Tim's Going to Kenya

OK. So I take off on Monday morning for Kenya. That's in 3 days. Got a few things to do.

I'm traveling with a team from The 1010 Project, a humanitarian organization here in Denver. We partner with creative and innovative social entrepreneurs in the developing world to break the cycle of poverty. As the Fundraising Coordinator, a big part of my job is writing the grants that help keep us trucking along. But to write good grants, and to keep our international development work running smoothly, we need DATA.

We're going to Kenya to meet with partners and friends in our community-based organizations. They're mostly in Nairobi, scattered across the various slums and estates, but we do have a few rural partners as well. We'll be going all the way out to Kisumu near Lake Victoria. We're collecting boatloads of photos, lots of video and audio, and most importantly, stories. We view ourselves as storytellers - our tagline is "Join the Story" - and we're going to talk with the people that our income-generation activities benefit. We'll be visiting schools, orphanges, microfinance institutions, women's empowerment groups, and HIV/AIDS support groups.

I've never been to Africa, but I hear good things. Our team is super-talented and super-cool, so I don't expect any problems. I'll be tweeting along with our Director of Communications, Mark Mann. With luck, we'll be tweeting like mad by next Wednesday morning, or for those of you in Denver, late Tuesday night (there is a 10-hour time difference). So stay sharp, keep up with us, and we'll see you when we get back!

poverty, the 1010 project, africa, kenya, mark mann, twitter

Why I Like Sci-Fi

Found a neat little clip from Babylon 5 (you might remember it from back in the day - "our last, best hope for peace") while ignoring my final for Modern Islamic Political Theory. I think it's a great reminder of how diverse and interesting our planet is:

interfaith, religion, future

Graduate School

A few months back, I read (with a somewhat horrified face) and commented on Penelope Trunk's Brazen Careerist post "Don't try to dodge the recession with grad school." It's a silly post, really, full of lovely little bits of wisdom like "Law school is a factory for depressives" or "Going to grad school is like going into the military." I usually enjoy Penelope's stuff, if for nothing else than her honest, self-effacing style. This post was different.

My comments were less than supportive. Her gist was that graduate degrees require overinvestment of both money and time. Money, being tight in a recession, is pretty important. Time, according to her, can best be spent at other jobs, even those outside one's experience or comfort level. We are reminded of people who try something different and in doing "figure out what they always wanted to do but didn't know they wanted to do but can now do with their whole heart." She recounts working on a French chicken farm and the non-traditional learning that she did while working in the coop. It helped her along her path.

I stand now at the end of two years of graduate school at a prestigious school and an even more prestigious program. I'm dozens of thousands of dollars in the hole. I couldn't be happier.

When I completed a year-long resident fellowship after finishing my undergraduate work, I knew that my skillsets were incomplete. I needed to know how to do interesting things. I needed to meet interesting people. Something told me that graduate school would guide me. And it did - I've made some outstanding connections, professional and nonprofessional, that will serve me very well in the future. I've made friends. I coordinate fundraising and social media for a local humanitarian organization (as it turns out, I have a passion for international development). I can write grants and I know the social web pretty well. I have a job waiting for me in San Jose, CA where I'll be working to eradicate malaria.

Did I spend two years well? Sure! Could I have done so more cheaply and still found my passion(s)? Certainly! Now I refer back to Penelope's post and think even less of it. Graduate school shouldn't be for everybody, but to come out and lambaste it (with plenty of support - check the comments) is shortsighted. I don't know a single person who's dodged the recession by furthering their education and networking, and I doubt that I ever will.

"the 1010 project", penelope trunk, graduate school, recession, brauhn

Standard "I Haven't Blogged in a While" Post

I haven't blogged in a while.

blog, time

Eradicating Malaria With the Tony Blair Faith Foundation

Hello web-friends,

I have been appointed to my dream job and I need your help to make it rock.

I have been selected to join the Faiths Act Fellows, a cadre of 30 young interfaith leaders in the US, UK, and Canada who will spend August 2009-June 2010 working to promote malaria eradication. This is a brand-new program which will operate under the auspices of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation (yes, THAT Tony Blair) and the Interfaith Youth Core. It's all fantastically exciting! I'll be traveling to London at the end of July (farewell, Denver) for induction and training. Then it's off to a malaria hotspot in Africa for on-the-ground work. We finish with training in Chicago. I report for duty to the Islamic Networks Group in San Jose, CA on October 1st. My job will be recruiting faith communities, and especially young people of faith, to work towards malaria eradication. Getting rid of this wicked mosquito-borne sickness can be done!

It goes without saying that I will utilize the fluid world of social media in order to reach these goals. I blog, tweet, and share most things, so this will be no different. I will be relying on my network (all of you) to help me spread the word and find kinds of people who can partner with me to get things done.

I'm short on the finer points and details, and for that I apologize. As a first order of business, I need to know ANYTHING about San Jose. My first ever trip to California is this Saturday when I attend the Nonprofit Technology Conference, so any advice/thoughts are welcome.

Post what you will, and send this one far and wide - the more, the merrier!

social media, technology, twitter, facebook, ntc, ntc09, nonprofit, malaria, tony blair, tony blair faith foundation, malaria no more, interfaith youth core, tbff, ifyc

Leadership vs. Leading

In most of the projects that I've been involved with, I've found that there are often severe gulfs between what I would call "being a leader" and "leadership as such." We've all been on both sides of this divide: we either are leaders or we are led by them. Here are a few of the distinctions that I've seen when I've had to fill a leadership role:

1. Leadership as such - In this case, we'll say that I've undertaken a large project. I am leading a team of folks (usually students like myself). During our meetings, I provide lots of good ideas and excitement. I can bring experience and networking. I delegate and decide and draw up plans for the team. At the end of our meetings, we go through our to-do lists and run out the door shouting our enthusiasm.

And no one does anything. The to-do lists do not get fulfilled. Meetings don't get scheduled. Forms aren't filed. I fail - I fail the team.

Now let's see the other side:

2. Being a leader - My group and I have undertaken a large project. Although I am leading the group, my real job is simply to steer our collective energy. We bounce around ideas to all groups members. We make lists and figure out where our individual strengths reside. We draw on all of our talents to construct a big-picture that we can move on as a unit. At the end of the meeting, we know what we have to do.

And it all gets done, and done well. Things come together because the team as a team has congealed. Who the leader is doesn't matter. What the team has done matters. If things don't turn out well, it's the team as a whole that needs to change something. We can learn.

It has taken me a long list of small failures to realize these things, but it's important to remember that true leaders don't so much point and command as empower and support.

Flickr photo courtesy of Dunechaser.

leadership, leader, project

Those Strange Happy Days (selfish post)

And there are mornings when, sitting in my chair by the window reading, in this case, an intellectual history of the birth of modern sociology, I'll set my book down, take a sip of warm tea and breathe deeply (usually nag champa fumes) - everything goes crystalline.

I've often wondered if it's some strange combination of "upper" hormones and sunlight, or if the post-rock Icelandic crooning that I'm listening to is somehow changing the way my mind orders priorities. In doing so, I've found that I don't really care how it happens, how I can have these moments of stunningly happy clarity and sense of purpose. I do know that as I stand here typing this post, it takes every fiber of my being to not shout with joy and run outside toward the sun.

There's nothing in my existence that suggests I lead anything less than a charmed life, and while there is always a part of me that says, "Stop talking so much about how happy you are!" the fact remains: Every day is an explosion.

Whew. I've got great friends, great family, pets (they live 900 miles away, sadly), my health, plenty of tea, and an overwhelming, perhaps uncomfortably, optimistic future-view.

I'm riding a smile-boat on an ocean of unicorns and stardust, and doing what I can to bring that feeling to those around me. Keep up the good work, everybody. We're all in this together.

feelings, future, optimism, happy, unicorn