Daniela Papi's Blog

I have had a great time blogging here on the Delaying the Real World site. I want to thank Colleen and her wonderful book for inspiring me, and so many others. I also want to thank Peter and all those at Perseus Books and Running Press for making this fellowship possible. There are many fellowships out there, but few which support adventurous ideas from us 20 somethings. This fellowship is a great idea, and I look forward to following the adventures of many fellowship winners to come.

Thank you for reading as I sent my thoughts and frustrations out into cyberville. I'm off to work for an awesome active travel company for the summer.... can't wait! Working at a computer has enabled me to accomplish a lot this year, but let's be honest, delaying those real world work habits isn't so bad! I'm off to delay until I head back to Cambodia in September to continue to run PEPY. Join us on a tour someday! www.pepyride.org

Ciao!

I did a presentation at my old middle school today, the "opening ceremony speech" for their "Wellness Day." Overall, it went better than I had expected, and I was impressed with the questions and comments from the students.

Doing research for the talk, I had to reflect on my own time in middle school and my perception of the world from then to now. I realized that now I have a much greater understanding of the value of education. I grew up in an affluent NYC suburb, and our public schools are some of the best in the country. I now realize that my schooling, even at their age, was in the top 1% of the world.... of the WORLD! That is even hard for me to grasp now, after seeing many areas which prove that.

We talked about living and working through our passions and looking past salary in our career goals as overall "wellness", as the day was titled, and happiness are contingent on that. I also added some quotes which I think relate to these topics:

"Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you feel like you have come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."
- Harold Whitman

"We are waking to the idea that if business inevitably shapes the future, it has a responsibility to choose what that future will be."
Fast Company - Social Capitalist Awards

In the afternoon I led a workshop titled "The World is a Village" based on the "if the world were 100 people" concept. We did an activity my friend Thao used to do in her classes, and we set up 10 chairs to represent all of the money in the world and 10 people to represent all of the people in the world. You know, if the stats I used are right, if we each got our own chair, the average income per person in the world would be $6,500 and the average cost of living (for basic needs) $4,500. Interesting....

Once I gave the lucky lady representing the wealthiest top 10% of the world 7 chairs and forced everyone else to squish onto the remaining three, the 6th graders started getting into their own little debate.

"Why don't people in poor countries just start making businesses and making more money?"

"If those are all the chairs there are, does that mean the top 10% people have to give up money if the people squished over there are going to get more?"

"Why don't we drop money down in those places, like on parachutes?"

"No silly. If we add more money, the value of all the money will go down, it's called inflation dude." (!!)

"If we travel, we go shopping, and that helps people."

"But, if we travel we have to think about where we give our money because like when we stay at the Hilton it's different then a Bed & Breakfast."

They were awesome. I enjoyed watching them discuss the topics we covered from corruption to capitalism. Impressive middle schoolers - surely the top 1% in terms of privilege :-)

I left reminding them that, as the leaders of tomorrows business, they have the "responsibility to choose what that future will be." I hope they choose to continue to question like they did today.

Imagine this trend of philanthropy being "fashionable" resulting in a new generation of social entrepreneurs as the norm of business. We'd have to all give Angelina more credit for her life after Tomb Raider ;-)

Yesterday I had the most uplifting and inspiring two hours of my year. I've had a good year, so this was really great :-)

I joined my friend Jane's ESL class - a subsidized evening class where, for about $1 per session of the 10 week course, people can sign up to learn English. I joined the class as the "Mystery Guest." I walked into a class room of smiles and eyes full of inquiry, and everyone was eager to ask the first question to try to figure out who I was. For the first hour I answered intelligent thought-felt questions one after the other. They REALLY were interested, "How does the community react to you being there?" "How do they view the occidental world?" (Even Jane was impressed with the vocabulary they were pulling out!)

After the break, they told me about themselves. They were from Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, and Brazil. I assume their ages were about 20-60. They told me they had come here to make money, to support their families, to pursue a better life. Some of them spoke about America as a dream land, the land of the free, a place that they love. It had been a long time since I had heard America described in such idealist language, and was glad to hear some people still believed in the "American Dream". Others of course spoke about providing for their children and raising them here in the US but how those children no longer understand the value of working hard. I can relate....

I spent yesterday morning at a wealthy middle school in the area. To their credit, we all know that middle school-ers globally are at the age where they care much more about girls or boys than they do about learning. During my presentation, most were engaged, and some asked thoughtful questions, but they were out the door without much of a bye already back into normal middle school flirt mode within seconds ;-) I hope some of what I said resonated with them, but I'm not sure.

With the evening ESL class, there were at least 3 times during the two hours where I almost started to cry. They kept thanking me and congratulating me and telling me how proud they were of me and how they wanted to do something similar too, but I kept thinking how impressed and moved I was by THEM and how thet WERE doing the development work they dreamed of, but on a more personal and day to day level. They work SO hard to provide for their families, SO hard. Some of the women were cleaning ladies, the men painters. Others janitors or nannies. One woman spoke about how, when she was a very young child, three western girls came to their village for a few months, taught them English, and songs like "Head, shoulders, knees and toes." I thought she was almost going to be able to produce the names of those girls from her distant memory. I was impressed with the impact they had made an impact on her.

Then a man spoke about how he used to give money to one of the bigger "UNICEF" type organizations. Someone had come to his house and asked him to sponsor a child in his home country of Honduras. For YEARS he sent at least $20 per month. He said that when he had more money, he would send $40 or $50 per month if he could. He wanted to support that boy in the picture, the young boy from where grew up, as he knew that even though he didn't have a lot of money himself, that boy needed it more. When he finally made it back to his country for a visit, he went to that town and tried to find the boy. The organization would not let him see the boy, or even say if/where he existed. He stopped paying the money and was very disappointed.

How many others like him, who work SO hard here, are "scammed" in my opinion, into this type of donation? How many others of us, who have so much, would never send $20 a month for a child we had never met?

When I got back to the US, I met a man who said to me "My wife and I are going to DC next week to talk to our Senator. We need to make sure he deals with this immigration problem. Anyone who doesn't speak English should be kicked out. They are stealing our jobs." For a professional living in a multi-million dollar house, I'm pretty sure those "non-English speakers" are not stealing his jobs, and I know he even has one of "them" working for him as he isn't willing to cut his lawn himself.

When I meet people like him, I will want to bring them to Jane's ESL class. If they saw her student's desire to learn, their commitment to educating themselves after a full 12 hour work day, heard the sacrifices they have made for their families, or felt the love they gave to me just because I gave them two hours of conversation, those people would either be moved, or be imovable. Let's hope for the former.

Does anyone else find it RIDICULOUS when people spend more time arguing about the nitty gritty than actually DOING anything about that which they would both agree on, if they stepped back? I feel as though this problem, usually associated with politics in general, is what we are facing with the global warming and carbon-offsetting issues. Some argue there isn't global warming, others say it's not as drastic as Gore makes it out to be, others think carbon offsetting isn't the right "cure", etc etc.

I got into a discussion about this with an old friend recently. She and I have very different views on the nitty gritty, and I was worried that this might cause trouble when we met up for the first time in a long time, but we quickly realized that in much of the big picture, we agree. We might have different ideas for the hows, whys, and how muches, but we are aiming for the same goals.

If those who argue that global warming isn't happening, and those taking the time to argue against them, could step back, we all have to agree on, at minimum, the fact that we all live on this earth, and that we, humans, are effected by and survive because of the earth's daily changes. Great! Now that we all agree to agree on that, we can make the next step, PEPY: Protect the Earth. Protect Yourself. By protecting the earth, we are thereby protecting ourselves, as we are a part of the earth. Great! Agreed!

From here, the how and how much is up to the individual, but I am confident that if we can all step back to this level, "Protect the Earth. Protect Yourself." our bi-partisan communities could spend less time arguing and more time acting. You can incorporate PEPY into your life by turning a light off when you leave a room, holding on to your garbage until you see a trash can, building a local compost heap, recycling.... the list goes on.

Like my close friend and I, many of us who think we are so different than those "other" people with that "other" view of the world should step back, help others step back too, and see the issues from afar. I believe, at the core, many of us have the same goals (well, besides the corporatocracy of course, but that's for another entry ;-)). Let's all try to reach those goals by doing what we can, in our way, to Protect Ourselves, and our children, but Protecting the Earth.

How do we define "change"? Is change good? Should we pat those catalytic change agents out there on the back and tell them to keep cutting down trees to make new trails, or is change bad, and we should make sure everyone follows the worn path as we realign the pebbles which have gone astray?

Development workers warn you "Watch out, your work might change the power structure, or the community fabric, or...." and voluntour operators advertise "We are improving (aka changing) lives!"

To the development worker, I want to say "CHANGE IS NOT ALWAYS BAD! You came here to change, you want to 'change people's dietary habits to ensure the children get enough vitamines' or 'improve education to help ensure a brighter future for the next generation.' so you can't condem change!"

To the voluntour operator, I want to say "But are you sure the change is GOOD? Have you followed up? Does the program last once you drive away? Have you promoted positive change or have you fed negative outcomes? Change CAN be bad!"

I think defining our impact as having CHANGED something is not enough. We need to reflect and ensure that our changes are good and ideally sustainable. We also can't assume changing something is bad, as change is inevitable, and keeping something as we found it can sometimes mean inhibiting its natural growth. Just some thoughts...