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[img_assist|fid=500|thumb=1|alt=Solutionary Women: Brande Jackson|caption=Photo via Brande Jackson]
Contributing Editor, Britt Bravo, also blogs at Have Fun * Do Good and NetSquared.
Last month I wrote a short post, Roadies for a Cause, about a nonprofit called Lokahi Outreach that partners with organizations like the ONE campaign and Oxfam to help them do grassroots campaigning on the road.
The organization's founder, Brande Jackson, took the time to answer my Solutionary Women e-interview questions. Enjoy!
Describe the work you do with Lokahi Outreach and what inspired you to start it.
In terms of nuts and bolts, Lokahi is an organization that does outreach and campaigning. We run our own voter registration programs, and partner with a lot of organizations and campaigns, helping them do outreach. Our biggest partnership is with the ONE Campaign - we took ONE to nearly 200 concert dates and events last year, and are on target to do even more this year. We also work with groups like Oxfam and their Make Trade Fair Campaign, Doctors without Borders, the ACLU, Global Exchange and this summer will be collaborating with Witness, Greenpeace, the NRDC and others.
Lokahi is focused on being a leader in grassroots outreach and campaigning - promoting social justice and civic involvement by reaching out to people in unique ways, giving them access to politics and social causes and campaigns. And in turn, I like to think we are forging new territory when it comes to building support for progressive campaigns. We try to move from the tried and true and look at new ways to access people that normally might think that a cause or campaign is too far removed for them. We're at concerts, at events, talking to people in ways they can related to about what is going on in their world. And hopefully, at the end of the day, we're helping them realize their ability to positively impact the world around them - that it doesn't take much, that you don't have to call yourself an activist or whatever, but that you do have a stake in this world, your voice is powerful and can be easily used. We also run after school programs, where we have curriculum that is based on teaching youth -mostly elementary and middle school aged kids - about community service and civics and cultural awareness. We also just started our first internship program - we are taking college aged students on the road with us this summer, giving them a first hand opportunity to go on the road and get a crash course in grassroots campaigning the way that Lokahi does it. We're hoping that they find it to be a rewarding way to learn about field organizing and about the amazing campaigns we partner with.
In terms of starting Lokahi, in part I was inspired to start it out of a need I perceived on a couple of different levels: the organization was initially formed in the spring of 2002, I wasn't quite yet 23, but had been running a canvas/fundraising office and was burned, just saw a lot of people and time and energy being wasted. And I felt like there was a disconnect in how outreach was being done - we spent a lot of time trying to talk to the same people in the same way and they weren't listening. So essentially, I saw a real need for people to get access to what was going on in the world around them. In 2001 I had done some stuff with Greenpeace on U2's tour of that year, and I think that was the first time I really came to see the possibility that lay in concert and event outreach when it was done innovatively. I took a few groups out on Warped Tour in the summer of 2002 as an experiment, and things have just sort of grown since.
My work with Lokahi is pretty varied and intense - I act as the ED and founder, but I am very hands on, I'm onsite at about 75% of the shows and events we do. So I do everything from working directly with our partner organizations, coordinating with tour production, leading and managing my staff to performing outreach and designing materials and writing after school curriculum. And I am always looking and thinking about where we need to go next. I have a few other small businesses as well, so I