I have a dream book. Not the kind where you put your sleepy, bleary-eyed memories of the night before under shut-eye, but the kind where you sprint to write down all the excitement in your chest before it escapes you forever. The kind where you write down how, exactly, you plan to change the world.

I’ve had this dream book since Christmas of 1998, a gift from my mother. I read it over the other day, and smiled at this entry -

“I want my generation, the time that I live, to be great and remarkable and groundbreaking. I want my generation to be the one with the first black and woman presidents.”

This was before Obama and Hillary declared their intention to run for President of course, and before I knew how close my dream would soon be a reality.  And as I read those words, I got goosebumps that something that I desired so badly had come true.

Most of the dreams laid forth in the book aren’t as grand though. They’re more to do with me, less to do with the world. And yet, for eleven years, the same themes keep popping up. Keep returning and haunting the page. For eleven years, I’ve wanted to change the world in the same ways, and for eleven years, I haven’t.

Now, to be fair, I’ve done quite a bit. And an outsider would probably say that my involvement in changing the world, while not extraordinary by any means, is passable for the average human. I’ve made a difference. And that’s good.

But in my dream book, the one where it’s quite visible that my mind is racing faster than my pen can keep up, I don’t want to be average. I want to inspire and empower and make change. Like in education. And equality in design. And the environment. And public art. Things that connect people and community and show our common humanity.

And at the end of my life, I hope it’s goosebump city from so many of my dreams coming true. Today though, I’m going to stop writing in my dream book, because there are enough words. Now it’s time for action.

The Changemaker

Rebecca hosts career and life conversations on her blog, http://modite.com/blog/, which is responsible for her current boyfriend and her current job at Alice.com, where she works in PR, social marketing and sells toilet paper. Her blog has been featured in the New York Times and her favorite brand of toilet paper is Cottonelle.

Connect with her over at her blog, Modite, or on her Twitter at @Modite!

Gen Y sometimes gets a bad rap. We’ve all heard the stereotypes by now — we’re lazy, we’re spoiled, we’re arrogant, we’re not willing to pay our dues, and we want to do work that we truly love. We want work-life balance, we don’t want to settle, and most of all - we’re entitled.

I’ll admit this: for a while, I thought some of these stereotypes about my generation were…true. But even worse, I felt like our generation was indifferent to social change. As an Economics major, I felt like everyone around me wanted to join investment banking or consulting, and wanted to catapult to the top of the corporate ladder right away. They didn’t want to waste a second before making tons of money. But really, that didn’t make me tick. I wanted something more than just profit - a meaningful career where I could truly contribute something, while also doing what I loved.

As I learned more about social issues, I realized - Gen Y is passionate about social change. But where are these powerful voices? Most of the people writing about issues like health, education, humanitarian aid, human rights, environmental issues, or politics are all much older. Many of them are distinguished academics, aid workers, NGO professionals. True, young people our age don’t always have the experience to discuss these issues at length — I’m not pretending I’m any expert. But I am willing to learn, and I want to write at least what I do know, so that I’m getting my voice out there. But in the blogosphere, so few of our generation are even engaging in the conversation about social change. Most of the Gen Y conversation centers around careers, work-life balance, personal branding, and topics related to marketing and media.

All that is great, but we need more than this to tackle the challenges of our time. We need young people to actively care about social issues and to do something about it. The first step, I believe, is education: before we can truly add value and take action in a truly meaningful way, we have to gain a deeper understanding of critical social issues. And one way we can do this is through writing, blogging, reading, sharing our knowledge, and learning from one another.

So this week will mark the beginning of “Be the Change” – a series of guest posts from my fellow Gen Yers related to social change. I hope that in the next few weeks, the guest posts that we see will inspire you and teach you about critical social issues. I hope they encourage you to take action, and convince you that social change is important. I hope they cause you to look inwards and reflect — what issues do you care about too? I hope they help dispel some stereotypical notions of Gen Y, by showing that we are working towards change. And most of all: everyone has a role in social change, and I hope that bringing together some of the passionate, intelligent voices of our generation confirm this.

Photo credit: here

I first heard about Hagar International over a year ago while reading the book “Not for Sale,” about human trafficking. Human trafficking is a tough issue to combat, especially since the solutions aren’t exactly clear, and require investment in long-term assistance and systemic change. But Hagar International has a really innovative and effective model, and is doing great work to attack the roots of human trafficking.

Hagar International is committed to individualized and long-term assistance for its beneficiaries, and they use the social enterprise model as a tool for social rehabilitation and economic empowerment. Hagar works with women and children from devastating backgrounds of violence, abuse and trafficking and supports them in their recovery, rehabilitation, job readiness and ultimately community reintegration.

Hagar International first began working in Cambodia, where about 80% of their beneficiaries have been successfully reintegrated into society. Hagar first provides shelter, accommodation, trauma recovery, therapy, education, literacy classes, and skills-training for women who need it, and then slowly helps them reintegrate into society. And what makes Hagar most unique is their development of social businesses; Hagar has begun several self-sustaining businesses which provide funds for the organization and meaningful employment for women who come from difficult backgrounds. For instance, in Cambodia Hagar runs Hagar Catering and Hydrologic - which provide jobs, the opportunity to learn new skills, and the chance to reintegrate into society for many of the women from Hagar’s programs.

I’d encourage you to visit their website to learn more about the innovative ways they are making a difference and combating human trafficking.

Picture Credit: Hagar Cambodia

I’m always getting to news late on this blog, because I constantly have things I want to say. So although this post refers to a news story from last week, I still feel a need to write about it - because it has haunted me ever since I read it. Last week the New Yorker published a moving, beautifully written feature about Todd Willingham, an innocent man arrested and put to death in Texas for killing his own children through arson.

I can’t stop thinking about it. Todd Willingham woke up in his house to find it on fire - he ran downstairs to try to save his children, but couldn’t get inside their room. About to pass out from the smoke, he stumbled out of the house, unable to help his kids even though he was desperate to do so. Soon firefighters arrived but even they were unable to get to his kids in time. He was completely devastated - he loved his children.

However, arson “specialists” soon investigated his house and apparently found clear signs that the fire had been set on purpose. Willingham immediately became the primary suspect and soon others began testifying that he was a bit “crazy.” He was imprisoned and it seemed clear that he deserved the death penalty. The only problem: no one had really found a motive.

Here’s the saddest part. Over a decade later, a woman began corresponding with Todd privately and began looking into the case. She found so many flaws — people’s testimony had changed over time and some of the witnesses were clearly unreliable. Then she sent the fire records to an expert scientist who found that the previous investigator had not been an arson expert and had made a lot of unwarranted assumptions. It was concluded that the fire had been set off accidentally. Todd was found to be innocent just before his execution and the evidence was all there — but the Texas courts refused to commute his execution. He was executed anyway, even after found to be clearly innocent.

If nothing else, this strikes me as a clear reason to abolish the death penalty. The death penalty doesn’t allow for mistakes, but the problem is that the US justice system IS rife with mistakes. So if you’re wrong, you have just killed an innocent person. Here are some shocking statistics from The Innocence Project, a great organization working to exonerate wrongfully convicted people through DNA testing:

• There have been 242 post-conviction DNA exonerations in the United States.
• The average length of time served by exonerees is 12 years.
• The average age of exonerees at the time of their wrongful convictions was 26.
• 144 of these 242 people were African American. Clearly there’s something wrong going on here.
• Since 1989, there have been tens of thousands of cases where prime suspects were identified and pursued—until DNA testing (prior to conviction) proved that they were wrongly accused.
• Eyewitness misidentification testimony is the leading cause of wrongful convictions. At least 40 percent of these eyewitness identifications involved a cross racial identification. Studies have shown that people are less able to recognize faces of a different race than their own (I find this really interesting).

Beyond this, there are so many of the other arguments - that it costs so much more to put someone to death than to imprison them for life, and moreover that it really has little impact on deterrence of future criminals. There have been studies documenting this. So why put people to death anyway? It doesn’t make sense to me.

But beyond this, what this article made me think is that if such huge mistakes are made due to inadequate research…who else is slipping through the cracks of the U.S. justice system? Public defenders are completely overburdened with cases. They are often unable to dedicate enough time to each client. How many of these clients are put in prison for crimes they did not commit? How many people are unable to afford a lawyer, and thus lack adequate representation — like Todd Willingham? How many people are given long sentences in prison while they require shorter ones? How many people are imprisoned when they really need rehabilitation — and then come out even MORE hardened by jail? It really makes you wonder; the system is in dire need of reform, and yet little attention seems to be given to the issue..

Image credit: New Yorker

Here’s a horrifying article from The Guardian, discussing the spread of Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army into Congo. Already 1,200 have been killed and more than 2,000 (about one-third children) have been kidnapped in the DRC in the past year. In one area of Congo, about 360,000 people have been forced to flee their homes. While the situation in Uganda is stabilizing, unfortunately the violence hasn’t truly stopped but has simply been displaced into the DRC. The article states:

In Congo, the confusion and anger is amplified. Father Benoit Kinalegu, the director of the Justice and Peace Commission in Dungu, said Kony was “not a human being”. “A human being can kill with reason, and an animal to eat. But Joseph Kony just kills people for nothing. The only way is take him out.”

Attempts are continuing. Officially, the Congolese army is leading the operation, with logistical support from UN peacekeepers. But it is the Ugandans who are doing most of the hunting. Despite claiming to have left behind only a few “intelligence squads” after Operation Lighting Thunder, interviews with analysts, aid workers, local officials and LRA victims suggest the number of Ugandan soldiers in the Congolese bush could exceed 3,000.

The situation seems to be devastating. I don’t want to go into the gory details of how the LRA is torturing, killing, and terrorizing the Congolese people - you can find that information in the article, and suffice it to say that it is horrifying.

It really disturbs me to hear this news, and realize that despite the efforts of the ICC, nothing has really changed. Sure, things haven’t exactly gotten worse, but the ICC’s warrant doesn’t seem to be deterring Kony one bit. On the other hand, it doesn’t seem like he would have agreed to a peace treaty even without the warrant. Basically the situation is just as it was before - violent and relentless. What disturbs me is: what next? Do we just sit aside and hope that the relevant state actors and authorities are able to find and arrest Kony? Perhaps the ICC needs to assemble some sort of force imbued with the ability and authority to arrest war criminals. Honestly, at the pace things are going now, the violence will never end.

The truth is this conflict isn’t going to end unless Kony is arrested. So it’s clear he needs to be stopped. But what is being done to ensure that this is the case? And how much longer can this go on? I’m clearly not an expert on this, yet I find myself questioning the current approach. I just know that some action needs to be taken to halt this horrible violence. What do you think would be a good solution?

Photo credit: here