And The Good News Is...

And The Good News Is...: #Girls Can Change The World! : "(Tonight I watched the final shows of the Oprah Show and it inspired me to express my feelings and thoughts about Girl Power that is emergi..."

(Tonight I watched the final shows of the Oprah Show and it inspired me to express my feelings and thoughts about Girl Power that is emerging across our world. I will continue the CDI story in my upcoming blogs). #Girls Can Change The World. “…and then the day came  when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful  than the risk it took to blossom. ” Anais Nin I received this as a thank you from the 2,000 women employees who attended the Hewlett-Packard’s 1995 Technical/Professional Women’s Conference.  Frances Hesselbein and I participated on a panel discussing the Power of Women. Throughout the ages women have been yearning for their voices to be heard, for the good of all girls, women and the world - I believe this is our time. I feel our world is begging for us to blossom. The signs of our times, the conditions of our families, communities, organizations, institutions, nations and our planet are compelling reasons for women and girls...

               “My parents held the vision that their children                 would have a better life than they did.” I came from a very humble background. I was raised in Morro Mos Macacos, a favela in Rio. My family was very poor and no one in my family had more than a secondary education until my generation. My father has an eighth grade education. For most of my life he worked collecting and recycling waste, now he has a small grocery store. My mother always worked as domestic. Even though they come from humble backgrounds they always stressed the importance of education. Vision and values were always very important to my parents. My parents held the vision that their children would have a better life than they did. They wanted us to have a formal education and professional jobs. They not only taught us to value education, they also taught us to respect and treat others well and to always value...

I started this blog to share real life stories of people who triumph over tremendous obstacles - people I call DreamMakers. My intention for “And The Good News is…” is to inspire hope and to demonstrate that we all have the capacity to change our reality.  Ronaldo is the Founder of IEE and The Center for Social and Cultural Integration (CISC), two grassroots organizations that partner with CDI in helping people in underserved communities to transform their lives. Ronaldo’s programs have been so successful that he was awarded an Ashoka Fellow. For those of you who are not aware of Ashoka. They are “the global association of the world’s leading social entrepreneurs—men and women with system changing solutions for the world’s most urgent social problems.”  Their vision on their website reads,  “Ashoka envisions an Everyone A Changemaker™ world. A world that responds quickly and effectively to social challenges, and where each individual has the freedom, confidence and so...

MARIA do SOCORRO, President of ASVI/CDI  “I knew I was helping them but the big surprise  was how much they were helping me –   this experience changed my life”. I am from Ceará, one of the 27 states of Brazil, located in the northeastern part of the country. My dad moved to Rio with four kids, seeking a better life. I have lived in several favelas in Rio. I will never forget when I was 5 years old; I used to cry a lot because I would hear gunshots at night. The bathroom in our house was a hole in the ground. Before moving to Rio my family lived in my great-grandmothers house. It was a big house, we lived a completely different lifestyle. My parents always emphasized education, so when I was 15 I decided I wanted to become a psychologist. I went to university and I worked very hard. I worked during the night as a typist - from midnight to 6 AM to pay for my college and I went to school during the day. I studied clinical psychology; I was not attracted to so...

Wanderson da Silva Skrock, Supervisor of CDI Francisco               “ I became more and more powerful in my community                because of my role as a drug dealer in the gang.”  My first encounter with CDI was while I was serving time in a juvenile detention center. I come from a single mother household with 5 children;I am the only boy. We moved to Rio from the south of Brazil to Rio in search of employment. We moved into a favela called the German Complex, a community that was dominated by the drug trade. As a young impressionable boy I was very influenced by the drug dealers and gangs. I saw that being part of a gang gave people visibility, power and money. I started using drugs and getting to know the dealers. I started out doing small favors for them but my role grew larger and larger. I was selling drugs by the time I was 14.  It was very hard for my mother to have her only so...

Introduction The people that you will read about   have undergone astonishing transformations,  against tremendous obstacles. On the second day I was in Rio de Janeiro to interview people for my book, I went to two favelas, Morro dos Macacos and Morro da Providênci. These communities are perched on the hillsides surrounding Rio. Favelas remind me of the severely poverty stricken shantytowns I saw in South Africa shortly after Mandela’s emancipation. The people in these communities built their homes so they don’t resemble the orderly blocks and urban designs you commonly see in cities. They are a series of connected buildings stacked on one anther, which gave me a feeling of a walled-in community. Although about 20,000 to 40,000 people live in each of the favelas we visited - it felt like everything and everyone was in very close in proximity. Up until recently armed drug gangs governed most of these communities. Over the past several years, the Brazilian governme...

Today I am posting the conclusion of Rodrigo Baggio’s interview. Before I get started I want to give you an update. I shared with you in my March 30 post that I published DreamMakers: Agents of Transformation in Brazil in June of 2010. It featured The Center for Digital Inclusion. Since that time CDI has gone from 813 centers to 827 centers around the world. They are impacting over a million people throughout Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, United Kingdom, and Jordon. They have just recently expanded into Spain and they are now developing CDI- US. CDI's model has overcome what is classically known as the “The Pilot Syndrome” - the difficulty of scaling up and replicating a project that is successful on a grassroots level to a global level. The structure of the CDI network creates a positive ripple effect that leverages CDI’s impact globally. Their model works around the world in diverse environments - from London to the...

I am continuing to share the story of Rodrigo Baggio, Executive Director of the Center for Digital Inclusion. You will read some extraordinary examples of how CDI is impacting people and communities. (Please see my April 30 post for the beginning of his story.) More amazing defining moments in Rodrigo’s life - in his words . Today we have 803 Centers in 13 countries. We have centers in neighborhoods and schools in urban and rural communities. We have centers in the African-Brazilian communities. We have CDI centers in indigenous villages, in the Amazon Rain Forest, in hospitals for the mentally and the physically disabled; CDI also works in prisons. Never in my wildest dream did I think my vision would translate into such a movement. EMPOWERED TO ACT "...  the magnitude  of the rat infestation that was overrunning their community, they decided to do something about it." A part of our program requires the students to identify a challenge in their community and use t...

In light of the important historic event that just happened, I feel compelled to share my thoughts. I will continue Rodrigo Baggio’s story in my next post. I lived through 9/11. Unfortunately, I watched in shock from my apartment balcony as the second plane hit the second tower. In spite of the shock, fear and the heartache I experienced (and my belief that evil must be stopped) - I feel sad about the kind of celebration I am witnessing. It is very hard to explain in words, it is just a feeling (and of course it’s just my opinion). I hope we take this time to reflect on the state of the entire world – what it is, and what it could be. Now more than ever we need to use the energy this event has generated to envision the world we want to create for our children, future generations, and for ourselves.  My dream is that we use this time to ask some very important questions. “What’s important in life? What values do we want to embrace and build into our future? What kinds of l...