes is a good marketing tool, but it’s not good aid,” agrees Saundra Schimmelpfennig, an international aid expert who blogs at Good Intentions Are Not Enough, where she aims to educate nonprofit donors about effective charity. She’s criticized TOMS for competing with local producers by handing out free goods and for being “quintessential Whites in Shining Armor.” “The idea of creating jobs that pay a fair wage and provide necessary benefits,” she says, “can have far more impact than aid.”

According to its latest giving report, TOMS also uses factories in Ethiopia, in addition to ones in China and Argentina. “I’m not saying ours is a better way,” Dehtiar says, “but people just continue to give away stuff to Africa, and there’s no incentive for dependencies to end.”

Dehtiar had experience in aid work abroad before starting Oliberté. After graduating from business school, he started MBAs Without Borders, a charity that consulted with small businesses in the developing world and helped them find venture capital. “It was basically Peace Corps for people who had done Peace Corps and now had a business degree,” he says. The nonprofit worked in 25 countries, from Haiti to Pakistan to nations in West Africa. One impetus Dehtiar cites for founding Oliberté is that African friends kept telling him they were tired of charity—what the continent needed was jobs. “On a given day,” says Dehtiar, “One to two hundred people are working on our shoes. Because we don’t hire foreigners, we have local buy-in.”

“For me, it is great,” says Feraw Kebede, general manager of Oliberté Ethiopia, in a company video. “As an Ethiopian I’m very proud that we are exporting shoes to America.”

Instead of striving to produce the cheapest shoes possible, the company focuses on quality. “When it comes to footwear,” Dehtiar says, “we don’t want people to think of Africa as the next China. We want them to think of it as the next Italy—think quality.”

The strategy has begun to pay off with American retailers. “The first thing that prompted me was the style of the shoe,” says Justin Davis, manager of Mint Footwear in San Diego. “They’re attractive. The shoes demand attention.” He noticed the materials and craftsmanship were better than “regular production stuff.” Once he heard about how and where the shoes are produced, Davis says the line became even more attractive to him. “People crave products that have a little more purpose than just consumption,” he says.

The Oliberté brand is still niche, but to Dehtiar, part of the venture’s value is in cutting a path that larger manufacturers can follow. “Our goal is to be the reason that 1 million people are employed in manufacturing in Africa,” he says. “We want to show that these models work and we want to encourage others, like the Nikes and Levi’s of the world, to do the same.”

Dehtiar says one of the top five footwear and apparel brands in the world recently inquired about acquiring the company, impressed that it built a high quality made-in-Africa brand rather than simply set up a cheap manufacturing center on the continent. But the company is not for sale, Dehtiar says, because he has yet to finish developing it.

“When we first started, I didn’t want to do the Africa angle,” he says, a seemingly strange statement about a company that markets the continent in its tagline. “Our first ad was very stereotypical Africa. It was a picture of an African face—a Maasi warrior. I hated it.” He stopped using the ad the following year. “We’ve gone from portraying a very stereotypical image of Africa to now selling pride instead of pity. But it’s a challenge, because some stores want the stereotypical Africa branding.”

“The balance,” says Dehtiar, “is how do I do the Africa angle without doing the part I hate: ‘Buy because you feel bad about Africa.’”

deejaybird: Cudjoe Lewis is believed to be the last African...

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 00:47:18 -0400

deejaybird:

Cudjoe Lewis is believed to be the last African born on African soil and brought to the United States by the transatlantic slave trade.

He was a native of Takon, Benin, where he was captured in 1860 during an illegal slave-trading venture. Congress outlawed the importation of slaves in 1808.

Together with more than a hundred other captured Africans, he was brought on the ship Clotilde to Mobile, Alabama. Cudjoe and 31 other enslaved Africans were taken to the property owned by Timothy Meaher, shipbuilder and owner of the Clotilde.

5 years later slavery was over so Cudjoe and his tribespeople requested to be taken back to Africa, but it was left ignored. He and other Africans established a community near Mobile, Alabama which became called Africatown. They maintained their African language and tribal customs well into the 1950s. He died in 1934 at the age of 94.

Before he died, he gave several interviews on his experiences including one to the writer Zora Neale Hurston. During her interview in 1928, she made a short film of Cudjoe, the only moving image that exists in the Western Hemisphere of an African transported through the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

"A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He..."

Wed, 24 Oct 2012 19:23:04 -0400

““A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.””

- Albert Einstein (via kristensaid)

afrikanwomen: Kopano Matlwa is the grounded twenty two year old...

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 18:40:35 -0400

afrikanwomen:

Kopano Matlwa is the grounded twenty two year old author of the provocative novel Coconut about black South African youths’ loss of identity in their highly Westernised nation.

Matlwa is the youngest European Literary Award winner to come out of South Africa and balances a hectic writer’s schedule of book readings, literary fairs et al, with a full-time schedule as a medical student at University of Cape Town.

Zimbabwean Tsitsi Dangarembgwa’s Nervous Conditions is one of her favourite books. (source: http://www.african-writing.com)

wnyc: Pro-Tolerance Ads Begin Appearing In NYC Subway

Sat, 06 Oct 2012 20:34:51 -0400

wnyc:

Pro-Tolerance Ads Begin Appearing In NYC Subway

“Candy cabbie” Mansoor Khalid gives passengers as much candy as...

Sat, 06 Oct 2012 20:30:26 -0400

“Candy cabbie” Mansoor Khalid gives passengers as much candy as they want.

Now that’s one sweet ride.

Taxi driver Mansoor Khalid is on a one-man mission to cheer up New Yorkers with a daily dose of candy.

“The New York life is not the easy life,” Khalid, 36, told the Daily News. “People are depressed. I see a lot of people stressed sitting back there.”

Khalid is no stranger to stress. He dubbed his taxi the NYC Candy Cab after his 2-year-old son died in April from a long battle with heart disease.

“I learned a lot of things,” he said of the trauma of losing his child, who underwent two heart transplants and lost a kidney before he passed away. “Life is too short.”

Khalid, who moved to New York from Pakistan in 1993 and has been driving a cab since 1997, had already seen the impact of small acts of generosity. During the two years he spent in the hospital with his son, he routinely brought coffee and desserts to the doctors and nurses when he got off his shift at 1 a.m.

“They got so happy when in the middle of the night I gave every person coffee,” he said. “I was so nice to them and they were so nice to me.”

After his son died, Khalid decided to bring his routine to the people he interacted with every day in his cab.

Khalid said he was inspired to do something sweet after the death of his 2-year-old son.

“I was very depressed, losing my little boy,” he said. “Somehow, God gave me this idea. Now (I’m) chit-chatting and time is flying by!”

Though he doesn’t eat much candy himself — “Skittles, only” — Khalid offers a wide variety of sweets, and has started cataloguing his collection on Instagram. Fans can also follow him on Twitter (@CandyCabNYC), and he may even start a blog for his growing following.

One such fan was thrilled to discover the cab on a late night out last weekend, and quickly spread the word about him through social media.

“We all started freaking out,” said David Weiner, 27. “You don’t see piles of candy like that in adulthood. It’s just one of those things that reminds you you’re in New York and anything can happen.”

And Khalid’s unusual project has the full support of the city.

“We encourage drivers to go the extra mile in the name of customer service, and Mr. Khalid certainly does this,” said Taxi and Limousine Commission boss David Yassky. “We appreciate the loyalty he inspires in his passengers.”

Loyalty isn’t the goal, considering that Khalid responds to every hail, candy or no candy. His mission is to spread warmth.

“It’s a little thing,” he said, “but people get happy.”

futurejournalismproject: The Hope of Participatory...

Tue, 18 Sep 2012 19:22:53 -0400

futurejournalismproject:

The Hope of Participatory Journalism

Some time ago, we interviewed Farai Chideya, multimedia journalist, entrepreneur, and a lady full of heart, art, and passion. In this video, she discusses participatory journalism and the evolving world in which journalists, news organizations, and audiences can collaborate to create meaningful stories.

For more thoughts about citizen journalism, check out the FJP archives.

For more interviews with smart journalism thinkers, see here.

npr: How The Poor, The Middle Class, And The Rich Spend Their...

Wed, 01 Aug 2012 21:23:43 -0400

npr:

How The Poor, The Middle Class, And The Rich Spend Their Money

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

Credit: Lam Thuy Vo / NPR

visual-poetry: “10 rules for students and teachers” from john...

Sat, 28 Jul 2012 15:23:59 -0400

visual-poetry:

“10 rules for students and teachers” from john cage

"If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes..."

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 23:36:08 -0400

“If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive.”

- Barry Lopez

globalvoices: An article by BuzzFeed that went viral with over...

Thu, 28 Jun 2012 11:12:08 -0400

globalvoices:

An article by BuzzFeed that went viral with over 1.6 million Facebook shares, highlighted 21 pictures that will restore your faith in humanity. Unfortunately, Africa and Africans voices were absent from the piece.

Despite efforts to change existing narratives, the African continent is still widely known as a leading recipient of international aid and the place where international NGOs come to ‘save’ the fragile local population.

While there is no denying the enormous needs of the continent, what is often lost in the many humanitarian stories from the region, are the stories of Africans helping Africans.

Here are a few photos and videos that Global Voices put together to show that “Africa’s got Heart” too.

"To know we are not alone, that our identity is not random but has a history and a meaning shared..."

Fri, 15 Jun 2012 17:53:13 -0400

“To know we are not alone, that our identity is not random but has a history and a meaning shared with others—that our existence has its own special kind of beauty—this is the great force of art to people moving against alienation”

- Adrienne Rich, from “The Ink-Smudged Diaries of Adrienne Rich” (via wwnorton)

futurejournalismproject: YouTube Launches Human Rights...

Tue, 29 May 2012 09:13:18 -0400

futurejournalismproject:

YouTube Launches Human Rights Channel

Via the YouTube blog:

Activists around the world use YouTube to document causes they care about and make them known to the world. In the case of human rights, video plays a particularly important role in illuminating what occurs when governments and individuals in power abuse their positions. We’ve seen this play out on a global stage during the Arab Spring, for example: during the height of the activity, 100,000 videos were uploaded from Egypt, a 70% increase on the preceding three months. And we’ve seen it play out in specific, local cases with issues like police brutality, discrimination, elder abuse, gender-based violence, socio-economic justice, access to basic resources, and bullying.

That’s why our non-profit partner WITNESS, a global leader in the use of video for human rights, and Storyful, a social newsgathering operation, are joining forces to launch a new Human Rights channel on YouTube, dedicated to curating hours of raw citizen-video documenting human rights stories that are uploaded daily and distributing that to audiences hungry to learn and take action. The channel, which will also feature content from a slate of human rights organizations already sharing their work on YouTube, aims to shed light on and contextualize under-reported stories, to record otherwise undocumented abuses, and to amplify previously unheard voices. The project was announced today at the Internet at Liberty conference, and will live at youtube.com/humanrights. Storyful will source and verify the videos, and WITNESS will ensure the channel features a balanced breadth of issues with the context viewers need to understand the rights issue involved.

We hope this project can not only be a catalyst to awareness, but offer people new avenues for action and impact. The channel is committed to providing new citizen creators as well as viewers with the tools and information necessary so that every citizen can become a more effective human rights defender. It will also be available on Google+, where the broader human rights community can take part in discussions, share material, and find collaborators.

Image: Screenshot the Human Rights YouTube channel.

How it seems to work. “history” by anna gray & ryan wilson...

Sun, 27 May 2012 18:26:06 -0400

How it seems to work.

“history” by anna gray & ryan wilson paulsen