By Akhila K. | Journeys towards Justice

Why do I do what I do? {Guest Post by Clare Herbert}

Written on May 17, 2012 by Akhila in guest post, innovation, life, social change

Today I am happy to present a guest blog from the lovely Clare Herbert, who works on social entrepreneurship projects by day and is a writer by night. I love her blog and am glad she’s here to share some thoughts with us about her passion, what makes her tick, and why she does what she does! Thanks for stopping by, Clare.

It’s such a pleasure to be visiting Akhila’s blog to share a few thoughts today. Akhila was one of the first blog friends I made and I really appreciate her ongoing support. She writes about the things she loves making her blog a delightful melange of engaging content, inspirational ideas and personal reflections. Every time I visit her site, I leave inspired, informed and hungry for more. Love your work, Akhila!

It wasn’t easy to think of a topic to write about. Should I talk about living in India, working in social entrepreneurship or trying to forge a career as a writer? Should I share advice, tell stories or talk about my life?

I couldn’t choose, so I’ve decided to write about my motivation for all of the above.

The perennial question: “Why Do You Do What You Do?”
The answer: Martin Luther King on our world:

I first really travelled at 19, when I went to volunteer in Zambia. I didn’t add much value but the experience had a transformative effect on me. Standing in the immigration queue listening to Celine Dion blast through the terminal, it was hot and dry. People were staring at me: white, freckly red-heads stand out in Lusaka airport. I was exhausted, trembling and totally overwhelmed by the world. ‘What had I done?’

Weeks later, when I came home, I struggled to settle in. I just couldn’t get my head around what I’d seen and how it fitted with my understanding of the world. I was in the shower (itself a shock after bathing from a bucket!), putting conditioner in my hair. The conditioner contained vitamin B12, something we had struggled to source in rural Zambia to help our patients with leg circulation problems. Standing in the shower in Ireland, I was washing it down the drain.

How could this happen?

Since that moment, the inter-connectedness of life fascinates me. The impact our lives have on the rest of the world. How the World Cup in South Africa lead to increased sex trafficking, due to a huge spike in demand for prostitutes. How milk prices rise when China eats more dairy. How I couldn’t get baking powder in Kolkata because the shipment takes 6 months and there was some problem at sea.

My work is about connecting and understanding the complexity and contradiction in our world. Or at least, that’s what I’m trying to do.

Social Entrepreneurship lights me up and it’s where I spend my days. The organization I work with finds entrepreneurial solutions to social problems and scales them up with a combination of financial and practical support. Our social entrepreneurs create change all around Ireland, and we support them to dream bigger, grow sustainably and have a greater impact.

By night, I’m a writer. I write about career and personal development, which in our modern world are really the same thing. I write about my personal journey as a young change-maker and share the lessons I’ve learned in the hope of inspiring others. I write to connect with like minds, to contribute to the debate, to create community. I write because that’s how I understand the world.

For fun, I travel to random places and live there for a while. I love to sink into new cultures and try to comprehend them. I love the buzz that comes from being someplace new everyday. I love the random adventures and friends that make traveling worthwhile.

My work is about inspiring impact. By writing an article, by connecting like-minds or by scaling change, my mission is to create positive, lasting, sustainable change.

Inspired by Martin Luther King, that’s why I do what I do.

Why do you do what you do?

About the Author

Clare Herbert is a writer and social enterprise enthusiast based in Dublin, Ireland. She loves to travel, read and create impact through her work and writes about these topics on her blog. She’d love to hear from you by email or to connect on the twitter machine.

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Transforming dreams into reality

Written on May 15, 2012 by Akhila in life, personal, social change, travel

I recently heard about a wonderful blog link-up on dreams started by Richenda Vermeulen and Lindsey Talerico and was inspired to join in. They write, “We’re writing about dreams this month because we believe when we share our dreams, we are dared to chase them. These dreams have inspired us, changed us, and fuelled our love for life and God. They’ve moved us jobs, continents and through relationships. They remind us that everything is possible.” I couldn’t agree more.

Almost four years ago as an undergraduate, I had the incredible opportunity to fulfill a long-standing dream I had since high school: to study for a year at the London School of Economics (LSE). In fact, the opportunity to spend a year at LSE was one of the primary reasons I chose to attend Northwestern for my undergrad studies. That dream almost did not turn into reality, but I made it happen, and soon enough I was off to spend a year in the UK. This may sound cliche, but it was a life-changing experience. Not only because London was an incredible city with so many cultural offerings; not only because of the stimulating educational experience learning about development economics, political theory, and economic history from one of the best economics schools in the world; not only because of the wonderfully diverse, brilliant, creative fellow students I met who taught me so much; but also because of what I learned about myself and my passions.

In the London Eye, fulfilling my first dream all those years ago!

London was my dream opportunity, and it led me to my next dream – one which I am finally beginning to realize today.

While I was in the UK, I took a trip with the International Criminal Court Student Network to the ICC in the Hague. We met with the Chief Prosecutor and officials from the Special Court for Sierra Leone; we sat in on the trial of Thomas Lubanga. Watching a video played in court of Thomas Lubanga brainwashing child soldiers — and then seeing the man himself sitting before our eyes — was quite an unbelievable experience. That week we did a whole lot of debating about international justice and we all came away impacted in some way. I left inspired, with budding ideas for my senior thesis — but also with a nagging feeling that something was missing.

Posing in front of the ICC, in the Hague!

Soon enough, I found this missing piece. I stumbled across International Bridges to Justice (IBJ), a non-profit that was training criminal defense lawyers to provide critically needed legal aid to people accused of a crime and languishing behind bars in Cambodia, China, India, Rwanda, and Burundi. I realized then what was lacking: while we were providing high quality legal services to perpetrators of war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity, ordinary people from the same countries were not getting the legal assistance they deserved. I applied for an internship with IBJ and moved to Geneva for the summer to work with them.

That summer, I fell in love with this seemingly unmet need, this clear injustice I saw before me. The rich & powerful were provided with excellent legal counsel (even after committing the most heinous atrocities), but the poor were most often not (even for just stealing a piece of bread– or being a rape survivor). This concept had previously been clear to me in my classes on law & society in the U.S., but I only then started realizing how this was amplified — and sadly true — on a global scale.

I began delving into the ideas of legal empowerment, the growing movement to provide high-quality legal services to people across Africa, Asia and Latin America. I began nurturing the beginnings of a new dream — the vision of working with non-profits and organizations to strengthen the rule of law in emerging legal systems, to work to expand access to compassionate lawyers & advocates for the poor. The dream of spending time abroad to do this work. The dream of becoming a lawyer to provide representation myself.

It’s taken many years, innumerable tears of frustration, many moments of confusion and internal debate, and many late nights hitting the books, but I am finally on my way to my transforming these dreams into reality.

More than a year ago, I started reading about BRAC and was amazed by the extent of their programmes, and particularly by the unique method of training shebikas or ‘barefoot lawyers’ – women who help identify and take action on legal cases (especially related to violence against women) in their own communities, thus acting as leaders and helping to bring critical assistance to survivors of violence. BRAC has the largest NGO-led legal aid program in the world, and I was inspired by their model and their grounding in the community despite (or perhaps because of) their size.

BRAC's Human Rights and Legal Education classes help raise awareness of basic human rights among women in Bangladesh

This summer, I finally have the chance to work on my dream project – doing research on legal empowerment with BRAC’s Human Rights & Legal Services program in Dhaka.

And this fall, I will finally be starting at my absolute dream law school.

I can’t say I deserve this, any of this. All too many around the world are smarter than me, more hardworking than me, more kind and compassionate than me, but have not been given the same opportunities to follow their dreams due to poverty, disability, violence, chance or circumstance.

I can’t say I deserve this. But I can say that I am thankful, and eternally grateful for the chance to chase these dreams.
To finally begin turning them into reality.

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Building an international support network for aid workers {Guest post from WhyDev}

Written on May 10, 2012 by Akhila in international development, non-profit, social change

I am happy to support the folks over at whydev in their new initiative. whydev has been a wonderful site and resource for me: I love their honest, compassionate take on aid and development, which takes a more uplifting outlook than many websites on aid work out there (while still remaining critical – no easy task!). They make an effort to include, engage and support the voices of young people just entering this difficult field, and I am excited to introduce a guest post below by Weh Yeoh, one of the editors of whydev. If you’re intrigued, read more about their peer coaching initiative here!

International development work is often difficult, exhausting, and isolating. Many people who seek to serve and live abroad often become burned out by the overwhelming nature of their work. In isolated places, often the only people you can turn to for support are your boss or your partner. For various reasons, neither of these are a good choice.

However, we know that the support of a peer is an easy and effective way to reduce stress, burnout and, just as importantly, have access to someone to bounce ideas off.

This is why we, at whydev.org, have decided to build an online platform where international aid volunteers and workers can connect and discuss their challenges and experiences, allowing them the opportunity to support others across the globe who are also making a difference. Knowing that the world of aid and development is under-resourced as is, we think our idea fits well. This service does not require more resources to be added to the sector (in the form of professional mentors, coaches or counselors), but rather, builds on existing resources that are not connected.

We would like to think that it’s the first of its kind – an international support network for isolated aid workers.

Luckily, we’re not the only ones who think this is a good idea. Since asking for expressions of interest earlier this year, we’ve had over 320 people sign up to our pilot program. This is great news for everyone involved, because the larger the pool, the more likely we’ll be able to achieve a good match.

One international aid worker said, “I feel isolated, uncertain and a little forlorn about finding my way into development-related work, and would like to have someone to share my experience with, who is perhaps also experiencing the same thing.”

It is perspectives like this that make us want to keep working towards creating this platform. But, this is where we need your help. We’ve launched a crowdfunding campaign over on StartSomeGood where people can chip in amounts of money, small or large, to help us get this project going. If you are reading this post, chances are you’re either working, studying or are at least interested in aid and development. Therefore, you’re probably the right demographic to understand the difficulties that aid workers can face across the globe.

Jennifer Lentfer, of How Matters, writes that having self-awareness of your own qualities and needs is crucial in becoming an effective aid worker. If you want to help us to build a future that supports the needs of aid workers across the globe, then this may be a worthwhile campaign for you.

If you are a frequent reader of Journeys towards Justice, then you would be familiar with Akhila talking about the need for sustainability, no doubt. So, just how sustainable is your funding? Good question! Once the platform is built, we think that we can keep the service running by adding in a tiered system of participation, so that it is self-sustainable.

Our vision is that peer coaching should always be accessible at no cost, as we promised right from the start. That option will remain, and people will still be able to be linked up to suitable peer coaches around the world at no charge. However, we think that people may also be willing to pay a small amount of money to get a value-added service. As such, we’ll be adding in different levels of participation so that those who are willing to pay a little extra will get a little more out of it. Whatever we make from this can then be fed back into the project to account for running costs. That’s why seed funding is so vital for us – the major outlay is not running the program, but getting it off the ground.

We’d appreciate it if you would consider donating whatever you can to our StartSomeGood campaign here, and spreading the word far and wide about what we’re trying to achieve.

If you have any questions at all about our campaign, please do not hesitate to contact either Brendan or myself. We’d be more than happy to answer any questions.

For the final word on the topic, here is Brendan, speaking from Ghana:

About the Author

Weh Yeoh is a current job-seeker based in Cambodia. He is a professionally trained physiotherapist who has completed a MA in Development Studies at the University of New South Wales. With experience in the NGO sector both in Australia and in China, with Handicap International, he hopes to combine his interest in development and passion for visiting far-flung destinations in the future. You can view his LinkedIn here and follow him on Twitter here.

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The dilemma of ‘free’

Written on May 7, 2012 by Akhila in career, innovation, life, personal

There’s something magical about free. Free is a place where incredible things can be done and beautiful art can be created. Free defies boundaries or expectations, because who would think we do so many amazing things for free? When you hit free, all bets are off.

Most of my biggest accomplishments and most enjoyable moments have been things I’ve done for free.

I wasn’t paid to start volunteering with Justice for All Afghanistan, to spend hours of my free time every week to help them raise funds for their programs. As a volunteer, I put my time towards what I believed in. I wasn’t held to expectations or forced into a role I disliked. I was able to fully utilize my skills, build on my strengths, make suggestions, and say ‘no’ as needed. In the past two years, we have raised enough funding to open legal aid centers in two new provinces, train hundreds of women on their legal rights, and conduct an advocacy program to push for changes to the Violence Against Women act in Afghanistan. I was only able to be a part of this by leveraging the power of free.

I’m not paid to write. To write reams of poetry that sit inside my bedside drawer (okay, inside a special folder on my computer, but I digress…). To tweet. To write this blog. I’ve tried putting ads on this blog, but trying to monetize it made me deeply uncomfortable. I realized that this blog was a labor of my love, and I wanted to keep it free - for both writer and reader. Having this space as an outlet has made me a better writer, allowed me to forge so many meaningful connections, and grow as a person by forcing me to have opinions and defend them. Can’t put a price on that.

Seth Godin has noted, very aptly:

At zero, at the place where no money changes hands, we see volunteer labor and free exchange. In these situations, sometimes we see extraordinary effort, the stuff that wins Nobel prizes. Just about every great, brave or beautiful thing in our culture was created by someone who didn’t do it for money. We see the local volunteer putting in insane hours even though no one is watching. We hear the magical song or read the amazing poem that no one got paid to write. And sometimes, though, we see very little, just a trolling comment or a half-hearted bit of commentary. Remove money from the story and we’re in a whole new category.

Here’s a taste of the amazing: Nilofer Merchant recently pointed out that a game called Fold It, “allows any individual to work with sequencing amino acids to figure out how that protein is going to fold. This particular work is very important to research and medicine, and is usually conducted by scientists with PhDs.” But after looking through their data, Fold It found that the best protein folder in the world was not a scientist or a PhD. It was a woman who was an executive assistant by day, and folded proteins for fun at night. And she was the best in the world at something that normally required an advanced degree. As Merchant notes:

This individual, driven by her own skills and passions, is not being assigned the work, nor being vetted to do the work, but is simply doing the work.

When you do something for free, you’re being driven by your heart, your passion, and not the paycheck at the end. When money enters the equation, however, something is lost. You suddenly feel obligation. If you write a blog post out of your interest, that’s one thing. But if you’re paid by the number of hits/comments/blog posts you churn out? It starts to feel like a job, and you start to lose some of the love for the work. You feel forced to do it; your choice is eradicated.

And this is the dilemma, isn’t it? At the end of the day, we all do need that paycheck to survive, to care for ourselves and our loved ones. We can’t dedicate our lives to doing things for free. At some point, money needs to enter the equation. Perhaps one solution for fostering better workers is for companies and non-profits alike to make jobs more like volunteer positions. Add some choice and independence back into the equation. If you really like a particular type of work that is your strength, jump in. If you really hate a task you’re assigned to, feel free to speak up — perhaps someone else enjoys those tasks and is willing to exchange. If you have an idea that excites you, tell us. Google allows employees to spend 20% of their work time pursuing personal projects that speak to their passions, interests, and innovative ideas. By reducing obligation and increasing choice, perhaps work can be made all the more fun. Like free.

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Feature Friday: UN Resolution on Access to Legal Aid

Written on May 4, 2012 by Akhila in criminal justice, feature friday, human rights, international development, public interest law

This Friday, I want to feature something a little different. Not an organization, but a little-known new UN Resolution which is truly groundbreaking. In a number of countries across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, access to legal services (even when accused of a crime) is unfortunately not a guaranteed human right. In the U.S., our…

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Links I Liked

Written on May 4, 2012 by Akhila in links

A lot of good reads I’ve come across recently. Enjoy the following! So you’re helping people with no skills…? Daniela Papi nicely destroys the rhetoric about poor people having no skills. Marianne Elliott has a beautiful series of posts chronicling her current journeys, re-visiting Afghanistan. A beautiful piece of writing by Jhumpa Lahiri, on writing,…

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Afghan women: undercover poets

Written on May 2, 2012 by Akhila in human rights, women's rights

Pashtun poetry has long been a form of rebellion for Afghan women, belying the notion that they are submissive or defeated. Landai means “short, poisonous snake” in Pashto, a language spoken on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The word also refers to two-line folk poems that can be just as lethal. Funny, sexy, raging, tragic, landai…

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Moving on to the ‘next big thing’

Written on May 1, 2012 by Akhila in life, personal

Why is it so hard for us to live in the current moment? When I got into the top law school of my choice back in December, I celebrated my accomplishment briefly — but within a couple of days, my mind started spinning into action. My thoughts started moving on to the ‘next big thing.’ I…

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