Successful Revolutions Require Organization

Massive rallies and marches fail to result in change, unless they are supported by organizations. It takes political parties to win elections, military forces to stage a coup, pressure from organized religions, and labor unions to change corporations and institutions of learning.

     Individuals with ideas for reform can write books, but organizations need to put these ideas into operational form. When would-be reformers approach Nancy Pelosi, the former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, for her endorsement, she asks if they can muster a group of at least one thousand. Crowdfunding on social media suggests one way to gain support for causes.

     Where are groups already assembled? On college campuses, war and South Africa's apartheid protesters gained traction. Members of Jewish temples, Muslim mosques, African-American and other Christian churches share common causes.

     In Prague, dissidents hung out at the Art Deco cafe, Kavarna Slavia, to plot the Velvet Revolution that ended communism in Czechoslovakia. The Cafe Gallery and Bassiani night clubs in Tbilisi, Georgia, now attract young people ready to break out of post-Soviet police and interior ministry restraints and to embrace liberalized Western culture. The clubs serve as a gathering space, not only for locals, but also for tourists, rappers, and DJs with European followings. Young Russians received social media news of a club protest that led demonstrators to the steps of Georgia's parliament.

Master the Gig Economy

Since the future of work is not what it was in the past, no one is likely to work for the same company 45 years and then retire with a pension. One way to guaranty a future income is to identify as many money-making options as possible, not only for your self, but for all family members. You've seen babies and dogs in commercials, right? In Rise and Grind, "Shark Tank" TV star, Daymond John, lists ways he made money as a kid by being the first out of the house to shovel snow for neighbors and by fixing and selling bikes and toys people threw away. Kid also hold their own garage sales in conjunction with lemonade stands these days.

     The "gig economy," as John Hope Bryant defines it in his new book, The Memo, "is a labor market characterized by short-term contracts or freelance work as opposed to permanent jobs." He adds, "Always be on the lookout for opportunities to create your own economy.... Every big business was once a small business."

Bryant gives some useful examples of short-term ways to make money:

• Drive for Uber or Lyft
• Rent your camper, powerboat, condo
• Deliver food
• Service computers, build websites
• Sell craft items on Etsy (I know a woman who went from scrapbooking for the family to using her skills to create the unique greeting cards she sells without a middleman at art fairs, holiday marts, and all summer at farmers' markets.)

I would add:

• Sell Avon, Amway, insurance, or other products at Tupperware-type parties, if you have a wide circle of relatives and friends
• Provide child care and pet care
• Become a personal trainer
• Form a "garage band" or write a stand-up comedy routine you can book at local clubs and parties
• Sell off unused and out-grown collections of dolls, LEGO sets, Civil War re-enactor garb, cookbooks, vinyl records, etc. on eBay or at a well-organized and advertised yard sale. (I know a women who made $700 by hanging clothes by size on racks and carefully pricing each item)
• Write and pitch freelance articles.
• Offer professional services, if you are an attorney, notary, CPA at tax time
• Tutor students in your best subjects

School yourself

Working in any type of job in a restaurant, retail store, warehouse, or phone bank, there are things to learn about hiring, firing, sales, promotion, taxes, cleaning, dealing with busy and slow periods, forms, handling complaints, etc. that you could use if you become an entrepreneur and/or if you'd like to sell services to these businesses. While one of my friends was working at the Department of Agriculture in Washington, DC, she saw companies having their labels rejected for a variety of reasons. She quit and went into business for herself advising food companies how to make the modifications they needed to meet government regulations.

     For any business financing you might need, check out crowdfunding sites, such as Kickstarter, GoFundMe, and Quirky. Also compare the interest and perks of various credit cards. (In his book, Bryant advises how to improve a credit score to get the lowest interest rate.)

     Study where you should move to find the best chance of success. Daymond John writes Vermont, Minnesota, Delaware, New Jersey, and Connecticut offer the best opportunities for working moms, according to WalletHub.

     Increase the skills you can offer by learning from YouTube video instructions and visiting the nonfiction section at the library. Remember how one of the women in the movie, Hidden Figures, used a library book to teach herself how to write a computer language. And I understand, when Harrison Ford was an unemployed actor, he taught himself carpentry from a library book.

     Learn all you can at a franchising show.

Get more out of college 

Don't just go to classes and make friends, unless the latter become your future business partners.

• Get experience being the travel manager for a sport, the band, the debate team. Such experience can lead to a gig as travel manager for a political campaign or rock band.
• Start as a DJ at the school's radio station before picking up gigs as a DJ at clubs
• Offer dance classes at sororities, like Maverick owner, Mark Cuban, did, when he was in college
• On an overseas semester, make contacts. You might find a company you want to work for after you graduate. (I know some students who went back to Africa to work for a travel adventure company where they lead hikes up Mt. Kilimanjaro and sun on the beach in Zanzibar.). Or, when you see a product that isn't sold in your home country, you could become an importer. Interested in movie making?  You might like to work for the film studio in Mauritius.
• Learn to build robots.
• Take a drawing class and create your own cartoon character before signing up for a comics class and sending samples to Marvel and The New Yorker
• Start combining subjects like biology and chemistry, medicine and religion, or economics and behavioral psychology like Richard Thaler did, when he just became a Nobel Prize winner.
• Scour departments for internships and ask professors if they know of any 
• Study literature to find English legends, German fairy tales, and Greek myths you can borrow for your own novels
• Write sketches and scenes for drama students and student reviews
• Study history to find inspiration for your own Hamilton or a Black Panther and warrior women who resemble the African warrior king, Shaka Zulu, and the female bodyguards of Muammar al-Qaddafi

Learn about operations and trends

Mingle with a purpose at rock concerts, motor car racing events, and football games. Shop with an eye to differences between discount stores, specialty boutiques, and pop up retailers at resorts and decide which is the best fit for the items you want to sell. Study the ways apartments are advertised and try your hand at real estate sales. Start to find opportunity everywhere you are.

     

   

   

Stage Your Life

Lin-Manuel Miranda, born of poor immigrant parents from Puerto Rico, wrote and stars in the extremely successful Broadway musical, "Hamilton." On the other hand, a 28-year-old man who was turned down for a job in Tunisia committed suicide by electrocuting himself on a utility pole. Clearly, there are alternative ways to become the center of attention on stage and off.

     Suppose you want to get into a field that is very competitive and has few openings. First of all, it may be a good idea to keep your plan to yourself, since others will be ready to discourage you. Lin-Manuel Miranda's road to "Hamilton" began by reading Ron Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton. He saw that Hamilton in real life was very wordy. The rap music Miranda loved also was very dense with words, and it would be the perfect vehicle to tell Hamilton's story in a musical. Besides, he went to John Weidman, who had turned history into a musical called "Assassins," to ask for advice.

     This season we've all heard of Stephen Curry, the Golden State Warrior who is making basketball history with his extra long 3-point shots. At 6'3" and 185 lbs, in a game of giants, he decided he could stand out as a shooter. Want to begin imitating him, check out the website, "30 tips to help become a better shooter." First step, practice, practice, practice. For another route into a sports career, study the erudition of ESPN's "First Take" commentator, Stephen A. Smith, who does his research and can write.

     Spend all your free time playing video games? Learn how to develop one. Even former US Supreme Court Justice, Sandra Day O'Connor founded the iCivics games. Just about any interest can be turned into a video game, considering the wide variety on the market: physical activity in
"GoNoodle," immigration officer for a country in "Papers, Please," rocket building in "Kerbal Space Program," math-related challenges in "Twelve a Dozen," designing a game in "Kodu Game Lab." Check out the igda.org website of the International Game Developers Association to learn about the scholarships it provides and what else it does for a global membership network of game developers.  

     While you are moving toward your super job, even the most lowly job provides an income and offers a chance to look around, to see how business works, to learn how customers behave, to improve your skills, and to become more valuable to an employer by making your job more productive and efficient. On the job, you can meet people and learn whom you need to know to get into your chosen field. Which employees are rewarded with thousands of dollars and promotions at the end of the US television show, "Undercover Boss?"  Those who treat customers well, follow the rules, offer suggestions that will provide more efficient and better service, and appreciate being given an opportunity (like the ex-convict who was a fast learner and hard worker). Everything you can learn on a job is a valuable lesson for your future.

    Suppose no one will hire you, while you are preparing for your dream job. Suicide is not the only option. Crowdfunding sites might be able to attract investors for your project. Try setting up a page on kickstarter, indiegogo, fundable, fondly, InvestingZone, Growthdeck, or other crowdfunding sites that continue to appear. Chinese young people who migrate to urban areas to find work, like other young people who continue to live with their parents, know they can return to family farms, if they fail to find a job in a car or computer factory. Skilled handy men and women who live on farms can offer their services to professionals in urban areas. With a truck, haul away junk and things that can be recycled from businesses and residences. In a family, one with a job can pay the bills while another can take over the household, childcare, and financial management responsibilities.  In some countries, governments do the job of relatives by providing benefits while the unemployed have the job of, for example, finding their next acting jobs.

(For other ideas to help find the position you really want, check out earlier posts, "Can't Find a Job or Career, Create One" and "Star-struck Realities.")

   

I Made This Myself

"Don't you love it when a plan comes together?" That saying John "Hannibal" Smith used to use on the "A Team" television show expresses the feeling I got when I read about the MakerMovement that encourages children to build what they imagine and crowdfunding by a Kickstarter, RocketHub, or Kiva. Since there is a way for anyone to find investors, anyone in the world who has an idea for a new app, 3D printer creation, programmable device, or, what one visionary has proposed, an automated factory on the moon, now has an opportunity to raise the money needed to make an innovation a reality.


     In an interview conducted by station KQED (kqed.org) in Northern California, Dale Dougherty, CEO of MakerMedia and editor of MAKE magazine, told how he began promoting hands-on learning at a Maker Faire in 2006 and later at MakerCon conferences. He is devoted to the idea that tinkering with the tools and materials for making things can be fun.

     Project Zero, a research study developed by Harvard's Graduate School of Education and tested by classroom teachers in Oakland, California, aims to inspire students to be curious about the designs that make things and nature work. When students looked at a pencil and a snail, they began to ask questions, not only about how they worked, but also what kind of designs could help them do a better job. Some youngsters even suggested ways to make life better for the snail. And there was a crossover to discover the new words needed to describe a design process and to defend ideas of how things are made.

     Since schools can't do everything, there is a greater role for parents, childcare, Boys and Girls Clubs, 4H, community centers, church youth groups, and scouting programs. They can provide the things kids need to help them create, perform, and learn: blocks, LEGOs, Tinker Toys, Erector Sets, computers, 3D printers, pottery wheels, found objects, cameras, watercolors, easels, musical instruments, a stage, and garden plots. It's rather expensive, but, for $16.95 per month, tinker.kiwicrate,com/inside-a-crate will send students, 9 to 16+, a hands-on STEM (science, engineering, technology) inspired maker project.

    Making all kinds of materials available to students helps them discover new possibilities. That's reason enough to provide a place to cook, bake, sew, make jewelry, and knit. Inspired by puffy sourdough and flatter pizza dough an artist combined them and twisted, carved, and painted them into what became an octopus sculpture. A businessman inspired children to create sculptures out of the shredded documents he dumped into a pail of water.

     According to experiments at Hanyang Cyber University in South Korea, involving the body in learning also helps improve memory needed in any subject. When hands manipulate objects, for example, the brain has more cues to remember what was learned. When my mother was a math consultant for the Chicago Public School System, the first thing she did when she visited a school was observe what manipulative devices were in use. If she saw few or none, her next step was to try to find the supply room or closet where they were kept, because she knew that after the Russians sent up Sputnik, the federal government funded purchases of many such devices to aid learning math. I remember seeing one of my favorites, a scale that allowed kids to balance numbers on one side with those on the other. A big "5", for example, would equal a little "2" and "3" on the other side.

      Earlier blog posts have related ideas. See "Transform Spaces into Creative Places," "Back to the Land," "Tin Can Art," and "Global Drawing Power."

It Takes a World to Raise a Child

When I saw umbrollers in London over 40 years ago, I couldn't wait to get back to the U.S. to tell my sister who just had a baby how easy they were to maneuver and collapse compared to traditional strollers. Since then, many U.S. parents also have adopted the baby slings and wraps that working mothers have worn when they were taking care of babies in Mexico, Peru, Ethiopia, Korea, China, Japan, and elsewhere. And what mother with a new baby wouldn't want to visit one of Japan's cat cafes? There, she and her baby could be among the customers, many who can't have pets at home, who come to talk to, play with, and chill out among cats while they drink tea. Hillary Clinton once wrote that it takes a village to raise a child; perhaps it takes a world.

     As an international marketing student at American University in Washington, D.C., I had a professor who told us one of the benefits multinational corporations enjoy is access to new products and ideas in one country that they can adapt for use in other countries. In these days, even without world travel, mothers have online access to global innovations.  To give just two examples, there is Internet information on international adoption and crowdfunding websites that finance or even find volunteers for their projects.

     On trendwatching.com, I was reminded of how women have expanded the yard sale concept to become sellers on eBay, Amazon, and other platforms. Kids in Nigeria, like they could in other countries, now play local versions of Monopoly. According to trendwatching.com, the "City of Lagos" version has local locations and, to reflect Nigeria's challenges, chance cards that say things like, "Pay a fine for attempting to bribe a law enforcement agent."

     In my earlier blog post, "Hope for the Future," you may have seen how the Grameen Bank and Kiva have helped women start businesses to support their families and finance their children's educations by providing micro-loans. When I read on trendwatching.com that the idea of selling meals through Thuisafgehaald in the Netherlands is spreading to the US, UK, Germany, and Sweden, I realized, with or without a micro loan, that mothers who are good cooks have an opportunity to specialize in selling nutritious home-cooked, peanut- and gluten-free, birthday party, and other types of meals.

     Mothers who do volunteer work for child-centered, not-for-profit organizations, like the March of Dimes, might be able to adopt a version of what trendwatching.com reports "The Exchange" is doing in South Africa. Consumers only are allowed to shop for its clothes and accessories donated by designers if they first sign up with an Organ Donor Foundation.

     T-shirts proclaim the slogan, "Changing More Than Diapers," on mothers who visit momsrising.org. Though mainly focused on the United States, the site promotes activities mothers around the world could adapt to work for fair wages, flexible workplace schedules, maternity and paternity leave, better childcare, and environmental health.

     The site, vitalvoices.org, already identifies women's issues, works toward solutions, fosters connections across international boundaries, and awards progress. On vitalvoices.org, viewers can see how women in Africa increase the continent's economic potential, how Latin American women strive for gender equality, and how female leaders in Eurasia are combating human trafficking. Malala Yousafzai, the young Pakistani woman who recovered from being shot in the head because she wants girls to attend school, currently is featured on the site.

     Making international connections that foster innovation in education is the aim of the WISE (World Innovation Summit for Education) Educational Leadership Program in Qatar. The leaders in education from the more than 100 countries who attend WISE summits discuss ideas about funding, curricula, assessment, and improving the quality of education, ideas that could suggest new directions worth considering by parents, guardians, and teachers around the world.