Your Voice Matters

Posted on May 20, 2013 by zoeweil
pile of colored straws

Image courtesy of jeff_golden/Flickr.

In a previous post, “Hold the Straw, and Other Tips for a Humane and Sustainable Life,” I wrote about my frustration every time I receive a straw in my glass of water at a restaurant. I just can’t understand why restaurants would choose to use a single-use, petroleum-based product that becomes trash in minutes, especially when they are wholly unnecessary and cost money, time, and effort. It just seems like such a lose-lose decision.

At one local restaurant where I eat periodically, they bring water with a straw so fast that I often don’t have time to request my water sans straw before it’s in front of me at the table. I’ve gotten into the habit of asking the server to please hold the straw before I’m even seated.

Recently, the server happened to be an environmental advocate herself, and not only did she hold the straw when I explained why I’d asked, she decided that she would hold the straw from now on with every table. And then she informed the kitchen of her decision.

I loved that. By using my voice, I created an immediate system change. So simple.

So use your voice. You’d be surprised at how quickly you can make a difference.

~ Zoe

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm; Above All, Be Kind; and The Power and Promise of Humane Education
My TEDxDirigo talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“
My TEDxYouth@CEHS “How to Be a Solutionary”

Continue the conversation! Leave your comment below, and “like” and share this post via your social media sites.

Filed under: changemakers, citizen activism | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Most Teens Don’t Think the World is Becoming a Better Place

Posted on May 9, 2013 by zoeweil
sad teen siting on bed

Image courtesy merfam/Flickr.

At the EARCOS conference, one of the other keynote speakers was Michael Furdyk, co-founder of TakingITGlobal, a fantastic organization we’ve written about and highlighted at IHE.

During his keynote, Michael shared an interesting (if not disturbing) statistic from the BBDO GenWorld 2006 study. When teens were asked if they agreed with the statement, “I think the world is becoming a better place,” only 14 percent (on average) responded in the affirmative. The breakdown by country looked like this:

China 34%
Taiwan 25%
India 26%
Brazil 16%
Russia 15%
United States 14%
Australia 11%
Spain 10%
Poland 10%
United Kingdom 9%
Germany 9%
Mexico 6%
France 2%

What’s ironic about these statistics is that, historically, things have been improving for centuries. As I’ve written about before and most recently shared here, by so many measures the world is indeed becoming “a better place.” There is greater freedom and democracy; girls are able to go to school, and women are able to live self-determined lives in greater and greater numbers; gays and lesbians are gaining rights; nonhuman animals are gaining greater protections; tolerance is on the rise and prejudice on the decline; life expectancy has increased almost everywhere, and death by violence has never been lower than in the last half-century.

True, the expanding human population and increased standard of living for a growing percentage of people has meant faster resource depletion and more global warming; increased rates of species extinction, and higher numbers of animals being brutalized and killed for expanding global appetites for meat. And the rise of the middle class has certainly not reached everyone—far from it—and slavery, trafficking, and sweatshop labor persist.

But even as the problems we face become potentially more grave, the opportunities for young people (the target of this BBDO survey) to solve them expands dramatically as organizations such as TakingITGlobal and IHE help pave the way for greater learning, networking, solutionary thinking, and problem-solving.

I am not surprised that only a small percentage of youth believes the world is getting better. After all, because they are growing up in the information age, they now know more about the grave problems we face, something previous generations did not. Fortunately, the fact that they believe the world isn’t getting better does not seem to stop them from committing to improving it.

I wish these youth had a greater sense of the arc of history, but I’m relieved that they are, by and large, staving off apathy and despair and joining forces through a globally connected world (which, ironically, is a perfect example of how the world is getting better) to solve the challenges we face.

~ Zoe

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm; Above All, Be Kind; and The Power and Promise of Humane Education
My TEDxDirigo talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“
My TEDxConejo talk: “Solutionaries”
My TEDxYouth@CEHS “How to Be a Solutionary”

Continue the conversation! Leave your comment below, and “like” and share this post via your social media sites.

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A Letter to High School Seniors: Don’t Accept College Rejections

Posted on May 2, 2013 by zoeweil
denied and approved stamps

Image courtesy of Joelk75/Flickr.

For my blog post today, I’m sharing a recent essay I wrote for Care2.com, an online community for people passionate about creating a better world. Here’s an excerpt from “A Letter to High School Seniors: Don’t Accept College Rejections”:

Dear High School Seniors,

Over the past few weeks, many of you have received letters from the colleges to which you applied in the fall and winter.

Some of you are delighted with the outcome, having gotten into your top choice(s). Congratulations. This post is not for you.

Some of you are content, having gotten into a couple of schools that were high on your list. Wonderful. This post is not for you.

Some of you – all too many – are despairing because you received multiple rejections; got on wait lists that are unlikely to turn into acceptances; didn’t receive the financial aid you required; and realized that you actually have no interest in going to the affordable safety school that accepted you. This post is for you.

Many of you, who worked so hard and expected to get into an elite college with the kind of endowment that would ensure you could affordably attend with good financial aid, wonder why you even bothered to take all those AP courses; to study so diligently in classes that sometimes bored you to tears; to prep for the SATs; and to follow all the rules laid out for you during four years of high school.

Here’s my message to you: Don’t surrender your potential. Don’t accept the rejections. It’s time to forge your own path.

Read the complete essay.

~ Zoe

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm; Above All, Be Kind; and The Power and Promise of Humane Education
My TEDxDirigo talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“
My TEDxConejo talk: “Solutionaries”
My TEDxYouth@CEHS “How to Be a Solutionary”

Continue the conversation! Leave your comment below, and “like” and share this post via your social media sites.

Filed under: education, humane education | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Who Was This Child’s Teacher?

Posted on April 18, 2013 by zoeweil

One of the videos Mike Johnston (see previous blog post here) shared with me at the EARCOS conference was this introduction to the children’s group Plant for the Planet.

As you watch this 4-minute video, I invite you to focus on these two underlying realities: 1) This boy represents a powerful movement of countless children; and 2) All these children have teachers.

Who are those teachers who’ve empowered and supported these countless children and their incredible work? What must these teachers do to support these children and how must they incorporate the skills and tools for activism and real-world service into their curricula? These children clearly aren’t spending every day focused on preparation for standardized tests, and my guess is that they’re learning more, gaining real world skills, and finding voice, passion, and goodness in the process of learning

This is what education should be.

Children like these will be the outcome.

~ Zoe

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm; Above All, Be Kind; and The Power and Promise of Humane Education
My TEDxDirigo talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“
My TEDxConejo talk: “Solutionaries”
My TEDxYouth@CEHS “How to Be a Solutionary”

Continue the conversation! Leave your comment below, and “like” and share this post via your social media sites.

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Thinking about Death Prompts us To Live our Lives with Greater Meaning

Posted on April 4, 2013 by zoeweil

In this powerful and moving TED talk, Candy Chang shares her New Orleans community’s most fervent wishes. Candy converted an abandoned, graffiti-covered building into a chalkboard wall with these words, “Before I die I want to ____________________.”, repeated over and over. Very soon, her neighbors had shared their deepest desires, and the wall was full of a community’s longings.

This reminds me of one of the keys to living according to the MOGO principle of doing the most good and least harm to ourselves and others. In my book, Most Good, Least Harm, I write about living one’s epitaph. To do so, we must reflect upon what we would want our epitaph to be. Asking ourselves these questions, “Before I die, I want to….” or “What do I want my epitaph to be?” allows us to more fully and deeply lead lives of meaning, purpose and, ultimately, joy.

If we extend Candy’s provocative, community-building, enriching question even further, by asking a slight variation on this question, we can add even great meaning to our lives: What do you want to have done before you die to make this world a better place?

With your one, precious, miraculous life, what matters most?

~ Zoe

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm; Above All, Be Kind; and The Power and Promise of Humane Education
My TEDxDirigo talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“
My TEDxYouth@CEHS “How to Be a Solutionary”

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Does Our Short Attention Span Prevent Us From Deep Thinking?

Posted on April 1, 2013 by zoeweil

For my blog post today, I’m sharing a recent essay I wrote for Care2.com, an online community for people passionate about creating a better world. Here’s an excerpt from “Does Our Short Attention Span Prevent Us From Deep Thinking?”:

“In his recent essay in Harvard Business Review, Umair Haque critiques “TED thinking,” which he writes, serves “as a shorthand for the way we’ve come to think about ideas and how we share them, whether it’s through an 18-minute talk, an 800-word blog post, or the latest business ‘best-seller’…. ‘TED thinking’ is just a symptom: and the underlying syndrome is our broken relationship with Great Ideas.” 

 While Haque brings up some important and good points in his essay, the construct he presents creates a false dichotomy between “TED thinking” and deep thinking; between solutions-oriented thinking and theorizing; between application and analysis; between idea generation and Great Ideas. These either/ors are both unnecessary and unhelpful.”

Read the complete essay.

~ Zoe

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm; Above All, Be Kind; and The Power and Promise of Humane Education
My TEDxDirigo talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“
My TEDxConejo talk: “Solutionaries”
My TEDxYouth@CEHS “How to Be a Solutionary”

Like my blog? Please share it with others, comment, and/or subscribe to our RSS feed.

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Clear Values ≠ Easy Decisions

Posted on February 18, 2013 by zoeweil
Image courtesy michaelaw.

During a recent board of directors retreat at the Institute for Humane Education, our facilitator helped the group (comprised of several new members) get to know each other through a wonderful activity. He’d collected a bunch of quotes and put them in a bowl. We each picked a piece of paper from the bowl, read our quote, and pondered what it meant for us. Then one by one we shared our quote and reflected about its meaning to us.

My quote came from Walt Disney, who said: “When your values are clear, your decisions are easy.”

Not in today’s world, I thought. Really, not even in Walt Disney’s world. Not if your values include compassion, kindness, and living sustainably. Being kind and compassionate and walking lightly in a complex, globalized world requires a great deal of knowledge about a great many things. It may be relatively easy to make kind and compassionate decisions in our interpersonal relationships, but what does it mean to be kind when the foods we eat, the clothes we wear, and the products we use may have contributed to the exploitation, abuse, suffering, death, and destruction of people, animals, and ecosystems?

My values are pretty clear. And I try very hard to live by them. But my decisions are certainly not always easy. Some are easier than others. I don’t want to cause unnecessary suffering and death to animals, so I’ve chosen to be vegan. I don’t want to cause the exploitation and enslavement of people around the globe, so whenever possible I opt for fair trade foods. But few foods actually have such labels; and every day I learn something new, such as how the high demand in the U.S. for the nutritious grain quinoa is now preventing poor Bolivians, for whom it has been a national staple for generations, from being able to afford what is grown in their own country. The truth is that the more deeply I attempt to live according to my values, the more challenged I am and the less easy it becomes to make truly humane and just decisions.

And so when it was my turn to share my quote with the group, I thought how perfect it was that I had picked this one. I had, in fact, written an entire book, Most Good, Least Harm, about the challenges, as well as the joys, of living as deeply aligned as possible with our values. I found myself thinking that Walt Disney’s quote represented a simplistic kind of black and white thinking that I’m trying to depose, by urging people – especially students – to think in ways that are complex, nuanced, thoughtful, and creative, so that they will be able to make wise decisions — a far more important thing to me than easy decisions.

~ Zoe

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Above All, Be Kind, and The Power and Promise of Humane Education
My TEDxDirigo talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“
My TEDxYouth@BFS “Educating for Freedom”
My TEDxYouth@CEHS “How to Be a Solutionary”

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Filed under: MOGO (Most Good) | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Believe and Never Give Up

Posted on January 24, 2013 by zoeweil

For my blog post today, I’m sharing a recent essay I wrote for Care2.com, an online community for people passionate about creating a better world. Here’s an excerpt from “Believe and Never Give Up”:

“… while the evidence is clear that we’re living in less violent times, we are simultaneously living in more dangerous times because we now have the capacity to cause so much irrevocable destruction of our planet. Climate change and habitat destruction are leading to the extinction of so many species that we may lose half of them by the end of this century. Nuclear weapons – tens of thousands of them – are a constant threat. A growing human population, all desirous of a better standard of living, could denude our planet.

And yet, never before have we had the capacity to collaborate and innovate with people across every border to solve our challenges. Anyone who says that we cannot feed the world through humane and sustainable agriculture; produce products ethically and sustainably; develop enough renewable energy to meet our needs; cure cancer and other diseases without animal experimentation; be safe without the war machine, or have thriving economies without endless growth in the GDP simply lacks imagination. This is why imagination, the capacity to envision solutions to our challenges, is the most essential ingredient in the complex recipe that will lead us closer to a peaceful, just, and healthy world. This is why it’s so critical that we nurture our children’s – and our own – imagination, our birthright as human beings.”

Read the complete essay.

~ Zoe

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Above All, Be Kind, and The Power and Promise of Humane Education
My TEDxConejo talk: “Solutionaries”
My TEDxDirigo talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“
My TEDxYouth@BFS “Educating for Freedom”

Like my blog? Please share it with others, comment, and/or subscribe to our RSS feed.

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How to Be a Solutionary: Zoe Weil’s New TEDx Talk

Posted on January 14, 2013 by zoeweil

I’m excited to share my new TEDxYouth@CEHS talk, How to Be a Solutionary, which highlights how vital it is that we each find our solutionary path, and offers examples of how others have merged their passion and skills to work toward solving the issues they care deeply about.

Author, activist, and visionary changemaker, John Robbins, said this about my talk:

“I loved watching this presentation by Zoe Weil, and feel uplifted, informed and strengthened by it. Her clarity and her compassion ring absolutely true for me — in a way that is only possible when someone’s heart and head are in alignment. Thank you, Zoe, for providing such a potent gift to us all. The more people who hear and heed this beautifully presented message, the more powerful we will be in building better lives and a better world.”

I hope you enjoy it! If you do, please share it widely and spread the word. Many thanks!

~ Zoe

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Above All, Be Kind, and The Power and Promise of Humane Education
My TEDxConejo talk: “Solutionaries”
My TEDxDirigo talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“
My TEDxYouth@BFS “Educating for Freedom”

Like my blog? Please share it with others, comment, and/or subscribe to our RSS feed.  

Filed under: citizen activism, humane education | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

What Can We Do When Children Cannot Imagine a Better World?

Posted on January 7, 2013 by zoeweil
Image courtesy of Tom Hickmore via Creative Commons.

For my blog post today, I’m sharing a recent essay I wrote for Care2.com, an online community for people passionate about creating a better world. Here’s an excerpt from “What Can We Do When Children Cannot Imagine a Better World?”:

“I recently spoke to the middle school students at an alternative, independent, progressive school. I talked first to the 5th and 6th graders and next to the 7th and 8th graders. As I often do when I give presentations, I opened my talk by asking the kids what they thought were the biggest problems in the world. Like every group, their lists included such topics as global warming, poverty and war, along with many other issues.

Then I asked a question I hadn’t ever posed before. I asked if they could imagine a world without these problems. Only three children out of 40 raised their hands. I was stunned. These are children. Children are blessed with active imaginations, yet these kids couldn’t imagine a world without a laundry list of terrible problems and crises.”

Read the complete essay.

~ Zoe

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Above All, Be Kind, and The Power and Promise of Humane Education
My TEDxConejo talk: “Solutionaries”
My TEDxDirigo talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“
My TEDxYouth@BFS “Educating for Freedom”

Like my blog? Please share it with others, comment, and/or subscribe to our RSS feed.

Filed under: humane education | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

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