2009 Maytree Leadership Conference Blog

At this year’s conference, we asked all participants to work together during lunch to create a Formula for Change.

Each table had a pile of approximately 100 individual cards, each with a word on them, plus a series of mathematical symbols (+, x, =, etc).

As participants introduced themselves, they also selected a few words that reflected their organization’s approach to change.

Once each person at the table had a chance to introduce themselves, they started to work together to create a collaborative vision of change and organize them into a formula.

There was no limits to this formula – we only asked them to be creative and have fun!

For the complete collection of Formulas for Change, download this PDF.

At the end of yesterday’s Leadership Conference, we had the opportunity to share and celebrate one of our own stories – ten years of the Scholarship Program for young refugee students.

To celebrate this tenth anniversary, we released a special publication – profiling 22 past scholarship recipients, telling the story how Maytree changed legislation so refugees could qualify for student loans, and putting the refugee experience in a Canadian context with an essay by Peter Showler.

But what we were most celebrating were the people who have inspired us in our work.

As Maytree’s president Ratna Omidvar pointed out: “By telling us their journeys to Canada, they let us experience their adversity and courage. By allowing us to be part of their lives, we have access to a world that is unknown to most of us. By sharing their stories, we have a chance to do something about the horrors that exist and build a better world.”

Maytree’s Vice-Chair and founder of the Scholarship Program, Judy Broadbent, told us how the program started: “Maytree started the scholarship program for protected persons (formally known as Convention refugees) in 1999. At that time, protected persons were unable to access student loans. So, for many, post-secondary education was simply not an option. We knew that it was important not only to provide scholarships to refugee students but aim for legislative change as well.

“All that needed to be done was to add three words – ‘and protected persons’ – to the Canada Student Financial Assistant Act. But this small legislative change took an enormous amount of time, patient follow-through and persistent, partnered effort by a wide range of people.

“The legislative change to allow protected persons to access student loans was finally included in the 2003 federal Budget. And in 2004 most provincial governments had made the changes in their student loan programs to mirror the federal changes.

“Maytree has now funded more than 150 students since the beginning of the program. And although one of our main goals has been accomplished, there is still much to do. In these times of diminishing compassion and hardening attitudes towards refugees worldwide and in Canada, we believe that our scholarship program makes an excellent case for Canada’s continued and improved openness to refugees.”

Download a copy of “Making Their Mark: Canada’s Young Refugees.”

John Pepin, Director of the consultancy JPA Europe Limited, in his article “Success with unreasonable people*,” tells an interesting story how breakthrough thinking can happen by exchanging ideas and experiences.

He describes how “[o]n 23-24 March in Jakarta 18 social entrepreneurs gathered for a two day master class entitled: Skills for Social Entrepreneurs Achieving Your Dreams: Growing Your Enterprise Profitability, Enhancing Your Financial and Social Return. It was designed for young social entrepreneurs and NGO’s who desired to grow their social enterprises, helping them gain greater outcomes with their social enterprises as well as to learn how to present their business case to potential investors and supporters.”

Retelling how social entrepreneurs in Indonesia and the UK got together to share experiences and to collaborate, he shows how by “[u]sing best practices, case studies and practical examples learning about each other’s approaches, successes and failures will provide a framework to aid social entrepreneurs as they develop enterprise strategies that balance financial and social goals.”

Download and read the full article (PDF).

*John explains that the title is borrowed from the 2008 book entitled The Power of Unreasonable People – How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets That Change. A review in Publishers Weekly reads “In this what’s-next business manifesto, ’social entrepreneurs’ Elkington and Hartigan run with a quote from playwright George Bernard Shaw: ‘The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.’ Using that thesis, the authors argue that the best place to find tomorrow’s revolutionary business models is on the unpredictable fringes of the mainstream market. There, they find cases like Jack Sim and his Singapore-based World Toilet Organization, who have ingeniously improved living conditions worldwide (and goosed profits) by, among other schemes, convincing governments and corporations to compete for cleanest public restroom honors. The heart of the book are the case studies, of both for-profit and nonprofit social organizations (many of them in Asian and Indian countries), which are mined for ideas and theories regarding their impact on global markets and local communities. Elkington (The Chrysalis Economy) and Hartigan also give nods to such well-known enterprises as Whole Foods, One Laptop Per Child, and Band Aid, Live Aid and Live 8. Written with a business-magazine style, Elkington and Hartigan’s eye-opening work and noble intent-bridging business acumen and social awareness-make a convincing case for unconventional entrepreneurship.

We just got back from an interview with Toronto Star publisher John Cruikshank.

He gave us his view on storytelling and the media, the media today, and new developments in social media. In particular, he addressed:

• Why storytelling matters to a media organization such as the Toronto Star;
• What role the Toronto Star has played in shaping the city over the years; and
• How the role of the media will evolve over the next decade.

John Cruikshank is the keynote speaker at this year’s Maytree Leadership Conference.

“I help tell the stories of the people and ideas that are unexpectedly changing our cities, to try and change the story of other cities,” I recently explained to an acquaintance who asked what I do.

He understandably looked a bit surprised (or maybe confused?) and so did I – since I have never explained Cities of Migration in quite such lofty terms before.

But on reflection, I believe it’s actually true. Our project is built on the belief that a story, told in the right way, to the right person can effectively change the narrative of a community and even a city. And not just in Canada but internationally.

Why?

Well, policy is at its most powerful when it is personal.

For instance:

English classes for newcomer parents and their children is sound policy: it means greater parental involvement and greater parental involvement is proven to translate into higher academic success for the children.

But what if instead I told you about six year old Amar, who just moved from Turkey to Frankfurt and can’t wait to start school next week since, as part of local program, his mother Fatima will be joining him in the classroom?

Stories like this stay with you. And if you are a decision-maker, a practitioner or a parent (or possibly all three), stories like these may help you imagine what this program would look like in your community.

(Reva Seth)

“So what is the big deal with banning refugee claimants from some democratic countries?” I asked Peter Showler, the Director of Refugee Studies at the University of Ottawa and former IRB member.

At that point he had already explained that some countries which say they’re democratic, really aren’t very democratic in practice and aren’t always able and willing to protect their citizens. He had also said that we accept hundreds of refuges from democratic countries each year. I understood intellectually and agreed with the thoughtful analysis he had put forward. But I wanted to really understand in my gut– beyond simply the facts – so that I could help him communicate his ideas about his proposal to reform to the inland refugee system, Fast Fair and Final.

Then he told me a story of a woman in Mexico who was abused, intimidated and threatened by drug traffickers. The police could do little to protect her or her family. He reminded me of the story in the Globe and Mail which described how a Roma family, terrorized by a white supremacist group, watched their homes burn to a ground. Firefighters were slow to respond, and the police did nothing to help them.

These stories put a human face on what were otherwise simply facts and figures. Stories bring data to life and help overcome apathy through empathy. Stories engage the public and move decision makers to action.

Peter uses storytelling brilliantly, in his book Refugee Sandwich. Read the Intro and a few exercises online.  He has also written several stories in a new publication, Making the Mark: Canada’s Young Refugees. Celebrating Ten Years of the Maytree Scholarship Program. This new publication will be available at the Maytree conference.

(Sandra Lopes)

All week I’ve been walking the streets of this city in search of the bloggable; casting word parachutes over crowds of TIFF groupies outside the Intercontinental, encircling an arguing couple at Spadina and Bloor with Times New Roman expletives…in short, I’ve been engrossed in the process of naming.

When we contain and name a situation, place, person, we create a frame around it. Whether or not it is true to the essence of the thing/person, it becomes a representation, something tangible. Whether that frame is porous, leaking into other narratives, or solid, randomly amoeba-like in shape or rigid and rectangular, the frame names and defines the content in some way. And from that fixed shape, we’re free to transform it, extrapolate subsequent shapes and imagine new possibilities.

What if the TIFF groupies were wearing Clean Train Coalition t-shirts in hopes of raising awareness and getting some star power behind the cause? Or, what if the arguing couple was acting out a row repeatedly in a relentless quest for YouTube fame?

There. I’ve just done it. Contained real-life strangers in stories then transformed them into potential political activists and narcissists.

If words are the tools of story-making, and stories have the power to connect us – humanize us, how can they be the foes of reality? In fact, I see them as the creators of reality.

Reality is subjective. If we create our reality through the stories we tell about our own lives, I believe that makes words our friends.

And if we can create our own futures, imagine the possibilities for organizations!

(Tina Edan)

There are many ways of creating narratives – for organizations, for communities and for cities. And words are not always necessary.

I was reminded of this last week when I met two photographers, John Beebe and Michelle Gibson, who use their art in a unique way to create the story of Toronto’s neighbourhoods right in the middle of the sidewalk.

They set up their informal outdoor studio on a neighbourhood sidewalk, take individual portraits of people who drop by as they are out shopping, going to doctor’s appointments, visiting the public library, strolling on the street or bicycling by.

The photo is printed and added to the instant sidewalk gallery reflecting back a narrative of the neighbourhood and the incredible diversity of the city. It becomes a conversation with those who have their photo taken and those who are passing by.

Check out their website, www.beingToronto.com, to have a look at their images and which neighbourhoods John and Michelle have travelled to.

(Ann Peters)

On her blog, Foundations+Footings, Julie White comments on Alan Broadbent’s latest Maytree Opinion “The Power of Stories.”

She gives a very personal example of how a story can have impact.

More than twenty years ago I told a story at a conference on work/family policies about a personal experience that happened the year I adopted my daughter after the death of my sister. It was a very painful and poignant story, but also a powerful example of the dilemmas we face as working parents. The story was picked up by the Globe and Mail and occasionally, even after all this time, I run into someone who remembered the story, and for whom it resonated.

She continues:

We are reminded that as human beings we are hungry to hear and tell our stories, to understand our unique – and at the same time – common experiences. It makes me think of the old saying, that you can never hate someone whose story you know.

Read Julie’s full blog post .

Sometimes the story that also matters is the story of telling the story.

Case in point: “Making the Refugee Hotel,” a series of short web videos and blog entries that chronicle the process of producing the play Refugee Hotel.

The play is described as a “humourous and moving portrayal of a group of Chilean political refugees who arrived at a Vancouver residential hotel in 1974, months after Chile’s bloody military coup.” The issues explored by the play, however, centre on the refugee experience and are therefore not just about Chileans in the 70’s. The videos and blog entries tell of the challenges and of community coming together to finally produce the play written by Carmen Aguirre a decade ago.

This approach to capturing the creative process is innovative and ultimately interesting. It showcases a community that has grown since the military coup,  one that continues to be present and vibrant.

Particularly moving is musician and composer Nano Valverde describing his own experience as a refugee working on this play (Episode 6).

Follow Marilo Nunez, Founder and Artistic Director of Alameda Theatre Company, on her present and future artistic adventures at www.alamedatheatre.com.

(Alejandra Bravo)