A Call to Action: Challenging the Status Quo

This call to action by one of our very own members urges you to challenge your perceptions, find your voice and initiate change!

Among the many movies that I’ve watched over the course of my childhood, none have struck me as a vividly as Pearl Harbour. Released in 2001 by blockbuster director Michael Bay (of Transformers fame) it garnered poor reviews and endured countless insults for its cheesy scenes and pathetic attempts to squeeze as much life as possible out of a dying genre that had been used and abused for at least twenty years prior.

Nonetheless, my favourite scene arrives at roughly two-thirds of the way into the movie where President Franklin D. Roosevelt reacts to news of the attack with visceral “shock and awe.” His Chief of Staff and military advisors respond with predictable epithets centering on the suddenness of the attack (“they took us by surprise”) or on the futility of counter-attack. In response, President Roosevelt scans the room, takes note of the expressions of defeat on the faces of his men, struggles to raise his crippled frame out of his wheelchair, stands precariously on his feet and then declares “Do not tell me it can’t be done!” It’s an awe-inspiring scene, and it’s especially sweetened by the phrase that incites such a burst of passion from this fictionalized president.

“Mr. President, with all due respect, what you’re asking can’t be done.”

Can’t be done. It can’t be done. There’s no use stressing over this situation, nothing’s going to change. If you’re even remotely irritated by statements like these, congratulations – that’s the right emotion. If you’ve ever been driven to actually do something in response to statements like these then congratulations once again, you’re no longer part of the rest of humanity that’s commonly referred to as “the herd.”

We live in a post-modern, consumerist society that corrals us into certain modes of behaviour based on what to buy, eat, wear and do (amongst other things). Our position and awareness of our place in society is defined overwhelmingly by our limitations, our constraints – or simply put, between what we do, and don’t have. We’ve been trained to understand that if we cannot afford something at a certain point in time, then we cannot have it (legally) at that particular point in time.

But an unfortunate effect of this type of daily conditioning is that it spills over into our perceptions of our own abilities, picking up a few flaws along the way. It influences our thought processes, teaching us to weigh our abilities to accomplish something against what we can and cannot do. Our thought processes exaggerate this perception, leading us to believe that if we cannot do something at a particular point in time, then it’s likely we never will be able to do it.

Ask yourself if you’ve ever encountered statements like these before:

“I’ve never studied science, I don’t think I could ever make myself understand what they talk about.”

“Math? I never understood that in high school, let’s not talk about it. I’m not very good with numbers.” [Cue in the nervous laughter]

“We can’t do that, it’s never been done before.”

“Don’t ask about that, it’s just not done.”

You may laugh, but take a look around, it happens to be a very prevalent mindset. What’s worse is that any form of unconventional thought that attempts to break this vicious circle of denigrating self-valuation is often countered with social ostracism, mockery or complete incredulity.

In the brilliant 1927 German expressionist film Metropolis, the protagonist Freder Fredersen encounters a giant man-eating machine that he interprets as the ravenous demon Moloch, swallowing up men whole without remorse. That’s how I envision the flip side of our modern society. Unlike our intellectual forefathers of yore, who were invigorated and challenged to rise above their immediate limitations, spurred on when people told them that what they were doing was “impossible” and “couldn’t be done”, most of our peers seem to have somehow crossed the apex on the parabola of human achievement, slowly and inexorably slipping down the other side into the maw of the demon of self-doubt and worse, inaction.

Remember Galileo Galilei? Against all odds, he continued to espouse a heliocentric model of the solar system even under pain of death. Or how about Darwin, who continued to support his Theory of Natural Selection in face of, as Einstein would have put it, “violent opposition from mediocre minds”?

The fact of the matter is that change as always been considered intolerable; the status quo badly in need of change forces people to continue to behave like cogs in some infernal man-eating machine, swallowing our ideas and hopes and dreams without remorse, without abandon, without thought, without consciousness. We become zombies, shuffling to and fro, living out our “lives of quiet desperation”, while the world watches on, silently beating its breast for change.

More than any time in history now is the time to take the initiative to make your voice heard. If you don’t like something, talk/blog/read/speak/argue/tweet/write about it. Don’t sit there expecting someone else to pick up the reins of change on your behalf and credit you for it. Be a Roosevelt, a Gandhi, a Martin Luther King or a Nelson Mandela. We need more people like them. Without action, our thoughts are essentially just actions held in stasis. With effort, the stasis mode is switched off and power suit of achievement has the potential to be switched on.

If that sounds clichéd, at least take heed from an unlikely source of inspiration. I did. This is Satan, speaking out from across the valley of time, from the pages of John Milton’s Paradise Lost:

“Awake, arise, or be forever fallen!”

Use this demon’s advice to rid yourself of your own demons. The Molochs of this world need to be identified and dismantled. Let’s get going.

Contributed by: Prashanth Gopalan

Prashanth Gopalan is currently pursuing a degree in Biotechnology and Economics at the University of Waterloo. An avid reader and writer, he looks forward to respectfully challenging your opinion in the near future. Follow him on Twitter @prashgopalan and feel free to kick-start the next great discussion.

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Lessons from Starfish

Photo credit: tibchris on Flickr

A recent article in the New York Times by Nikolas Kristof profiled the rise of the DIY Foreign-Aid Revolution, where particular attention is paid to examples of three American women, who saw social problems in far away places being Rwanda, Congo and Nepal, and felt the moral obligation to act to address the dire social situation found in each of these developing countries. Through their efforts, hard work and persistence, we are told that these individuals end up leaving the community in a seemingly better condition than when they found it.

Although the activities of these three individuals mentioned in the article are certainly noble, Kristof does acknowledge that their activities are merely a drop in the bucket when compared to the larger picture of millions more people around the world needing basic access to education, food & shelter, clean drinking water, and the list goes on and on.

Kristof does go on to say that if you happen to be that drop in the bucket of being helped however, it could transform your life. This reminds me of the story of the boy walking along a beach that has starfish lined up for miles on end. The boy walks along the beach, picking up one starfish at a time, throwing them back into the sea when he comes across an old man who asks him what he is doing. The young boy responds by saying that the starfish will die if left out in the morning sun, hence the reason why he is throwing them back into the water. With exclamation in his voice, the old man says that there must be thousands if not millions of starfish stranded along the beach, how could the boy possibly think he could make a difference? The young boy goes on to pick up a starfish and as he throws it into the water, he responds to the old man by saying, "I made a difference to that one".

Reading Kristof's article in the New York Times, you do get the warm fuzzy feeling inside that there are people out there in the world doing good, and in some way, we're encouraged to strive to be just like them, helping to change the world by starting our own non-profit organization, raising funds from our own local community so that people and children halfway around the world could get a better chance at life.

Now, to play devil's advocate, the reality is not so simple and is a lot more complex than Kristof makes it out to be. Dave Algoso of Foreign Policy, issued a response to Kristof's article arguing that we all want to tell ourselves stories of going through our own personal hardship in order to make the world a better place. The fact is however, and I agree with Algoso, that the real work of change on the ground takes time and will not come from the foreigner, typically a Westerner, who comes into the developing world to save the day. Rather, it comes from the local community where the change is needed who rally together to make their community a lot better for themselves. From a previous guest blog post by Akhila Kolisetty, the real key is not to adopt the "saviour complex" where you see the poor and marginalized as the "other" that need saving, but rather, understanding the lives and struggles of the people and the community you are working with, bringing your skills and experiences to the table in order to join them in the journey of realizing their goals.

Don't get me wrong, I certainly applaud the commitment and work of people who decide to spend months or years overseas in developing countries volunteering with credible international organizations; it is a great learning experience and allows you to see and adopt a different cultural perspective. However, the point is that it is not about you, it is about the people that you are working alongside with, empowering them and embarking on a shared journey together with them to improve their own standard of living.

We can all make a difference in the world, just like the young boy with the starfish mentioned in the story above. Sometimes, we don't even have to go overseas to do so, we can start with our own local community where we could potentially have the most impact since we understand our context and our culture so much better. If this is the case, then I would highly encourage you to join and volunteer for a club, organization or non-profit that best aligns with your passions, skills and interests. At the end of the day, as long as you stay true to yourself and your intentions, you will have a positive influence on those around you, whether it happens to be in your local community or overseas.

Contributed by: Renjie Butalid

Renjie Butalid is currently pursuing a Masters in International Economic Relations at the Institute for Social & European Studies, Corvinus University of Budapest. Prior to moving to Hungary, Renjie was Communications Coordinator for Social Innovation Generation at the University of Waterloo. Follow him on Twitter @renjie

Three Ways Poker Can Help Your Career

To all emerging change-makers, wherever your career may take you, these poker-inspired tips will give you insight into improved decision making and judgement.

Rafe Furst is a World Series of Poker champion, an angel investor, a mentor for groups like the Unreasonable Institute and All Day Buffet, and an advisor for the Decision Education Foundation. By his account he simply “connects ideas, people and resources and makes things happen faster."

With his degrees in computer science, symbolic systems, and a deep understanding of poker our conversations with Rafe kept coming back to how to make decisions. Considering how many decisions we make every day, and how directly connected our ability to make good decisions is to accomplishing anything, it's surprising how little attention the subject gets.

So, thanks to Rafe, we now offer three tangible rules that you can use not only to pick up your poker game, but also to help you get wherever you want to go—faster.

Rule #1: Use The Small Edge
Says Rafe: "Let's say there are 10,000 decisions that you make in the course of winning a poker tournament, each with different odds of a positive outcome. The key is taking very small edges (55/45 here, 60/40 there) over and over and over again. If you keep waiting for the perfect hand, you'll lose all your money in antes. Most people’s perceptions of how much of an edge they need to make a ‘correct’ play is totally off."

The daily decisions we make follow a similar pattern. We can either wait for the odds to be obviously in our favor before making a move or we can take hundreds of smaller chances where we have a small edge. So ask yourself: Are the odds of this particular job, conference, or opportunity going well better than flipping a coin? Yes? Then do it again and again and again.

Rule #2: Decisions are Different From Outcomes
We've been raised to think that good decisions always lead to good outcomes. Problem is, they don’t. If you follow the small edge rule, any decision you make that has a better than 50 percent chance is a good decision. You both win and lose, but over a long period of time, you eventually make it big.

Learning to trust that you made a good decision even when you get that bad outcome is what enables you to keep making those hundreds of small-edged decisions that lead you to win over the long haul. If you see decisions and outcomes as the same, then slowly you begin to make decisions only when you have a close-to-guaranteed chance of success, you miss out on opportunities.

As Rafe told us: "Making a good decision most of the time in poker and in life is dependent on being able to decide based on the expected value as opposed to the particular outcome." So embrace those decisions, and realize that if you have that small edge, it was a good decision regardless of the outcome.

Rule #3: It’s All One Big Game.
Sitting at a card table, dealer in front of you, can make one feel like this hand and this opportunity is going to be your last chance to make money, to play, to win. But as Rafe explains, “It’s not like this session or this game has any more importance than the one I have tomorrow or the one I had yesterday. A lot of times what happens in poker is people have the wrong mindset. They make decisions in the game as though it’s their last.”

It is this mindset of the immediate that affects the kinds of decisions we make. The feeling of a lack of time, or of limited opportunity changes the ways we make decisions subconsciously and makes it hard to determine what the correct small edge decision is.

In poker, as in life, there is never just one opportunity and taking the long term view knowing that the perfect opportunity is still ahead will help you become more in tune with yourself and your ability to know what that correct small edge decision truly is.

Contributed by: Dev Aujla

Dev is the Founder and Executive Director of DreamNow, a charitable organization that produces ideas that do good for the world. As a producer, DreamNow brings together people, raises money and plans for the growth of ideas. The ideas which Dev has played a role in producing reach over fifty thousand people annually and have collectively raised over 3 million dollars. Dev’s work and writing has been featured through numerous media outlets including Time Magazine, The Globe and Mail, The Huffington Post, Paper Magazine and CBC Newsworld. He currently sits as an advisor to several start-ups and is a director of both the Spirit Bear Youth Coalition and Resource Generation. Dev holds an English Literature degree from the University of Western Ontario and currently lives and works in both Toronto and New York. He is currently at work on his first book which will be published by both Penguin and Rodale.

Also posted on GOOD.

Volunteers: Harder than managing paid employees, but so much more impactful!

Having managed over 250 student volunteers over the last five years, I can definitely say that volunteers are harder to manage than paid employees. Yet when a group of motivated volunteers work together well, the impact on them and on the organization’s goals is unparalleled in the world of 9 to 5.

Having witnessed exceptional volunteer teams, as well as those ending in utter catastrophe, there are a few commons aspects of productive, motivated volunteers.

Understanding Their Priorities: To engage volunteers effectively, you need to realize that most don’t work on your initiative 8 hours a day. For most volunteers, you are 5th or 6th on their priority list, with the top 4 including themselves, their family, their friends, school (or work), and, for students, maybe a hobby or a part-time job. This means you need to recognize where your organization exists in their priorities. By doing this exercise, you can determine how much time and energy they are willing to invest so you can best gauge their level of involvement. Improperly done, volunteers will either be overwhelmed, often resulting in them leaving without addressing the issue with you, or become disengaged with your organization since you didn’t properly identify their desire for more what?.

Providing Meaningful Experiences: With an idea about their desired level of commitment, in order to keep them stimulated, you need to provide them with meaningful experiences. Unless they are head-over-heels for your cause and just want to help out where they can, most volunteers won’t be enthusiastic about folding informational brochures for 10 hours a week. In addition to helping a good cause, many (especially students) are looking for opportunities to grow and develop personally. This is by far the hardest aspect of volunteer management – providing growth experiences for their few dedicated hours a week, which may require you to delegate a task? of a rather critical aspect of your organization. This is a highly accentuated instance of the traditional management scenario of delegation vs ‘doing-it-yourself’. Do you get a volunteer to help define your new marketing strategy? But if they botch it, you’ll have to significantly redo it - how will your volunteer feel about their usefulness when you do this? But if you tried to avoid these growth experiences, how do you ensure volunteers feel valued?

Goal Congruency is essential: Up until this point, you have focused on your volunteers, a necessity to running a non-profit organization, but your organization will not achieve its goals without aligning them with your now properly identified and stimulated volunteers. The key to this is proper planning. Figure out what you need done, who you have to do it, what they wish to get out of volunteering, and what they can offer. With those questions answered you can then devise roles and responsibilities that meet their goals and your goals. Sounds easy? Think again. Properly delegating tasks to part-time volunteers is a science. As well, being 5th on their priority totem pole gives volunteers at least 4 potential ‘outs’. Being low on the list means their loyalty to your organization is much lower than to the higher rungs. If any of the higher priorities need more of their time (school is getting busy, part-time boss wants me to work weekends now, etc), you are first on the chopping block. To effectively manage a team of volunteers, the planning process needs to be constantly reviewed to ensure your goals are being met, something which in itself can take up an enormous amount of your time.

Develop volunteer loyalty – communicate and empower: As a manager of volunteers, you will most likely be more committed than your volunteers to the cause and the organization. To help develop a greater sense of loyalty in your volunteers, show them why you are so committed and make them feel that they are an integral part of the organization. As volunteers start to drive results, many will begin to internalize the organization’s goals and won’t be helping to reach ‘your’ goals, but they will be helping to reach ‘their’ goals.

If this has scared you from working with volunteers, that was definitely not the intention. Working with volunteers has been one of the most rewarding experiences I have had. When these four things listed above are present with your volunteers, the results are simply euphoric.

Contributed by: Greg Overholt

Greg Overholt is the founder and executive director of the national student-led social venture SOS: Students Offering Support and a recent business and computer science graduate of Wilfrid Laurier University. Students Offering Support supports local SOS chapters residing in universities across Canada who offer SOS’s interactive ‘Exam-AID’ group review session to their peers. Over the last six years, SOS volunteers have tutored more than 10,000 university students and raised over $440,000 for sustainable educational projects in developing nations that are built by SOS volunteers on annual outreach trips. By using inventive entrepreneurial business practices, the SOS model provides university students a unique means to acquire valuable extra-curricular and entrepreneurship experience while helping children around the world gain break the cycle of poverty through access to a quality education.

Also posted on the FP Executive Blog.

Walking together towards social justice

"If you have come to help me you are wasting your time. But if you recognize that your liberation and mine are bound up together, we can walk together." -Lila Watson

Are you involved in any public service or volunteer work? Have you worked with non-profit organizations is the past? Have you participated in rallies, demonstrations, or other activist movements? At the very least, do you donate to non-profits occasionally? I suspect the answer is yes -- especially since you’re reading this blog.

If you have any interest in social change, take note of the above quote. There’s a difference between seeing the beneficiaries of any philanthropy, volunteer work, or non-profit services as “charity cases” and seeing them as simply - human beings. There’s a difference between wanting to help someone through feelings of pity or compassion, and wanting to do the right thing because of a feeling of empathy, because you truly understand their struggle.

Do you see the poor, the abused, the marginalized as people you have to help? Do you ever think the poor are weak, helpless? If you do, you’re seeing yourself as a savior, and seeing the poor as people who need to be saved.

Such a viewpoint is not simply inaccurate, but actively harmful. By thinking of yourself as a savior, you’re building a barrier that separates yourself from the poor. The “savior complex” means that you start to think of the poor as the “other.”

Instead, think about adopting a different attitude, viewpoint, and worldview. Instead of elevating yourself to the status of “savior,” take on a simpler approach -- that of togetherness, community, friendship, mutuality. Believe that you’re working with the poor to achieve the same goal: to improve this world we live in, and to contribute to social justice. See yourself as a friend, a brother, a sister of those you previously wanted to help. Develop empathy, where you are actively working to understand the lives and struggles of those who you hope to work with.

If you want this perspective, what is most vital of all is to gain experience working directly with poor and marginalized communities. Get out into the Bronx to tutor kids. Attend a migrant workers rally and listen to their stories about employment inequality. Work abroad with a (trustworthy, effective) local community-based organization in India or Uganda. Live with a host family, and understand their lives. Become a community organizer. Don’t separate yourself from the poor. Work with them.

My most meaningful learning experiences have come from working directly with the poor, and listening to their stories. I’ve spoken with immigrants from Haiti, homeless individuals attempting to find public housing, drug addicts seeking rehabilitation, disabled individuals on housing vouchers, men with a past criminal record attempting to find a job. I’ve spoken with a range of low-income and disadvantaged people and I can tell you one thing: I could have been in their shoes. There is literally nothing that differentiates me from a poor person, except luck - the household I was born into, the community I grew up in. These experiences have taught me to have empathy, not sympathy. They’ve taught me not to see myself as the savior -- because I’m not.

Only if you work alongside the poor will you understand that you are not the key to their liberation. But you can make a difference. You can bring your skills and experience to the table and join them in the journey of achieving their goals. You’ll understand that “helping” someone is not the key to social change -- but that empowerment is. You’ll see that poor people are incredibly resourceful, motivated, smart, talented, resilient, courageous, and making do with what they have. But you’ll understand that the system is biased against them -- and that’s where you come in. You’re not there to give them charity, but you’re there to help twist the system to achieve greater social justice. You’re here to empower people so they can better face the challenges they encounter in life.

There is a role we can play -- but it’s not the role of “savior.” And only by developing a keen sense of empathy with poor communities and by tearing down the barriers that separate “us” from “them,” can we find the key to achieving social justice.

Contributed by: Akhila Kolisetty

Akhila Kolisetty is a Legal Assistant for a civil rights law firm in Washington D.C., where she works with clients who have experienced housing discrimination and assists lawyers in fair housing litigation. She recently graduated from Northwestern University with a B.A. in Economics and Political Science, and has worked with a range of human rights non-profits. She is passionate about expanding access to justice and legal services for indigent populations worldwide. Read her blog at Justice for All and catch her on Twitter at @akhilak!

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Empowering the Bottom of the Pyramid

Here is a look at how newer concepts in development, such as capacity‐building, microfinance and “bottom of the pyramid” are changing perspectives…

In a recent address to the world economic forum, Bill Gates proposed that if we are going to have a serious chance of changing the lives of the poor “we will need another level of innovation. Not just technology innovation—we need system innovation”. It is intriguing that one of the key players in today’s technology driven industry would be suggesting such an idea. In actuality, the system innovation he speaks of has somewhat been present for some time now, however it is finally creating ripples on a global scale and more people are taking notice of the newer concepts of international development through empowerment. Instead of simply extending money towards vague aid efforts and hoping that it will bring an end to the repetitive cycle of poverty, the new concepts aim to equip low-income individuals with the necessary tools and support to better their situation. Often referred to as efforts targeting the ‘bottom of the pyramid’, typically the poorest socio-economic group living on less than two dollars a day in developing nations, the concepts appear in efforts aimed at capacity building and specific services such as microfinance. With their growing success, these concepts are altering perspectives by way of benefiting not only the individuals in need, but also providing companies and foreign entities gains in varying forms.

Focusing first on the nature of these new concepts and services, they share common objectives and underlying principles. Capacity building from an international development standpoint involves entities such as NGOs working together with communities or local organizations and facilitating growth through providing crucial resources, training or simple yet effective technologies. Focusing on specific implements, microfinance is the offering of unique financial services geared particularly towards the poor such as Microcredit. The commonality in these two approaches is that they both attempt to empower those with low-income by providing them with a small, yet appropriate, amount of aid so that they can ideally support themselves in a way that is sustainable even after support is no longer available. In order to reduce poverty, these approaches aim to understand the system and the root causes of the infliction, such as a lack of education, and take the necessary steps to break the cycle. It is only logical that if a person lacks the basic necessities such as food and shelter, then essentials such as education are deemed unimportant. However, if you provide a person with small loan (i.e. microcredit) and help them develop a small yet sustainable profit generating venture, they will likely be able to support themselves and proceed to potentially provide their children with an education. Thus, these new concepts shatter age-old barriers. The poor are not perceived as recipients of charity but instead as potential entrepreneurs, customers, partners, leaders and contributing members of the global society.

The benefits of these initiatives have been better than expected. There are countless ongoing success stories. For instance, WaterHealth International is a for-profit founded over a decade ago and operates a successful for-profit business. They sell water purifying technology at a reduced cost and on affordable plans so that clients in the third-world who buy the devices can generate small yet helpful revenues from selling clean water. Within a few months of purchase the third-world customers can typically pay off the technology and then fully keep the profit. In this situation the company earns profit, establishes the customer to earn profit, and also helps provide well needed clean water to many more. This may come as a surprise to some. For-profits benefiting countless individuals while at the same time generating returns. It is important to realize this fact since typically foreign aid efforts have resulted in little to no growth in recipient nations and at the same time have still drawn on large resources from the contributing nations. In stark contrast, the success of organizations such as Grameen Bank, an early adopter and purveyor of microcredit, is inspiring. “More than 2.3 million Bangladeshis, spread over 37,000 villages, have borrowed from Grameen Bank. Cumulatively, the bank, a financially sustainable, profit-making venture with 12,000 employees, has loaned $2 billion, and virtually every cent has been repaid”. This represents only the beginning of a shift towards socially responsible and mutual benefit.

Considering the unarguable success of the efforts, corporations and global entities are taking notice. Partnerships are actually emerging among multinationals. Danone is currently working with Grameen to establish a food company in Bangladesh that provides low-cost baby formula and processed milk products. The benefit to third-world consumers will be significant and benefit to the supplying organization comes in various forms and if not anything, it will at least help them in their public relation efforts as being a socially responsible brand. In addition to partnerships, Social Venture Capitalists are also emerging such as North American based Acumen Fund. Such VC’s are unique in the sense that they devise models built on a triple bottom line and gauge results using metrics such as the Social Return on Investment. It is such an approach that is likely to catch on and bolster development in the third world during the near future.

Perspectives in international development are slowly yet nonetheless shifting as foreign entities are coming to understand that there is a benefit to both parties involved in considering citizens of developing nations as clients and partners. Regardless, going forward important advances are necessary. As suggested by Mohammad Yunis, Noble Peace Prize recipient and Microcredit pioneer, “helping the poor involves more than simply providing technology. They must be owners of that technology, not just its passive consumers”. Thus feasible business models must be created such that products can be made ‘for the people, by the people’ and on a much larger scale than what is seen today. Foreign entities must invest more thought behind their aid and actually approach third-world nations as equal partners in order to invest in their growth.

Contributed by: Saksham Uppal

Saksham Uppal is the Executive Director of the Take Action! Organization. Still completing his studies in Engineering at the University of Toronto, he is passionate about helping those in need and empowering youth to be effective and socially conscious leaders. Connect with him on twitter at @SakshamUppal.

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Welcome to The Leaders Blog!

Leaders come from all walks of life and although they may not share common skills or experiences, they possess many similar traits: unbounded vision, admirable character, value-driven action, and the ability to transform ideas into reality. However, one must not be extraordinary to be a leader and we all have the ability to lead by example. Through small yet meaningful gestures, dedication, and standing up for issues of greater societal importance, each of us can be leaders.

Bearing this in mind, Take Action! presents The Leaders Blog. A showcase of opinions and passion contributed by leaders and change-makers across the globe. On a weekly basis we will feature thought provoking content to get you inspired and thinking about how you can make a difference.

On the same note, if you have an issue you are passionate about that pertains to leadership and/or social change, we ask that you contribute your material and voice your opinions. Please submit your posts to theleadersblog [at] takeactionorg.com and we will be in touch.

Remember change starts with YOU. Be a leader. Take Action!