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"Social change is one giant organism. It's not about one person, it's not about one vision, it's about recognizing and honoring your own in conjunction with everyone else's."--Ilyse Hogue at the Stanford Women's Leadership Conference
Between now and July 8th, BlogHers are voting on what they want the BlogHer Acts Initiative to be for the year. When the Initiative is announced during the BlogHer Conference on July 27th, BlogHers will be asked to take action to create change around it. For some it will be the beginning of their journey as, what I like to call, a Solutionary Woman, and for others it will be the continuation of their travels.
In April I organized a panel for the Stanford Women's Leadership Conference called "Solutionary Women: How Can I Create Change?" I asked four of the women who I had previously interviewed for the Big Vision Podcast to share what brought them to their work, and their advice for the graduate and undergraduate women who attended the conference. The panelists were Alli Chagi-Starr, who is the Co-Founder of Art in Action; Ilyse Hogue, the Campaign Director for MoveOn.org; Melinda Kramer, the Founder and Director of Women's Earth Alliance; and Reem Rahim, the Co-Founder and Vice President of Marketing for Numi Tea
I'd like to share some of their words of wisdom for social changemakers, "advice for the road" for everyone who joins BlogHer Acts:
After 20 years of nonstop activism, Chagi-Starr's "medicine for the movement" was four-fold:
- Create a culture of longevity that asks what the goals are for 30 years from now.
- Create a culture of appreciation of each other's work, rather than falling into competition and criticism.
- Create a culture of sustainability that allow time for fun, relaxation and balance, as well as for work.
- Create a culture of magnetism that makes your campaign compelling to a wide range of people and isn't just preaching to the choir.
If a moment comes when standing up for what you believe in becomes terrifying, Hogue, who worked as the Global Finance Campaign Director at Rainforest Action Network before working at MoveOn, advises you to, "own your space":
One of the first things that I had to do that was terrifying to me, when I was at the Rainforest Action Network, was actually stand up in front of a crowd at Carnegie Hall and address the CEO of Citigroup, which is the largest bank in the world. And I was like "Oh! Who am I? Why is he going to listen to me?"
Even if you have to, fake it. I did that whole thing of looking in the mirror and being like, "No, you have something important to say and you're the only one who can say it." Because what I was going to say to him is, "You need to change the way you're doing business if we want to have a planet for our children." And if you can't quite get there, fake it, because you will come through.
Sandy Weill, who was the CEO of Citigroup, he's not anymore but he was when I was in this meeting, he got there by faking it, and that doesn't make him more valuable than me, and it doesn't make him more valuable than you. So step into your own space and own it. Even if you have doubts, own your space.
She also reminded attendees to "be a woman" and to,
"[H]onor that in you which is a woman and bring that with you wherever you go. . . . If we're going to see the change that we need to see in the world in the coming decades and centuries, it's going to be because a woman's vision, women's visions, are more honored and we're going to get back in balance."
Kramer, who works with women activists all over the world as part of her organization, Women's Earth Alliance, talked about creating space for the diverse voices and stories it takes to create change:
"[S]omething my mother has always said about creating a quilt is creating the space. The envisioned and imagined space where disparate fabrics and colors and designs can come together and tell one story. And I really think that's what it's about right now. I think that humanity has quite a story to tell, and telling it in unison is so important, so that we can start moving towards solutions."
Finally, Rahim, who co-founded Numi Tea, emphasized that change can be made