2010 November | Allison Jones

Yesterday at TEDxBrooklyn, Barbara Bush discussed the history and success of her organization, Global Health Corps, a non-profit that provides a year-long fellowship for young professionals and recent college grads to work on the frontlines of global health in the United States and East Africa. The organization was born of a simple question: How can we engage young people in global health?

Since asking that question in 2008, the organization has grown and currently has 60 fellows. During her presentation she shared the stories of some of the fellows and I found her approach to engaging millennials in social change insightful and compelling:

Provide skill based opportunities: People who want to do good work are often frustrated by the lack of opportunities to put their skills to good use. Either the work requires little to no use of their skills or the skills required are highly specialized. In fact conversations around health often focus on medicine which leaves out people who are passionate about health but don’t have medical experience. Global Health Corps allows fellows to harness their interests and skills for social change by placing them in specific skills focused projects.
Focus on the big picture: The purpose of GHC isn’t just to get millennials giving back; it’s also to start a movement of young people passionate about global health inequality. To that end fellows stay in touch through the alumni network, and are offered support after the fellowship ends. As a result, fellows see the impact of their work in the communities they serve and continue to be involved in the conversation around global health inequality in various capacities once their fellowship ends.
Start with millennials in mind: Often people will start a project or organization and last minute try to figure out how millennials might fit in. However, GPC thought of millennials from the beginning, so their inclusion (seen in terms of addressing their concerns and challenges in service) is built into the structure of the fellowship and the organization.

I loved her presentation and would like to add other approaches to engaging millennials:

Retiring the phrase “next generation”: Here’s the thing: Barbara bush is a millennial successfully leading millennials. When we say “next generation” we imply that she is not yet a leader, her work is incomplete, and that there is only one way to lead. Additionally, this approach not only influences how you treat young people but also how you view their work.
Provide needed resources: And this doesn’t necessarily mean money. For example, mentorship and a sense of community with co-workers and constituents allow people to feel invested in their work and welcomed. When thinking of supporting young people money isn’t the biggest issue, and I think this is actually really challenging to address. It requires innovation and often rethinking about what motivates people to do their best.

What other organizations are successful in supporting millennials? What other strategies would you add?

Bob Herbert of the New York Times offers a compelling analysis of last week’s election results:

Our leaders in Washington seem entirely out of touch with the needs, the hopes, the fears and the anxieties of the millions of Americans who are out of work, who are struggling with their mortgages or home foreclosures, who are skimping on needed medication in order to keep food on the table, and who lie awake at night worrying about what the morning will bring. No one even dares mention the poor.

What this election tells me is that real leadership will have to come from elsewhere, from outside of Washington, perhaps from elected officials in statehouses or municipal buildings that are closer to the people, from foundations and grass-roots organizations, from the labor movement and houses of worship and community centers.

The last line really stuck with me.

Of course non-profits can grow to be so large and so powerful that they become just as out of touch as the government. Yet many non-profits are small, often started with the goal of addressing a specific concern in a specific area (leading, often, to charges of redundancy and calls for more collaboration and mergers). Non-profits have felt the impact of the recession not only in terms of smaller budgets but also in terms of increase in demands of services.

So who best to talk about the needs of people than those who watch lines getting longer for the saturday soup kitchen; those who notice more people signing up for free job/resume classes; those who help more people fill out applications for support services; those who have more people visiting the emergency room instead of a doctor because of lapse in health care; those who are offering more programs to teens because jobs are no longer available; those who are counseling adults who are out of work and feeling emotionally vulnerable. These little markers, which get lost in big conversations about problems and progress, add faces and stories to the numbers about unemployment and the social breakdown that follows.

And often non-profits are fore front of this story telling. However, our focus is on telling stories to raise more money to provide more services. The economic crisis has turned us away from the larger picture of social change to focus on the smaller, yet still important issue of survival. In the long term, does this do more harm than good for the people we serve? Is the election a call for us to use our stories for something else? With our political leaders running in circles, perhaps its time we use our experience and expertise to provide much needed guidance.

This is not to say that a relationship or push for political change won’t be messy or complicated. For example, in DC while Michelle Rhee was chancellor of education, she developed relationships with foundations that many thought were problematic. But clearly, there is a space in our national conversation on progress where non-profits are needed and can have a major impact.

What role do non-profits have in guiding the country out of this social and economic crisis?

Allison Jones

Helping millennials put their passions into practice

Monthly Archives: November 2010