The Rex Foundation Blog

Rex Blog has moved

2010-04-05T16:37:00.001-07:00

The Rex Foundation has moved its blog from eblogger to WordPress. The new blog address is http://rexfoundation.org/rex-foundation-blog. Please make a note of it.

Lunch at the Soul Food Project

2010-03-23T10:10:00.000-07:00

A 2008 grant from the Rex Foundation helped San Francisco's Nextcourse establish the Soul Food Project, a collaborative effort to give women leaving the county jail system practical resources for healthy lifestyles and good nutrition. Last week Rex executive director Sandy Sohcot had the opportunity to participate in a session--and enjoy the results. She reports:

On Thursday, March 18, I had the pleasure of being part of the lunch session of Soul Food, a project of Nextcourse that meets each Thursday at the Women’s Reentry Center of the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department.

On this day, a guest chef from the San Francisco Zen Center provided the meal recipes and guided the food preparation and cooking. Niyati Desai, the Soul Food Project Coordinator, began the session with all of us declaring our favorite vegetables, then followed with a review of cabbage and ginger, two of the main ingredients of the meal we were about to prepare, and how these ingredients provided nutrients and health. There were some excellent questions about good calories and bad calories, good carbohydrates and bad carbohydrates, and why it was good to try tofu.

For the two hours, we were all a team, collaborating to prepare and cook the food, and then sit together to enjoy the delicious results. Over lunch, one of the women who regularly attends the project classes told me about how she has completely changed what she buys and cooks for her family meals and knows this has made a big difference. She said she is still dealing with resisting tempting snacks and desserts, and we commiserated about this ongoing, universal challenge.

Rex on the Air

2010-03-11T12:08:00.000-08:00

Rex Foundation executive director Sandy Sohcot spoke with California PTA president Carol Kocivar in an interview that aired Tuesday, March 9 on KALW FM. Sandy talks about Rex's The World As It Could Be project and the impact it's having on the lives of local high school students who participate.

Listen to the interview on the Rex Web site!

Make Believe Ball

2010-02-19T13:44:00.000-08:00

The Rex Foundation produced our first Make Believe Ball February 18, 2010 at the Grea Publish Postt American Music Hall in San Francisco. The Make Believe Ball spawned from an idea by board member Tim Duncan who collaborated with board member Dawn Holliday to arrange for the replay of the infamous 1975 Grateful Dead Blues for Allah record release party later released as One From The Vault. The term Make Believe Ball is attributed to the taper who named his audience tapes of that evening "The Make Believe Ball".

The Make Believe Ball, reproduced on the state of the art sound system at the Great American Music Hall included the serendipity that Lee, the sound board operator, was the same person who did the sound for the original show in 1975.

Hopefully there will be more to follow, perhaps in a city near you!

New Skills, New Lives

2009-12-18T10:48:00.000-08:00

The Bread Project in the San Francisco Bay Area is a Rex grantee working to provide job skills in the culinary field to adults who have trouble finding work--and along the way, life skills to help them achieve the goals they once thought impossible. The program's been so successful that the Project has been forced to turn many eligible students away, but an upcoming expansion to larger headquarters will allow it to train even more.

Recently we heard from Bread Project Executive Director Dagmar Schroeder-Huse, who shared a few of the program's success stories. We were delighted to read them--and happy to share this example of the good work the Rex community makes possible.

Grace Potter & The Nocturnals Join Rex Music Caravan

2009-12-14T09:50:00.000-08:00

Grace Potter and the Nocturnals graciously supported the Rex Foundation by joining the Music Caravan with a show at The Fillmore in San Francisco. They also attended the Rex pre-concert reception greeting fans and enthralling board members with their open minds and kindness. Grace Potter is one of the sweetest musicians we have met in years. Rex board members thanked Grace for her participation, but it was the Rex Foundation who Grace thanked for allowing her and the Nocturnals to be involved. As a young band on the road establishing their audience, Grace Potter and The Nocturnals appreciated the opportunity to associate with a well established organization like the Rex Foundation. They realize and acknowledge the valuable support Rex Foundation provides to grassroots efforts that have continued making a difference in the world. It was wonderful to meet these talented musicians and even more fun to discover and experience their music live! Thank you Grace Potter and The Nocturnals for stepping on board the Rex Music Caravan. We appreciate being associated with you.

For more information and photos go to the Rex website for A Little Night Music for Rex.

Rex grant keeps giving in Africa

2009-11-23T16:01:00.000-08:00

Rex Foundation provided Burners Without Borders a grant in November 2009. Burners Without Borders is a service group of individuals who are Burners, a sub-culture like Dead Heads. Instead of attending Grateful Dead shows, or jamband shows, the Burners work year round on the Burning Man project held every summer in Nevada's Black Rock Desert, 130 miles north of Reno. Some Burners are in fact also Dead Heads and presumably attend jamband shows.

Burners Without Borders was founded at Burning Man in 2005 during the onslaught of hurricane Katrina and consequent destruction in New Orleans and Mississippi. A call throughout the Burning Man event was intitiated to raise money and send a crew of Burners with heavy equipment to help as an act of kindness and civic engagement. Burners Without Borders has since conducted further acts of kindness and civic-minded engagement to assist throughout the world on various projects where the government or local authorities have either failed, or are reluctant to provide assistance.

Two days after receiving the Rex grant, Burners Without Borders' executive director, Carmen Mauk, received a request from a Burner working in Africa named Will Ruddick. Will is assisting citizens in Kenya with their cultural art of fire spinning. The project is called the Moto-moto Circus. The Kenyan troup had been invited by the Kenya National Museums Counsel to a three-day national festival in Lamu, Kenya, to perform for three nights. They did not have the money to send ten people to Lamu let alone stay in another city for three days. Carmen worked out a budget of $500 which would allow the troupe to travel and stay in Lamu to perform their art. An unexpected serendipity; it has been learned that this trip will reunite a Kenyan mother and son who have not seen each other in many years.

The power of grassroots giving is powerful when people like Carmen and Will connect to help those less fortunate than ourselves.

Rex Helps Shine a Little Light in Tanzania

2009-11-03T11:13:00.000-08:00

Children born with disabilities or medical problems in remote villages of Tanzania face a bleak future, made worse by prejudice and poverty. Rex grantee Mwangaza Tanzania ("Mwangaza" means "beacon" in Swahili) seeks out these children and matches them with the best medical resources. They also conduct health education classes to address preventable diseases and medical problems. David Large recently had a conversation with Mwangaza founder/director Paula Gremley, which we're pleased to feature as our latest Food for Thought.

Renewal, Community and Conversation

2009-10-19T15:35:00.000-07:00

Earlier this month, Rexfoundation.org editor Mary Eisenhart and I sat down for a conversation about the rebirth of the Rex Foundation in 2001, our ongoing renewal, and our community of supporters. We hope you enjoy these video clips and find them informative, and we invite you to share your thoughts and comments here!

--Sandy Sohcot

Well-Deserved Kudos for Dune Lankard

2009-10-14T11:05:00.000-07:00

Now on the Rex Web site is a great article from Indian Country Today about Dune Lankard, the founder of Rex grantee Eyak Preservation Council (EPC).

This photograph of me with Dune Lankard and Carol Hoover, EPC Executive Director, was taken on August 10, 2009 at the 5-Mile House in Cordova, AK, home base of EPC. I had been visiting for four days, experiencing firsthand the positive force of Dune's thinking and energy, as well as the vast and deep beauty that motivates his actions.

Reading the article inspired me to write more about my reflections on how Dune and the work of EPC connect with all of us seeking to do our part as members of the global community.

Let us know what you think about these reflections: Post your comments here or email us at info@rexfoundation.org. Thanks!

Sandy Sohcot

A Heartfelt Tribute

2009-10-08T15:03:00.000-07:00

We recently heard from Philippe Vezina of Rhode Island, who suffered the loss of his friend Mark Calo earlier this year and is putting on a fundraising concert this weekend to pay tribute. Philippe, who is sure that Mark would approve, will be donating the proceeds of the event to the Rex Foundation.

Philippe writes: “I have been a supporter of the Rex Foundation since the late 1980s as a result of my Grateful Dead connections. I feel it is an excellent charity that year after year makes a difference in the challenging world that we live in today.”

Our deepest condolences to Philippe and all Mark’s friends, and our heartfelt thanks to them for deciding to honor Mark by furthering Rex’s work.

Share the Love

2009-09-18T14:56:00.000-07:00

Support Rex, Send a Local to the Black Tie-Dye Ball

We can't wait for the next Black Tie-Dye Ball, when Dark Star Orchestra takes the stage at the Crystal Ballroom in Portland, Oregon, in support of the Rex Foundation. It's coming right up on September 25. See our website for details.

But what if I can't make the show? people have been asking us. I'd just like to help out.

So we had this idea: If you can't make the show but would still like to support Rex—buy a ticket and let us give it to a local Portland resident who can't afford a ticket. It's a great way to share the music and the good vibes, and further Rex's work at the same time. Call (415) 561-3135 and leave a message with your information; we'll get back to you as soon as possible. Thank you!

Rex invites Musicians, Bands and Promoters to get on Board the Rex Music Caravan

2009-06-17T14:59:00.000-07:00

The Rex Foundation hopes you all get on board the Rex Music Caravan over the summer when you encounter a Rex Jam at the summer festivals or see one of the bands on the Music Caravan. Rex Jams are when one of the bands announces from the stage that "this is a Rex Jam segment". Volunteers will walk through the crowd collecting donations that are granted to local music programs. The potential is that thousands of dollars will be donated to help children's music programs in communities where the festivals are held. 10,000 Lakes and Gathering of the Vibes are festivals where you will encounter the Rex Foundation in a prominent grass roots fundraising role.

Various bands out on the highway are also on board the Music Caravan donating a small portion of each ticket sold and helping Rex identify worthy non-profits and individuals who are doing the good work that fits the Rex Foundation Mission. Taj Mahal, Bob Weir, The Dead, Dark Star Orchestra, Melvin Seals & JBG, Moonalice, and Steve Kimock's Crazy Engine are just a few bands who are donating $1 from the ticket sales to the Rex Foundation. We encourage you to go out and see these bands which in turn will support their musical efforts along with supporting the Rex Foundation.

Are you a band or a musician who shares the values of the Rex Foundation? Whether you are an A list band or a bunch of Dead Heads jammin' your hearts out, Get on Board and let us know if you want to support the Rex Music Caravan. We would love to work with you! Please email info@rexfoundation.org and tell us who you are and how to contact you. Use the phrase "Rex Music Caravan" in the subject line.

We also welcome the interest and participation of Promoters who want to associate with the good works that Rex Foundation has supported for the past 26 years. We can use your help and expertise to further the tremendous effort that has supported so many people and positively affected the human race and the planet in so many ways. Take a look at the extensive list of Rex Grantees to see what we've been doing.

In this short video, Rex Foundation board members, Nick Morgan and Carolyn Garcia with Sandy Sohcot, executive director talk about the impact the money raised from the Rex Jams at summer festivals has on music programs in communities where the festivals are held. Please take a few minutes to hear what they have to say. Thank you in advance... for supporting the Rex Foundation!

Taj Mahal at Silver Oak Cellars 6-11-2009

2009-06-14T11:50:00.000-07:00

In the heart of Napa Valley and California viticulture is Silver Oak Cellars, considered to be among the producers of the finest cabernet sauvignon in the world. The winery and vineyards are nestled between Route 29 and the Silverado Trail on Oakville Cross Road. Thanks to Executive Vice President and Rex board member Tim Duncan, Silver Oak Cellars opened its doors to the Rex Foundation's Music Caravan.

The extraordinary setting included a remarkable sunset that flowed into a bright view of the big dipper overhead while Bob Weir, Rob Wasserman, Jay Lane and the Taj Mahal Trio shredded the vines right off their roots. Excellent wine and delicious food were served all evening to several hundred Rex supporters at this intimate event.

The evening was an acoustic exploration of Grateful Dead Music, and Delta Blues with a smattering of World Music sprinkled in. The first trio was Weir, Wasserman and Lane who played for an hour or so improvising a jam so thoroughly delightful that the wine enthusiasts rated it a 99. The Taj Mahal Trio followed with no less than a 99.5 performance that jolted the laid back crowd to its feet and kept them dancing till the music stopped. Bobby Weir joined Taj for an eclectic set of songs.

Some of the proceeds from this Rex Music Caravan event will benefit small non-profits in Napa Valley doing good work who fit the Mission of the Rex Foundation.

Reflections on the Grateful Dead: Saying Yes to Fun

2009-03-10T08:34:00.000-07:00

I was moved by the conversation with Sandy that started over coffee and prompted her to share her reflections here. So, I'm taking her up on the invitation to share my thoughts, too. I hope to read yours soon!

“Thought he’d have a big ol’ party; thought he’d call it planet Earth.”

In the early ‘80s, I was a prep school student in Westchester County, New York, on track for an Ivy-caliber college and a predictable path to success: doctor, lawyer, executive with a house in the ‘burbs. Like many of my classmates, I was envious of the people who lived in the 1960s. It seemed things had been much more exciting then, and that there had been more opportunity for adventure and a focus on making a difference – socially, artistically, politically, and personally.

Rock ‘n’ roll music tied us to that “energy” but underscored that we’d missed the boat: the deaths of the Who’s Keith Moon (in 1978), Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham (in 1980), the Rolling Stones’ ventures into disco, and, of course, the shooting of John Lennon (in 1980) amplified our sense of being stuck in not-so-interesting times.

Then there were the Dead, who were just … different. The Dead’s music—and the tour milieu—conjured up the possibility of world, and a country, that was still very exciting. Intellectually, I found the synthesis of so many different kinds of music –“American” spirituals, jazz, country, blue grass, with symphonic infrastructure, “global” drums, and Eastern European folk music – fascinating and promising in the way that Walt Whitman’s poetry was. Emotionally, though, it was as much about the people as the music.

Mythologist Joseph Campbell once said, “The Deadheads are doing the dance of life, and this, I would say, is the answer to the atom bomb.” That sounded like a pretty weighty assignment! Perhaps he was right, though, and the dance of life isn’t a solution – just a healing response: the best moments at shows gave a glimpse of what it would feel like if the world were right, and confirmed that regardless of the many things to worry about, the path to right should be (and, in fact, is) fun.

While I was involved with a variety of political and social activities and experiments, from apartheid protests to organic farming, these organized endeavors did not provide the level of community or the little doses of magic that appeared spontaneously among the Deadheads. The best part … once brought to life among those people, that version of reality has stayed with me; it is part of my inspiration for staying involved through the Rex Foundation in general, and in the capacity of social networking in particular. I want to help spread the human wealth.

You see, I’m not quite ready to give up on getting those out-of-the blue reminders of the dance of life: from a guy who greeted me in a parking lot on Easter morning 20 years ago with a quartz crystal and the announcement that, “Christ has risen, sister!” to a new, online friend who told me he’d encountered a 17 year-old “just turned onto the Dead” and introduced him to the charitable works of the Rex Foundation. If we’re all here for the same party, we may as well dance together.

Reflections: How Grateful Dead Concerts Influenced My Life

2009-02-11T13:50:00.000-08:00

Rex Foundation Executive Director Sandy Sohcot writes:

See here how everything lead up to this day...

Robert Hunter's lyric from "Black Peter" is front and center right now as I contemplate a recent conversation with a sister Deadhead about how our experiences at Grateful Dead concerts have influenced our lives. We thought it would be interesting and fun to invite a story exchange on this theme--I hope you enjoy my story and feel inclined to share yours.

Unquestionably, I'm sitting at my Rex Foundation desk as Executive Director writing this because of that first Grateful Dead concert I went to at the Berkeley Community Theater in 1972. I recall that at about 1:00 a.m., during a long space set that prompted me to wonder if deeper contemplation was called for, I turned to Art Sohcot, my husband, who in 1987 passed away from complications related to leukemia, and asked what he thought this experience was all about. "It's just fun," he said. And so, the fun began.

What also began to happen as we went to one show after another was the connecting with people. At one Warfield show a woman sitting next to me just started talking to me about random thoughts, which then became a continuing conversation. We kept seeing each other at different shows and essentially became concert friends, which in turn generated expanded connections with the various people we each knew at the shows.

I had the same experience with many different people. We found that our shared connection with the music, and all that the music and lyrics evoked, offered a common frame of reference that was both fun and soul-enriching. Going to shows meant music and community. And, independent of concert-going, it got to the point that if you met someone and found out that you shared similar Grateful Dead experiences, you immediately had a common bond, which then paved the way for a likely friendship.

I'm at the Rex Foundation today in great part because of what I've just described. The Rex board member who called me in February 2001 to see if I'd be interested in being Executive Director was a lawyer who had met Art Sohcot at a law office party in 1983, and in talking, discovered common interest in the Grateful Dead. We became close friends as we went to many shows together and then kept connecting in other ways. The person who encouraged me to take the Rex Foundation position was the friend who took us to that first show in 1972.

These deep friendships were and are based on shared life views and values, extending way beyond the concerts we frequented, yet also are connected by the ethos felt during those shows. That same ethos is, in my view, how the Rex Foundation came to be; flowing along with the fun of enjoying the music was the awareness--among the band and the fans--that there was more to care about outside the concert hall.

It's now virtually impossible to distinguish between all the connections across people, lyrics and experiences that have led to today. I know that the personal life values I started with were both reinforced and enhanced by those connections. For me, the Rex Foundation has been an incredible opportunity to connect all these dots and carry forward day-by-day the very best of my concert experiences.

Congrats to Mickey Hart and Global Drum Project

2009-02-09T14:32:00.000-08:00

Percussionist extraordinaire (and Rex board member) Mickey Hart, along with compatriots Zakir Hussain, Sikiru Adepoju and Giovanni Hidalgo, won the Grammy for Best Contemporary World Music Album in last night's Grammy Awards ceremony for their Global Drum Project album. It's the second such award for Mickey and his fellow drummers, whose Planet Drum won a Grammy in 1991. Congratulations to Mickey and GDP!

Bob Weir to Help Rex grantee Project Avary Celebrate its 10th Anniversary

2009-02-03T19:49:00.000-08:00

If you are going to be in San Francisco on Wednesday, March 4th, please join Project Avary at the Great American Music Hall for an intimate evening that promises to be a literary and musical treat. Project Avary offers summer and family camps, field trips, and leadership programs for children with incarcerated parents. Founded by former Grateful Dead manager Danny Rifkin and supported from the beginning by the Rex Foundation, Avary is happy and proud to have seen so many of our children grow and thrive.

The festivities will include a conversation between KQED’s Michael Krasny and author Isabel Allende as well as a musical performance by Moonalice with special guests Bob Weir and Mark Karan. Your ticket also gets you dinner, entry to a silent auction, (which will include special signed collector’s items), and a chance to meet some of our children. Come and hear about their successes in college, the arts, the workplace, and the community! Just complete the online request for an invitation. Tickets are $100, with all net proceeds benefiting Project Avary's programs. Sponsorship opportunities are available.

Sweet Pictures Everywhere...

2009-01-29T13:38:00.000-08:00

or at least on the Rex Web site and on our Facebook page--great shots by Susana Millman and Bob Minkin at December's Sweet Music Everywhere gathering. The music was wonderful, the vibe couldn't be better, and it all shows in the pics. Whether you were part of the event or want to join the fun now, check it out!

For Rex History Buffs

2009-01-19T15:12:00.000-08:00

This week's archived Grateful Dead Hour broadcast on Dead.net features a 1991 show in which Phil Lesh and Gary Lambert explain the Rex Foundation's Ralph J. Gleason Award, which they're about to present to David Grisman. They're interviewing Grisman and swapping tales of the early days when along comes Jerry Garcia with more stories. It's a blast from Rex's past, so if you missed it the first time around, or want to revisit the good times, check it out!

Sweet Music Everywhere - Twenty-Five Years, So Far ...

2008-12-17T19:51:00.001-08:00

When the Grateful Dead launched the Rex Foundation in 1983, they had not yet hit the 20-year milestone. The band’s break onto the top of the pop charts and into the mainstream's limelight was a few years away, and the taper's section was not yet a reality.

This community has come a long way!

On December 13th, Rex celebrated 25 years of grassroots philanthropy with “Sweet Music Everywhere” at the Grand Ballroom of the Regency Center in San Francisco.

During his bluegrass set, early in the evening, headliner Peter Rowan commented that his musical world opened up the day he heard the “Whop-bop-a-lu-a-whop-bam-boo.” The evening’s performers, including Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, David Gans, Jackie Greene, the Brass Mafia, and Crucial Reggae lived up to the challenge of exploring the horizons, weaving elements of reggae, bluegrass, and rock ‘n’ roll into new arrangements of familiar tunes.

Since its inception the Rex Foundation has granted over $8M dollars to grassroots nonprofits and individual artists doing good work all around the globe. Over $1M of that amount has been raised and given out since 2001, when Rex invited the next generation of musicians and supporters to join the Rex Caravan, and participate in special events that carry on the Grateful Dead’s tradition of benefit concerts.

Thank you to everyone who attended. Even if you missed the music, you can still be a part of the celebration. Stanley Mouse's commemorative poster - created especially for the occasion - is still available.

Another Accolade for Mickey Hart's Global Drum Project

2008-12-07T17:13:00.000-08:00

Rex congratulates Mickey Hart and the Global Drum Project on the Grammy Award nomination in the Best Contemporary World Music Album category for their self-titled, 15-year reunion album from Shout! Factory.

The 1991 collaboration album between Zakir Hussain, Giovanni Hidalgo, Sikiru Adepoju, and many other musicians took home the first ever Grammy in the World Music Category. Mickey and Zakir produced the recent album at Mickey's Studio X in Sonoma County; engineers included Jonah Sharp, Graham Shrimpton, Richard Fisher, John Paul McLean and Robert Gateley. Mickey, Zakir and Tom Flye mixed it. Mastering was by John Cuniberti at The Plant in Sausalito.

The Grammy Awards will take place at the Staples Center in L.A. February 9, 2009.

Rex Grantee Bradley Angel Wins 2008 Cultural Freedom Award

2008-12-05T22:30:00.000-08:00

Bradley Angel, the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Greenaction for Health an Environmental Justice, was just awarded the Lannan Foundation 2008 Cultural Freedom Award. This award honors individuals working on behalf of communities struggling to uphold and defend their right to cultural freedom and diversity. As defined by Lannan, Cultural Freedom is a basic human right dependent on political, economic, and environmental justice.

The Rex Foundation supported Greenaction in 2006 with a grant in recognition of their outstanding work mobilizing community power to win victories that change government and corporate policies and practices to protect health and to promote environmental justice.Using technical expertise and people power, Greenaction has been on the front lines of preventing incinerators being located in communities that are the least prepared to stand up for their rights.

Its another testament to the exceptionally relevant work of the Rex Foundation that we are identifying and supporting organizations that are important participants in the efforts to build a better world!

Personal Invitation from Carolyn Garcia

2008-12-02T11:52:00.000-08:00

Carolyn Garcia, former wife of Jerry Garcia and present Rex Foundation Board Member, has posted a video inviting everyone to come out and celebrate our 25th Anniversary!

Update: Drums of Peace in Iraq

2008-11-10T14:29:00.000-08:00

Christine in Iraq.

In 2007 and 2008, the Rex Foundation provided grants to help Christine Stevens of UpBeat Drum Circles bring drumming as a peacemaking and community-building tool to war-torn areas of Iraq. (See Drums of Peace and Ripple Effects).

Rex executive director Sandy Sohcot recently received this report and pictures from Christine's latest trip.

Sandy,

Thank you so much for your support of our project in Iraq.

Thanks to Rex Foundation, there are ongoing drum circles weekly in four cities recovering from the war in northern Iraq; including Halabjah, Darbandikhan, Koya, and Suliamaniya. In addition, we were able to join them for a ribbon cutting ceremony of the first-ever music therapy clinic for children's rehabilitation in Iraq.

Happy drumming,

Christine

Christine participates in a drum circle in Darbandikhan.

Ribbon-cutting ceremony at music therapy clinic.

Christine talks to young drummers at the music therapy clinic.

Music therapy clinic for children.

Women's drum circle.

(photo credit: Constantine Alatzas)

An Excerpt from the Rex Foundation Newsletter-Perspectives on the World As It Could Be

2008-10-27T10:44:00.000-07:00

The writing below reflects why we put together the current newsletter Perspectives on The World As It Could Be. With the election on the horizon, I’m hopeful that these perspectives add to the hopeful energy stirring around us, where with our votes, energy and engagement, we can both imagine and experience the best of all possible worlds.

To read more of the newsletter (http://www.rexfoundation.org/RexNewsletter6.pdf), please
CLICK HERE

In April 2006 I had the privilege and joy of being at the offices of the San Francisco Mime Troupe Youth Theater Project to begin planning our creative project with youth to help raise greater awareness about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Around the table, in addition to the Mime Troupe staff, were Ellen Sebastian Chang, our soon-to-be Creative Director, Sarah Crowell of Destiny Arts Center, and James Kass of Youth Speaks. We were looking at the UDHR document as printed in the 2006 Rex Foundation newsletter Perspectives on Being Human, reading its Preamble and 30 Articles.

As we contemplated the significance of the UDHR statements, Peggy Rose of the Mime Troupe noted the document’s eloquence in depicting the world as it could be. And so was born the title of our first creative project, The World As It Could Be – A Declaration of Human Rights, which, because of its positive impact, has now evolved to The World As It Could Be Human Rights Education Program. What has been most meaningful to me over these last two years has been the way the youth and adults involved in the project have gained not just awareness but palpable excitement about the type of world that is possible, and how individual and collective actions
make a difference.

This experience prompted publishing this newsletter right now. We are close to the November 4th U.S. election to choose the next president and Congressional leaders. We’ll also be choosing local officials and deciding on regulatory policies and amendments to state constitutions. And we are in the midst of a sharp global awakening as to how inter-connected we are in terms of financial and environmental activity. The current situation, though anxiety-provoking and challenging, is a unique opportunity to spur thinking about how vital it is for each of us to be awake and mindful – to know that we can not only envision but also impact the type of world we live in. While we have had visionary thinkers and leaders throughout history, we have not always had the psychological know-how to realize our own individual importance as conscious, caring people, who, by our own actions and awareness of our impact on others, can generate tremendous energy and influence.

In the 2007/08 dramatization The World As It Could Be – Where There’s A Will There’s A Way, created by the youth of the Destiny Arts Center Performance Troupe, there was a segment where each person presented minute actions they would take to manifest the words of the UDHR. One said, “I will no longer drink bottled water.” Another said, “I will speak up if I witness anyone being disrespectful to others.” And another said, “I will vote.”

December 10, 2008 marks the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, when all the nations in the world agreed that it was vital to work toward a world that provided for everyone the conditions laid out by each of the 30 Articles. I know that the people who work to carry out the programs supported by Rex Foundation grants are doing all they can to manifest these words. I’m also seeing how the young people who learn about the UDHR are inspired to take on responsibilities as global citizens to manifest it’s words. I’m hopeful that the messages conveyed here and throughout this newsletter provide encouragement to consider the type of world desired for generations to come and how invaluable each person’s thinking and actions are to making this happen.

– Sandy Sohcot

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass: A Gift of Music

2008-10-08T10:16:00.000-07:00

It's been twenty-four years since I saw my first Rex benefit show. Since then I've seen more shows, contributed money, and worked with the Rex Foundation over the World Wide Web. It was a great joy to open a new chapter - joining other volunteers to staff a table at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park.

The festival, which celebrated its 8th year on the first weekend in October of 2008, is financier Warren Hellman's gift to the City and to music fans. Mr. Hellman decided to underwrite the free concerts so that an eclectic group of musicians could be hired without regard to their ability to bring in ticket sales. The unique event now draws over 100,000 people to see big names like Emmylou Harris, Elvis Costello, and Robert Plant (with Allison Krauss and T-Bone Burnett) and less widely known players as diverse as Gogol Bordello, Loudon Wainwright III, and Jimmie Dale Gilmore. Mickey Hart performed with the Global Drum Project.

I had a great time at the Rex table, getting to know the other members of the team, board members Freddy Hahne (our captain for the weekend) and Nick Morgan; fellow supporters Dave Fortescue and Casey Lowdermilk; and intern Kai Flippini. What made the experience really special was the connections with so many generations of kind travelers, ranging from one woman who remembered Jerry Garcia from a time before he earned money from his music to another who looked at the Carvavan flyers and asked me why we chose a bus as the metaphor.

We collected $600 in donations for the Rex Foundation. For those $20 donors who recieved a Jerry Jams, Jerry Cares CD, enjoy your tunes. Thanks to everyone who visited, or who threw us a smile or a thumbs-up as you made your way through the crowd!

Phil Lesh Rocks the Slow Food Nation

2008-09-08T19:54:00.000-07:00

A two-hour set from Phil Lesh and Friends was the perfect close to San Francisco’s Slow Food Nation events. Over the course of the Labor Day weekend, sixty thousand people attended Slow Food Rocks concerts, lectures by luminaries such as farmer-poet Wendell Berry, a tasting event, and picnics at various locations across the city. A World War II style Victory Garden, planted at the Civic Center in July, produced food that was ready by late August for distribution to people in need.

At Fort Mason’s Great Meadow, the performers’ backdrop consisted of breathtaking views of the Golden Gate Bridge and the San Francisco cityscape. The weather cooperated with a sunshine daydream kind of day; by the time the openers took the stage, the fog had burned off. Brief educational speeches came between sets by London Street, G Love and Special Sauce, and the John Bishop Trio. Phil delivered sunny tunes, including Sugar Magnolia, Sugaree, and a lovely Box of Rain.

The Slow Food movement challenges us to contemplate the entire cycle that turns soil, air, and sunlight into the cells of our bodies. To protect both health and social justice, we must take into account the condition of the water supply, the treatment of animals that some of us eat, the nutritional content of our food, the work practices and economics of farming and distribution, the social rituals that surround the preparation and consumption of our meals, and how we dispose of the waste.

The network of music and arts festivals is taking the lead around creating traditions in keeping with this attitude of awareness. Foods for sale at Slow Food Rocks included healthful fare like salmon and organic salads instead of hot dogs and nachos. To meet the guidelines for a “zero-waste event,” packaging was recyclable, reusable, or compostable.

The Rex Foundation supports many organizations working in the intersection of food and social justice. Visit the Rex Foundation site to learn more about the work of grantees such as Oakland People's Grocery, Sustainable Fishery Advocates, Organic Farming Research Foundation, Dinner Program for Homeless Women, and Rock and Wrap it Up.

SF Outside Lands: The Humans are Still Being In

2008-08-26T14:33:00.000-07:00

Radiohead's set on Friday, August 22nd, marked a San Francisco first – officially sanctioned live music after dark in Golden Gate Park. Three generations of artists were represented on the roster for the weekend – Steve Winwood, Toots and the Maytals, Tom Petty, Wilco, Widespread Panic, Ben Harper, and Jack Johnson were just a few of sixty-four musical acts. Local and regional restaurateurs served foods ranging from vegan wraps to gourmet sausage, and craftspeople sold their artwork.

Producers asked that sponsors such as Microsoft, Dell, and PG&E participate in ways that accorded with the spirit of the event. The results: an EcoLand where solar panels powered the stage, the vending booths, and a cell-phone charging station; a large circus tent with computers available for audience members to upload their own photos, blog posts, and tweets; and a station for creating and emailing a mix "tape" of mp3s from artists performing this summer at festivals throughout the country.

As I took in the 80 acres of offerings, I couldn't help thinking about an earlier gathering. I was not on the planet to attend the Human Be-In held in the park on January 14th, 1967, but its legend was one of the things that brought me to California. Organizers said that the purpose of that event was to harmonize then-competing elements of the youth movement – people focused on political change and those focused on transforming consciousness. The media coverage brought the world its first eyeful of what came to be called the counterculture. The Outside Lands crowd demonstrated how much some the ideals of those times, like environmental awareness and the revival of craftsmanship, have been accepted by the mainstream.

Rex Jam Report #5 - Gathering of the Vibes

2008-08-11T07:11:00.001-07:00

Gathering of the Vibes
August 2, 2008
Band: New Riders of the Purple Sage
In Support of Bridgeport Central High School Musical Instrument Program.

On Saturday, August 2nd, we had a plan to hold the final Rex Jam of the summer with the New Riders of the Purple Safe (affectionately "NRPS") at 2:30 in the afternoon. Because they were not the first band on the stage that day, and the weather had been extraordinary all weekend, I had anticipated a great event. I have said it before and I'm saying it again... I'm not always right. At about 12:00 on Saturday afternoon, the sun disappeared, the clouds grew heavy and skies opened up. I dare say I can not recall a time where I have been in an "out-door environment" in such a storm. Lighting strikes, thunder claps, strong winds and heavy rain certainly created chaos in Seaside park. As the rain continued in the the 1:00 hour... I began to wonder what was going to happen to the Jam. The music was halted when Alternate Roots was called from the stage. I figure there would have to be some cancellations and was not sure if NRPS would even play. As I stood in the relative safety of my friend's vending booth - I contacted volunteers and asked them to hold tight until further notice... I contacted Harry Moran, our Non-profit contact, for his thoughts... he said to hold tight until further notice... I contacted Toast, manager of NRPS... he said hold tight until further notice. So we held tight.

The rain finally ended and more chaos ensued. What would the new schedule be? Are NRPS palying? Is that other storm going to move in and hit us too? We had "missed" the volunteer meeting, but my folks were waiting patiently. I finally decided to go backstage, as the storm seemed to have passed. Next thing I knew, Toast was telling me they were going on any minute. It was Whiz! Bang! Spring to action! Harry raced me over to the vendor booth to get the buckets and mateirals, I sent a text to the volunteers to come ASAP! Everything seemed to be happening at once, I am ever appreciative to have had Miss Jen there. She has been with us for three Rex Jams this summer, and I relied on her to help gather the troops and give them the low-down because I had not time to meet with them before I made the stage announcement. After the announcement was finished, I rushed over to meet the volunteers with the materials.

I gave out buckets, bags and CDs, as well as my best advice and sent them out into the crowd to wait for the signal. Again - we had more volunteers than buckets, so I did not go out into the crowd. I think it was for the best this time, as I was so frazzled.... fortunately, no one seemed to notice but me. While on stage making the announcement I saw few friends in various locations in the crowd, and they all gave me the "hi" sign. Afterward, they gave me praise for my "performance" and said I looked very composed and natural. I was also ever-so appreciative when Toast told me the band would make some acknowledgment of the song (Garden of Eden) designated for the Rex Jam. Michael Falzarano made a comment to the crowd before the song, and I know that helped.

Beautifully, in spite of the mayhem - the Rex Jam was a raging success (ok, so I was right about something!). I am so proud to say that we raised over $2000 for the Bridgeport Central High School Musical Instrument program. This program is set up to purchase instruments so students who can't afford their own can still learn to play and perform with the band.

I want to say here that being the Rex Jam Representative at so many festivals this summer has been such an honor and a privilege for me. It has brought me such joy I can't even explain it. I have always said that I wish I was rich so I could give money away when I see a need.... I don't have that kind of money - and this is a great substitute (giving away other people's money where there is a need!).

A friend of mine asked me how much money we had raised this summer, and I hadn't really given it much thought - but as it turns out, over the 5 Rex Jams and fund raisers we did this summer, we have raised close to $10,000. It is amazing to me. Yes - your dollars add up quickly people. All it takes is $5.00. Just $5.00.....

Jerry Day: Nourishing San Francisco's Grassroots

2008-08-05T11:08:00.000-07:00

August 3, 2008 was Jerry Day in San Francisco, the sixth annual day of celebration commemorating the life and music of Jerry Garcia. It's one of my favorite summer events – for more than the expected reason. The success of the event is a testament to the power of community spirit in action.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported, "Long before he was lead singer for the Grateful Dead, Jerry Garcia was a scrappy kid in the Excelsior -- pulling fire alarms, sticking his hands in wet cement, throwing cherry bombs in the Alemany tunnel."

San Francisco changed quite a bit in the 50 years or so since Garcia's cherry-bomb days. His old neighborhood, "hidden" on the south east edge of San Francisco, didn't benefit as much as some SF neighborhoods did from the City's economic upswing.

Rex supporter and Excelsior resident Tom Murphy joined forces with a group of friends and neighbors to improve their neighborhood by renovating and upgrading the Excelsior's Crocker-Amazon playgrounds. Local neighborhood associations, San Francisco parks officials, Garcia fans, parents, kids, and friends all came together around this worthy project. The first Jerry Day all-day concert in 2003 raised $5000 for the playgrounds.

In 2005, San Francisco's Parks and Recreation Department voted to dub the open-air venue located in John McLaren Park "Jerry Garcia Amphitheater." Not nearly as well-known as that other San Francisco Park, McLaren boasts athletic fields, hiking trails, and a golf course; a water tower and reservoir; and an abundance of flora and fauna.

This year's show featured Loco Bloco, Stu Allen and Sandy Rothman Acoustic, Workingman's Ed, and Melvin Seals and JGB. Jerry Day is becoming a tradition. A mellow tribute to Jerry Garcia - and a major triumph for a committed group of neighbors.

Rex helps with an EPIC battle to save the redwoods!

2008-08-01T14:24:00.000-07:00

The recent announcement that Charles Hurwitz and his Maxxam Corporation will no longer be in control of logging old growth forests in Humbolt County is a victory for environmentalists everywhere. Maxxam Corporation engaged in highly destructive logging practices that put old growth forests at greatest risk as well as serous long-term troubles for the local economy. Rex Foundation can feel proud of providing funds for a key leader in the effort to stop the destructive logging practices in the region. The Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC) received two grants from Rex over the last 20 years to help with organizing and keeping the heat on Maxxam and the courts to protect our forests. With the word that a bankruptcy judge will now be transferring control to Mendocino Redwood Company(MRC), known for more sustainable logging practices, the residents of the area can be assured that economy will continue to thrive while all Californians can rejoice over the protection of our old growth forests.

The MRC Plan comes closest to implementing the standards EPIC advocates for timber management in the Redwood Region. These standards flow from three core principles for timberland management: recovery of high-quality timberland and wildlife habitat for salmon & steelhead and other aquatic, terrestrial, and avian wildlife; recovery of an economy based on these resources and full integration of the region's human communities in these
efforts.

Rex is committed to funding grassroots efforts like EPIC to ensure the preservation of and conservation of our environment. Thank you to all our supporters for helping support this critical work.

Rex Jam report #4 - 10KLakes Music Festival

2008-07-28T18:21:00.000-07:00

10KLakes Music Festival
Detroit Lakes, MN
July 23 - July 36, 2008
Band: Matt Butler and The Everyone Orchestra
In support of the Detroit Lakes High School Band Musical Instrument Program

The Rex Jam at 10KLakes Music Festival was one of the best yet. It was most exciting because the Rex Jam was “born” at 10KLakes, with Matt Butler and the Everyone Orchestra, in 2007. Sandy Sohcot, Executive Director of Rex Foundation, was there last year to do the honors and get the ball rolling. I know Sandy would have liked to have been there this year, but I was really quite honored to stand-in on her behalf. I was glad to be among last year's veterans, with Matt leading the charge, Rex Volunteer Dave Fortescue as my right-hand-man, and Deanna Sinclair or the Detroit Lakes Rotary with her crew of Rotarians and Interact Club students from Detroit Lakes High School.

If you have never seen Matt Butler do his thing, you definitely need to check him out. He masterfully pulls together performers from several bands – in this instance it included Jen Durkin from Deep Banana Blackout and the Micky Hart Band and Kim Manning from The Parliament Funkadelic on vocals, Jannis Wallin from Family Groove Company and Patrice Blanchard from Panjea sharing the duties on Bass, Michael Kang from Panjea and Steve Kimock on guitars, Adam Lasher from Umelt on Keys, Allie Kral from Cornmeal on Fiddle, Johnny Polanski from One Under and Jason Hahn from SCI on drums and Percussion. – and then he conducts them as well as the audience, in this amazing performance of the Everyone Orchestra. Matt Butler is my new hero. He conducts with his whole body. He dances a round to convey emotion to the musicians and the audience, he includes the audience in the performance by encouraging timely claps and shouts, and he writes notes to the performers on a small white-board to tell them who to follow, what key to play, and other intricate things that exuberant body language simply can’t convey. It is a truly amazing thing to witness.

On top of all of that, he incorporated the Rex Jam into his performance. So instead of the typical situation where I get on stage, talk about the Rex Foundation and what the Rex Jam is all about, and then introduce the band – I felt as though I was actually brought in as part of the Orchestra. Matt brought me out on stage in the middle of their set, as he wanted to build the crowd up before I made my appeal. They were still deep in a hot jam and at first I wasn’t sure if I had read his cue right, but really – he’s very clear. So I hung out and sort of enjoyed the jam along with the crowd and the band. Matt brought the jam down and then spoke a bit about Music being a gift and it being an important thing for kids…. I wish I could remember exactly what he said. I’ll get a recording of it and correct this as soon as possible. Then he introduced me and I spoke very briefly, but passionately. Most of my “speech” went out the window, but fortunately I’ve done this enough at this point to know the basics. I tried to keep it short and sweet so as not to interrupt the amazing flow of the set.

This was the first Rex Jam where I didn’t go into the crowd with a bucket, as we already had 11 people out there, and it was a relatively small crowd. However, I just couldn’t sit still – the music the Orchestra was producing was so incredible and I was really high from it. I danced my energy through the crowd and supported the volunteers as much as I was able. I suppose that between Matt, the Orchestra, the volunteers, and me, we made all the right moves. The volunteers collected about $1700 for the Detroit Lakes High School Band Instrument program. We were really to have exceeded last year’s total of $1638.00.

Special thanks should go out to Chryll Sparks, who coordinated so many pieces of this production, and who took such good care of Dave and me while we were at the Festival. Also, to Stucker for his stage announcements and support throughout the day on Thursday and to Dave Wiesman for helping Matt and I connect with plenty of time to compare notes and plans for the event. Yet another raging success and a truly positive experience for all involved. (I think I’m getting good at this…..) ;-)

Rex Jam Report #3 - All Good

2008-07-21T22:06:00.000-07:00

All Good Music Festival and Camp-out
Masontown, WV - July 10-13, 2008
Band: The Bridge (and Medeski, Schofield and Dietch)
In support of University High School and Morgantown High School, music and arts programs.

The All Good Festival provided the Rex Foundation with some amazing opportunities to raise awareness and raise funds. The good folks at Walther Productions were truly supportive of what Rex is trying to accomplish and helped to create tremendous success over the three days we were there.

Instead of just the Rex Jam, Rex also presented
Q&A Collaboration with John Schofield, John Medeski and Adam Dietch, and we staffed the beer service in the VIP "Sky Lounge." as a fund-raiser as well. It was a lot of work, but even so, a good time was had by all.

The Sky Lounge was a new addition to the VIP program this year, and Tim Walther (producer of All Good) offered to let us staff the beer tent and donate some of the sales to Rex Foundation. Along with all of the tip money, it turned out to be a great resource. I had an amazing crew working with me. The picture above shows Darrell, Chuck and Jen hard at work behind the taps. Between the three of them, Butch, Amy and me, we poured beer for 47 hours to some of the most generous group of people I have ever met. These VIPs tipped and tipped... and when they realized that all the tip money was going to the Rex Foundation, it almost seemed as though they tipped even more. On the last day - Jess, a woman who we'd been serving all weekend, who had been tipping heavily all weekend, came over to me, handed me a $50 bill and said, "I think what you're doing is amazing." The beauty of some people knows no limits. I want to extend a very special thanks to all of those who purchased VIP tickets and spent their time with us in the "Sky Lounge". I do hope to see you all again next year!

On Friday afternoon I was to present a special Q&A Collaboration with Schofield, Medeski and Dietch. As soon as I arrived to the Ropeadope Stage, I felt very welcomed. The stage manager, Mario, was right there ready to help me with anything I needed, and as I walked onto the stage, John Schofield offered me his microphone to use (such a gentleman!). I did my speech - a truncated version of the Rex Jam speech - and we set out into the crowd to collect money. I was not overly optimistic, as the crowd was pretty small, but Jen and I persevered. People were slowly arriving to the stage as they heard the music, so we kept at it, and about half-way through the program, Schofield reminded the crowd that we were out there collecting and that they should dig into their pockets... I was so appreciative because it really did spark some more support. I hope to have the chance to say a special thanks to him for that someday soon.

On Saturday, we had the Rex Jam with the Baltimore-based band, The Bridge. I had been unsuccessful in getting in touch with them, and I was a little concerned because they were doing a special 20 minute set wholly dedicated to the Rex Jam. As I made my way to the back stage area, I finally did connect with the guys in the band as well as Mook - the stage manager in that area. Once again - everyone was great. I was more comfortable doing my presentation there, perhaps it's because I had Friday as a "practice run".... I do know that the crowd was really responsive so that also helped. During my presentation, the band heard me talking about the Jerry Jams CDs we are giving away (yours with a $20 donation, while supplies last!) and so they changed their set at the last minute, and opened with a great version of "Get Out of My Life" in honor of Jerry. I was really excited about that for a few reasons... 1) I simply enjoy the song and 2) it was so validating to know that people are actually listening to what I'm saying. So - we only had about 20 minutes (maybe less) to collect, but I had 9 people circulating, the "bar staff" was joined by Molly, Jessica, Mike, Briannan and Luke - while Butch stayed behind to man the taps. We were diligent in our limited time, but we did well. Again, the people were generous and the volunteers were motivated.

By the end of the weekend, combining the collections during the Q&A on Friday, the Rex Jam on Saturday, and the beer Tips - we raised a significant amount of money. I have to say that I have been lucky enough to have found some of the most wonderful people to help with these Rex Jams (and other events), and I think we all feel equally as lucky to be able to say we are part of this amazing adventure.

Here's looking forward to 10KLakes - the home of the very first Rex Jam!

Rex Jam Report #2 - High Sierra

2008-07-17T18:06:00.000-07:00

High Sierra Music Festival,
Quincy, CA - July 5, 2008
Band: Ratdog
In support of Plumas County Save our Schools, music and arts programs.

While the firefighters fought to control the blazes, several thousand people found ways around the fires to make it to the High Sierra Music Festival this past weekend. This was my second time attending the High Sierra Music Festival. I went as a patron in 2002. I had a great time that year, went to a lot of the play-shops, ran into old friends, played for 3 days straight.... This year I had a great time as well, but the experience was wholly different.

This Rex Jam really was Theresa Reed-Hayle's baby. I was not originally supposed to be at High Sierra, but I knew High Sierra is a great festival, and, I all I really needed was a good excuse. Since Theresa was also significantly involved with the production of High Sierra, I figured I'd see if she could help me justify my expense in travel ling all the way to California for the festival. She asked me to help her in the FestivALL (VIP) hospitality area, and of course with the Rex Jam. Theresa and I have been working closely together via phone and e-mail in coordinating the Rex Jams, it is so nice to now have a face and a personal energy to put with the voice and the e-mail. It was awesome to work with her. She worked tirelessly - crazy 20 hour days - and managed to keep a smile on her face and a positive attitude. It really was my pleasure to work with her in helping coordinate the Jam.

We assembled our crew and discussed some good tactics for collecting. We knew that the darkness was going to be to our disadvantage, but we had glow sticks ready for the containers. I briefed everyone with my experiences at Mountain Jam and we decided we would start the collection right after Bobby started his set, and then continue collecting as long as we could. The more time in the crowd, the more donations we could collect. Theresa has also arranged for the MCs to talk up the Rex Jam over the course of the weekend, which I know helped keep people aware of what we were doing. Also, we had an incentive item, a "Jerry Jams" 3-CD set - to give to people who donated $20 or more. The Grizzly Radio was playing tracks from it all weekend, between bands. We were 8 or 9 people moving through the crowd - all of whom were friends of Theresa's including her husband and brother - and we were awesome, if I do say so myself!

I had been excited last time, when tallying the donations, but this time was even better. I knew we had done well when after everyone came back, we only had 8 or 9 "Jerry Jams" CDs left. We started out with 100 of them. I seriously almost started to cry as I tallied the containers, each seeming to have more than the last. In the end, we had collected almost $3000 during the Rex Jam that night. I could barely believe it. We were so thrilled... and of course, it only served to inspire us to continue doing better and better as the summer progresses.

Rex Jam Report #1 - Mountain Jam

2008-07-17T17:31:00.001-07:00

Mountain Jam - Hunter Mountain, NY
Sunday June 1, 2008 8:30 pm - w/Ratdog
In support of Family of Woodstock

This was the first Rex Jam of the summer, and my first one ever. I think that, all things considered, it went really well. I organized my crew of volunteers - some people I've known for years, and others I'd really only just met (Thanks to Mollie, Joey, Debi, Jonny Wa, Sam, Susan & Matthew, Ann Marie, Jennifer and Erica!) to help me carry out the collection of funds. Michael Pillot, who was in charge of the Awareness Village, was my contact for the event and he was just great. Easy to work with - and an all around nice guy - he was a tremendous support. So, Michael, if you're reading - thanks!

The first rush came when I stood on the same stage where Govt Mule, Michael Franti, Ratdog, Levon Helm and a ton of great musicians had played that weekend, and gave the appeal to the seven or eight thousand people assembled in front of me (the photo above is of the view from the stage). It was intense. I've never been described as shy, and I have done my share of public speaking, but never to an audience that size. Yes - I was nervous, but I guess I hid it well. People I spoke with afterwards told me I did a great job and marveled at how I seemed so poised and comfortable up there. I just kept reminding myself to speak slowly and clearly... (thanks to Jon and Lisa for their input). Michael Berg, the executive director of Family of Woodstock also spoke, giving some information about the program (follow the link to the website for more about Family). It was nice to not have to be up there entirely by myself.

The second rush came when we were tallying up our collection. Each jug contained a glowstick (to help it be seen in the dark!) and a substantial amount of money. With each bucket, I became more and more excited about what we had accomplished on this first endeavor. I was thrilled to be able to call Sandy with the total that night (more than $750 in only 10 minutes or so). I felt like we had really made a difference.

We raised a nice chunk of change for Family of Woodstock. We also learned a lot about what works well, and what can be done better. We intend to put this information to work to make the next Rex Jam an even greater success.

Rex Jam Report - Summer 2008

2008-07-17T17:13:00.000-07:00

"Hi! My name is Elyce Turner, and I'm proudly representing the Rex Foundation and bringing a big hello from Sandy Sohcot and everyone at Rex."

This is how I have introduced myself to several thousand people so far this summer, at Rex Jams across the country. The Rex Community Caravan has taken to the festival circuit in order to spread the word about how easy it is to be a philanthropist, and I have had the privilege of being a messenger of that word.

The Rex Jam is a special set of music that is performed by a band who has generously offered to give us special support at a festival. Before the band begins their set, we speak to the crowd to let them know what the Rex Foundation is, what we've been up to, and what we'd like to do on that day. We invite the people to get on board the Caravan, to which we are all connected by our love of music and understanding of the significance of community support, to create a positive difference for a local, grassroots organization which has been chosen by the festival coordinators. We then introduce the band and make our way through the audience with donation containers, asking people to contribute what they feel they can.

It sounds pretty straight forward. It is. We have learned a lot along the way, and we keep learning. There are amazing people involved in these activities and wonderful results from this process. We thought it would be important to share it with you - so keep your eyes peeled for the reports. They start here... now.

Oakland's Youth Movement Records

2008-06-26T10:09:00.000-07:00

It's always interesting, and usually inspiring, to talk to Rex grantees about their work and write about it in our Food For Thought section. So, when I went to talk to the folks at Youth Movement Records, I expected to like them and was looking forward to our visit, especially after seeing the YMR youth's work in the Oakland Tech production of "The World As It Could Be: Where There's a Will There's a Way."

Still, I wasn't prepared for the fact that these folks really knocked my socks off.

Part of this, no doubt, is because I've lived in Oakland for the last 32 years, and thus am somewhat aware not only of the crime rate that currently has the city rated as the nation's 4th most dangerous, but also the poverty and lack of opportunity that often drive youth down a bad path. Programs, many funded by the city, seek to address these issues, and many of them do good work, but others are defined by empty feelgood statements, political posturing, and a general lack of accountability, all of which tends to feed rather than mitigate the problem.

Which is why YMR was such a breath of fresh air. On the one hand, unquestionably hip, using state-of-the-art technology and topnotch professionals to teach kids media skills -- while some well-meaning groups are all about what they think kids SHOULD want, YMR uses what they absolutely DO want to reach them. And on the other hand, the program has a strong component of fostering responsibility, personal accountability and life skills (as founder Chris Wiltsee puts it, "You want to be in the performance on Saturday night and you miss rehearsal, forget it").

In a town with a 50% dropout rate, YMR keeps kids -- most poor, some literally homeless -- in school, broadens their sense of what's possible in their lives, and gives them the skills to set and achieve their goals.

As an Oakland resident and a Rex supporter, I was just blown away by these folks. Check out the article, listen to their "Will/Wish=Change" anthem, and you'll probably agree.

The World As It Could Be

2008-06-13T18:12:00.000-07:00

At the end of April, Ellen Sebastian Chang (Creative Director of Rex's The World As It Could Be project) and I submitted the draft curriculum to use the creative arts to teach the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This curriculum element is being considered for inclusion in the San Francisco Unified School District's 2008-09 Pilot Ethnic Studies program.

Wow! When I began work on this project in 2006, my goal was to raise awareness about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and to showcase the excellent work of the Rex grantees who utilize the creative arts in their work with youth who, due to their lower socioeconomic status, often face troubling and risk-raising issues. My theory was, “What better way to teach, than through the lessons we can we learn from young people, delivered through the medium of drama, dance and song?”

The first performance of The World As It Could Be - A Declaration of Human Rights was at the Presidio in San Francisco on December 7, 2006. The primarily adult audience was taken by the beauty and eloquence of the performance. During the interactive discussion following the performance, I learned that most of the audience had no idea there was a Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and that they appreciated the learning that had just taken place. The next morning, the performance was presented to the 1,000+ students of San Francisco's Balboa High School. Just as the night before, the entire audience was fully engaged throughout the 40-minute performance; students cheered and called-out in appreciation for what their peers presented.

Besides feeling that this had been the most meaningful creative project I had undertaken, I knew that multiple dimensions of learning and teaching had taken place, and that this was something that should continue. Several of the sponsors, along with Sarah Crowell of Destiny Arts Center, who provided the core performance company, and Ellen Sebastian Chang, agreed. We decided not only to do a second dramatization that would build on the first, but also to explore how to bring more focus within the public school curriculum on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, utilizing the creative arts as a key learning tool.

The Aha! about this came to me as I thought about what I witnessed when the performance company youth began working on the dramatization project. In addition to learning about the Declaration, the youth were given numerous thought-provoking questions to prompt writings, dance sequences and dramatic staging, to help express their ideas about what it means to have freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from fear, and freedom from want. You could literally see the learning taking place as each performer mulled over the questions and shared their responses.

As I planned for the next steps in this project, it seemed that we had an opportunity not only to continue working with youth via the great grantee programs we support, but also to help reinstate the arts as a vital part of public school education. We started working on the second dramatization, The World As It Could Be - Where There's A Will There's A Way, to explore the “will” needed to manifest the words of the Declaration, this time including 826 Valencia and Youth Movement Records, as well as Destiny Arts Center. 826 Valencia worked with three freshman English classes at Raoul Wallenberg High School to create writings about human rights and the “will to change” for a Chap Book (a booklet of collected works). Youth Movement Records worked with several of their youth to create an anthem for the performance, and produce a CD of the anthem to be included with the Chap Book.

We arranged for two performances this time, once again at Balboa High School, on January 11, 2008, and at Oakland Technical High School, on April 14. Then, we worked with Balboa High School to develop a pilot curriculum focused on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (already part of the official curriculum for 10th grade history). Ellen Sebastian Chang and Destiny Arts Center program directors are currently leading three classes to create writings about the Declaration. In the fall, auditions begin for students who will create their own production about the Universal Declaration and perform it at an assembly on December 10, 2008, the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration (which took place in San Francisco!).

My original hope had been that this pilot project could then be considered by the San Francisco Unified School District for broader application. While all of this has been going on, our newly assigned faculty representative at Balboa High School approached us about including the project in the pilot Ethnic Studies curriculum being developed for 2008-09. Now, we're excitedly moving ahead on parallel tracks to demonstrate the power of the arts to teach, to raise greater awareness about the Universal Declaration, and to shape the public school curriculum.

--Sandy Sohcot

Keller Williams Releases "Rex" for Digital Download

2008-05-06T21:51:00.001-07:00

We are pleased to announce the release of Keller William's "REX"- Live at the Fillmore, featuring Williams, Keith Moseley (The String Cheese Incident), and Jeff Austin (Yonder Mountain String Band), now available for Digital Download.

On April 29, 2008, this very special evening of music became available for digital download at iTunes and other digital retailers. 100% of the net proceeds of REX: Live at the Fillmore will go to The Rex Foundation.

Rex Foundation wants to express its deepest appreciation to Keller and the musical community for this generous support.

The 2008 Rex Musical Caravan travels on with a special performance from New Monsoon and special guest ALBINO! at the Great American Music Hall.

Rex Supporter Al Futransky: What I'm Doing With My Tax Rebate

2008-05-01T08:31:00.000-07:00

I am not a fan of the $600 tax rebate we will soon be receiving. I think it is going to cost a lot of money that could be better spent on other things, and it will not accomplish the stated goal of stimulating the economy. Since I don't plan on returning it, I needed to find a way to use it in a way that can help stimulate the American economy and still be something I can feel good about.

Spending it on consumer items will only help the economy of the large corporate CEOs who already have enough of my money. It also has a good chance of helping to exploit a worker in another country while taking jobs away from Americans. A donation to the Rex Foundation does none of those things.

I know the money will be spent here at home, helping someone on the grass-roots level who can use the help in some way. I trust the Rex board to donate the money to organizations whose work I will most likely approve. So the decision is easy: Give the money to a foundation that has a history of good works done in a great spirit. What more can I ask from my $600?

Perspective on the Digital Divide

2008-03-06T17:02:00.000-08:00

In the latest Rex Foundation newsletter, Ken McNeely, President – External Affairs for AT&T California, suggests that there must be a “will to change” among the public at large with regard to broadband Internet service -- and the importance of ensuring universal access to that service. He notes it will take corporate political will, in combination with policy makers, to effect the changes needed to ensure digital inclusion.

Looking at earlier products or services that were deemed so essential as to require subsidized access for those who couldn't afford them, he asks, "Is broadband on the same level as subsidizing food and public education? Should every student have a computer and Internet access?"

Read more...

Mickey Hart: Drumming As Peacemaking Tool

2008-02-09T18:09:00.000-08:00

Mickey Hart says:

"Humans are rhythm machines. That’s what life is built on, rhythm, so when you share that with someone you make a connection at a very deep level. You get to understand their emotions, their hopes, dreams, fears, whatever.

"When you entrain you get in sync, you have common ground, you’re touching the essence of life. You’re sharing some kind of sacred space with these people. That makes peace.

"I don’t ever remember coming off of a stage where people were really passionate about playing music at that moment, and feeling bad towards them. It’s always a heightened experience; it’s always enlightening in some way, and it makes you feel good. And it’s fun."

More...

Drums for Peace

2008-02-02T13:07:00.000-08:00

We're really excited about the latest Food for Thought story on the Rex Foundation site. It's about a recent project in which Christine Stevens, renowned drum circle leader and friend of Mickey Hart, was invited to come to Iraq and teach drum circles to local people as a peacemaking tool. The results were very moving, and we're really proud to have been part of this project.

The story also includes a text and/or audio interview with Mickey on the healing power of drumming. Check it out!

http://www.rexfoundation.org/foodforthought/drumsforpeace.html

Rex Foundation completes 2007 grant cycle

2008-01-21T10:32:00.001-08:00

The Rex Foundation is Furthering a Tradition of Grassroots Giving by completing the 2007 grant cycle designating recipients for its three major foundation awards and grants.

Rex is proud to announce the Jerry Garcia Award to Jazz Masters Workshop. In memory of Grateful Dead guitarist and founding Rex board member Jerry Garcia, this award is designed to honor and support individuals and groups that work to encourage creativity in young people. Since 2000, JazzMasters Workshop has held 2,000 workshops for children of all ages, abilities and backgrounds. The program has a host of accomplishments, from assisting with admittance to schools, conservatories and summer camps, helping find scholarship assistance for needy students, acquiring musical instruments for talented young people without the resources to procure one and providing numerous performance opportunities.

Rex awards the Ralph Gleason Award to Allen Toussaint. This award is in memory of music journalist Ralph J. Gleason, a major figure in the advancement of music in America in the 1960s, whose openness to new music and ideas transcended differences between generations and styles. Allen Toussaint's work and art have never gone out of style and he has continued to mentor musicians and represent New Orleans in the finest fashion. Producer, songwriter, arranger, session pianist and solo artist, Allen Toussaint represents artistic excellence. His music crosses multiple generations and inspires new generations.

The Rex Foundation's Bill Graham Award has been designated to The Cambodian Children's Fund. In memory of pioneering producer and founding Rex board member Bill Graham, himself a refugee, this award is for those working to assist children who are victims of political oppression and human rights violations.The Cambodian Children's Fund (CCF) services Cambodia's poorest, undereducated and most vulnerable children by providing them with the care, education and training they need to reach their full potential. CCF seeks to create a safe, open place for children to thrive, learn and grow and to provide protection and support needed to overcome the barriers that prevent human development.

In addition to the three major awards, the Rex Foundation provided grants to thirty-two non-profit organizations. The list and description of grantees is at the web site linked at Rex 2007 beneficiaries.

The Grateful Dead was always known for generosity and the performance of numerous benefits. In the fall of 1983, the Rex Foundation was established as a non-profit charitable organization by members of the Grateful Dead and friends to further this tradition. The Rex Foundation enabled the Grateful Dead to go beyond responding to multiple requests for contributions, and proactively provide extensive community support to creative endeavors in the arts, sciences, and education. The first benefit concerts for the Rex Foundation were held in the spring of 1984 at the Marin Veteran’s Memorial Auditorium. Since 1984 the Rex Foundation has granted $8.2 million to some 1,000 recipients.

Continuing to embody the spirit of generosity and concern that evolved in the culture surrounding Grateful Dead concerts, the Rex Foundation is on a new path that seeks to include and engage many people. With activities that honor the spirit of community, service and creativity, Rex is building the funding necessary to carry out our mission. Thanks to the resounding response of so many generous supporters, since December 2001 we have granted $911,000 to 171 programs, across the United States and internationally. We plan to multiply our grant making each year so that we can once again support many grassroots programs across the United States and beyond that might otherwise be overlooked by mainstream funders, yet work in innovative and bold ways to bring about helpful solutions to challenging situations.

Freddy Hahne
Rex Foundation Board President

The Music Never Stops - Your Thoughts Please!

2007-12-19T16:55:00.000-08:00

Saturday night, watching people happily dance to the music, pose as Caravan Riders next to the Rex bus, and smile as they connected with others, was truly inspiring.

We'd love to see your entries that describe your thoughts on The Music Never Stops to help continue the celebration.

Thank you!

Sandy Sohcot

The Music Never Stops

2007-12-18T14:33:00.000-08:00

Last Saturday evening, December 15, the Rex Foundation hosted another Black Tie Dye Ball called The Music Never Stops at the Warfield Theater in San Francisco. The event featured Bob Weir & Ratdog, Little Feat, and The Waybacks. 450 people attended a pre-concert banquet reception. The rest of the sold out festive Warfield crowd filled the venue after dinner.

The music was highly received starting with the Waybacks from Marin County who were joined by Bob Weir. They were followed by the Little Feat freight train that infused the Warfield with that fabulous New Orleans "riddim". Ratdog's set included the serendipitous return of Mark Karan adding to the guitar mix of Barry Sless with Weir's eclectic rhythms.

The Rex Foundation benefit event included a silent auction of classic memorabilia, and an installation of a work of art by the Art Police who created the Rex Community Caravan Bus. Attendees had many photo opportunities to pose with the Bus which represents the grassroots campaign to involve individuals and bands with the Rex Foundation's philanthropy.

Here is a link to photos of the performances that many attendees referred to as a "magical evening". Blair Jackson has posted an elegant review of the evening at Dead.net.

The Rex Foundation's goal is to Further the Tradition of Grassroots Giving created by the Grateful Dead, Family and Friends. We hope you will be there to celebrate with us next time, because the music never stops.

How Important Is the Net?

2007-12-17T09:44:00.000-08:00

Interviewed in the current Rex newsletter, AT&T executive Ken McNeely says he believes that basic broadband service should be available to all, and considered an essential component of Universal Service in the U.S.

Ken suggests that there must be a "will to change" among the public at large in recognizing the importance of broadband service to society and ensuring a level playing field. The question, he says: Is subsidizing broadband on the same level as subsidizing food and public education? Should every student have a computer and Internet access?

Are the benefits of broadband connectivity such that it should be a guaranteed universal service, regardless of location and cost issues? And if so, what's the best way to make it happen? Please give us your thoughts.

A New Way of Thinking?

2007-11-19T16:37:00.000-08:00

In the current Rex newsletter, Rex Advisory Board member Jon McIntire says: "Thought cannot lead us out of our dilemmas — the nature of thought has led us to our current predicament!"

He goes on: "Much of the way we have been thinking, framing our ideas for thousands of years, needs to change if we really want to solve problems like hunger and disease."

In your experience, how can new ways of thinking lead to solutions to stubborn problems? How does inspiration come from unexpected quarters? What synergies emerge in the strangest of places?

Give us your ideas; tell us your stories.

A Change of Priorities

2007-11-01T16:48:00.000-07:00

Interviewed in the current Rex newsletter, Annette Gellert of Women's Environmental Leadership Network proposes that the will to change, the momentum needed to solve the world's most intransigent problems, proceeds from a set of priorities very different from those that currently prevail.

"We need to consider our children’s health and quality of life first, with our personal interest and financial rewards second, which is the reverse of the current situation," she says. "We must consider how to take care of each other and benefit future generations, not just focus on quarterly profits."

If you look at the world with those priorities, how do your choices change? What issues become most urgent? Share your thoughts here.

What Will It Take? Your Thoughts Please

2007-10-29T09:34:00.000-07:00

In the current Rex Foundation newsletter, we note that in 1983 Buckminster Fuller proclaimed: "We can now solve all the problems of hunger and need across the world, having all the available resources and technology; all that we need is the political will." And yet, nearly a quarter century later, those problems and many others persist.

For the newsletter, we asked some Rex supporters for their thoughts on the question: “How do we find the will to generate positive solutions to current world challenges?" Here are some of their inspiring responses:

"The will is always a matter of the individual taking small steps and a leader at the top to help show the way." - Phil Eisengart

"Look beyond our own comfortable blessed lives and see how others less fortunate live." - Michael Fasman

"We find the will by being an example for others and working together with others for social change. We need to always have hope.” - Janet Leach

What do you think? We welcome your thoughts. We also encourage a wide range of viewpoints; please treat your fellow participants with respect.

What Should Public Education Be?

2007-09-17T10:16:00.000-07:00

Many schools across the U.S., particularly public ones, face budget constraints and challenges to beef up standardized test scores. As a result, they’ve severely cut, if not eliminated, music and arts education.

In the course of its 24-year history, the Rex Foundation, like many other philanthropic organizations, has helped to fund grassroots groups that find innovative ways to foster creativity in young people and serve as models for similar efforts elsewhere.

But to consider where the arts fit into public education, we first have to consider the nature of public education itself.

Over the centuries in which it's been a key component of American society, it's been perceived as (among other things) preparing the younger generation for the responsibilities of democracy, giving them the necessary job skills to support themselves and contribute to the economy, providing them with critical thinking skills, or helping them find their own most fulfilling path in life.

A key issue, of course, is that public education is funded by the taxpayers, who not unnaturally see themselves as stakeholders, and hence is greatly subject to the vicissitudes of political wind-shifting.

As you see it — as a citizen, a taxpayer, possibly a parent and certainly a former kid — what do you think the true job of public education is? Where is the current version measuring up? Where is it falling short?

Watch Our Video!

2007-09-17T09:21:00.000-07:00

Recently Rex joined forces with some of its grantees to actually engage youth in raising awareness of human rights issues, creating a stage production called "The World As It Could Be: A Declaration of Human Rights" — and producing a DVD of the event.

The main goal of this dramatization was to raise awareness about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It also exemplified the importance of using the creative arts to educate people about social, economic and political issues; at the same time, it demonstrated the value of the programs that use the arts to nurture the development of the participating young people.

By creating a permanent document of this often soul-stirring performance (at Jerry Garcia's alma mater, Balboa High School in San Francisco), we hope to make it available far beyond the original audience. In particular, teachers may find it a valuable resource in presenting issues related to human rights.

Check it out, and let us know what you think!

Project Avary: A Better Way

2007-09-12T12:56:00.000-07:00

Project Avary: A Better Way

When a parent goes to prison, statistics show their kids have drastically increased odds of heading down the same path. Project Avary takes an intensive approach to breaking that cycle.

By Mary Eisenhart

Back in the mid-’90s, Danny Rifkin, a longtime Grateful Dead family member and then the Rex Foundation’s executive director, was looking for a new challenge. “It was about a year after Jerry died,” he recalls, “and I was asking friends of mine whom I held in high regard for ideas for what I might next do in life.”

One of the friends he talked with was Earl Smith, who served as a chaplain at San Quentin prison. Smith told him that while there were some community-based organizations that helped former prisoners re-enter the community, and a few agencies to help families while loved ones were incarcerated, there were next to no resources specifically devoted to helping the children of incarcerated parents cope with the myriad issues that come with having a parent in prison.

The results, Smith said, were there for all to see, with sons following fathers following grandfathers into the prison system. But he had an idea of what might break the cycle — and who might want to do it.

Danny Rifkin, Project Avary founder

Rifkin recalls, “When Earl brought up the fact that there were no programs for children with incarcerated parents and that what would be good would be a summer camp and follow-up program, a light bulb went off in my mind. I knew that this was what I wanted to do, and with my previous experiences at Slide Ranch and Camp Winnarainbow, I had the experience and potential staff resources necessary to get the project going.

I was, at the time, the administrator of the Rex Foundation, so I wrote a letter to the board asking them if I could use Rex as an umbrella organization until we could establish our own non-profit status and whether Rex would supply a $10,000 start-up grant. The response to both requests was positive. In addition, Caryl, Mickey Hart’s wife, happened to see my letter and offered an additional grant of $10,000 from her family’s foundation, the Ohrbach Foundation. This was very validating for me, and I knew I was onto the next right thing.”

Launched in 1999, Project Avary (Alternative Ventures for At Risk Youth) began with Rifkin and a group of friends taking 32 kids to a week of camp in the Sierras. By the next year it had grown to three weeks, with a fourth added in 2004. But Avary’s work extended beyond just taking at-risk kids to camp — monthly Avary Adventure Days take kids on field trips throughout the Bay Area, there’s a Family Camp once a year, and twice-yearly celebrations gather the whole Avary community. There are leadership retreats and a mentor program to help older youth in the program work with the younger kids.

Underlying all of Avary’s work is offering “The Avary Way” as an alternative family structure and way of life to kids whose regular lives often lack both stability and positive influence. “The Avary Way” emphasizes five areas (see sidebar): Social skills in daily life, creative arts, environmental education, physical activity and nutrition, and life skills. Along the way there are rituals, gatherings and celebrations to honor the kids and their progress.

Avary is a small, resource-intensive (for example, at camp there’s one counselor for every two kids) effort serving the San Francisco Bay Area — but it offers a clear demonstration that what it’s doing works. Remarkably, of approximately 300 kids who have attended Avary camp since 1999, 159 remain involved today.

Since that first startup grant in 1999, Rex has continued to support Avary with subsequent grants in 2002, 2004 and 2006, as Avary itself has continued to evolve. Says Herb Castillo, who became Avary’s executive director last year when Rifkin retired, “In 2004 there was a surge in teen involvement. Rex funding over the following two years was instrumental in helping Avary expand the Teen Leadership program’s capacity to accommodate the large number of children choosing to commit their teen years to Avary. Today, nearly 60 of the over 150 children and youth participating in Avary are teenagers.”

We recently had a chance to speak with Castillo about Avary’s work, the difficulties, and the rewards.

Herb Castillo, Project Avary Executive Director

Rex Foundation: What are the particular challenges kids with incarcerated parents face? Who are these kids — where do they live, what are their families like?

Herb Castillo, Project Avary: The families we serve are typically “multi-problem families” who face a range of interrelated challenges, including poverty, lack of a stable home environment, lack of educational resources, and physical and mental health issues.

Research tells us that children of incarcerated parents experience trauma affecting their emotional and even physical development. Their ability to trust is undermined. Other problems include anxiety, asocial behavior, and inability to focus or concentrate.

Also, the constant contact children have, through their parent or parents, with the criminal justice system can socialize a child, such that their life chances of incarceration can be as much as five times more than other children’s.

There are an estimated 170,000 to 200,000 children of incarcerated parents living in the Bay Area. Obviously we are only serving a fraction, but across a wide geographic area. The kids Avary serves live in eight Bay Area counties and in 39 cities.

Nearly 60% of Avary kids live with the remaining parent and another 20% with a relative, usually a grandmom. Most of our kids are low-income, live in tough neighborhoods where even a walk to the school is filled with risk, and usually suffer from inadequate health care and under-resourced schools.

Rex: What’s the process for deciding which kids get to enter the program?

Project Avary: Summer camp is the primary entry point for a new child to join Avary. The child must be between 8.5 and 11 and usually comes to our attention through a teacher or social worker. Thereafter we strive to work with a child into young adulthood and base decisions around advancing into the Teen program on a child’s ability to thrive in our program.

We interview the parents and the referring party to determine a child’s maturity and readiness to attend camp, as well as fit into a community. Many of our kids have suffered emotional and physical abuse (in some instances even sexual abuse) and neglect. We want to be aware of potential problems, but do not screen out kids because they have problems. We see with our teens, many of whom have been with Avary for five, six or seven years, that with the right support and the right set of expectations, kids can prosper and dream and act on those dreams, in spite of the hurdles placed before them in the early years.

Rex: You've mentioned that teens are your fastest-growing constituency. To what extent is this the result of kids starting the program at an earlier age and sticking around? And was this part of the plan from the beginning, or an unexpected evolution?

Project Avary:: Avary accepts only children between ages 8.5 and 11. Their commitment to remain involved in our program begins to form with their first summer camp, when they are introduced to our values and practices.

They are told that during the first two years of their involvement with Avary, they will be held to one-week sessions at summer camp; that if they wish to graduate to two-week status and ultimately enter the Teen Leadership program, they must show that they are meeting the objectives under our Personal Responsibility goal. When they reach 13 and 14, they are considered for entry to the Teen program.

However, while in the program, they demonstrate progress in achieving Community Responsibility objectives. In short, we present to our kids values and goals; we support them in achieving those goals; and, as you can see, many strive to meet these expectations.

Was this part of the plan? Yes and no. Yes, because we saw early on a number of the older kids stay with the program. No, because I don’t think Danny or anyone else was prepared for the number of kids who would ultimately stay with Avary into their teens.

Rex: Avary’s long-term, family-like commitment to the kids who enter the program is very striking. Could you elaborate on how that works, and why it’s important?

Project Avary: What impressed me most when I joined Avary was the constant reference to “the Avary Way.” The Avary Way is based on values and practices that promote healthy lifestyles and appropriate youth development.

When children attend their first summer camp, they learn that Avary focuses on five areas of development: social skills for daily life; creative arts; environmental education; nutrition and physical fitness; and life skills training.

For children to advance through our program — which means graduation from one week to two weeks, entry to the Teen Leadership Program, and graduation to senior staff — they must demonstrate progress in each of these areas.

Surrounding these expectations is a sense of family, which for us means showing our appreciation and committing our support for one another. We take this mutual responsibility seriously.

Rex: Also striking is the fact that Avary has its own rituals, rites of passage and so on. Again, could you talk about how that works, and why it’s important?

Project Avary: We think that rituals, ceremonies, and rites of passage should be used to signal major stages and achievements in our lives. When we mark a child’s advancement with ceremony, we intentionally engage all members of our community in that process. Children and young adults feel honored by the Avary community and, importantly, responsible or beholden to their community.

This is key: the sense of mutual responsibility towards one another. Isn’t this what we mean with all the talk of a civil society? It is more than being respectful; it also means being supportive and available to cheer or help when needed.

Rex: Obviously, for reasons ranging from financial to geographic, Avary can’t help every child of incarcerated parents. Does it have ripple effects with kids and families outside the program? Could the model be adapted elsewhere?

Project Avary: Avary is a very unique organization. We have blended enrichment, mentoring and counseling, environmental stewardship, professional training, and leadership development into an integrated array of activities that promote positive and healthy youth lifestyles.

We see firsthand the positive effects of Avary when our kids commit to Avary in their teen years; when siblings and relatives of one Avary child seek to enter our program; when our older kids enter college or survive multiple foster care placements to live stable and productive lives. I don’t think this is rocket science. When Danny and friends created Avary, they did so out of love for children, and if kids know that someone cares for them, they will usually turn out OK.

Rex: The kids who started in 1999 would be approaching adulthood now. What’s become of them?

Project Avary: I can only comment on the kids who remain involved with us.

The two oldest are on full scholarship at San Diego State University. The next oldest is in community college and living independently. She is a former foster care child, which makes her current circumstances especially laudable.

Next is a young woman we have integrated into our senior summer staff who will be attending San Francisco Community College in the fall and whose tuition at SF State, where she will continue after finishing with the JC, will be covered by the company with whom she is currently employed.

Rex: One of your recent developments is a mentoring program. How does that work, and do you need more mentors? If so, what qualities are you looking for?

Project Avary: Actually, we launched the mentoring program three years ago with the aid of a federal grant. Those funds have ended, and while we will continue to support the mentoring relationships that are currently active, we intend to focus our energy on developing a mentoring program from within.

As I mentioned earlier, many of the children we recruit into the program are choosing to grow up with us. We hope they will become our leaders of the future and have been accelerating their professional development with training and formal job responsibilities.

In the same vein, we intend to develop a buddy system where our older teens are matched to our younger participants for the purpose of providing guidance and support. We think this is more in line with the sense of family that has developed at Avary.

Rex: By your own calculations, you’re serving maybe 1/1000th of the Bay Area kids in this situation. How, if at all, could the Avary model be expanded to serve these other kids without losing quality of service? What issues are involved?

Project Avary:That’s a good question, and I’m not sure it would be possible — to maintain the same quality of service, I mean. We could expand, bring in more kids, but I’m not sure we would be able to maintain the same feeling of family and community.

In fact, I’m looking at ways to deepen and intensify our familiarity and relationships with the current kids in the program, but that would involve seeing our kids more even more often than we do now.

Rex:Avary seems to be very much about quality rather than quantity. Unlike a lot of weeklong programs that essentially have no contact with kids for the rest of the year, Avary sees the bonds formed at camp as essential and puts a lot of energy into fostering them. Which, in turn, entails a huge commitment of time and energy from not only the kids themselves (and their families), but the staff and volunteers. How do you sustain this energy?

Project Avary: First and foremost, once you become acquainted with the challenges confronting these kids and witness their desire and effort to overcome those challenges, any claim at emotional or physical fatigue is pretty silly.

While I’d been with Avary for nearly a year, I hadn’t attended summer camp until this summer, and I was absolutely unprepared for the profound emotional impact it would have on me. If I didn’t think so before camp — and I’m sure I’m speaking for many of the summer camp staff — I am particularly resolved, especially after having experienced camp, not to let down these kids regardless of the effort or work required of me.

We call ourselves the Avary family and the Avary community. I believe that referring to and thinking of ourselves as family and community fundamentally determines how we act in relationship to our kids.

Also, when I interviewed for this position with Danny, he talked about how some day we’d be able to select an executive director from the ranks of former campers. So OK, that’s how I’ve approached this job from the beginning, that our training, expectations, services, and care we provide our kids meet our mission of crafting a safe place where kids will realize their potential.

Why? First, this is the only way that kids with a heightened likelihood of experiencing incarceration sometime in their lives will develop the vision, confidence, and skills to avoid following in the footsteps of their parents. And second, this agency belongs to them — and if this Avary belongs to them, they need the skills and tools to manage it.

“We see with our teens, many of whom have been with Avary for five, six or seven years, that with the right support and the right set of expectations, kids can prosper and dream and act on those dreams, in spite of the hurdles placed before them in the early years.“ – Herb Castillo

“When we mark a child’s advancement with ceremony, we intentionally engage all members of our community in that process. Children and young adults feel honored by the Avary community and, importantly, responsible or beholden to their community.”

– Herb Castillo

Tools and Skills for Life

Avary’s five focus areas provide the skills and tools children need to develop their emotional intelligence and express themselves successfully in the Avary community and in their lives.

1. Social Skills in Daily Life: All program activities emphasize cooperation, tolerance of diverse viewpoints, conflict resolution, and communication skills. Avary’s approach is child-centered rather than curriculum-centered. Counselors are trained to exploit “teachable moments“: When conflicts or meltdowns occur, they are mediated immediately — within the group or in focused conversation between the counselor(s) and the child or children involved. The conflict resolution skills they learn at camp are tools they can take back to their school playgrounds.

2. Creative Arts: Training in the arts offers a variety of benefits, including opportunities for reflection, self-expression, and communication, comfort with speaking and performing in public, and opportunities to discover and explore talents. Campers get a respite from television and other mass media and learn crafts, graphic arts, music, dance, improvisational acting, and storytelling. In past years, they have collaborated to write and perform skits and work on a community mural that celebrates multicultural awareness.

Children are supplied with two journals — one that Avary keeps for them to use for Adventure Day art lessons and reflection time; another in which they can collect friends’ signatures and their private writings and drawings.

3. Environmental Education: Many of these girls and boys have little opportunity to spend time out of doors. Lessons and experiences are designed to help them feel comfortable in nature, appreciate its essential importance, and develop a sense of their own role as stewards. Nature walks, storytelling, mini-science lessons, “eco-treasure hunts,” and an “Interdependence Day” celebration teach the children about the plant and animal life native to various local eco-systems.

4. Physical Activity and Nutrition: Avary participants are among the millions of American children affected by the epidemic of “diseases of lifestyle”— obesity, poor nutrition, and lack of exercise. As participants in our programs, they are introduced to good eating habits and a wide variety of sports and physical activities — from indoor rock climbing and ice-skating to deep-water swimming lessons and aikido classes to traditional sports such as volleyball, soccer, and basketball. Cooperation, teamwork, and fitness are emphasized over competition.

Children sit down every day to three family-style meals preceded by group appreciations, singing, and community announcements. Kitchen staff use fresh wholesome ingredients and only minimally processed foods, and do not use refined sugar. Each of the main meals and two daily snacks includes fresh fruits and vegetables. Candy and junk food are not served.

5. Life Skills: Children learn practical skills they can use to serve themselves, the Avary community, and the community at large. The program has included classes in gardening, First Aid & CPR and cooking. At camp, children are responsible for cleaning up their cabins and are assigned to do chores in common areas, and help with meal preparation and cleanup.

—Project Avary

Xavier Meets His Mentor

From the Project Avary newsletter

“One of the great things about the Avary community is the chance to see synergy happen; to witness connections made between campers, families and staff arise in surprising ways. A great example of this phenomenon occurred at our 2005 Camp Reunion and Holiday Party.

“Pete Sears, a longtime friend of Danny Rifkin and father of one of our counselors, offered to play the piano for our party. We felt very lucky to have the donated time of a professional musician, providing ambiance for the event. When Pete arrived, he happily began playing what seemed to him to be background music for the Avary families, staff, and supporters in attendance.

“While the rest of the children waited for a Bingo game to start, Xavier took an interest in what Pete was doing, and asked if he could play too. It wasn’t long before the pair was jamming together, with Pete establishing a structured baseline to support the boy’s improvisational spirit. They quickly gained the attention of the whole room.

“Most surprising, the young man — just 9 years old — had never had piano lessons. The pair formed an instant musical friendship and Pete soon approached Avary with a request: could he help Xavier develop this talent?

"In 2006, we were able to purchase a used piano for Xavier and match him with Pete as a mentor. Unlike other mentor matches, where meetings are a chance to get out, Pete and Xavier spend most of their time in Xavier’s home in front of the small upright piano that sits at the base of the stairs. Sometimes they just improv jazzy riffs, but often they work at whole songs.

“Recently, Xavier played ‘Amazing Grace’ for his church and received a standing ovation. His grandma says it’s amazing how he’s excelling at the piano. We think the difference a caring adult can make is amazing.”

—Project Avary newsletter

“Many of the children we recruit into the program are choosing to grow up with us. We hope they will become our leaders of the future, and have been accelerating their professional development with training and formal job responsibilities.” – Herb Castillo

Maria Schell, Project Avary Program Director

Rex Board Perspective

Rex Foundation and Project Avary board member Cliff Palefsky says: “Project Avary is an extraordinary program that is trying to provide a sense of community and continuity to good young kids who are very much victims of their parents’ misconduct. Rather than be a high-level policy group, Avary literally is out there trying to break the cycle of violence one child at a time.

“There are several components to the program. The summer camp is the entry point where the kids get a chance to get away, commune with nature instead of an inner-city environment, and spend time with other children in similar circumstances. The camp helps create the feeling of community and exposes the kids to the culture of mutual respect and non-violence, and tries to help provide them with the skills necessary to navigate the world. The staff is composed of some wonderful, nurturing and well-trained counselors. We have psychologists available to help in individual cases.

“During the year there are monthly Adventure Days where a group of kids get together for participatory activities such as kayaking, horseback riding, and rock climbing in addition to some educational or skill building sessions. We’ve had a mentoring program, which has had a profound impact on the lives of some kids and their mentors.

“This community, families with incarcerated parents, is not among the most sympathetic classes of folks out there, and they’re often neglected by other funders and donors. The foster care system is broken, so these innocent kids are truly victims of the system. That is why it is so important for Rex to support this kind of program.”

“I don’t think this is rocket science. When Danny (Rifkin) and friends created Avary, they did so out of love for children, and if kids know that someone cares for them, they will usually turn out OK.”

– Herb Castillo

Why Not Teach the Kids the Music They Like?

2007-09-05T11:53:00.001-07:00

Why Not Teach the Kids the Music They Like?

Little Kids Rock Takes a Radical Approach to Musical Education in the Schools

by Mary Eisenhart

The sad state of music and arts education in most of America’s schools, especially the public ones, is an oft-told tale. In 1996, a Bay Area teacher decided to do something about it. What began with scrounged instruments and after-school lessons for his students is now Little Kids Rock.

When musician David Wish reported for his day job, teaching 1^st and 2^nd graders at a Redwood City, California elementary school, back in the mid-’90s, he quickly found that music, along with art and PE, had simply disappeared from the curriculum in an educational culture of tight budgets and obsession with test scores.

In contrast to untold numbers of frustrated teachers before him, Wish took matters into his own hands, scrounging instruments wherever he could find them and teaching his students music on his own time. After school. Before school. During lunch.

While the project’s immediate popularity owed a lot to Wish’s contagious enthusiasm, it was also due to the course materials Wish found himself developing, based on the radical notion of teaching the kids the music they liked. Rather than force young Ricky Martin fans to slog through “Down in the Valley” and “Swans on the Lake,” he taught them “La Vida Loca.” (As he told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2005: “Take Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. It’s two chords: D and A. Do you realize how many songs are structured around only D and A? When you teach a kid how to play a Selena song that is D and A, you’re also teaching them to play Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. You’re teaching them to play. Period.”)

Pretty soon his music classes became a victim of their own success and he had to start turning students away because he had no more time. At that point he started recruiting his fellow teachers to teach a class or two.

One thing led to another, word got out, rock stars started taking notice, and the program started to expand. In July 2002 it formally incorporated as the not-for-profit Little Kids Rock, and a few months later the Rex Foundation became one of its earliest supporters.

Today, Little Kids Rock, now based in New Jersey, serves thousands of students in grassroots programs in nine states, and continues to expand rapidly. We checked in with Wish to find out why music education matters so much, and how LKR’s work extends far beyond its own classes.

Rex Foundation: Why is music and arts funding in the schools being cut — and why is that a bad idea?

David Wish, Little Kids Rock: I think it’s being cut because the constituents that it affects can’t vote. It’s always easiest to take away from people who don’t have the power to stick up for themselves, like the very young or the very old — that’s one of the places that you see people cutting because you don’t hear the screams from the victims till much later.

Why is that a bad idea? I believe that arts education brings children more rapidly and directly in touch with their creative side than many other academic areas — yet all academic areas rely on creativity for efficacy.

Rex: For example?

LKR: Try to solve a math word problem just by knowing how to multiply, divide, add and subtract. It can’t be done. You need to think creatively. You need to be able to take information that you’ve never been presented with before and synthesize it in new and exciting ways — even if it’s something as unexciting on the face of it as solving a word problem.

Or coming up with a scientific theory. Or trying to explain the motivations of a political ruler that lived in a century and a continent light years away from your own. All of these things require creativity. Problem-solving in your interpersonal life requires creativity.

I believe there is sort of a puritanical streak in American culture that’s as old as American culture itself, a sense that if something’s fun, it might be frivolous. So things like music and the arts, which are very much fun, are also seen as frivolous, these little extras. But I would posit that the creativity of the individual suffers across the board when they are not able to express themselves in the arts.

It would fly in the face of what we expect from an educational system if an adult could grow up and in every other way be whole, but couldn’t add, subtract, multiply and divide. They can hold a job, they can write, they can read the paper; they just can’t add, subtract, multiply or divide.

Or maybe they can do everything except they can’t read. Or that they don’t know the most basic scientific principles — like gravity exists, the earth is round, there’s an atmosphere and different types of matter. It’s unacceptable, and it actually doesn’t happen — if you go through the school system, unless you have severe learning disabilities, you come out with something of an education in all those areas.

But one exception would be music.

Rex: So you’ve been doing this 10 years — how did you get started?

LKR: I was working in a school in Redwood City that had no music program. I was also a guitar player, so I took it on myself to start giving guitar lessons to the kids in my 1^st and 2^nd grade classes. That was the sum total of my aspiration: I felt it could be done, I felt it should be done, and it was something I could do. So I begged and borrowed a little fleet of instruments and started teaching them.

But there was a little interim step. I needed teaching materials. So like any dutiful teacher I went to the source. I went to music stores and music publishers, and I looked at what was available.

I found it basically so uniformly dry and unappealing and useless that I had to come up with something in its place. You’d pick up Volume 1: Guitar, and open it up to the first page, and there’s “Red River Valley.” You open up the next method book and it’s Beethoven’s Ninth.

I’m looking at a class that’s filled with first-generation immigrants from Central America who are obsessed with Selena and Ricky Martin and Carlos Santana. So I thought, why don’t we make that the canon then? Why don’t we take a student-centered approach? Why don’t I not take my own musical tastes and make that the starting point; why don’t I take the radical idea of “Well, kids have this cultural capital, let’s put that in the middle”?

At the time I would have defined it as “Why not teach the kids the music they like?” You like Ricky Martin? Sure, we can do “La Vida Loca.” It became a very natural thing.

It was a very successful class, for me and the students, so I added another one and another one. I was teaching so many students at my school, while being a regular classroom teacher — every single one of these classes was either before school, after school, or, towards the end, even during my lunch hour. Then it got to the point where I couldn’t take on any more students, which put me in the ironic position of having to say no. Where I was trying to extend the franchise, now I became the axeman, which sort of seemed karmically unfair.

So I started reaching out to my colleagues, initially just to handle the overflow, and say, “Hey look, I’m running all these classes, why don’t you do one?”

I tried that, and I realized for that to be successful I had to articulate, concisely and in teacher-friendly language, what I was doing specifically with the children that was resonating so strongly with them. That led to me codifying and defining what was happening naturally into something that could be replicated by other people through a set of pedagogical beliefs and a set of curriculum. By using that and using teachers to teach, all of a sudden it started replicating. It wasn’t about me as a teacher, it was about a set of teaching ideas being more effective at eliciting success from children.

Why does this work? Well, Little Kids Rock leverages a number of things that make it successful. One of the things is that we leverage the cultural capital of kids everywhere by focusing on the music they like. But I also leverage the human capital of schools everywhere by identifying individuals who have committed themselves to teaching, namely teachers, and then arming them with our content and our training, so they can then dovetail that into what they’re already doing.

When I started doing that, that’s when it really started to replicate and grow — to the point where my first class was 20 kids and now we’re at more than 10,000, and we’ve basically doubled each year since 2000. We’re poised to do that again this year. By the end of the 2007-2008 school year we’re likely to be at 20,000.

Rex:: What determines which schools get the program?

LKR: We identify large urban districts where more than 50% of students participate in the Free and Reduced Lunch Program, which is a poverty index that all public schools are required by law to maintain. They have a very high concentration of low-income families.

The schools of the United States are outrageously segregated in terms of economics. Those who get to choose their ZIP code have the best schools in the country. The people who don’t get to choose have less, sometimes deplorably so.

We go into those districts, and recruit and train those schoolteachers. There’s nothing about our curriculum or our pedagogy that’s class-specific. I believe this program would be equally compelling to children of every economic class. But because we have finite resources, we direct them to where the need is greatest.

That’s beginning to change a little with Little Kids Rock TV (see sidebar), where we’re going to take the same pedagogical ideas and create video of them. Those are going to be given away as a free public resource to whomever. We believe musical education is a right; we have a way of offering it up to people that is effective, and puts them in touch with becoming a music maker very quickly. I think that’s a noble thing to do for a person.

Going into a school is a little bit different. It costs us about $100 per student, and we generally don’t enter a district with fewer than 4-600 students.

Little Kids Rock gives out thousands of free instruments to music students every year.

Rex: Does the district invite you, or does somebody say, “Hey, you ought to be going into this district?”

LKR: At this point it’s both. We’re still a very young organization, and most of our growth is opportunistic, undergirded by some strategy. Some are no-brainers — the Los Angeles Unified School District, biggest school district in the country, totally meets our criteria, slam-dunk, so we’re there. We chose that, we tried to get funding, and we were successful. We’ve been there going on four years.

But we’re also in Shreveport, Louisiana. We’re there because James Burton, who played with Elvis Presley and is one of the most recorded guitarists in history, is from Shreveport. He has the James Burton Guitar Festival, and he wanted to bring the program into his city, so he facilitated that.

So we go where there’s interest, and we go where we see an opportunity, where a community might support this kind of an effort. Or we just go in because we come up with the resources ourselves and just direct it that way.

We might not go to a single school because it’s just one school, but some of our programs have started with a single phone call from a single teacher. We’re in DC for that reason now. Philadelphia’s another example.

Rex: So you do want to hear from teachers.

LKR: Oh, we always like hearing from teachers. We serve children only because we serve teachers. If we didn’t serve teachers we couldn’t reach the children.

Our model isn’t to find volunteers to go in and pay them and have them teach; we’re having the teachers do it. And teachers can get free resources from us as well, even without being in the program.

There are two crises facing music education today. One is that it doesn’t happen; that’s a problem that no nonprofit will ever solve, because it’s too vast in its scope. We’re talking about 15-20 million U.S. school-age children not receiving music education; show me a not-for-profit that can generate a budget to address that. I don’t even think the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation could do that for more than 50 years, and then it’d go bankrupt.

It needs to be something that we as a culture place importance in. I do believe it’s cyclical, and I do believe it will come back.

That’s the first issue, and we do address it, because we’re giving away thousands of free instruments every year. But that’s just a drop in the bucket.

On the other hand, there’s the second problem, which is that oftentimes music education is outdated, oftentimes people have exposure to it, and oftentimes they vote with their feet and they leave, and they grow up with regret. They grow up without fully developing themselves and their education because they’re alienated from music at any other level than just being a consumer of it. That’s an issue that Little Kids Rock is really seeking to address, or at least I think it’s a place where we can affect millions and millions of people in this country, and it doesn’t take a giant budget. It takes vision, and that’s what we’re supplying.

If the expectation of music education is that you leave and you can be first, second or third chair in a symphony orchestra, or you can be a sight-reading session jazz musician — then yes, it’s true, only 5-10% of the population could and should bother wasting their time with music education. Unfortunately, in a de facto way, that’s kind of how it’s structured; the unspoken aim is that you’re going to get to the end and be either a concert violinist or a sight-reading session jazz musician.

Now, if you look at the world of commerce, that is a miniscule slice of the music-making pie of how you could make a living; and if you look at the world of life, it’s an infinitesimally small slice of what playing music could mean in your life.

Public speaking is something we all have to do, for example. I may not be Martin Luther King, and I may not ever be able to speak as eloquently and with such an on-fire sense of mission as he was. So I have a decision to make: either I’m just not going to talk, or I’m going to do it the way I do it, for myself and for meaning in my life.

Likewise math. I wouldn’t say that I’m mathematically inclined or that I have some special facility, but I use math for meaning in my life, and it’s very important to me. I can balance the budget for this not-for-profit and make sure we’re fiscally solvent and that we can meet our mission. I can figure out the tip on a bill. I can figure out my household budget. So math is very meaningful to me.

Now what if music were similar? You might not be Jimi Hendrix, or Andres Segovia, but is that the standard you need? Is that the point of entry? Shouldn’t the point of entry be that you should be able to express yourself on an instrument? And then you, as a democratic citizen of this democratic nation, can define how much time and energy you want to put into that, and rise to your own ability, to the extent that you want to.

That’s the thing that really amazes me and I find really upsetting as an educator — meeting these people who spent their entire childhood studying and can’t play a song. It’s mind-boggling, and it wouldn’t be acceptable in any other arena. I think it’s indicative of a need to revitalize the way music education is taught, and that’s what I think LKR is really striving to do.

Rex: Are the same kids in the program for multiple years, or is it a fixed-length program?

LKR: The answer is really both, because we work in districts that have no music teachers, and when we do that it’s an after-school enrichment program. Those students may only be in the program for a year because perhaps the teacher elects not to do it the next year, because it doesn’t fit their schedule. Or they may be in it for multiple years, but it’s a little more tumultuous. There’s a lot of variables.

We also work with music teachers, and the music teacher’s there year after year and it’s their defined job, and therefore there’s no problem. They structure it so the students can continue.

Again, while LKR can provide guidance in the curriculum and the pedagogy, when it gets to scheduling, that’s up to the individual teacher at different schools. If we were to start dictating it we would lose our constituents, because some teachers can’t do it after school, and some can’t do it during the school day.

Our only requirement is that it be taught at least once a week, for at least one academic hour. And then we have some teachers who cram in 15 hours of LKR time a week; we have some that cram in as little as one hour. We have some teachers who reach as few as 10 students annually, as an after-school program, and we have some teachers who incorporate it into their school culture and reach literally every single child at their school.

Rex: To what extent do you chart what happens to the kids who go through the program?

LKR: We use a product called SalesForce, which is an online customer management system — they’re a great company, they give their service free to nonprofits, and their services are extremely valuable.

All of our teachers use it to track their students, to see how they’re doing against the LKR rubric. How is this student doing in terms of their psychosocial gains? How is this student doing in terms of composition, in terms of improvisation, in terms of the discrete didactic skills by grade level that we’ve identified as necessary?

Now, this is new for us, and it’s being implemented for the first time. Basically all our students will be being tracked and given a LKR report card, if you will — I know it’s not in vogue, but it’s a way for us to determine the efficacy of our efforts. We’ve developed a measurement system that’s different from a standard music evaluation, because it’s much more competency and performance-based assessment, as opposed to task or skills-based assessment.

Like, for example, “Has the child composed original music?” That would be one very important rubric. “To what extent does the child know how to improvise?” That would be another one. “To what extent can the child play music that’s appealing to them?” “To what extent has the child mastered a self-defined canon?” All these things are being measured. I’m just talking about an honest assessment and having metrics. I’m not talking about having mandatory testing, but determining a set of criteria by which you can measure your own success, and holding yourself accountable.

Up until we started using this system, all of our reporting has really been more anecdotal. We hear back from the teachers, we hear from the students. But I’m a schoolteacher, and I don’t really like anecdotal measurements. They’re really great for ego gratification, but they’re not really great for efficacy.

One of my great friends and counselors is a man named Bob Morrison, who’s the founding executive director of the Music for All Foundation, the VH-1 Save the Music Foundation — he’s a heavyweight in the world of music-based philanthropy. He says, “Without statistics, you’re just another guy with an opinion.” And I like that. I’m not a statistics wonk, but I want a healthy balance of both. Anecdotal is great, but it’s far from enough.

When I was teaching 1^st grade, you’d be judged on one criterion alone as a teacher: Did your students learn to read? It’s not like, “Gee, Juan’s such a sweet little boy and he really learned to get along with his peers and it was really wonderful having him in the class, and he loves me and I love him and we’re all just a big happy ed family.” OK, can Juan read? “Well, he’s really applying himself, he’s really trying, he loves to read…” OK, but, can Juan read?

As a first grade teacher it was always a major point of pride for me that my students — and I only worked in troubled districts — read at or above grade level in the 1^stgrade, this in districts where this was not the status quo.

I believe that as the founder I have a few more years to put my cultural imprint on this and set the organizational tone for the years to come. I want to bring that same kind of transparency and accountability for ourselves internally, and of course for our funders externally, as we measure the impact of our work. Because when you’re in the nonprofit world, there’s one thing that’s for certain: you live to serve. If you don’t, there’s a lot of other fields to explore. But if you’re really in touch with your mission, then the only thing that’s really important to you is whether you’re fulfilling it or not.

“I believe that arts education brings children more rapidly and directly in touch with their creative side than many other academic areas — yet all academic areas rely on creativity for efficacy.” – David Wish

"There is sort of a puritanical streak in American culture that’s as old as American culture itself, a sense that if something’s fun, it might be frivolous. So things like music and the arts, which are very much fun, are also seen as frivolous, these little extras. But I would posit that the creativity of the individual suffers across the board when they are not able to express themselves in the arts.”

– David Wish

Rocking the World: Little Kids Rock TV

When David Wish first started recruiting his fellow teachers, he realized he had to codify the hands-on, “teach the kids the music they like” methods he’d come up with — not just because they were so successful, but because they were so radically different from conventional music education. As a result, when a new teacher comes on board with the program today, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel — a wealth of materials evolved from years of finding what works best is already available.

But even as Little Kids Rock reaches thousands of new students every year, Wish readily concedes that not even the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation can provide music education to every child who needs it. So Little Kids Rock got creative again with Little Kids Rock TV.

Whatever your age, location, or economic status, you can check out tutorial videos on the site, from guitar power chords to drum licks, all delivered with the trademark LKR style of, as Wish puts it, “the Suzuki Method meets the Rolling Stones.” And it’s all free of charge, with more lessons added often.

Says Wish, “We believe musical education is a right; we have a way of offering it up to people that is effective, and puts them in touch with becoming a music maker very quickly. I think that’s a noble thing to do for a person.”

Rex, Youth and the Arts

This is consistent with the Rex mission statement: The Rex Foundation aims to help secure a healthy environment, promote individuality in the arts, provide support to critical and necessary social services, assist others less fortunate than ourselves, protect the rights of indigenous people and ensure their cultural survival, build a stronger community, and educate children and adults everywhere.

Says Executive Director Sandy Sohcot, “The Rex Foundation has supported youth-oriented educational and creative arts programs throughout its 24-year history, sharing a relatively common view that such programs help young people thrive and succeed – and that helping young people flourish is not only good for the individuals, but also for the greater community. The different art forms – dance, music, poetry, fine arts – provide a range of opportunities to engage young people in positive, constructive and healthful activities that tap their creative energies and encourage all kinds of learning.”

The benefits extend far beyond fun and creativity. Explains Sohcot, "Many of these programs provide safe and constructive vehicles for helping young people express their concerns about – and more positively grapple with – their own challenging social and economic situations: poverty, homelessness, violence, threats of family deportation, and unhealthy, even toxic environments. And, because of their positive experiences in these programs, many of the participants are often able to gain greater academic success and leadership opportunities, which in turn lead to enhanced and transformed life situations that might otherwise have not been possible.”

These are some recent Rex grantees whose work enriches youthful lives with art and music:

Marsh Youth Theater (Jerry Garcia Award, 2005)

Kids on Broadway (2006)

Tule Elk Park Child Development Center (1994, 2006)

Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls (2006)

BAYCAT: Bayview Hunters Point Center for Arts & Technology (2007)

Destiny Arts Center (2007)

Monroe Elementary Arts Enrichment Program (2007)

Youth Movement Records (2007)

Rex Board Perspective

Rex Executive Director Sandy Sohcot says: As David Wish explained his motivations for beginning the Little Kids Rock program — the simplicity, yet power of engaging kids with easy-to-learn guitar chords of the music they liked, and his Teach-the-Teacher approach for extending the reach of the program — the teacher in me was immediately interested. I was even more intrigued by the video showing the broadly diverse young students performing their original songs with such spirit and enthusiasm, and by seeing that spirit reflected when I visited the sites. Clearly, Little Kids Rock was a very effective way to provide life-enriching musical involvements to young people in schools that, due to declining funding, could not otherwise provide this vital experience.

A few months after the Rex Foundation grant had been issued, I had the pleasure of attending a special program for Little Kids Rock at a San Francisco elementary school. The program included Bonnie Raitt, Norton Buffalo and Tom Waits. I saw David Wish in action. First he engaged the students to show off their knowledge of different key chords. Then, within minutes he elicited a few words, two being treasure and measure, along with some chords, and then had everyone playing a new song created on the spot called “Measure the Treasure.” The celebrity musicians joined in for quite a jam.

Though several years have passed, I still recall the magic of watching these young kids being so engaged, and having such a wonderful opportunity to experience their creativity and talents.

The Rex Foundation includes in its mission statement promote individuality in the arts, recognizing the value of the arts to the human experience, whether to elicit each person’s creative potential, encourage learning of other disciplines, foster cultural development and community connections, or simply to engender positive feelings. Supporting Little Kids Rock is one great way to make it possible for young people who, through no fault of their own, might otherwise miss the opportunity to have this invaluable life experience.

“When you’re in the nonprofit world, there’s one thing that’s for certain: you live to serve. If you don’t, there’s a lot of other fields to explore. But if you’re really in touch with your mission, then the only thing that’s really important to you is whether you’re fulfilling it or not.” – David Wish

Wounded Warrior

2007-08-17T08:07:00.000-07:00

Wounded Warrior

Project Disabled Sports USA

by Mary Eisenhart

Back in the late ’60s, Kirk Bauer, a decorated soldier, a lifelong athlete, and the kind of guy who had frequently cut school in his native Oakland to go surfing in Santa Cruz, lost a leg in combat in the Vietnam War and endured a grueling convalescence.

“After struggling with seven operations and six months on my back,” he recalls, “they put me back together at the hospital. It was a pretty frustrating experience — a lot of pain, a lot of frustration, a lot of doubt. I didn’t have a lot of self-confidence about what I would be doing with my life.”

Into this private hell came the National Amputee Skiers Association, launched a few years earlier by other disabled vets. “Some fellow veterans visited me and got me out of the hospital and took me up skiing,” Bauer recalls. “I really didn’t think I could do it, but I went up anyway just to try it.”

It turned out to be a life-changing event, and a planned one-day trip extended into four. “I was able to actually make a turn down the slope on the first day,” he says. “It was the biggest high in the world to be able to move again, go fast, feel the wind against my face — it was a transforming experience for me, and I couldn’t leave.”

The ski trip made such a difference in Bauer’s life that he immediately signed on as a volunteer. Today he’s served for 23 years as the executive director of the group, now known as Disabled Sports USA. The group has expanded its offerings considerably, with a variety of sports rehabilitation programs around the country for those with permanent disabilities. It also sponsors competitive events.

Most of the organization’s work over the years has been with civilians, but in 2003 DS/USA had an opportunity to return to its roots. A group called the Wounded Warrior Project, which was working with seriously injured vets returning from the Middle East, asked about forming a partnership.

“Both of us were at the hospitals serving the severely wounded,” Bauer explains. “They are there to provide counseling and financial assistance to the family, clothing and so on. They saw what we were doing and said ‘Hey, we love what you do. We look on this as part of what we want to do. Let’s be partners.’

“DS/USA is a sports organization for people with disabilities, primarily civilians and not military. They realized we were doing a great job and wanted to support it; we were looking for funding and they’re one of our major funding sources. So we’ve come together as partners for the Wounded Warrior Disabled Sports Project.

“We’re focusing on those who have lost, or lost the use of, something for the rest of their lives,” he continues. “People with amputations, visual impairment, spinal cord injury, head injury, where they’ve become permanently, severely disabled. That numbers in the couple of thousands so far in this conflict.” Since the project’s launch in 2003, it’s worked with over 700 vets and 400 family members. In 2005, the Rex Foundation, which had previous given DS/USA a grant in 1995, contributed funds to support the project specifically. Rex presented Bauer with a check at that year’s Black Tie-Dye Ball in D.C. — “lots of tie-dyed shirts,” says Bauer, “but not so many black ties.

“We couldn’t do all of this without people like the Rex Foundation,” he adds. “What I find gratifying, quite frankly — and it’s very different from what happened during the Vietnam War — is that no matter whether somebody is for or against the war, they all want to help the guys who’ve been severely wounded who’ve given the most to this country. I am very grateful that the American people have pulled behind this project and supported it. We rely on private sector donations — we do not get federal funding.

“This program is changing lives, there is no question about it,” he continues. “It is making a difference very early on, and helping to set the vets on a good positive track. And it needs support.”

Rex Foundation: Who are the vets you’re serving today — and why have sports turned out to be such a great tool for rehabilitation?

Kirk Bauer, Disabled Sports USA: My experience as a vet back in the ’60s is still very typical of hundreds of these guys that we serve— they’re very active, many of them were and are athletes, they’re big into stamina events like marathons and army 10-milers. So for them, the comedown of being permanently disabled is even greater.

When these guys crash, they really crash. They’ve come from being trained to take cities to lying flat on their back. When I first visit them they’ve got tubes coming out of them, they’ve got pins in them, they’re in pain. The comedown is a huge, huge hit. It tends to create a mental state that involves depression and despair and a lot of other negative things.

We go in there and start talking to them real early, introducing them to the idea that they can be active sports people no matter what, even with a severe disability — and here’s how we’re going to do it.

I’ve had people ask me to leave the room; that’s OK, they’re not ready for it. But it plants a seed early on. Then later on, sometimes only a few months later, we’re actually able to get them out and get them to do something. And that early experience helps to turn their confidence, their mindset around, so they can basically build their lives again.

One of the beauties about sports is that we can introduce it very early. In some cases we can take amputees who haven’t even gotten their leg yet, and we can get them out skiing or water skiing or bicycling without the prosthetic aids.

People say “Gee, you’ve got a triple amputee here, how are you going to teach them to ski or water ski?” And not only can we do it, we can almost do it faster than with a person with all their limbs, because of the adaptive equipment available and because of the trained instructors; they get individualized instruction, which helps.

Recently we had 58 young men and women at a ski event. In order to get on a chair lift you have to be able to make a turn and stop so you don’t kill yourself. You learn how to ski the first day, then we take you up in the chair lift. Every one of them got up on the chair lift the first day.

There were eight double amputees in that group. There were men, there were women, didn’t matter. We were able to get them going, and right away they had a successful experience, just a little thing like being able to turn a ski. This starts to rebuild their confidence: “Hey, I can do this.” It really is a tremendous tool for rehabilitation.”

Rex: How long do you typically work with each vet?

DS/USA: We do whatever it takes to get that person to a point where they feel independent, confident and fit, and ready to take on the world.

The first stage is just to teach them a skill and let them focus on becoming accomplished in that skill. That’s the rehab part — they focus on something positive, and it really begins their road to recovery. That can take place literally within a few months of their injuries. Over the next months and years we make available to them every opportunity they want to take advantage of to learn sports skills. We can teach them over 20 different sports — golf, cycling, rock climbing, fly fishing and many other sports besides skiing.

When they become proficient in one or more skills, we turn information about them over to our local chapters. When the vets get discharged and go back into civilian life, they can take advantage of the programs locally or continue to take part in the project. We are still serving some young men and women who were injured in 2003 and 2004.

The big thing is, once they learn those skills and get that adaptive equipment, they can do that sport anyplace in the country, with anyone. The ideal is to give them the tools to do it anywhere, with or without an organized group like DS/USA. They can do that — they can go skiing anywhere, they can go cycling anywhere. So we sometimes stay with them for not months but years. Our commitment is open-ended until they are back and fully confident in their mobility.

Rex: What’s changed over the decades in terms of who your clients are, and what resources you have available?

DS/USA: Everything.

First of all, let’s talk about opportunity and availability. DS/USA as an organization really reflects the transformation. We started out as one chapter in California doing one sport, winter skiing, basically for one group of disabled amputees. And now DS/USA is 90 chapters operating in 36 states, offering over 20 different sports activities year round.

Also, as far as opportunities are concerned, the cities and counties are starting to open up their recreation programs to people with disabilities and trying to accommodate them. There’s still a long way to go, but the movement is in the right direction.

The second thing that’s really changed is equipment. Using aluminum, titanium, carbon fiber, some of the space-age materials, and using some of the engineering that’s been developed around motorcycle cross-country racing, and running dynamics and aerodynamics that are literally performed in wind tunnels for wheelchair devices — you now have a piece of equipment available to all the sports we offer, everything from adaptive prosthetic devices to adaptive vehicles like racing chairs or hand cycles, to adaptations such as swiveling chairs that can be used so a disabled person can operate a sailboat single-handedly. All those things, developed in the last 40 years, have transformed the availability of adaptive sports to people with disabilities.

The third thing that’s changed is the trained instructors. Back in the late ’60s every time we taught a student we had to reinvent the wheel. Somebody would teach an amputee in California and then somebody else would do it in Colorado, and they’d both be stumbling around trying to figure out what’s the best way to make this happen. Many more teaching programs exist now that enable professionals or volunteers in the field to teach the latest adaptation and to know how to do it before they go to teach a student, so they don’t fumble around. There’s a certification program offered by the Professional Ski Instructors of America, there’s a certification of instructors in SCUBA, there’s certification for instructors in skiing and sailing.

We have a new a program with the PGA — we have trained 36 of their professionals near a hospital where severely wounded vets are being treated, and they’re going to be able to provide continuous instruction free of charge to any wounded warrior who wants to learn golf. They’ve been trained to teach somebody who’s in a wheelchair, somebody who’s blind, somebody who has one arm or one leg, to play golf.

We just employed the American Canoe and Kayak Association to teach the instructors at a new amputee center for wounded warriors. So the opportunities are greater because of more trained instructors.

Rex: It also seems that in contrast to the days of the Vietnam War, everybody seems to support the troops, whether they support the war or not.

DS/USA: That’s true. People now are much more aware that these young men and women are here to serve their country, that’s what they want to do. Back in the days of Vietnam, when people turned against the war they turned against the soldiers as well. That’s not happening in this war, and I hope that continues, because they’re deserving of our support no matter how you feel about the war.

Rex: In the Vietnam days, a lot of the troops were draftees. Today some of them are career military, but a lot of them are also ”citizen soldiers” from the reserves or National Guard. Do you see that making a difference for the vets you serve and the issues they’re facing?

DS/USA: Well, the first thing is attitude. All of the people that are serving did volunteer to serve. Their attitude is much more “I signed up, I knew that I might go to war, and in war you do get injured. What I want to do is learn to how live with this.” That attitude is much more prevalent.

That does not mean that they don’t suffer depression, it doesn’t mean that they don’t have setbacks, but they seem to be more willing to try to move on and accept what happened to them, and try to make the best of it.

The biggest change, though, is the women. Quite frankly, as a male who has seen the war, it’s distressing to see women who are amputees coming back. They are serving on the front lines right along with our young men, and doing this valiantly and heroically. My heart goes out to them for their service, but it’s probably the toughest thing for me personally to witness.

Rex: Does the fact that more of them have families and adult responsibilities have ripple effects on your work and the problems you’re trying to address?

DS/USA: It does and it doesn’t. We’re still seeing a lot of young people, but we’re also seeing a lot of middle-aged people in the National Guard and the reserve, and we also see more who have families. In that respect, they have more responsibility, more pressure on them.

One of the things we’re committed to — and thanks to our partners we’ve been able to meet that — is that no matter what program we offer to them, everything, once they go out with us, everything is paid for. Instructions, lodging, airfare, everything that it takes for them to take part in the sport is paid for. We realize that some of these guys and gals are young, low-level NCOs and enlisted people. They don’t have a lot of money, they’re trying to raise families, and they could not take part in these programs without the cost being paid for. So we are much more sensitive to their financial needs and try to respond to that by making this free of charge.

Rex Board Perspective

Rex board member Diane Blagman says: “The mission of the Rex Foundation is to help secure a healthy environment, promote individuality in the arts, provide support to critical and necessary social services, and assist others less fortunate than ourselves.

“The original Rex Foundation grant to DS/USA was many years ago, in 1995. One of the strongest supporters of this grant was Jerry Garcia. He sat next to me at the board meeting and spoke up to support this proposal.

“I was really proud of Rex when they approved funding for the Wounded Warrior Project/Disabled Sports USA. Kirk Bauer is an amputee and a Vietnam vet. He received no federal funding for this project — he simply and quietly went out and helped those who were returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and suffered loss of limbs. He showed them that there they can have a productive and fulfilling life, and literally changed so many lives.”

Meet Orlando Gill

Born in the Bronx, Orlando Gill was 19 when he enlisted in the Army in 1992. Over the course of his service he traveled around the world, and was in his second tour of duty in Iraq when he took a direct hit from a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) in Ramadi. The explosion amputated one of his legs at the knee.

That was in October, 2004. When he got to Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington D.C., he quickly got a visit from Kirk Bauer of DS/USA. “We came down to the fact that I like snowboarding and snow sports, that I was a snowboarder before,” Gill recalls. “He said he’d get me back up on the mountain.

“And sure enough, in January of 2005 he had me back out on the mountain again. We went to Vail, Colorado. They gave me an instructor and started teaching me how to relearn how to snowboard again. It was great!”

Today Gill, who married a soldier he met at Walter Reed and has a son, is retired from the service and living in the D.C. area. He volunteers full time with DS/USA, helping other soldiers in the program — transporting them to events such as the newly launched golf clinic, helping in the office, and especially visiting wounded vets in the hospital. “I do get all kinds of different responses when I talk to them about doing things,” he says. “Some guys, they’re not ready for this, but we still talk to them, trying to get them into doing it. And then others are all excited and really want to get into the swing of things.”

Gill reports that the golf clinic is turning out to be a big hit with the vets he’s working with. “A lot of them are really excited. When they first go there they don’t know what’s going on — and then they’re all up for doing it again, and asking if I’m going to pick them up next Saturday.”

And it’s not just the vets themselves who benefit — the program helps their entire families, who can all get involved in the sports activities. This is a real boon to overall morale — “It gives the family something to do besides just sitting in the hospital,” says Gill.

While the program has benefited many and received huge support, he says, there are always more vets in need than there are resources.

“The support the American public has given to the soldiers is incredible,” he says. ”We have a lot of support from everybody.

“But there’s never enough to help out somebody; there’s no such thing as ‘I’ve done enough.’ It’s about, ‘What else can we do for somebody?’”

Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls

2007-06-01T16:51:00.000-07:00

Discovering their inner musician, New York girls

and young women find a whole new way to look at life.

By Mary Eisenhart

"We've found that girls who might not have ever met in their home communities in New York can come together and share a love of music, start working together and bring their ideas together — and it works. – Karla Schickele

For the last two summers in New York City, the Willie Mae Rock Camp has given girls and young woman — mostly local, some from around the U.S. and beyond — a week of total immersion in music. And, quite often, a life-changing experience.

"Rock camp," says the camp's Web site, "is dedicated to youth empowerment through music. The program is founded on the proposition that music can serve as a powerful tool of self-expression and self-esteem-building for girls and young women, and can help combat racism and stereotypes by building bridges of communication and shared experience among girls from diverse communities."

Also, it's a lot of fun.



All Photos by Kate Milford

The Willie Mae Rock Camp (named after blues legend Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton) got its start in 2004 after alt-rocker Karla Schickele spent a couple of summers as a volunteer bass teacher at the Rock 'n' Roll Camp for Girls in Portland, Oregon.

"It absolutely changed my life," says Schickele, who, as a proud native of Brooklyn, quickly decided NYC needed its own version. "So I reached out to some other women musicians here, and we spent about a year getting together at coffee shops, planning and working. We did the first rock camp in summer of 2005.

Schickele, a founding director, also had the idea to name the New York camp after the blues legend. "We like to educate the girls about all the women who played music before them. We thought one way to do that would be to name the camp after one of the seminal women of rock 'n' roll, Big Mama Thornton."

Determined from the beginning to draw a diverse cross-section of girls from one of the world's most diverse cities, the founders planned to offer full or partial scholarships to at least half the campers at each session. Then, they cast their net.

"We used the powerful tool of word of mouth," Schickele recalls. "Our volunteers who were teachers put the word out to their students. Then we also had volunteers on bikes going around to various New York City neighborhoods. Particularly we wanted to target low-income and under-serviced communities in New York, where there are a lot of kids who don't have access to summer programs the way kids do in affluent communities. So we had volunteers going out on bikes, bringing flyers and posters to community centers and schools and shops and just talking to people on the street.

"We were going up to girls on the street and saying, 'Hey, are you into music?'" she laughs.

At the beginning of the weeklong day camp, girls form bands, with whom they'll practice, write songs, and perform in a concert at the end of the week. They'll get lessons in their chosen instrument from a pro. Along the way, they'll get a crash course in other practical realities of band life, e.g. making custom T-shirts and posters. And working together.

The rest of the year, the founders and a host of others in this almost all-volunteer organization (the only employee is a part-time office staffer to keep things running smoothly) work ceaselessly to gather support from parents, the community, industry and beyond. An online list of Willie Mae's supporters reveals a multi-generational, multi-genre roster of artists: Fiona Apple. Neko Case. Ani DiFranco. The Donnas. Deborah Harry. Natalie Merchant.

Probably the most popular fundraiser of the year is the annual Ladies' Rock Camp, which raises money for the scholarship fund. Says Schickele, "Once a year we do a mini rock camp — it's a three-day program for about 50 women who pay tuition. We get volunteers to work at that event as well, so all the proceeds go to the scholarship fund.

"It's an incredibly powerful and moving experience. A lot of the women who sign up for it haven't played music before, and just always thought it would be fun to be in a band. And the transformation they go through in three days is really extraordinary."

The Willie Mae Rock Camp received a grant of $2,500 from the Rex Foundation in 2006. Says Schickele, "We're very grateful to the Rex Foundation for its support, which is really helping us out this year."

We were recently able to spends some time talking with Schickele about the Rock Camp's work, how it helps participants elsewhere in their lives, and where the founders would like to take it from here.

Rex Foundation: An undertaking the size of this camp, with all its space and equipment requirements, isn't cheap. Where does your funding come from?

Karla Schickele, Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls: We do fundraising year round to make the one-week program happen. We solicit musical instrument manufacturers for gear donations; some of them have been quite generous, and given us guitars, drums and amps. We try to reach out to foundations and raise a lot of individual contributions. We hold fundraising events throughout the year to raise the cash we need to buy gear we can't get donated, and to help pay the rent and our other costs.

Rex: How do your teachers hear about you and get involved?

Willie Mae: As with the campers, it's a combination of word of mouth and concerted outreach efforts on our part. We strive to have our campers and our volunteers reflect the diversity of New York City, which is one of the most diverse cities in the world, racially and ethnically. So we really wanted camp to be a place where people from different backgrounds and different communities can come together and make music together.

From the get-go we found it fairly easy to attract a diverse camper group, but our volunteer group in the first year was overwhelmingly white. So we've been working to reach out to musicians, women of color who are musicians, and also groups that provide leadership, like the Black Rock Coalition, to try and diversify our volunteer group. It's going great.

Rex: At least half your campers are on scholarship, and some of them come from all over the world. How do you do outreach outside of New York, and how do you ensure that all this diversity doesn't simply lead to conflict and bad vibes?

Willie Mae: We don't do outreach outside of New York. Our mission is to serve girls in New York City. We are open to girls from anywhere, but that's not part of our outreach program. Any girls who find us out there in the world have just come upon us — we get a fair amount of media coverage, and people find us on the Internet.

The question of bringing people together — what we've found, and this is no big news, is that music really brings out the best in people. We've found that girls who might not have ever met in their home communities in New York can come together and share a love of music, start working together and bring their ideas together — and it works. There's something magic that happens when people play music together. It creates lines of communication and builds bridges in ways that I think are unique to music.

It's not that there isn't conflict, because in any band there is conflict (laughs). One of the things we do is provide a band coach to every band. The band coach is an adult, an experienced woman musician who helps the girls find a working process. Like if someone has an idea for a lyric and one of the girls says, "Oh, that's so stupid," the band coach is there to say, "Hey, is there a different way we could talk about this?" So it becomes a weeklong exercise in communication, both through music and also through the working process of writing music.

Rex: You talk about how they form bands on the first day of camp — how does that work, and how do you avoid having it turn into nasty clique behavior?

Willie Mae: Good question.

At the Portland camp originally, they just had the names of different kinds of genres on the wall, and the girls would go to the kind of music they wanted to play, and then just sort themselves into groups, in a way that, as a volunteer, I found very traumatic to watch. It was a little like picking sports teams in school, and didn't seem to really serve the process. So one of the changes we made in New York was to overhaul that system.

Our system is based on speed dating (laughs). All the girls are given packets that have the name of every other girl in the camp, and a couple of questions. Like, if you could be any animal, what would you want to be? And maybe also some music-related questions. But in my experience, a lot of bands get formed not because of a shared musical sensibility — that can be part of it, but a shared broader sensibility can often be a really good foundation.

And also I have a personal aversion to the use of musical genres as a limitation. I don't think anyone should have to choose whether they want to play this kind of music or that kind of music. I'm much more interested in girls inventing entirely new genres of music.

So for these reasons, we do this exercise that involves each girl interviewing every other girl at camp for a few minutes. It's a big, joyous, loud exercise, all the girls talking to each other at the same time — and then after a few minutes they switch. So at the end of the exercise every girl has talked to everyone else. And then they sit down and they write down the names of a bunch of girls they would like to be in a band with.

They hand them to us and go off and do a workshop, and we go into a back room and form bands, based on their requests, but also making sure that no girl is left out, and no girl knows what the other girl had asked for.

We then announce the bands, and they immediately go off and start working. We don't really allow any time for "Oh, I really wanted to be with her…," that kind of thing. Life is too short.

Rex: Why did you decide to name the camp after Big Mama Thornton?

Willie Mae: I like the idea that we really try to pay respect to the early women of rock. We're not limited to rock music at our camp, but we do like to try to educate the girls about all the women who played music before them. So we thought one way to do that would be to name the camp after one of the seminal women of rock 'n' roll, Big Mama Thornton.

We also name the rooms: the bass room is named the Carol Kaye room after the bass player, and the piano room is the Nina room after Nina Simone. We also have little bios of those artists up in the rooms so the girls can learn more about different women. We also have a workshop on the history of women in music. We try to get that information in a couple of different ways.

Rex: You've only been doing this for a couple of years, so you don't have a really long-term perspective, but do you see the same girls coming back more than once?

Willie Mae: Oh yeah!

Rex: What benefits do you see from kids going to the camp?

Willie Mae: We've heard from parents about the incredible increase in self-confidence that they've seen in their daughters. There have been girls who were having trouble in school and were incredibly shy, and who only played music alone in their rooms. Or talked about music but said, "I don't know how to write a song." And then we hear about how they say, "I wrote a song!"

A lot of them find ways to play music. Some of them don't play music during the year, but we find that they feel really good about themselves coming out of rock camp and they carry that with them when they go back to school.

Rex: What would you do if you had more resources? What's your wish list, and how do people like Rex help with all of that?

Willie Mae: Support from foundations like Rex is absolutely key to the success of our program and our ability to keep doing it. It's really through foundation support that we've been able to have our part-time staff member, which has allowed us to streamline operations and do a better job.

Our goals are to start an after-school program. There are schools that have expressed an interest in having us come in, and the girls themselves are just dying for the opportunity to do this program year round. So that's high on our wish list.

"A lot of them find ways to play music (after camp). Some of them don't play music during the year, but we find that they feel really good about themselves coming out of rock camp, and they carry that with them when they go back to school." – Karla Schickele

More Than A Cooking Class

2007-05-14T23:18:00.000-07:00

For San Francisco’s Nextcourse, food is a tool for building a better world, and better lives

By Mary Eisenhart

“We believe it is our social responsibility to make healthy food accessible to the entire community, and we are dedicated to preserving local farms and farmland. Chefs are offering up their skills not to make a better chicken, but to make a better world.”
– Nextcourse founder Larry Bain

Once a week at the San Francisco County jail, about 20 women inmates participating in the SISTER (Sisters in Sober Treatment Empowered in Recovery) program leave their cells and gather in a classroom. After listening to some information on health, nutrition and food choices, they join the instructor and pitch in to prepare and eat a meal together. Criteria: the meal is made from fresh, healthful, locally produced ingredients; the meal is delicious; the cost per serving is $5 or less.
Nextcourse founder Larry Bain recruits some Mission High kids to help out at his healthy hot dog stand, Let's Be Frank.

For these women, it’s probably the only decent meal they get all week. As in many institutions, the jail’s food service is the province of a contractor whose offerings are mass-produced, heavily processed, short on taste and nutrition — but highly profitable to the vendor. Ironically, this takes place at a time when California’s prison health care system is so lethally dysfunctional that a federal judge took control of it, so anyone unfortunate enough to land in the system gets a double whammy of food that’s bad for their health and substandard care when they get sick.

The determination to do something about this problem came from a somewhat unlikely quarter — a group of chefs and food professionals who, in their day jobs, cater to a very different, very upscale clientele. In 2003, restaurateur Larry Bain, who among other achievements pioneered the introduction of grass-fed, sustainably and humanely raised beef at his Acme Chophouse, decided to do something about healthy nutrition for people who were unlikely ever to be able to afford fancy restaurants. He soon attracted other like-minded food professionals in the Bay Area, and Nextcourse was born.

Offering nutrition, food preparation and camaraderie, Nextcourse’s classes in schools and jails, taught by chefs and other food professionals, provide a potentially life-changing resource to people most likely to be on the receiving end of a food industry more focused on profitability and convenience than nutrition and health. In addition to meal planning and cooking skills, they show how to take advantage of local farmers’ markets to create tasty dishes that are at least as affordable as overprocessed supermarket and fast-food offerings, and which kids will happily eat.

One project where the kids themselves are involved is at Mission High School in San Francisco, where a pilot project last year was such a hit that its participants are now Peer Leaders to this year’s crop of students. They’ve spread the word to friends and family by word of mouth and, most recently, in a community newsletter.

In 2006, the Rex Foundation gave a grant of $5,000 to help support Nextcourse’s jail program, which is perennially strapped for funds. “Rex was a lifesaver for us last year,” says Susie White, Nextcourse’s project director, who took over the running of its community projects when Bain decided to focus his energies on the Food From the Park program, another Nextcourse project.

Nextcourse instructors and food pros Megan Hanson (left) and Rania Long (right), in aprons, teach Mission High School students about fresh produce.

We recently spoke with her to learn more about Nextcourse, its work, and the challenges it faces.

Rex Foundation: What inspired the creation of Nextcourse?

Susie White, Nextcourse: Nextcourse was founded in 2003 by Larry Bain, who at the time was the general manager for Jardinière and Acme Chophouse restaurants. Larry had worked for many years in the Bay Area restaurant community modeling green business practices, particularly in the area of using sustainable foods — fresh, local, seasonal, free of chemicals, humane and just.

Larry and some of his like-minded colleagues were well aware of the growing food divide in this country and wanted to take the message of sustainable eating to people who needed it the most: low-income communities where the risk of hunger is high. Their belief was that eating in a sustainable manner can be more economical and healthier than a diet based on convenience and processed food, and no one was out there advocating this approach of food education.

Because many of our founders were professional chefs, cooks, and restaurant people, and we utilize cooking as a means of teaching people about food, we are often referred to as a cooking class. However, our true focus is to provide people an opportunity to acquaint themselves with fresh, whole foods, and to begin a new and conscious relationship with their food.

While sustainable food philosophy is at our core, our message is consistent with good nutrition, and some of our programs, like Mission High, operate under the heading of nutrition education. We think we have a more effective way to teach people about eating healthy, starting by raising awareness of how our food system has changed. We talk a great deal about the difference between whole and processed foods, and just a small bit about hidden sugars and good fat. Most traditional nutrition education programs spend much of their time reading labels; however, we encourage people focus more on foods that come without labels — whole, fresh foods.

Our belief is all people deserve the highest quality food available, and the best food available is grown locally, picked when it is at its peak of flavor and nutritional content, and doesn’t have harmful additives that detract from good health and well-being. Our low-income communities are under siege by food corporations selling cheap and empty-calorie foods. The people in these circumstances are most in need of what we have to offer, and need inspiration to act on their own power to change things.

Mission High students discover the joy of pie.

Rex: You have quite a few projects addressing different aspects of food and nutrition issues. Given that there’s always more to be done than resources to do it with, how do you decide which projects to pursue?

Nextcourse: We are asked all the time to conduct cooking and nutrition classes for various groups, but in terms of our mission, the educational piece is only the first step. Our choice in projects is based on the potential to involve our participants in improving their own food system. This requires organizational partners that recognize the need for change and have a genuine commitment to our philosophy.

We not only want people to be able to make healthier changes in their own lives and to understand that their choices can be votes for better food, but to also begin to identify ways they as a community can effect change.

Rex: Particularly in view of the much-publicized dire state of California’s prison healthcare system, and the contribution of bad food to the prison health problem, how does Nextcourse’s program at the jail make a difference, and what difficulties does it face?

Nextcourse: The fact that the jail system doesn’t see the correlation between what people eat (or what people are fed, in this case) and the implication for health is just a reflection of that same disconnect in our larger society. We also see this same thing in public schools and the declining health of our children.

When people come to jail, they are usually at their lowest point. They have not tended to their health, may have abused their bodies, and are generally just a mess. Healthy food (and exercise) could do a great deal to curb the diet-related chronic diseases that consume institutional budgets.

In our class, we teach our core concepts about sustainable eating, and prepare a complete meal that highlights simple cooking methods, the importance of fresh ingredients, and affordability. Each serving of our menu is under $4-5. From a practical standpoint, it’s one healthy meal a week the women eat. They also experience the sense of community involved in cooking together and sitting down together to enjoy the meal.

The women participating in our jail program are housed in a special substance abuse and academic facility, so they’re involved in intensive rehabilitation programming. Since how we eat is such a big part of self-nurturing, emotional and physical well-being, it seemed logical that there should be a food education component.

When we started at the jail, we knew the available food was not conducive to the women’s needs. The jail’s food is much like every other jail and prison in our country — based on calories and not nutritional value (or taste). Most of the food is highly processed, with little or no fresh offerings, and it generally tastes so bad that the women don’t rely on their three meals. Instead, they supplement their diets with snack foods from the jail’s commissary.

The regular food service is highly regulated and restricted by budget constraints, so we decided to work with the women on getting better foods in the commissary system. With the help of our class participants, we did a formal assessment of the commissary foods and presented our findings to the Sheriff. He gave us the green light to move forward as long as there was no increase in the costs of the foods.

Working with the commissary provider has been frustrating. It is very frustrating when you sit down at a table with people to talk about a real moral responsibility for the people who are in your care, and you’re spending most of your time talking about profit margins, and this supplier or that supplier that’s not going to budge because they’re not willing to give up part of their profits. It’s a different set of priorities.

The kind of thing that we’re running into with the commissary provider at the jail is no different from any other food corporation, and the way they control the foods that are available in our supermarkets and convenience stores. It’s all about making money and providing the cheapest food so the companies can make the greatest amount of profit. It’s a hard thing.

There has been a small victory on the jail front in terms of the commissary project. When we heard that the contract was coming up for renewal, we went and met with the contract manager for the sheriff’s department, and talked with her about our assessments and our vision for how this commissary system could really support good health and not detract from good health.

This woman knew about the benefits of nutrition from her own experience, and championed our cause. She inserted some language into the RFP (request for proposals) requiring that the new commissary provider provide at least 10 percent of the items that were healthy items, as determined by us and by the sheriff’s department.

(laughs) It doesn’t sound like a lot; it’s almost laughable to say, “You have to provide 10 percent healthy foods, but 90 percent can still be crap.” But I’ll take the 10 percent and work with that, and hopefully next time around we can increase that percentage. It’s really about changing the culture that has been entrenched for so many years.

With regard to the healthcare system in the jails and prisons, if they had a higher priority for healthy food and exercise, they would have completely different outcomes for the inmate population. A lot of people aren’t really paying attention to what’s happening in our jails and prisons, and that’s why things like this are allowed to continue. But again, it is representative of a larger problem in our society regarding health, nutrition and well-being, and just not putting a high priority on it.

Nextcourse instructor Rania Long shows the fine points of preparing kiwi fruit.

Rex: Who are the women who participate in the program, and what happens to them when they get out?

Nextcourse: Because it’s a jail, most of the women we meet are incarcerated for fairly minor offenses and are going to be out within six months. By being in the jail’s recovery program, they’re already trying to turn their lives around. But we do see them come back; some of the women have taken the program a couple of times.

It’s just the chronic nature of substance abuse, that you kind of get yourself a little together, and then when you have an emotional struggle or stress you relapse. And these women have a lot of stresses in their lives. They have children and often can’t make enough money to support them; the kids may be staying with relatives, they may be in foster care. There could be an abusive husband or boyfriend — just a lot of issues they have to struggle with. When you look at all that and see what they go through, it’s not hard to imagine the odds are against them, so we’re always looking at ways to strengthen the program. We’re thinking of doing part of the program in their re-entry center after they’re released, rather than all at the jail. That would be the ideal time for the women to have somebody working intensively with them and integrating their nutrition and their recovery.

Also the sheriff’s department has some needs for food, and we’re looking at ways to see if women who have been through our program could work alongside us in preparing those foods, so they wouldn’t just be getting the content from being part of this program, but also some job training as well. We’re looking at ways we can strengthen the outcome, and the sheriff’s department is very committed to helping us do that.

Rex: How did the program at Mission High get started, and how is it working out?

Nextcourse: The kids we’re working with at Mission High have been amazing to watch, and it has been their steady progress that has really guided the evolution of the program.

We started two years ago as a pilot in partnership with an educational farm called Pie Ranch. We had a straightforward agenda: to provide a small group of students with some classroom-based food education, and to augment the classroom piece with monthly trips to the farm focused on sustainable agriculture.

The students we started working with were from the special education track because they had a less restrictive curriculum that allowed for “alternative” teaching opportunities. On each trip, the kids would learn about and participate in some farming activities, and we would all prepare and enjoy a lunch from ingredients sourced from the farm. There was also some journaling to reflect on their experiences. It was an all-day event!

By the end of that school year, these kids had been transformed. They were eating healthier foods, trying new foods, encouraging their parents or caregivers to buy better foods, and to shop at (health food store) Rainbow and farmers’ market. They become our biggest advocates, and strongly encouraged us to do more and involve more kids. So, we went to work and managed to get some funding, and just this past October started doing our school-based classes and ranch trips with 9th and 10th graders, with the assistance of last year’s students who serve as Peer Leaders.

We hope to grow new leaders from this year’s students, and begin the cycle anew next year.

Sampling fresh fruit in the neighborhood.

Rex: It sounds as if the kids go out and become evangelists for healthy eating in their communities.

Nextcourse:: They do. I definitely feel that way about the kids we’ve been working with at Mission High, because they’ve been so proactive in communicating the things they’ve learned to other students and their families and friends. They have really been an inspiration that has driven this program, because we were just intending to do the pilot program, and weren’t sure where it would go or if it would go anywhere. And seeing how these 12 kids, in a matter of nine months, were so transformed...

It wasn’t just about food, either, it was about this small community that we had been involved in for nine months around food. When you come together and you eat and you make food and you do all those sorts of things, you really start to bond with people. These kids were from the same classroom, and they knew each other, of course, but they weren’t really friends. And I swear, when you see them at the school now, you don’t see one without seeing two or three or four or five of the others. They have really become great friends around this; they’ve had a shared experience that has made them a sort of family, and they often will refer to their class in that way, as a family.

Rex: Given the fact that the Bay Area food scene is overwhelmingly the province of affluent people, how do you avoid the pitfalls of being perceived as rich people talking down to the less fortunate and telling them what to do? How do you make sure people don’t feel patronized?

Nextcourse: You raise a really valid point. So much of the food community is represented by rich white people (laughs) and because we have our roots in that, it’s logical that those would be the people to get involved in this kind of program.

But we’re not coming in and telling people how to run their lives or be better people. What I think we’re doing is giving people information that they can then use to make different decisions — or they can choose to not make different decisions if that’s their choice. The emphasis is on communicating to people that they have the power to change the situation if they don’t like it.

In this case, if they don’t like the food that’s represented in their neighborhood or their community, or that they’re being served at school, because of the information they’ve gained from taking part in a program such as Nextcourse, they know how to go about making changes. They can voice their opinion. We’re not trying to foster a dependence on our program; we’re trying to give people the tools they need to empower themselves, to vote with their dollars.

One of the real benefits of involving professional food people in these programs is that they have a really true passion for food and for the work that they’re doing, and we’ve found that that’s really inspirational and motivational for people, who see that somebody has such a love and passion for what they do and what food can mean in people’s lives. How it can bring people together and families together, and be a source of pleasure and community. That’s the ingredient that they bring to the table. We have a lot of content we share, but using professional food people really brings the passion.

Rex: Is Nextcourse an only-in-the-gourmet-ghetto kind of project, or can it be replicated elsewhere?

Nextcourse: I don’t see any reason why this type of program can’t be done in other areas. Almost every community in our country is struggling with these same issues and questions, and there are people in the community like the people who started Nextcourse who could step up to the plate. There’s a restaurant community, a food community, a culinary community, whatever you want to call it, in almost every area of the country, and these people have a lot of knowledge and skills.

So I think you can definitely use this model in other places. The tools and the ingredients are all there for people to do it; it’s just a matter of bringing them together and coordinating it.

Susie White: “We’re not coming in and telling people how to run their lives or be better people. The emphasis is on communicating to people that they have the power to change the situation if they don’t like it.”

Making Peace in the Mideast, One Family at a Time

2007-04-25T22:04:00.000-07:00

The Parents Circle – Bereaved Families Forum

By Mary Eisenhart

Peace is not a prayer, peace is in the hands of each and every one of us. Peace is not just between states, peace is between a man and his friends, man and wife, parents and their children, between neighbors, between partners, between all human beings and between states. The basis for any peace is compromise and reconciliation.

—Yitzhak Frankenthal, founder and chairman,
The Parents Circle–Bereaved Families Forum

Circle of peace: Young Forum members in Italy.

In the Middle East, losing a family member to sectarian violence is a common and grim fact of life, one that often perpetuates and exacerbates conflict. But when Yitzhak Frankenthal’s son Arik, serving in the Israeli army, was killed by Hamas activists in 1994, Frankenthal chose a different path.

“As I was sitting shivah for Arik a friend said to me, ‘Now you understand it is impossible to make peace with an enemy that understands only violence,’” he told the Village Voice in 2002. “And I knew that was all wrong. I knew the only reason Arik was murdered was that there was no peace between our peoples, and I blamed the leaders. The Palestinians were acting exactly as we would if we would be under occupation. The occupation is a kind of terror that we are doing against Palestinians, and they are doing unacceptable terror against Israelis. As a man who loves his people and his country, I decided that I had to do whatever I can to help bring reconciliation and peace. There is no other solution.”

Frankenthal began contacting other bereaved Israelis, garnering, in addition to some abuse, a core of people who wanted to meet; then they began to meet with Palestinians in the same situation. “We couldn’t make reconciliation by ourselves,” Frankenthal told the Voice, recalling the first meeting with people in Gaza. “We share the same sorrow. When someone tells you about his infant killed by a soldier, you cry the same tears as when someone tells you his child was killed by a suicide bomber. We all want no one else to suffer the pain we share.”

Young members of the Parents Circle-Bereaved Families Forum. The sign reads, in Hebrew and Arabic, "Yes to peace between us and our neighbors, the pain of peace is better than the pain of war, for our children and yours...Yes to Peace. Bereaved Families Forum, the children of Muhammad Kabha."

From that beginning, the Parents Circle/Bereaved Families Forum has expanded to include over 500 members, many of whom spend a great deal of time, in Israeli-Palestinian duos, speaking to youth and adults on both sides of the conflict — many of whom have literally never met a member of the opposite group.

Along the way spontaneous projects have arisen to increase communication and understanding, often one person at a time. In an area where military checkpoints and severe restrictions on personal travel effectively keep Israelis and Palestinians from interacting in normal human ways, the Hello Shalom/Hello Salaam project is a toll-free line that allows any Israeli to pick up the phone and talk to a random Palestinian, and vice versa. Says Robi Damelin, the Parents’ Circle public relations officer, whose son David was killed by a Palestinian sniper, “We created it in 2002 as a sort of counter to the powers that be that say there’s no one to talk to. Since then we’ve had over a million calls on this line, which is a toll-free line for all Palestinians and Israelis to talk to each other.

“Sometimes people scream at each other and say appalling things over our telephone line, but if they give each other their telephone number at the end of the conversation, which has happened, then I would think that there is some hope. That’s the beginning of talking, and it’s not throwing stones or killing each other. For me that’s very important. I don’t see anything negative about people talking to each other. Something wonderful may not come out of it, but nothing negative can come from getting to know the person on the other side.”

Her colleague Ali Abu Awwad, her speaking partner on a recent U.S. visit, also bears the scars of the conflict: the son of a politically active family, he was imprisoned for four years for his efforts in the intifada – “I threw lots of stones,” he says in the documentary Encounter Point (see sidebar). After being released, he was shot by an Israeli settler, and, while in the hospital, learned that his brother had been shot and killed by an Israeli soldier at a checkpoint.

Robi Damelin and Ali Abu Awwad

In 2003, the Parents Circle/Bereaved Families Forum received the Rex Foundation’s Bill Graham Award for its peacemaking efforts, and we were recently able to talk with Damelin and Awwad about their ongoing work. Says Damelin, ”Our group has a broader vision of two sides trying to find a way to live together, because there’ve been so many peace agreements, and very little person-to-person, people-to-people work on the ground. This is where it’s very important, what we’re doing.”

Rex Foundation: So many people who have suffered losses like yours turn to more violence, more vengeance. Why did you choose a different path?

Robi Damelin: It’s not all black and white. When I heard that David had been killed, when the army came to talk to me, my first reaction was “You may not kill anybody in the name of my child.” Now I have no idea where that came from.

I can’t talk about other people and what they do and what they don’t do. Yes, it’s true that many people think that vengeance is the way to go, but there isn’t any vengeance for a lost child. How many people would I have to kill in order to make myself feel better, and would it? It wouldn’t. So that was not an option for me ever. And I realized that the man who killed my child didn’t do it because he was David, he did it because he was a symbol of something.

So after about six months, Yitzhak Frankenthal, who was the founder of the Parents Circle, came to talk to me, and invited me to go to a seminar where there were about 60-80 Palestinians and the same amount of Israelis, all bereaved parents. I went to that seminar, and I thought that this would be a good framework for me to make a difference. I was working with other groups, but this seemed to me to be the most powerful organization that could really make a difference.

Seeing the other side as human beings: bereaved Palestinian and Israeli family members meet and talk at Parents Circle events.

Ali Abu Awwad: It’s complicated. The majority on both sides, they don’t choose violence; they don’t react at all. They are quiet, they are silent — and this is actually a reaction, because when they are silent the other people use them. Everybody becomes a part of it without feeling it.

Most of the bereaved families are not reacting by killing each other. Somewhere there may be people who support violence inside themselves, but they don’t get it on the ground in violent behavior against each other. Maybe they hate each other, true; they are angry, and so and so, but they don’t kill each other.

I grew up in this also, not just in this daily pain and daily suffering; I also grew up in a political home. My mother used to be one of the famous leaders of Fatah, which is part of the PLO. Being in a prison and all that I have been through, I also read about nonviolence. First of all it was a personal choice; I choose it for myself, because I cannot react in violence anyway, because personally I cannot kill somebody.

Before, I was not pro-violence, I was not pro-peace, I was just desperate. And when this happened, it removed me; it made me think deeply about — I want a reason to open my eyes in the morning. So how can I deal with this? Because I believe that even the people who support violence are doing this to deal with the anger, and by showing it to the other side through violent behavior. But I cannot do it, so what shall I do? And then I thought, killing somebody, it’s not returning back my brother. Causing the same pain that I have to somebody else is not making my pain more easy.

And politically, supporting violence is not leading my people to independence. It’s not removing the occupation. People have been reacting with violence, and we are losing, especially the Palestinians. Because the whole world now starts looking at the case as there are these extreme Palestinians and they are killing. It’s an injustice to judge a whole people under occupation in this way, so what shall I do to change?

I got involved after my mother; she was the first one to get involved. What happened to me at that meeting when I met the Israeli bereaved families for the first time, and I saw those people who are talking about our right as Palestinians to live in justice and in dignity, in our own independence, with all of the high price that they paid — it touched me, and I feel I depend on them, I’m part of them, because we have the same pain, we are just human.

Rex: What work are you personally involved in?

Damelin: I’m very much involved in the schools; for me that is the most rewarding work. David was a student, doing his master’s in the philosophy of education. In many ways it’s kind of commemorating who he was. I spend a lot of time in classrooms; over the course of 2005, the Parents Circle did more than 1,000 classroom dialogues in Israel and Palestine. So that is a huge amount of students. We have a group of about 50 members who do these classroom dialogues, and that is a main part of the work we’re doing.

I’m also part of a project to create a television series on the second channel in Israel. It’s a drama series, a fiction drama of 10 episodes, and it will be in Hebrew and Arabic on prime time. It will interweave some of the stories from people from the Parents Circle, but mainly the audience will watch it like anything else you’d watch on TV. There’s no peace message, just the narrative of two families, which obviously would give a greater understanding for both sides, just humanize things a little. And then at the end we’ll show a making-of, and then people will recognize that much of what they’ve seen is true.

Awwad: I talk to many schools as one of the Palestinian members who are active; I talk to universities, I talk to people on both sides. I talk to people who are fighting; I talk to the army. I talk to many people about this movement, about the Forum and about nonviolence.

Many people, when you say peace, they despair. They don’t know that there is a difference between peace and nonviolence. Peace is the end, peace is agreement, peace is the life. But nonviolence is the way to live. It’s the way that could lead you to life. Nonviolence is not a hope, like peace; nonviolence is a mission and a duty.

I used to talk to angry people from both sides. They are angry, because this is the way that they deal with fear and pain. Then when I talk to them, hear their pain, their history, their different experience, their behavior today and the future, I wonder where are we leading ourselves by being so angry, so upset, and violent. As a person who has suffered a lot I can touch them, I can reach them. To show the people how to use the pain, not just how to deal with it.

It doesn’t mean that everything will be OK. It doesn’t mean that the violence will stop and the occupation will be removed tomorrow. But to finish we have to start, and how we start, this is the question: to allow the people to control the reaction, to have this connection between the feeling and the mind, and to get this out through a nonviolent behavior, through a human behavior that will allow the other side to understand your rights, and which will allow you to understand there is hope and there is somebody on the other side who understands you.

Rex: What response do you get?

Awwad: In Israel, especially the students tell me that they have never met a Palestinian before. It’s not surprising, because they see the Palestinian by being in the army reserve, or they see the Palestinian by being in the settlements, and they don’t have any contact with Palestinians. They see the Palestinian in the media holding a gun, and they don’t know what it means to live in a refugee camp.

They ask me, well, if there are many people like you, as you say, where are they? We don’t see them. Yes, they don’t see them, because the Palestinian life is so different from the Israeli life. Palestinians are not demonstrating for the peace, like what is happening in Rabin Square in Tel Aviv, but on the other hand they are not doing anything against the peace either.

Nobody realizes that until we meet them. And sometimes they react in another way. Sometimes they don’t want to hear me – I mean, part of them doesn’t want to accept me. But I hold myself there, and keep talking to them, and at last – it’s happened to me many times – at last they come to me and they shake my hand, and they say, you helped us to open our eyes, and to open our minds, because we never thought that there is a human on the other side.

So the Palestinian has to be convinced that nonviolence could lead you to peace, could lead you to independence, but nonviolence is a duty. Even if you’ve been controlled by the occupation, this is a successful way to control your feelings and decide for yourself how to act. When you react with violence, the occupation has an excuse to use this reaction against you.

It’s complicated, you know. It’s huge.

I have a friend; now he wants to give up fighting. When you see the people touched by you, by this message, you feel that you are changing things.

It’s a process; it takes time. We need the political level also; we cannot do it alone. There’s the human level and the political level, but we cannot reach the political level without helping the people understand the other side.

Rex: How do you cope with the problem that’s common to many peace workers, the accusation that you’re betraying “your” side and “giving aid and comfort to the enemy”?

Damelin: Actually that’s very much in the minority. We haven’t come across this very much, and when we do it isn’t from Israel or Palestine, it’s from radical right-wingers in America.

Ali has standing in his community; I mean, somebody who’s been to jail for four years, who’s been shot by a settler and lost his brother can hardly be suspected of being a collaborator.

Of course I’ve had some remarks, I can’t say that I haven’t. But as bereaved parents and families, we’ve paid a high price to say what we say, and generally there is a sense of respect, in Israel and in Palestine, for both of us.

But you do get kooks, and I guess wherever you do work, whatever country, there’s always some extreme people who are frightened by this work, because we shake up their belief system.

Rex: The Parents Circle’s work is very much of a particular time and place, but does it have any lessons for the rest of the world?

Awwad: Sure. I believe that all of us are involved in this circle of our humanity. I believe that our conflict has been used by many other people to kill other people, not just Israelis or Palestinians. And I believe that when I help by also solving another conflict, another hatred here, there, everywhere, it pushes my case to be solved more. Because when I solve your problem you start to care about mine.

And the other thing is, I believe that everybody has a message in his life. It doesn’t matter who you are. It doesn’t matter if you are Palestinian or Israeli or Egyptian or Christian or Muslim or Jewish; you are part of this world. So what are you doing, and how are you doing that? How are you connecting to this identity, or nationality, or religion?

It doesn’t mean I will become an Israeli or a Christian or a Jew; people keep their identity and their religion. But there is another thing more holy than everything, which is their humanity. So if we put this power and this movement and this cycle around, we can involve everybody to help and support us by supporting themselves.

Damelin: We were at a conference on restorative justice in Milwaukee, with professor Mark Umbreit; he’s worked on Death Row introducing families of victims to murderers or perpetrators of the crime. The mother of Amy Biehl, the Fulbright student killed in Soweto, was at the conference together with one of the men who had killed her daughter. And in September we were here for the September 11 five-year commemoration in New York.

So I met with many people from all over the world who have been the victims of terror, or who have created organizations for reconciliation. From that point of view it’s been very enlightening — we’re not just an island on our own. I think what’s interesting is that we have a very profound effect on people, mainly because it’s a Palestinian and an Israeli talking with one voice.

I was in San Francisco in September — a hip-hop artist named Michael Franti invited us to come and talk in Golden Gate Park at the Power to the Peaceful festival; there were something like 60,000 people there.

I have to tell you that when we arrived there and I saw all these amazing colors and dresses and outfits and people, I was quite astounded, because I thought that I had seen it all. But the fact is that there’s a sense of acceptance there; I think if I were wearing a carrot coming out of my head, that wouldn’t have created too much noise.

It’s not music that I understand, but I can tell you that when I did stand on the stage and I started to hear the words and understand them, I started to realize that this is the most incredible protest music. And I felt all the music coming through my legs.

I was there with a partner called Nadwa, and I said, these people are never going to listen to us. But Michael Franti stood up and told everybody to sit down and told them who we were, and 60,000 people sat down on the grass and listened to us for 15 to 20 minutes, which was amazing, because they were all fired up.

And then I walked around, and I saw a lot of hate posters – kill Bush, destroy Rumsfeld, assassinate what’s-her-name, Condoleezza Rice. And that really upset me, because that’s the same language, just the other side of the coin. You know, the things they’re supposed to be anti-. If you’re a peace group, that’s not the rhetoric you should be using. But that’s just my personal opinion.

Awwad: I want to say that it’s not our destiny to keep dying violently, and if we cannot solve this conflict, the world has more power than us. How many people have to die for the rest of the world to wake up and help us?

I think the behavior of the world is going in a crazy direction, which will cost everybody in this world an even higher price. We have to stop it or we will be sorry after a few years.

The other thing is it’s very easy to be right; everybody wants to be right. It’s very hard to be honest. So people prefer to be right, they prefer to be a victim; when you feel you you’re a victim you’re giving an excuse for your behavior against the other side. On the other hand, everybody wants to see the other side as a devil, to excuse their own behavior against him, because if I see him as a human, there is a payment, there is a price, and nobody wants to pay the price.

What I’m asking from everybody, not just in Palestine and Israel, is just not to be stuck by those feelings and those thoughts. Being human doesn’t mean to feel sorry for the other person; I don’t want people to feel sorry for me. It means understanding what the people need to live as humans by supporting them.

Robi Damelin: “There’ve been so many peace agreements, and very little person-to-person, people-to-people work on the ground. This is where it’s very important, what we’re doing.”

Israeli and Palestinian kids, members of the Bereaved Families Forum, at a conference in Italy.

Furthering Social Change

2007-03-19T15:45:00.000-07:00

FOSTERING THE POWER OF COMMUNITY, SERVICE AND THE ARTS
Perhaps like you, many people knew about the Rex Foundation from attending Grateful Dead Rex benefit concerts. As they danced to the music with their community of friends, they were also playing a part in helping others. There was an unspoken understanding that Rex provided a way to extend to others the good will and largesse of the entire Grateful Dead community. In 2001, to launch its renewal in the absence of Grateful Dead benefit concerts, the Rex Foundation began to raise its grant making funds in a new way that involved those very elements of its legacy – music, connection, fun, creativity and community spirit – which hold us together. Along the way, we’ve been asked some very good questions about Rex, including, • Why do we make grants that address so many different types of issues? • What are our ideas about social change and how are we helping to support such change? • How do we further human rights? We hope the words that follow provide some answers, are helpful and thought-provoking, and inspire you to be part of the Rex Foundation Community for many years to come. The Rex Mission, formulated in the 1980’s, continues to be our basic guide: “to help secure a healthy environment, promote individuality in the arts, provide support to critical and necessary social services, assist others less fortunate than ourselves, protect the rights of indigenous people and ensure their cultural survival, build a stronger community, and educate children and adults everywhere.” In May 2003, at a Rex Foundation board retreat, we defined “Being an impetus for social change” as one of our long-term direction-setting goals, toward which we would direct our resources and efforts. "The Rex Foundation views social change as the gathering of momentum to realize globally the conditions under which all societies operate with principles and values that embrace the right of every human being to experience equity, justice and the pursuit of happiness.” Towards Social Change Grassroots activity is vital to social change because its very nature embodies the engagement of individuals at a primary level, to create movement. The often-used quote of Margaret Mead speaks to this: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.^® Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” When we examine the programs that the Rex Foundation has supported over the last 22 years, it has usually been the passion and commitment of one or a few people that has enabled the programs to begin, take hold and flourish. The results have often been real shifts to behaviors and conditions that support social change. Many examples can be found in the write-ups of our beneficiaries found on this website. In its grant making, the Rex Foundation has emphasized grassroots programs which often fall under the radar of mainstream funding entities. With this approach, the very programs we believe are vital to social change are supported. By funding a wide spectrum, we help encourage the conditions for a broad social movement in support of biospherical and human rights, as those spelled out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Such a movement would demonstrate the power of grassroots community, service and the arts. Buckminster Fuller stated in the early 1980’s that we could now solve all the problems of hunger and need across the world because we had the available resources and technology; all that we needed was the political will. The challenge we face today is how to foster the political will to bring about social, economic and political equity. The current social environment is severely oppressed because of the seemingly perpetual “war on terror” that spreads fear and a sense of doom. The antidote to such oppression is to rekindle hope, optimism and a sense of community connection. In this way, more and more people are likely to engage in vital civic and community activities, such as voting, participating in local government, neighborhood associations, and social action efforts, to help generate and “be”, as Ghandi suggested, “the change they want”. In addition to our direct grant giving, the Rex Foundation is working in several ways to foster the community connections described above: • The presentation of benefit concerts across the country, which we call Black Tie-Dye Balls. These bring together local communities around music, a joyful ambience and connections to local philanthropy. The enthusiasm is palpable. And, we experience on-going connections with all of the participants, from those attending, to local in-kind contributors, the musicians, and the beneficiaries. • The publication of newsletters and annual reports which present perspectives on the issues described above. The recent Perspectives on Being Human provides viewpoints on the meaning of the “human rights framework” – seeing action across a broad spectrum of areas, such as environmental rights, civil rights, women’s rights, and social and economic justice, as being unified and amplified by the common goal to further human rights for all. • In April 2006 we introduced new website features called Food for Thought, Musicians Spotlight and Ripple Effects, providing more in-depth information about Rex beneficiary programs, the Rex musician community, and the results of our joint efforts. • We have launched this Rex Foundation blog to generate more connections by encouraging online discussion of the Food for Thought topics, hopefully raising awareness about these issues of social change and how to participate in addressing them. • We are building on what was presented in Perspectives on Being Human in a way that fosters the creative arts while also supporting excellent non-profit programs. We have commissioned three Bay Area non-profit organizations that use drama, movement and spoken word in their work with youth, to create a dramatization about human rights, called The World As It Could Be – A Declaration of Human Rights. The dramatization was presented at a convening at the Presidio in San Francisco on December 7^th and at Balboa High School in San Francisco on December 8^th. We will continue to build on this work during 2007. In these ways, together, as participants in the Rex Foundation community, we are fostering the power of community, service and the arts to help generate positive social change toward health, happiness and prosperity for all.

Tule Elk Park

2006-11-02T10:45:00.000-08:00

Tule Elk Park
Child Development Center

By Mary Eisenhart

“Whatever landscape a child is exposed to early on,
that will be the sort of gauze through which
he or she will see all the world afterwards.”
—Wallace Stegner,
(quote at entrance to Tule Elk Park)

“Rita, who’s she?” an inquiring 5-year-old, pointing in my general direction, asks teacher Rita Hurault, who’s gathering her kindergarteners and 1st graders as they arrive for their after-school program. “Who are you?” says another, looking up at me.

This is my friend Mary, says Hurault. She’s here to write a story about the school.

Nobody tells them they shouldn’t ask questions like that. Nobody tells them they shouldn’t call their teacher by her first name. And, once their curiosity about the stranger is addressed, the kids are off to more interesting pursuits. Playing among the trees. Digging in the garden. Observing the worms and other fauna near the compost bin. They’re especially happy today, because it’s Friday and they don’t have homework (yes, in San Francisco, kindergarteners have homework...), so they’re free to play and explore longer than usual.

Discovering bugs in the compost.

It’s a typical afternoon at Tule Elk Park Child Development Center, a two-time grant recipient from the Rex Foundation.

Originally founded in 1943, as the Yerba Buena Children’s Center, Tule Elk Park is part of the San Francisco public school system, with a full-day program for toddlers and preschoolers and an after-school program for kindergarteners through 4th graders (who also attend all day during school vacations). Says site manager Alan Broussard, “When the program was conceived in 1943, we were in the midst of World War II, and the purpose of the program was to support low-income families, primarily women who were entering the workforce in large numbers for the first time, the Rosie the Riveter moms. It was a child-care situation, but because it was connected to the school district, it always had an educational focus, preparing kids for kindergarten. I don’t think we’ve changed that dramatically — our primary audience is still low-income children. We’re really a gateway to the K-12 system; we’re a foundation for lifelong learning.”

Site director Alan Broussard, with tile art documenting
an earlier class's study of alternative energy.

Like most urban schools, the center was, for most of its existence, a barren expanse of concrete and asphalt, in a neighborhood where even a street tree is a rarity. But in 1990, it began a remarkable process of self-transformation that’s still ongoing.

Before the transformation: 20,000 square feet of asphalt.
Photo courtesy of Tule Elk Park Child Development Center.

It all started when Broussard, then a teacher at the school, approached Lynn Juarez, then the site manager, about the possibility of cutting a hole in the surrounding fence to allow his students access to a small adjacent patch of dirt in which to garden.

He explains, “Our kids were mostly inner-city children whose opportunity to experience and be associated with nature was pretty limited. When we took them just to the park down the street, where there was dew on the grass in the morning, and bugs, they didn’t want to sit on the grass, because it was either too wet, or there were too many bugs — it was just completely foreign to them.

'Angels dropping from the sky': a volunteer crew of concrete specialists lays the foundation for the future Tule Elk Park. Photo courtesy of Tule Elk Park Child Development Center.

“We began to wonder why we weren’t supporting kids to really connect with nature. There’s such a deprivation around this issue, particularly with urban low-income kids. And that was the impetus to creating something much more than a hole in the fence — to really think how to use 20,000 square feet of asphalt to create a green space that kids could learn in and from.”

Says Hurault, who came to the center in the mid-’90s, “What these children needed deeply was a connection to the natural world. They were scared to death of grass, dirt and bugs. And that’s the stuff of life.”

With the public school district, like many others, perennially strapped for funds, any such project was going to require serious creativity and community involvement. Broussard recalls, “It was an effort that involved seeking out people initially who were willing to suspend reality and dream with us, and we went about developing this design by seeking out people whose imagination could envision that.

The garden at Tule Elk Park.

“We found a landscape architect who was willing to think this through with us; we engaged our parents by bringing them together on Saturdays to talk about what we had envisioned and ask for their input. We did the same thing in the classrooms, where the children drew and had discussions about what this new playground might look like. Then we reached beyond the school community and began to find people in the broader community, particularly in the neighborhood, who we thought would be receptive and interested in supporting such an idea. And we began to have community meetings.”

The transformation began in 1992 when the San Francisco Conservation Corps began ripping out the playground’s asphalt, but the process was fraught with unexpected obstacles and equally unexpected miracles from the beginning.

“We envisioned this happening in an orderly way in phases as we got some funding,” Broussard laughs, “but after we ripped up out quite a big chunk of the asphalt, what we were left with was mud. And it was winter, and everybody was miserable, and there was no playground, and there were some very challenging points in this whole process.

Entering Tule Elk Park. In the background: a parking garage.

“But then a family who’d had a child here who had special needs discovered that we were in the process of trying to do this; they contacted a relative who happened to be connected to a construction crew whose specialty was concrete work. Over a couple of weekends, it was kind of like angels dropping from the sky: they realized this terrible situation we were in with all this dirt and mud; we found the funding for the materials, and they came and provided all the labor for this concrete work to lay out the structure of the park. They did it for free, and it was connected to this feeling that we had done this very special thing for this very special child, and they had never forgotten that.”

Over the next few years, piece by piece, the garden took shape: trees, an edible plant garden, a butterfly habitat, totem pole sculptures of native animals. Private funds paid the salary of a garden educator, an art instructor, and more. And in 1996, the Yerba Buena Children’s Center got a new name: the Tule Elk Park Child Development Center, taking its name from an animal indigenous to the area.

"Peace Pole" in the garden.

Soon Tule Elk was generating its own ripple effects, inspiring the creation of the San Francisco Green Schoolyards Alliance, which successfully campaigned for the passage of a bond initiative in 2003 to "green" other schoolyards in the city. That launched similar projects at 16 schools; a bond initiative on the 2006 ballot seeks funds to expand the program.

“Sometimes I think it’s a little nutty to do this big thing with one little school,” Broussard says. “And then I think, if one little school doesn’t do it, who will? I think we have to demonstrate that it’s possible in order for others to learn from what it is that we’re trying to do.

"That’s why I keep pushing the envelope, even though I sometimes feel, Oh my gosh, where is this going?” he laughs.

The Rex Foundation first gave Tule Elk a grant in 1994, through the Trust for Public Land, to help with the transformation from asphalt to garden. In 2006, Tule Elk received another Rex grant to help fund the ExploStation, an upcoming project demonstrating alternative energy — solar and water power — in a way that’s engaging to the kids. "Thank God for people like Rex, and for people who contribute to things like Rex, who make this possible," says Hurault.

On my Friday-afternoon visit, I learned more about Tule Elk from Broussard, Hurault and garden educator Ayesha Ercelawn.

Rex Foundation: Why is early childhood development so important?

Rita Hurault: It’s critical to all learning that comes afterwards. It’s the foundation. The child is developing at a very rapid clip in the early years; they’re getting their sense of self, they’re getting their sense of community, they’re getting their first real understanding of the broader world around them. So this is when it’s critical that they are given the tools for developing their feelings about the world, about learning and accessing knowledge, that will carry them through their whole lives.

If you build a strong foundation in the early years, where children feel that they are able learners, and that they are worthy of asking questions, if they feel connected to each other and the planet — those are things that will enable them to thrive in their schools and communities.

Rex: What sets the Tule Elk Park program apart from its more typical counterparts?

Alan Broussard: At the core of the program is the importance of relationship. We truly believe philosophically that in order to help a child learn and succeed, and help a child love to learn, we need to have a very strong relationship with each and every individual child, as well as his or her family. That’s critical. That’s one foundation piece.

Garden educator Ayesha Ercelawn working in the garden.

Another foundation piece is that we strongly believe that relevance is important in their education, and that as the Reggio Emilia philosophy (see sidebar: One Mile Deep, One Inch Wide) says, we have to pay attention to what children are paying attention to. And that if we do that, if we’re good observers of children’s behavior and their interests, then we can capitalize on what’s relevant to them. So we use a project approach; it’s an inquiry-based method based on a framework where we support children to learn about the things that they’re interested in, and to go in depth.

That is a very big contrast to the old-school rote learning method, and a very large contrast to what exists in public education today, because we’re in quite a conservative environment that’s very skills-based. There’s not a lot of thought being given to supporting children’s critical thinking skills, or analytical skills, or social-emotional skills, the kind of things I think the Fortune 500 companies are actually looking for.

The way we want kids to learn is to go one mile deep and one inch wide. Traditional education is one mile wide and one inch deep. We really want to support kids to peel those layers back, and to support them to ask the questions. It’s all about asking the right questions, because that’s what’s going to support their growth.

The third piece would be rigor: because it’s inquiry-based, there’s rigor both on the teacher and the student end, because the teacher has to be a reciprocal learner. The teacher can’t sit back and have a canned curriculum and say "Today we’re going to learn about the color red." It’s all got to be in context, and it’s got to be related to what the study is at the moment. It may require the teacher to go online; it may require the teacher to call a professional or an expert or to go to the library. Sometimes the kids want to explore something that we don’t always know a lot about."

Totem pole sculptures depicting native animals, including the Tule Elk (center).

Rex: How do you decide what to study?

Hurault: Everything comes from observing the children and seeing what it is they’re interested in. We’ve all gotten very good at having our ears to the ground and seeing "Well, what is it they’re following now? Could this be a study?"

For example, at the beginning of the summer we started to notice lots of ladybugs in the alder trees, and the kids kept coming up to Ayesha and me saying "Ladybugs, ladybugs! Look, look!" and we knew right away that OK, we’re going to study ladybugs this summer. It was right there in the children’s hands.

Rex: How long do you stick with a particular subject?

Hurault: As long as it takes. A typical project will have sustained interest over a longer period of time, but sometimes there are projects that just happen and last a couple of days. The ladybug project ended when the ladybug cycle turned and there were fewer ladybugs in the trees.

I had one incident several years ago where we were coming in for group time, and much to everybody’s surprise there was a worker trying to fix the windows. And instead of sitting facing me, they sat down facing the guy working on the windows and started peppering him with questions — because they are self-assured enough to ask questions. They are used to feeling that they have a right to ask questions and to have them answered seriously.

The man was wonderful; he stopped in his work and turned around, and I said, “Well, we have some interest here in what you’re doing; do you have time to talk to us?” He answered our questions and showed us his tools, and for the next two or three days it was essentially a mini-project on tools and window-fixing. The children would go into the block area and build things. It was great, just a spontaneous little tiny project. The kids just see themselves as investigators, and worthy of saying, “I want to know something about those windows. Will you tell me, please?”

Waiting for play time.

Rex: And you encourage this, instead of saying, That’s not on the lesson plan.

Broussard: Exactly. “We’re not on Chapter 3 today...”

Ayesha Ercelawn: Our day is like that. It’s questions. Nonstop, constantly, because they know they can ask.

Rex: So much of conventional education is about squelching you and keeping you in line and making you conform.

Broussard: And asking you a question and demanding that you know the answer. It’s very didactic, and not at all about group consciousness, higher-level thinking. We see kids creating an environment where they can learn by asking questions, versus kids who are still about waiting for the question and making sure they have the answer.

Hurault: I see it a lot with my kindergarteners and 1st graders. They seem to have it compartmentalized: “This homework page is where I want to be sure to get it right, but here, questions are good.”

Ercelawn: The time we were surveying bugs, we left it open to them, how they decided to record what they found, as opposed to saying, This is the structure in which you’re going to record and do it. You get these amazing interpretations — this kid is doing charts, and this kid is doing tally marks, and some kids are doing drawings and some kids are doing labels. It is so much more interesting, even for us to see, and they’ve got the chance to do it the way they want, the way it works for them.

Hurault: Which gives us the information about how that particular child’s brain works, how they access knowledge. It gives us more knowledge to reach them in places where maybe they’re struggling; you can go back and see, where this child chose to make circles and dashes instead of writing a number, that maybe they need more work over here, or perhaps that child is a visual learner. The more you let them express themselves in the way that’s comfortable for them, the more you understand about that child. This teaching is just a big circle.

Cape gooseberry bush in the Tule Elk Park garden.

Ercelawn And since it’s documentation and we often put it up, the kids get to see how each other chose to do it, and learn from each other. And they say, Oh, I could have circled each one. I could have done a key for it. And it’s all about roly-polies and worms, so it’s interesting! (laughs)

The new 3-year-olds are learning from the 4-year-olds and the 5-year-olds. Everybody’s teaching each other about what’s OK to do in the garden and what’s not. There’s a whole mentality here of taking care of nature; all the staff signs onto it. It would not be doable if it was just me saying it, but it’s coming from everybody.

You hear the kids now, telling each other “Hey, that’s nature. Don’t step on that ant; don’t pull all those leaves off that plant, you’re breaking that plant.” So they’re watching each other almost more than we’re watching them, which is really nice.

The kids are always showing each other things. For example, a kid may be really excited to learn about spearmint. Even if I show it to just a small group, I know word will spread during recess the next day; I know that kid can come back to the garden, and she’ll drag her friends along to share the spearmint with them. I spend a lot of time just standing around watching and listening to what they’re talking about, so I know what they’re excited about. For a year they were coming and eating spearmint — which I’m growing to make tea with, but a few of them have discovered they like chewing on the leaves.

Broussard: That whole reverence for living things — the kids come to me very, very carefully with something they’ve found, a caterpillar, a snail, and they’re very protective. They always know, because they learn from Ayesha and the staff, that it has to go back to its home. It has to return to where it was.

Another perspective on the life cycle of the ladybug,
and the bird hoping for a ladybug feast.

Ercelawn Occasionally we’ll get a new kid who’ll start here in the middle of the year, a 1st or 2nd grader, and this is their first experience of something like this. That’s when we can all tell ourselves that we’re doing something really good here, because that kid’s knowledge and empathy levels are completely different.

Our kids aren’t scared of bugs and are careful around them, and then we get a new kid in whose immediate reaction is stomp or scream. So we spend a bit of extra time with them, getting them up to speed, and they pretty much get it from the other kids really fast.

Broussard: It’s a good kind of assessment tool, understanding the depth of the appreciation, the awareness, that our kids develop, versus someone who comes in cold and starts from scratch. The beauty now, after 10 years, is to see kids who sometimes have the ability to be here from 3 all the way up until they’re 9 or 10; the body of knowledge that they just sort of naturally walk around with is quite amazing.

Ercelawn I know it’s coming up in the kids’ academic studies, but it’s not a piece of information Tule Elk park kids have just memorized. They have internalized how nature works, and they know it because they’ve watched it happen so many times — for example, that if they plant that seed it’ll probably grow. They complete that life cycle in front of me. They’ll collect a seed and say, ’Can we plant it now? And even if it’s not the season I’ll say ’YES!’ — because they made that connection right there.

Rex: According to your Web site, you have a diverse student body that speaks dozens of languages at home. What impact does that have on the learning process?

Hurault: It’s a very lively environment! The children who need to learn English pick it up very quickly, not only because they do at that age, but also because we’re child-driven, and child-interest-driven, and their interests are so compelling they tend to access the language quickly in order to get at what they want to know.

I think it’s one of the strengths of this arts-based, Reggio-based curriculum, because you get this bunch of children in the yard, and everybody is excited about the ladybugs, and everybody’s talking about the ladybugs, and the children are showing each other the ladybugs, and the word “Ladybug” is written on the wall. The children learn from the teacher, they learn from each other; and they generally pick up language very quickly.

Rex: Let’s face it, mainstream education is not very much like this. How do these kids adjust once they’re in “regular” school?

Hurault: I get down about what’s happening overall in American society. I get down very specifically about what’s happening to education for our children and how they’re being pressured; the focus seems to be about beating each other out from the get-go. You’ve got to compete to get into the right nursery school, because if you don’t get into the right nursery school you’re not going to get into Stanford, and if you don’t get into Stanford your life is over because you won’t be able to have five cars. The whole thing gets so crazy.

There is a quote of Gandhi’s: “Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.” I feel that the early years are our chance. This is the time we have to save the soul (laughs), you know? This is when we can influence them, and the future, the most.

By giving them the foundation we’re giving them, by having this program, by children having a year or two of this experience — I can’t help but believe it changes them forever. That there’s some critical positive little kernel that’s placed in there. No matter what else happens in the rest of their lives, they’ve had this little bright shining moment where things really mattered.

We have children here whose parents work at the various embassies. We have a Russian child in our class right now, and the family’s going back in November. I asked his dad what school is like there, and he said they do not have the attention to the individual the way we do here. I could see he was feeling really torn about having to leave, because his child has been here for two or three years now, and he’s going to go from this environment to a very, very different one.

I worry for him. But I am also hopeful that this experience that he’s had here is something he will always have to draw on, and always remember that there are adults in the world who will listen to you, and hear you in your particular concerns, and help you follow your particular interests — and that those things are worthy.

Oak tree in the Tule Elk Park garden

So you know, every tiny spark you put out there in the world, every tiny seed you plant — you just keep planting those seeds and hoping they come out the right way. We nurture them all we can, but at some point, off they go. You do what you can do.

The kids in my class going to school are transforming their worlds. Right now one of our feeder schools is digging up part of their asphalt to create a garden. It happened because the parents are aware of this environment and what is happening here, and the teachers there became interested in what is possible. There’s a growing movement to have this kind of environment for urban children. The sidewalk is sort of cracking, and the grass is coming through here and there.

“Sometimes I think it’s a little nutty to do this big thing with one little school. And then I think, if one little school doesn’t do it, who will? I think we have to demonstrate that it’s possible in order for others to learn from what it is that we’re trying to do.” – Alan Broussard

One Mile Deep
One Inch Wide

“The way we want kids to learn is to go one mile deep and one inch wide. Traditional education is one mile wide and one inch deep. We really want to support kids to peel those layers back, and to support them to ask the questions. It’s all about asking the right questions, because that’s what’s going to support their growth.”
– Alan Broussard

Impromptu study of gravity.

Tule Elk Park’s educational philosophy is derived from the Reggio Emilia schools in Italy, which emphasize community involvement, continuous learning by teachers and students, and, above all, a course of study driven by what interests the children at the time.

Whatever the chosen subject — which, at Tule Elk, has included interests as varied as alternative energy, paper, tea, and ladybugs — it becomes the context in which kids acquire knowledge and develop skills.

Rita Hurault with her class's
self-portraits and ladybug art.

So, for example, for Rita Hurault’s kindergarteners and 1st graders, ladybugs became the gateway to learning about words and language (from the word "ladybug" on), numbers (counting ladybugs and recording the results), and science (observing the life cycle and day-to-day behavior of ladybugs, and how they fit into the surrounding natural environment).

Observational drawing of ladybugs,
their life cycle, and predators.

Art is integral to the entire process, as the kids observe the ladybugs going about their lives and record what they’ve seen. The art they create not only shows what they’ve learned, but allows them to share knowledge with each other, to appreciate different styles of perception and expression. And, working with the art instructor, the children helped create ceramic tile murals recording what they’ve learned about a particular subject, leaving a permanent legacy of their learning for those who come after them at Tule Elk.

Rita Hurault greets her students as
they arrive for their after-school
program at Tule Elk.

“The kids are always showing each other things. For example, a kid may be really excited to learn about spearmint. Even if I show it to just a small group, I know word will spread during recess the next day; I know that kid can come back to the garden, and she’ll drag her friends along to share the spearmint with them.” – Tule Elk garden educator Ayesha Ercelawn

Digging in the dirt.

Rex Board Perspective

Executive Director Sandy Sohcot says:

When I visited Tule Elk, I was immediately struck by the beauty of the outdoor area, with all the different spaces for the children to play, engage in learning and demonstrate their creativity.

Then I talked with Alan and Rita about the program. Having taught 3^rd– 4^th and 5^th– 6th grades back in 1970 and 1971, I knew that Tule Elk was providing a special gift to not only to the students and their families, but also to the teachers and other staff connected with the school.

I have a deep personal conviction that nourishing the minds and spirit of our children is one of the most important responsibilities we all have to ensure the well-being and richness of our communities.

To encourage children to observe the world around them, to appreciate and think about the interconnections of all things, and be enthusiastic about questioning and learning as much as possible, is a tremendous boost to promoting their healthy development, and, ultimately the health and vibrancy of our culture as a whole.

Teacher Rita Hurault: “If you build a strong foundation in the early years, where children feel that they are able learners, and that they are worthy of asking questions, if they feel connected to each other and the planet — those are things that will enable them to thrive in their schools and communities.”

Rita Hurault: “The children who need to learn English pick it up very quickly, not only because they do at that age, but also because we’re child-driven, and child-interest-driven, and their interests are so compelling they tend to access the language quickly in order to get at what they want to know.”

Preparing to gather dirt, leaves and rocks.

Rita Hurault: “There is a quote of Gandhi’s: 'Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.' I feel that the early years are our chance. This is the time we have to save the soul (laughs), you know? This is when we can influence them, and the future, the most.“

Suggestions for Further Reading by Tule Elk

Reggio Emilia
Official Web site

"The Best Kept Secret This Side of Italy," by Gary Stager
District Administration Magazine

Reggio Emilia Book Lis t

Engaging Children's Minds: The Project Approach, Lilian G. Katz, Sylvia C. Chard

All Kinds of Minds, Melvin D. Levine

A Mind at a Time, Mel Levine

Photos by Mary Eisenhart

Ambassadors of Hope and Opportunity

2006-11-02T10:40:00.000-08:00

Ambassadors
of Hope and Opportunity

By David Large

“You are not a human being in search of spiritual experience. You are a spiritual being immersed in a human experience.” — Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Generation Y – Everyone wants them when they have money to spend. It’s all about “market share.” But what about the ones who aren’t even in “the market”? They’re the subset that no one wants to talk about – the ones who are homeless, or high school dropouts, or juvenile hall parolees, or “aged out” foster kids, or runaways. They are not going to college. They do not have jobs.

And these young adults are “off the grid” – they are not being counted in the Census or by any single Marin County agency. They don’t have cell phones. They don’t have a mailing address. They don’t have email. They don’t have driver’s licenses or cars. They are sleeping on friends’ couches, camped out in the hill above Boyd Park, sleeping in parked cars and who knows where else, doing everything they can to hide from our view and help Marin keep them a secret.

But you’ve probably seen a few of them – hanging outside of Starbucks on Fourth Street in San Rafael, or napping in the grass across the street; gathered on the Promenade in Fairfax, or on the benches of just about any park in Marin. You’ve probably dismissed them as drug addicts and kept your distance. But few of them are drug addicts, they’re just homeless.

For a lot of different reasons, these young adults don’t have family support or adult guidance. No one is encouraging them to go to college. No one is trying to get them off the streets. No one is trying to keep them out of prison. No one is helping them get a job. No one is helping them learn the life skills they need to survive. No one is listening to them.

Actually, that’s not quite true – the Ambassadors of Hope and Opportunity Project (AHO) is trying. But we need your help.

— Ambassadors of Hope and Opportunity

James Hayes, Molly Kron and Zara Babitzke spread the word at a community event sponsored by software company Autodesk.

A Rex beneficiary this year, Ambassadors of Hope and Opportunity is an innovative, all-volunteer program that provides support to homeless young adults (ages 18 to 25) in Marin County, California, just north of San Francisco.

Since incorporating in January 2005, AHO has produced four groundbreaking community forums that brought together business and political leaders, individuals, parents, youth, and various organizations to focus on the growing issue of homelessness among youth in the county. Through these forums, AHO has recruited 13 “Parent Partners” who are willing to act as host families for homeless youth.

The people AHO seeks to help include young people without families, or whose family ties have been severed, military veterans without family support, and teenagers in the child services system — mental health, social services, special education, juvenile services and residential placement as well as foster care — who are about to exit the system and face living independently, often with few coping skills and little knowledge of such basics as how to apply for a job. AHO’s founder and Executive Director, Zara Babitzke, Molly Kron, AHO’s Youth Program Advisor, and James Hayes, the Youth Outreach Advisor, all have had personal experience with living as a teenager adrift in the world, and this helps them relate to homeless young people, who are often disillusioned by and distrustful of institutionalized efforts to help them.

AHO is on the forefront of grassroots efforts to deal with homelessness. Currently it receives no local, state or federal funding; instead, AHO has reached out to individuals, business and the larger community to provide the funding for the “hand up” and safety net of stable housing, guidance and community connections it provides to youth in need.

Recently Rex talked with Zara Babitzke about her unique program.

AHO founder Zara Babitzke with Youth Outreach Advisor James Hayes

Rex Foundation: Tell us more about the “Parent Partners.” We understand that the young people live in the sponsoring families’ homes for as long as six months, and that you have placed young people with four families so far. How did you find them, and what has their experience been with the program?

Zara Babitzke, Ambassadors of Hope and Opportunity: Through our forums, we have recruited 13 Parent Partners who are willing to act as host families for a homeless youth.

In our first year, we have had 85 referrals and piloted a program with four youth who were previously homeless. Four host families provided stable housing for these young adults.

Host families commit to housing one young adult for up to six months and to providing the crucial first step toward the stability necessary to begin to build a healthy and meaningful life. While matched with a host family, the young person is also matched with a life coach, who helps them begin their journey of envisioning, planning and actualizing a new lifestyle and future of hope.

The life coaches meet one on one with youth for four to six hours weekly, helping them develop their individualized transition plan with guidance in identifying, accessing and navigating the barriers to resources that match their educational, job and life goals.

Youth, host families and life coaches are matched according to lifestyle, interests, personality traits, and other characteristics that are important for the best match.

All four youth who were in the AHO pilot program are currently living in apartments with peers, with the support of a life coach and peer mentor. They have jobs, and are working toward their education goals. A unique aspect of our program is that these youth are now themselves peer mentors to others who are currently homeless.

James Hayes and Brian Latady

Rex: You seem to have profound faith in the power of every young person’s inner spirit, regardless of how much they have been beaten down by circumstances and “the system.” Where does that come from?

AHO: Growing up, I was essentially one of these youth myself. Although I knew my parents, they did not have the capacity to guide me, provide emotional support, and acknowledge me as a unique and worthwhile person. My father’s alcoholism and abuse, and my mother’s abandonment and neglect, left me confused, afraid, vulnerable and deeply disconnected from my inner essence and spirit. I longed for someone who could really “see” me and believe in me, someone who would inspire me, and a place where I could belong and feel safe.

What I was searching for in those critical adolescent years is, I believe, a basic human need. With the Baby Boom generation approaching their 60s and 70s, in less than a decade the current generation of business, government, and organizational leaders will be retired. We need to nurture the strengths and gifts of today’s youth to become the leaders of the future for our children and grandchildren. It is important that we value youth’s voice, and support and inspire them to become the leaders of the future.

Another contributing factor to my belief in the power of the spirit was a family tragedy involving my younger sister. My sister, a single mom with two children, had brain surgery at age 32 that left her without her physical, verbal and other communication functions. I became the conservator, and the sole support of my niece and nephew. After six weeks in intensive care, professional evaluations by a team of doctors and therapists were completed, with the prognosis that there was “no hope” for her and she would “never be a mother.”

The medical professionals decided that there was no further point in providing any therapy and the other supports she needed because she would never speak, walk, write, read or be able to have a meaningful life. I realized at that moment that without an advocate or family support, my sister would have been discarded by the system. None of those professionals knew what I knew about my sister — her strong and powerful spirit. I knew my sister would prevail if she received the necessary services and therapies she needed. It was my job to advocate for the support she needed at this critical time when she was unable to do this for herself. The result is, after years of care she has defied all the odds. Today she has a normal, healthy life and is giving back to the community by supporting others who are facing their own life crises. Her basic communication skills have returned. She exercises, walks daily and is an inspiration to all who meet her.

This tragedy with my sister was my initiation into “the system” of social services. Just as I realized that my sister, without family, or a caring advocate, would have been discarded by “the system,” I see the same thing happening with our young adults today. Youth who have no voice are vulnerable; they have no political power, and with no caring adult to believe in them, are being discounted and discarded by society.

I know from my own experiences, and from what might have happened to my sister, that the human spirit is the strongest force in determining whether someone will beat the odds. It is the human spirit in all of us that can make miracles happen.

Zara Babitzke and Molly Kron

Rex: A unique aspect of your program is that your staff have all had personal experience with life as a teen set adrift. How did you find these people, and what futures do they see for themselves?

AHO: I believe that AHO’s mission and message are universal. They touch the hearts of many people who have felt invisible, unheard, discounted, abandoned or abused in their own lives, individuals who are just waiting for the opportunity to stop that from happening to anyone else. They are looking for a way to give back and make a difference. Through community forums and intensive outreach throughout the County, individuals who have had similar or difficult childhoods are moved to step in and help AHO leave a different legacy for our youth in the future.

Rex: Marin County is one of the wealthiest counties in the state, if not the country. How do you reach people who believe that “we don’t have a homeless problem here”?

AHO: It’s truly been our biggest challenge, but we are definitely making inroads into that mindset in Marin.

To illustrate the challenge, the County created a visionary team of nonprofits and individuals to design the County’s Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness. AHO was not included on that committee, and yet, there were no organizations advocating for the largest growing homeless population — young adults ages 14 to 25, who represent 40% of the growing homeless population, according to the 2000 Census. AHO is the only organization I know of whose sole mission is preventing the growing population of homeless among at-risk youth.

I tenaciously lobbied to have AHO included on that committee; we were eventually included, but it was difficult.

So you see, we are educating the entire community about this issue — one day, one speaking engagement, one news article, one committee meeting at a time. AHO youth and myself have met one or more times with the political leaders in the County — Director of Health and Human Services, Marin Community Foundation, all of the Board of Supervisors, the Director of Marin County Office of Education, Chambers of Commerce, Rotaries, and Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey. In addition to our four community forums, we did a Comcast cable interview, and there have been 10 feature articles in local papers, including Pacific Sun, Marin Independent-Journal, North Bay Business Journal, NewsMarin, Marin Magazine, Mill Valley Herald, and Southern Marin Business Expo.

Zara Babitzke and James Evans with Comcast host Terri Hardesty;
taking the message to community TV.

Rex: You’ve been in operation for just one year, but you have already garnered all that publicity. How have you managed this?

AHO: With commitment, dedication, persistence and tenacity and a true belief in the spirit, wisdom and capacity of today’s youth. I feel I have been led to educate and bring light to this issue.

As the founder of AHO, I believe that all young adults, regardless of their histories, have the compassion, wisdom and soul to become responsible future leaders if they have the hand up and safety net they need through the critical transition from adolescence to adulthood. However, without a safety net at this important juncture in their lives, they will not be able to actualize their potential.

Also, I believe that my entire life experiences (personal, educational and business) have led me to this mission with youth. This includes my own family experiences, my direct experience in marketing, public relations, and building enduring individual and community relationships.

Rex: Your budget is very modest. How do you manage to do so much with so little?

AHO: AHO has been an all-volunteer effort (33 volunteers in all, including myself) since its inception last year. Our successes to date have been driven by the 24/7 intense commitment, dedication, passion, and heart-and-soul belief of those 33 volunteers that the future of our culture depends on harnessing, supporting and nurturing the gifts and strengths of our youth.

In spite of this commitment, however, we are at a critical crossroad, and will need to generate more funding to move to the next level of our Host Family, Life Coach and Peer Mentor programs.

Austin Willacy's Youth A Capella Group Til' Dawn performs at AHO fundraiser.

Rex: What would you like the readers of this piece to learn about the homeless youth problem, not only in Marin County, but also nationally, that they may not have appreciated before?

AHO: This issue is not going away on its own. The problem has been building over the last 10 years, and has not been adequately addressed.

The transition to adulthood during the past 40 years has become more protracted and difficult for most youth, who continue to depend on their parents for financial help, health insurance, or a place to live between jobs, well into their 20s. Yet, not all parents have the resources to offer these supports, and still others face even greater demands because their children have physical, mental, or behavioral problems.

More striking, some youth have no families at all to fall back on. These vulnerable youth — those with mental or physical disabilities, those with pasts in the juvenile justice or criminal justice systems, those leaving special education programs, those aging out of foster care, and those young adults who are homeless — are on their own without a safety net.

Some of the challenges youth are facing today are considered in the recent book On Your Own Without a Net by Osgood et al. This is an excellent resource for those interested in learning more about this subject.

Rex Board Perspective

Executive Director Sandy Sohcot says:

“Jonathan Frieman called me regarding AHO. Jonathan has been a longstanding supporter of our events and very active in community issues, so the fact that he himself was so involved with AHO compelled my immediate desire to learn more about the program.

“I felt that AHO’s work was particularly important for Rex to support because AHO was helping address what is otherwise one of the most troublesome concerns in our society right now — youth falling through the cracks and becoming lost in a downward spiral.

“I went to an AHO event and met one of the young men who had been helped by AHO. He told me he was now attending the University of San Diego, an option he might not have had without AHO. Seeing this bright young person doing so well, as opposed to being lost, affirmed that we must do all we can to nurture our youth to be healthy, engaged members of the community. I am glad that the Rex Foundation is not only supporting AHO, but also bringing more attention to this critical issue that affects all of us.”

Molly Kron
Youth Program Advisor

Once homeless herself, she now helps others at AHO

“I am a recent graduate of Dominican University, and was born and raised in the urban setting of Denver, Colorado. At the age of 14 I dropped out of school and ran away from home more times than one would care to count. Eventually I found myself living on the streets and hopping from couch to couch, whenever possible, for nearly two years. During the last six months of that experience with homelessness, I become involved with an organization like AHO whose purpose it was to help mobilize homeless youth in order to remove them from their current way of life. Because of this support network, I was eventually able to reconnect with my family and became actively involved in education.

“I heard about AHO and met Zara through my professor at Dominican University in March of 2005, while completing my thesis on government policy regarding youth and child homelessness. Since then, I have both sought out guidance from Zara, and seek to assist her in the development of the Ambassadors of Hope Project, especially with the peer mentor program of AHO.

“Currently, I am facing the reality of life in transition since graduating from Dominican. I am dealing with similar uncertainties that I experienced six years ago when I was homeless. Today however, contrary to my past experiences with homelessness, I have the support, guidance and safety net that I did not have previously, and because of this, I have been able to formulate a plan to attain long-term, stable housing. I hope to help other youth at AHO on their own path to a better life.”

“The transition to adulthood during the past 40 years has become more protracted and difficult for most youth, who continue to depend on their parents for financial help, health insurance, or a place to live between jobs, well into their 20s. Yet, not all parents have the resources to offer these supports.”
— Zara Babitzke, AHO

Brian Latady

Helped by AHO, he’s now attending college

“Born in the Orwellian 1984, I grew up in Los Altos Hills, California. My parents divorced when I was almost 10. It became completely clear that I was depressed when I was 14, about freshman year of high school. It got to the point that I wasn’t attending classes at all; I would just be at home, in bed, feeling like I was falling deeper and deeper into my despair. I battled two years with CFS (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome). I was sent to school counselors at first, tested, and then the private therapist visits began. We were going to doctors for the CFS, and psychiatrists and psychologists for my now mounting diagnoses (currently it’s: the ADD form of ADHD, Clinical Depression, Social Anxiety Disorder, OCD, and Bipolar Disorder, Type II).

“I went from school to school, and eventually landed in a SED program at Lynbrook High School near Saratoga, California. About a year and a half into my time there, my mother called the police and told them she was worried that I would commit suicide… Imagine my surprise when six police officers file into my house and up into my room. They seemed to think it was necessary to have me hospitalized. So I was taken to the county hospital for some observation. I was there on September 11, 2001, and then I was shipped off to Herrick, the Psych part of Alta Bates Hospital in Berkeley, California, for about a month.

“From there, after just turning 17, I was sent to an all-male 'residential treatment center.' When that place closed down a year later, I went off to another 'residential treatment center,' Sunny Hills. At that point, I was 18, and when I graduated high school that was my aging out point, when my funding ended and I had no place to go next. Sunny Hills placed me back with my father (which was not a healthy situation for me, either before or after residential placement). Eventually Sunny Hills started a transitional housing program, where I met Zara, who had been hired to design and manage that program.

“With stable housing and the support and guidance of Zara, I began going to the College of Marin and figuring out how to survive on my own. Within a year in this housing, Sunny Hills closed the program and I was out on the streets again. It was at this point Zara started the Ambassadors of Hope and Opportunity to provide a safety net of housing and support for youth like myself who would be otherwise homeless.

“Through AHO, the care of Zara, I was given the opportunity to live with one of AHO’s host families, and begin solidifying myself as an adult in this world, with all the entailed responsibilities. With AHO’s continued support, guidance and community connections I am hoping to enter UC Berkeley in the next two years and work in the field of BioInfomatics.”

"Youth who have no voice are vulnerable; they have no political power, and with no caring adult to believe in them are being discounted and discounted and discarded by society.”
— Zara Babitzke, AHO

Cost-Effective Help

In February 2006, Rex gave AHO a grant of $5,000 — the amount it takes to keep a young adult in the program for a year. Because of AHO’s large volunteer base and community alliances, that money goes a long way. It provides a year of healthcare, stable living, a host family, life coach mentors, money management and savings support, education, clothing, transportation, internships and jobs — and the all-important security deposit on an apartment.

Contrast that with AHO's estimate of the annual costs commonly incurred by homeless youth without a safety net: homeless shelter, $23,400; jail, $60,000 for juveniles and $26,690 for adults; psychiatric facility, $208,050. All are costs that can be avoided, AHO points out, by helping homeless youth now, before their problems reach crisis levels.

“With the Baby Boom generation approaching their 60s and 70s, in less than a decade the current generation of business, government, and organizational leaders will be retired. We need to nurture the strengths and gifts of today’s youth to become the leaders of the future for our children and grandchildren. It is important that we value youth’s voice, and support and inspire them to become the leaders of the future.”
— Zara Babitzke, AHO

Statistics on Youth Leaving the Child Services System

Within 2-4 years of leaving the child services system (foster care, community mental health, social services, special education, juvenile services and residential placement):

35% are homeless
40% are on public assistance
50% are unemployed
25% of the males are incarcerated
50% of the girls have given birth

Sources
• National Runaway Switchboard
• Bay Area Social Services Consortium Research
• Assemblywoman Karen Bass’s Select Committee on Foster Care
• Honoring Emancipated Youth (HEY)

According to the 2000 Census, young adults ages 14 to 25 represent 40% of the growing homeless population.

“All four youth who were in the AHO pilot program are currently living in apartments with peers, with the support of a life coach. They have jobs, and are working toward their education goals. A unique aspect of our program is that these youth are now themselves peer mentors to others who are currently homeless.”
— Zara Babitzke, AHO

Kids Helping Kids
Philanthropist Jonathan Frieman on AHO

By Mary Eisenhart

Marin County philanthropist and community activist Jonathan Frieman, a longtime Rex supporter, first suggested Ambassadors of Hope and Opportunity as a possible Rex grantee.

Eight years ago, Frieman was putting his law degree to work at the Homeless Advocacy Project in San Francisco, and decided he needed to experience the reality of homeless life for himself. So, with a few companions, he left his money behind and lived on the streets of downtown Los Angeles.

It was, he said, an eye-opening time. “Even though one’s needs are very simple, it’s still a very stressful experience,” he recalls, "not the least because of the attitude towards homelessness that society has, which is that those people are good for nothing and they should just get a job, and they’re drug addicts.”

In fact, he says, a fair number of homeless people actually do have jobs. “Those are the invisible homeless,” he says. And, as with AHO’s clients, who for various reasons aren’t on the radar of more conventional homeless services, “we don’t see them on the streets. It could be a family has been living paycheck to paycheck, and they got that one bill, a medical bill usually, that they couldn’t handle. So the father goes out on the streets; the mother and maybe one of the kids goes and stays with a friend; maybe the other kid goes with one of the grandparents. The father works until they can save enough to get another place. That’s still stressful, because everybody’s apart, they’re not in the home unit.”

One day a couple of years ago, he got a phone call from Zara Babitzke, who was in the process of launching AHO. She’d read a profile the Marin Independent-Journal had done on Frieman, and decided he was the one to help her get started. “I start nonprofits, and she was starting one. I work with kids, and she works with kids. At that point I was starting to get somewhat known in the County and had some contacts, and I just helped her out in that regard. She’s got a vision. She saw a need and went ahead to fulfill it. It’s something that I just felt needed some strong support.”

Frieman, who went on to join AHO’s advisory board, marvels at the force of Babitzke’s vision and her effectiveness in bringing together a large coalition of business, healthcare and community groups to help out — including such groups as the Chamber of Commerce and the Board of Realtors, not usually associated with helping the homeless. “It’s a coup,” Frieman says. “That’s her.”

What makes AHO’s program successful, he says, is that it’s based on formerly homeless kids helping their peers. “It’s these kids helping each other, and it has to be that, necessarily so, because they’re the ones who are going to know who’s out there. It really is an invisible group. That’s one of the things that does set AHO apart: it’s these youth helping these youth. They mentor each other. It’s a group of people trying to help each other.”

"I believe that AHO’s mission and message touch the hearts of many people who have felt invisible, unheard, discounted, abandoned or abused in their own lives, individuals who are just waiting for the opportunity to stop that from happening to anyone else. Through community forums and intensive outreach throughout the County, they are moved to step in and help AHO leave a different legacy for our youth in the future.”
— Zara Babitzke, AHO

TJ, Zara Babitzke, James Hayes, Molly Kron, Brian Latady

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