Still Pushing for DREAM (Inside Higher Ed)
“This week, news reports have suggested that Congressional Democrats are pushing ahead to take up immigration reform legislation, which would most likely include measures aimed at putting students who spend at least two years in college on a path to permanent residency,” Inside Higher Ed reports. “It was with this sense that such change might finally be in the offing, after close to a decade of false starts, that the National Forum on Higher Education for the Public Good, based at the University of Michigan, and the Kellogg Fellows Leadership Alliance convened for ‘Challenges and Opportunities: Future Pathways Towards Immigration and Higher Education,’ a three-day conference designed to build support for policies aimed at helping college students who are also undocumented residents of the United States.”
This post originally posted to FinancialAidNews.com on April 28th, 2010.
When Tragedy Strikes, How Can You Help?
In light of the West Virginia coal mine tragedy, you may find yourself asking, “How can I help?” This question is especially hard to answer when misfortune hits close to home. Well, I’ve discovered a Web site that helps not only those in need but also the people who want to be of service in some way. It’s called LotsaHelpingHands, and here’s an example of how it works.
Recently, a friend of mine-I’ll call her Sally–was overwhelmed with caring for her husband who was dying of cancer, and when I asked her, “How can I help?,” she told me about this site. It took very little time to set up a private, secure online community of friends who could make Sally’s life a little bit easier.
A calendar on the site allowed us to schedule blocks of time for relieving Sally of the arduous task of being an around-the-clock caregiver at home. The site, which is free, also makes it simple for members of the group to communicate with one another. In Sally’s case, this was especially helpful, since most of us didn’t know everyone in the community.
If you’d like to raise money for those in need, LotsaHelpingHands.com makes this a breeze. Regarding Sally, it was clear that she was emotionally and physically exhausted and could use something that was just for her. We thought some spa treatments might be just the thing.
(Before you dismiss these as a luxury for someone facing the death of a spouse, bear in mind that this was not something she asked for, but something we wanted to do to remind Sally that she occasionally needed to make time for herself and to have an identity beyond that of caregiver.)
In no time flat, we came up with more than $1,000 to get her a gift card for a tony spa in town, which she has used for a series of treatments and visits. As Sally’s friends, we were devastated about what was happening to Sally and her husband, and we were powerless to do anything about it, but we were grateful to be able to ease her suffering even in a small, temporary way. It was because of LotsaHelpingHands.com that we were able to do this so quickly.
Two important notes: 1) I have no stake in this Web site, financial or otherwise; I just want to let as many people know about it as possible. 2) If you do some fundraising through it and use PayPal as I did, please make sure that the vendor you contract with can accept money via PayPal. (There are ways around it, such as purchasing credit card gift cards, however.)
George Carlin rightly took issue with people who tell the bereaved, “If there’s anything I can do, ANYTHING at all, PLEASE don’t hesitate to ask.” Who is going to take someone up on such a vague offer? I was fortunate that Sally had an answer at the ready to the question, “How can I help?”
The next time you’re in a similar situation, why not use a Web site like LotsaHelpingHands to create a community of friends, co-workers, and loved ones who can actually do something, not merely talk about it? (Space prohibits me from discussing the thorny ethical issues that arise when one mixes the professional and the personal, but suffice it to say that managers who organize a community of helpers on behalf of a co-worker should respect the decision of others not to participate.)
Words of solace are good. Actions that bring solace are much better.
Dr. Bruce Weinstein is the public speaker and corporate consultant known as The Ethics Guy. His new book, Is It Still Cheating If I Don’t Get Caught?, (Macmillan/Roaring Brook Press) shows teens how to solve the ethical dilemmas they face. For more information, visit TheEthicsGuy.com.
This article originally appeared on Businessweek.com on April 8, 2010. It was reprinted with the expressed permission of Dr. Weinstein.
Sustainable Agriculture Thrives in Cuba
Miguel Salcines Lopez is a farmer of the 21st century. With a stylish jean jacket and rakish cowboy hat adorning his six-foot frame, Miguel looks more like a Cuban John Wayne than a stooped, tired farmer. That’s part of his game: he wants to make agriculture attractive, especially to the younger generation.
Miguel is the president of Organoponico Vivero Alamar, Havana’s largest and most successful organic garden. Actually, at 11 hectares, it’s more of an urban farm than a garden. Recently, I visited Vivero Alamar with several other Kellogg Food & Society fellows. “In the past,” Miguel told us, “agriculture in Cuba was demonized. People preferred to do anything but agriculture.” But today, Cuban farmers, especially urban farmers, have become respected members of society, some earning three times as much as doctors.
Why the sudden shift in cultural values and pay scale? I asked that question at each of the three Havana organic gardens I visited in mid-February. Mostly, the answers I heard contained exalted phrases like, “Organic agriculture is the privilege of the Cuban people,” which sounded to my Yanqui ears a bit like socialist propaganda. Cubans did seem proud of their organic gardens and had ample reason to be. But in my view, the country’s sudden shift to organic agriculture, and the accompanying shift toward more respect and better pay for farmers, can best be described in one word: necessity.
At one time, the Soviet Union was Cuba’s main trading partner, supplying the island with not only meat and grains but also fertilizer, pesticides, tractors, and oil; all the standard trappings of industrialized agriculture. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Cuba was left scrambling to feed itself. Food disappeared from the shelves. Over the next three years, which Fidel Castro euphemistically dubbed “The Special Period in a Time of Peace,” the average Cuban lost 30 pounds. Cubans had to learn to grow food without all those inputs simply because they had to. Call it organic-by-default.
And judging by the success of places like Vivero Alamar, they’re doing an amazing job. The garden is a cooperative, which Miguel describes as a “private ownership model with socialist, egalitarian tendencies.” Of the 164 workers, 22 have university degrees, two of which are doctorates. Seventy percent of the profit is distributed among the workers, 20 percent goes to farm infrastructure, and 10 percent goes to the state. The vegetables and fruit grown at Vivero Alamar are sold six days a week to the people in the neighborhood, and the garden also has contracts with Havana hospitals, rest homes, and schools.
Miguel describes the benefits: working hours have been reduced to seven hours a day in summer and six hours a day in winter. There are coffee breaks and free lunches, and workers can take home 1.5 pounds of vegetables each day they work. Workers can also gather after work for a beer at the on-site cantina, and bring their families there on weekends. The garden is both workplace and community center. “We even have hairdressers and manicurists for our women workers,” Miguel said. Women hold prominent leadership roles. “We men get easily ruined by rum and cigars,” Miguel laughed. “Women are better workers.”
As you might gather, there is a waiting list to work here.
In 15 years, Cuba has become “the world’s largest working model of a semi-sustainable agriculture,” according to U.S. writer and activist Bill McKibben. At least in terms of vegetable and fruit production like the kind I witnessed at Vivero Alamar, Cuba is a model to emulate, demonstrating how an entire society can convert its agriculture to organic methods and thrive.
Granted, Cuba still imports between 76 and 85 percent of its food and is far from being food-secure. But in the city of Havana, nearly all of the vegetables and most fruit now come from within a 30-mile radius, an accomplishment of which few cities in the world can boast. Talking with Miguel, it’s also clear that whatever crisis led Cuba to organic farming in the first place, there are few backward glances.