Anti-Poverty Mom Reads "Whoever You Are"

This is what the book would look like if you were
little and sitting on my lap.

The book "Whoever You Are" by Mem Fox has been on my mind lately and I want everyone to know about it. I don't have any pre-schoolers anymore, but this was always my Go-To book when I was asked to talk to tiny children about global poverty. It paints a universal picture of childhood while acknowledging the differences in the lives we live all over the world.

I believe that before we can tell them about how they are different from kids who don't have the basic resources they need to grow and thrive, we should tell them how we are the same. That is the way we will build empathy and caring in our youngest readers.

Mem Fox knows this well. She is a 70-year-old Australian writer of children's books and the author of some of our favorites in this house. "Time for Bed" was a staple for us. It was THE book that could get my babies to sleep on planes! A particularly popular one of hers (and one of Austrailia's official gifts to Prince George) is "Ten Little Fingers, Ten Little Toes." She is a literacy specialist and has said about literacy: "Literacy has become the great focus of my life - it's my passion, my battle and my mission and my exhaustion." 

Fox was in the news recently because of an unfortunate recent incident in the in immigration line at the Los Angeles airport. She was detained and interrogated along with several other women. They shared the same room and were shouted at in a de-humanizing fashion for over an hour. The irony of the author of "Whoever You Are" having to endure this is almost too much for me to bear.

With all of this on my mind, I decided to record the first of what might become a series of readings. I want to spread the word about great books we can read to small ones to build big hearts. I want to model how parents should read to children: slowly, with loving expressions, showing the pictures, asking questions, with eye contact, with emotion and humor, etc.  Maybe I just miss reading to kids now? Or maybe I'm leaving a record of a memory for my own kids for when I'm not with them or they feel little enough for a story, but too big to ask for one.

So, here I am reading "Whoever You Are" by Mem Fox...

Rainbow Parfaits for #Global Goals

It's true that sometimes I am overly ambitious. I know this. I claim that my life is too short to do one thing at a time, so I multitask to a ridiculous extent and manage to work in a poverty-fighting action or lesson into almost everything I do. Sometimes to great success. Other times...well, let me tell you the story of the End of the Rainbow Parfaits.

I was browsing through Pinterest one day with my eye out for a fun dessert I might make with my daughter and her friends for an upcoming slumber party. They'd been in a baking phase and I wanted to indulge them a bit. This is when I stumbled upon the End of the Rainbow Parfaits.

Photo from Tablespoon.com

Now, I know most moms wouldn't look at these delicious treats and say "Hey, that looks like a good lesson about the Global Goals!!!" But I'm weird and that's exactly what I thought. See, when I saw that picture, my mind when straight to this infographic...

The Global Goals for Sustainable Development, which I previously wrote about here, are 17 goals for the world that will help us do three things in the next 15 years: end extreme poverty, fight inequality and injustice, and fix climate change. It's up to us as global citizens to choose which ones we personally want to work on to get there. Each goal has a color in the graphic, so I thought that it would be neat to make these parfaits and allow kids to choose the color representing the issue they felt most strongly about. Only want to help "Life Below Water?" Cool. Yours can be all blue. I can never choose just one and like to work on global health (green), life under water (blue), clean water (light blue), education (dark red), and poverty in general (bright red).

I wanted to make these with my daughter's friends and give them the message that THEY get to choose in life what THEY want to work on. Too often, we just spoonfeed kid the idea that they have to do something and give them a something that we personally want to do. In real life, we have a choice.

In the middle of the prep, I got a call from my good friend Jennifer Burden, founder of World Moms Network. I told her I was getting kind of aggravated while I was getting ready for a slumber party and putting together the ingredients for this pretty ambitious dessert/craft. She said something like, "Do you ever just do anything just for fun?" I laughed and (joking-not-joking)said something like, "I don't think so. Please help me. It's a problem!" And it was! I was stressing out about the party anyway. I had no business trying to add a poverty lesson into the mix!!! Why was I pushing myself into an "Advocate to Aggravate" campaign?

Sigh. Well, Jen talked me into a better mood and we proceeded with the craft. Let's see how it went shall we?

STEP 1: Mix up refrigerated sugar cookie dough with eggs, vanilla, and food coloring. For simplicity, I did not make 17 different colors.

STEP 2: Spoon the colored batter into cupcake cups.

STEP 4: Bake 'em up! Use this baking time to explain the Global Goals to your helpers and tell them to think about what colors and goals they would like to work on.

STEP 5: Remove from oven and admire how well you are doing so far.

STEP 6: Crumble up the colored cupcakes into separate bowls.

STEP 7: Spoon in a chosen color, cover with whip cream, repeat until satisfied. And VOILA!

U

hmmm...okay, so they didn't EXACTLY turn out the way they looked on Pinterest, but on the whole I think we...

NAILED IT!

So, yeah. It turned out to be a laughable mess. We won't be doing this for any bar mitzvahs or anything, but the girls had fun and they got some global learnin' along the way. I was not sorry we tried!! If you try it, tell me how it goes!

Sometimes You Have to Break a Few Eggs

Hey, look what happened to me this morning as I was in a hurry to make the kids some breakfast! Splat. Broken egg. Wasted food. Wasted time cleaning it up. Clumsy mommy. Luckily, I still had a few more eggs in the carton and as I stood there watching them cook, I thought of this old saying...

"If you want to make an omelette, you're going to have to break a few eggs."

In addition to being literally true, it's a good reminder for activist moms like me who are juggling other roles like "mommy" and "wife." 

A work in progress

I've noticed that on days that I'm the best homemaker, I'm not the best advocate. When I'm on a roll being Best Mom, chances are high that I'm not simultaneously winning the award for Most Empathic Wife. Whenever I'm really killing it with my advocacy work (having a number of face to face meetings in a month or taking a trip to DC), that's usually when my husband and I have the most disagreements about household cleanliness. When I'm totally on top of everything and getting compliments from my husband on how organized I am...those are the times when I've not written a single word on my book-in-progress for weeks. It's great, of course, to feel appreciated for being an attentive mother and homemaker, but those aren't the only things I want to be. What a bummer to realize the only time I excel at homemaking is when I'm blatantly hiding and procrastinating on working on the biggest, hardest project in my life (i.e. the book-in-progress).

This used to depress me...until I started paying attention to what was happening to other moms around me and realized I wasn't alone. I started hearing more and more stories like mine, especially from mothers who were still navigating careers along with motherhood. Many of them aren't advocates, but a lot of us are thinking the same thing anyway about our multiple-identity lives.

Meredith Boggess shared some of her thoughts with me about making the transition to motherhood. "The hardest adjustment for me to make was to not try to be the best at everything. It just isn't possible," she observed. Meredith is a successful Director of Marketing at Buckingham Family of Financial Services, a wealth advisory firm based in the St Louis area. She continued,

"Being the best employee, the best wife, the best mom, the best friend...it's all too much to keep up with all the time. To try to do all of that stresses out the kids and the spouse as well as the mom." 

When we talked, it really hit me that I could get much farther by dropping the word "best" out of these inner-voice conversations. Of course, I'm not the first person to figure this out and that's why you can go out and read a book called "Good Enough Parenting" or a blog called "GoodEnoughMother.com" 

These may not be examples of the calmest 

ducks, but they're cute!

For the record, every time I see Meredith, she's always a calm and very well put together lady. Which makes me think of another quote that comes up on the internet a lot (cited as a quote from many different sources, including actor Michael Caine): 

"Be like a duck. Remain calm on the surface and paddle like the dickens underneath!" 

Voila! A delicious masterpiece!

I don't think there's ever any mom that ever has everything totally under control. But I do think the thing that keeps me moving forward is to keep my eye on the goal. Some balls may be dropped. Some eggs may be broken both literally and figuratively. But for the most part, my family is able to bounce back from my missteps as long as everyone is communicating and trying to be as kind to each other as we can be...and together we are saving lives and ending poverty. A beautiful omelette, indeed!

Looking Back at my RESULTS Conferences

Photo Credit: RESULTS Educational Fund

Greetings from the RESULTS International Conference in sunny (for now) Washington D.C.! We are celebrating the 35th Anniversary of this stellar organization, which has played such a pivotal role in the steady march to end poverty. We've been sharing a lot of memories and retrospectives here at the conference and it made me want to post a few of my own memories here on my Anti-Poverty Mom blog. Makes sense because this is the organization that MADE me the Anti-Poverty Mom. 

Getting our pic with my Senator Obama's foreign policy
aide at my 1st RESULTS conference

2008: The year I took a leap of faith. 
I wanted to learn to lobby in person and heard from people in the know that RESULTS teaches face-to-face lobbying better than any other organization. Wow. That's huge considering the people that told me also belonged to other advocacy organizations. So, I left my babies with my husband and went all by myself to the RESULTS International Conference where I knew exactly ZERO people. During that week, I met people I now call dearest friends and role models. I lobbied my senator's office never knowing that Senator Obama would soon become President Obama.

Standing with lobbying giants Sarah Beardmore and RESULTS
legend Bob Dickerson

2009: The year of the green suit. 
(Who wears a green suit?) By this time, I had been bitten by the lobbying bug hard and was on my way to becoming a regularly published letter-to-the-editor writer. I loved RESULTS so much, I ran for the national board by making a speech in front of the whole conference...and won! Wait, what?! Yep, I became the Evanston group leader and a board member the same year. With pre-schoolers. See what a good green suit can do for you?

A photo op with Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois

2010: The year I met Senator Dick Durbin. 
By this time, my U.S. Representative Jan Schakowsky knew my name and even mentioned me in a speech. More importantly, I'm feeling super empowered because I walked into their offices, asked them to do things, and they said "Yes!" You're looking at a mommy drunk with power!!! Fortunately, when I came home, my kids wasted no time dumping food on the floor, which I had to clean. Humility restored. 

2011: The year of the D.C. family vacation.
By this time, my family was wondering what the heck I do with myself at the RESULTS International Conference of mystery. The girls were still too little to come with me, but we decided they are old enough to enjoy some museums and, I guess, an open-bar reception in the Capitol. I greeted them with "Future Member of Congress" T-shirts and we ushered them in to meet all my friends, colleagues, and celebrity activist Valerie Harper. Then, later, even after the conference was over, we had a double senator meeting at the IL constituent breakfast with senators Durbin and Kirk. Um...yes...somtimes our family lobbies on vacation on our free time. We're a bundle of fun!

Pre-Lobby Day shenanigans at a podium

2012: The year I was elected to Senate.
No, no. Just kidding. But I did quit my board term early and start working as RESULTS staff part-time on the fundraising team. I got paid for talking on the phone and emailing the most wonderful people every day! I loved being so involved with our volunteer activists and getting to know the staff I admired so much as friends and colleagues. I no longer had any free time and learned that everyone who works at a non-profit does about 30% more things that I thought they did.

My daughter & I become a DC lobbying team

2013: Take your daughter to work year.
Finally deciding my oldest daughter had enough patience to sit through conference sessions (even if she reads books while we meet), I brought her out to DC with me. After all, she'd already attended more in-district lobby meetings than most adults by this point in her short life. Turned out she was great at filing things and sorting nametages, so "take your daughter to work day" became "put your daughter to work" day as well.

Bringing the little sister to join the team

2014: The year BOTH daughters attended.
By this time, I had decided to leave my part-time job because of my decision to become a writer. Yet it was far from a slow paced conference. That year I brought both girls, ran for board again (and won), met the president of the World Bank Dr. Jim Kim for the price of writing a thoughtful blog piece about his speech, coached a team full of brand new poverty advocates on my team, and even helped acclimate movie star Sean Astin to our happy family traditions. Honestly, I'm kind of tired even thinking of last year!

2015: ??????

What will this year hold? I don't know, but I'm here with my two seasoned lobbyist kids and heading to offices who darn well know who we are now. All I can say, is that I'm excited for the future days and future years with all my RESULTS family.


And now, here's a retrospective of my dear friendship with Jen Paprotna who has now left the RESULTS staff for another organization. Here are all our pictures together in one place from Lobby Days past. (Honestly, 2012 was a rough year on that open bar.) Enjoy, Jen!

2009

2012

2013

2014

Advocacy Made Easy: The Town Hall Meeting

Cynthia at a U.S. Senate podium pretending to give a speech.
Photo Credit: Cynthia Changyit Levin

What comes to mind when you think of the words "Town Hall Meeting"? I think of the Town Council scene in the movie "Footloose." I also think of Patton Oswaldt's 100% Improvised Star Wars filibuster on NBC's "Parks and Recreation." (Wait...I have to watch that again...OMG...hilarious genius...) Believe it or not, there is some semblance to reality in those fictional scenes of democracy in that citizens are addressing elected officials in a public forum. Let me answer some questions about what town hall meetings are and offer tips on how you can add them to your advocacy toolbox.

What is a town hall meeting? It's an informal public meeting typically open to everyone and held at a public space like a library, municipal building, or school. "Town Hall" can also simply refer to a format where attendees generally get to voice their opinions and ask questions of elected officials, staff, or election candidates. They might have different names - like, "Kitchen Table Talk", "Constituent Breakfast", or "Listening Session" - but anywhere the public is invited as active participants instead of spectators is generally thought of as a town hall meeting.

When do they happen? Summer is when many U.S. representatives and senators hold them because they come home to the district from Washington D.C. during August recess. Some members of Congress hold weekly "town hall"-type meetings for visiting constituents in Washington D.C. Some have staffers do them throughout the year even in their absence to create another way for constituents to get information to them.

Do people really yell? It's definitely a possibility, but that depends on how many emotional citizens show up. Even then, it's usually not a cinematic mob scene. Yet these types of meetings are where programs like The Daily Show are able to dig up some gems because these meetings are where real, everyday citizens can hold their elected officials accountable for actions in DC. This is democracy at its raw-est (not necessarily finest) form.

Why should I advocate at a town hall meeting? Because you'll make yourself visible to your member of Congress and to your community. You'll build upon your public reputation. Plus, your member of Congress will be giving you an answer on the record in front of the public and possibly the media.

What is the format for taking questions? This varies. Sometimes questioners must line up at microphones. Sometimes a member of Congress will call on people who raise their hands. I was just at one where less than 20 people showed up, so the aide literally went down the rows, front to back, asking each person to state their issue in 2 minutes or less and allow time for the aide to respond to each and every participant. 

With those questions out of the way, here are some general tips of how to advocate at a town hall meeting. Remember, the format will vary, but these are suggestions that apply to most all town hall meetings. For more details, see this guide from www.RESULTS.org that will take you from the first steps of finding out where the meeting is to crafting your message and presenting at the meeting.

• Talk to someone who has attended one before - even an aide. Find out what the format will be and get tips from their experience with your particular member of Congress.

  

  U.S. Senators Durbin and Kirk of Illinois posing with
  Cynthia and her family. Photo Credit: Cynthia Changyit Levin

• Invite friends/allies who will also speak on your issues. With a big crowd, you may want to sit separately and try some crafty birddogging techniques. This is not my specialty, but essentially you have people in different areas in the room forcing the official to come back to a topic even if he/she is trying to evade the issue.
• Show up early. This is about logistics and relationship-building. We showed up early to an Illinois constituent breakfast in DC with our children and BOTH senators made a bee-line to talk to us as soon as they entered the room because they wanted to talk to the cute little girls!
  
  
• Sit up front and wear a logo T-shirt of your org. You want to be noticed and remembered.
• Write down brief, clear remarks on your issue and end with a "yes or no" question. There's nothing wrong with reading from a paper, but be sure to end with asking them to take a clear action.

• 

  Image: A young girl wearing a ONE campaign t-shirt, raising her
  hand excitedly. Photo Credit: Cynthia Changyit Levin

  Raise your hand right away if that is the format for choosing questions. Be "first, fast, and high" and keep it up there! Think Hermoine Granger in Potions class (even though it didn't work out that well for her...that was Hogwarts, not Congress)
• Say something personal about yourself. Give some context for why you personally care about your issue, so other people can see themselves in your shoes. For instance, "I am a mother of young children who cares deeply about their health. When I found out that  1.5 million children - 1 every 20 seconds - die in developing countries because of lack of vaccines, I was horrified."
• Be brief and polite. No one wants to be there all day nor be insulted.
• Focus on story more than statistics. People are much more likely to remember a touching story rather than a bunch of numbers. For example, my colleague told a story he saw on a Gates Foundation video about a woman who personally vaccinated thousands of children and concluded powerfully saying, "She just needs our help to get the vaccines!" If press are present, they might ask you to repeat your story for their news outlet.
• Address the audience as much as you address the member of Congress. If possible, turn your body and have eye contact with some of the audience and the member of Congress as well. Town hall advocacy is public awareness as much as lobbying. You may find like-minded people in the audience who might want to join your group. Or, conversely, you might educate someone who thought they were opposed. 
• Use your loud, clear speaking voice. You want everyone to hear about your issue AND the name of your organization. Now is the time to be bold and be heard. Speak the truth...even if your voice shakes.
• Bring all your printed media and leave behinds. You might be permitted to give a packet to an aide.

Now, because this is a mom-blog, here's the million dollar question:

SHOULD I TAKE MY CHILDREN? Maybe. Ask yourself if your children can easily sit through a religious service without causing a disturbance. Then, think about the time of day, what the venue will be like, and if any controversial adult topics are likely to be shouted about. I did not take my kids to a standing-room-only, evening town hall with my U.S. Representative the year the controversial Affordable Health Care Act was passed and adults did NOT behave like adults.  If I'm pretty sure the town hall has a photo op for everyone, will only last 1 hour, and everyone will behave, I'll bring my kids. I also bribe them with lollipops, which are portable and keep their mouths quietly busy!

Good luck and please leave a comment about your experience if you go to one!

Cynthia smiling and waiting for a town hall meeting to
start. One child looks bored and the other is sticking her
tongue out at the camera.
Photo Credit: Cynthia Changyit Levin

Image: Book cover

Buy an autographed copy of "From Changing Diapers to Changing the World: Why Moms Make Great Advocates and How to Get Started" at my website www.changyit.com or order it from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or any independent bookstore!

Advocacy Made Easy: Teaching Kids to Write to Congress

How far did you walk for your last drink of water? Was it clean water? Safe to drink? How much water would you drink if you had to walk for hours to fill up a canister for your whole family's daily water supply?

These are questions 4th graders at Park View School in Morton Grove, IL have been pondering for the last few weeks. Guided by their teacher, Debby Schmid, they read A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park. It's a great book to introduce elementary school students to some of the challenges their peers in Sudan are facing right now. The story, brilliantly told in alternating sections, tells the tale of two Sudanese eleven-year-olds in different times (2008 and 1985). The fictional girl based on current life in Sudanese children, Nya, spends hours each day carrying water making two trips to a pond every day for her family, deprived of education. The boy, Salva, is a real person...one of the "Lost Boys of Sudan" - survivors of Sudanese civil war - who had to flee his country on foot looking for his family and safety. Water is a theme and focus of the book.

Giving some context of how hard it is for a bill to become a law
before showing the SchoolHouse Rock video, "I'm Just a Bill"

My portion of the program came when the students were ready to ask that critical question: "What can WE do to help people have water?" Ms. Schmid and I wanted these gifted youngsters to dive in to make a big difference and also learn some great lessons for both writing and life. We created a field trip to the Morton Grove Public Library to fill up empty water jugs and carry them back. At the library, they would learn about how the U.S. helps people in developing nations gain access to clean water and what our role is as citizens to help make that happen. 

Right now, there's a bill in Congress called the Water for the World Act of 2013. It's an update of an law that directs how U.S. foreign aid helps people in extreme poverty get access to clean water and sanitation. The Water for the World Act of 2005 said we should focus water and sanitation assistance toward the countries, locations, and people with greatest need. Yet countries with the least need receive more funds than those with greatest need. This new bill will help make sure that the people who need the most help will get the most help...without an increase in funding!

With the help of the all-time BEST training video for explaining how a bill becomes a law, the 1975 SchoolHouse Rock "I'm Just A Bill" segment, I showed them that the World Water Act is at the point where we, as citizens, can help it to be passed in the House of Representatives by writing to our U.S. representative and asking her to co-sign the bill.

I taught them the very same method for letter writing that I teach to grown-up RESULTS volunteers. When writing a letter to Congress, it helps to follow this tried and true "EPIC" format to create a clear, effective, one-page handwritten letter. This is what EPIC stands for:

No joke...these kid-letters are gonna be EPIC!

Engage: Grab the reader's attention with a question or a startling statement. You could use a surprising statistic or a question.

Problem: State the problem that you want the reader to address.

Inform (or Illustrate): Inform the reader of the solution or illustrate how the solution can help.

Call to Action: CLEARLY state what you want the reader to do. It's best if you can do it in the form of a question that should be answered with a "yes" or a "no."

This same format can be used to create a "laser talk" or "elevator pitch" for your issue, but in this case, we encouraged the kids to write just one or two sentences for each section to create their letter. I had them tell me about what they learned from reading A Long Walk to Water and watching videos from the Water for South Sudan organization, so that the letters would be truly their own creations.

The kids gave me their own bullet pints to use for the "Problem" portion of the EPIC format.

z

Carrying water through neighborhood streets

I was impressed by these kids asking great questions like "If Jan Schakowksy cares about poverty so much why do we need to write her letters?" (Answer: Because hundreds of bills are introduced every year and even her awesome staff can't keep track of everything!) and "What kind of people wouldn't want to help people get water...evil people?" (Answer: Ummm...more like people that don't fully understand the issue or ones that are worried about running out of money. And evil people, I guess.)

After turning in their letters, we loaded up the kids with their filled water jugs and began the 0.7 mile trek back to school, which took about 20 min. All the kids were very aware this was only a fraction of the distance the children walk in Sudan. The trip in the book took a quarter of the day for a round trip on roads in disrepair that must be travelled barefoot.

I feel compelled to point out that the girls are not sad 

and miserable. They're just looking down at the letters.

Last, but certainly not least, came the step of delivering our letters to the local congressional office of U.S. Representative Jan Schakowksy. It was a simple drop-off appointment, but it does make a big impression to hand over 22 letters from school children. I would be very surprised if we don't hear from her office very soon! 

Here was our outline for the program for anyone who would like to duplicate this program in their school:

• Walk to the library with empty jugs
• Explain the role of an advocate or activist 
• Talk about what it's like to meet with members of Congress
• Explain what a bill is and the difficult process for it to become a law
• Show SchoolHouse Rock "I'm Just a Bill" video
• Tell them about the World Water Act and explain where their letters fit in the process
• Explain where we are in the process and that they will be writing letters
• Teach the EPIC format of letter writing
• Have them tell me their own talking points they've learned and write them on the board that they can use in their letters.
• Pass out an example handwritten by a child
• Have kids write their own short letters
• Fill bottles of water
• Take pictures to send to parents and Congresswoman
• Walk back to school

Please take a moment to write your own letter to your representative about the World Water Act using this website for talking points and a sample letter! If you take on this program at your school, I'd love to hear about it. Please leave a comment with your experience. Good luck!

Image: Book cover

Buy an autographed copy of "From Changing Diapers to Changing the World: Why Moms Make Great Advocates and How to Get Started" at my website www.changyit.com or order it from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or any independent bookstore!