Chris Gardner wished to find a way to encourage random acts of kindness in the world. To this end, her project in Landmark Education’s Self-Expression and Leadership Program, “Pass It On,” involved creating acknowledgment cards for people to give away to thank others for their acts of generosity. The idea is for that person to then pass the card on to someone else to acknowledge them, and onwards to countless other people.

Participants in the project distributed these numbered acknowledgment cards to anyone they saw committing an act of kindness. The recipient is then encouraged to register the card by emailing the information to Gardner. Gardner created a website that in addition to displaying many acts of kindness she comes across, includes the contents of all these emails and thereby further celebrates these acts of kindness and generosity.

Gardner summarizes the point of this process on her website:

“This allows the global community to be witness to a growing chain of generosity and compassion. Not only are the givers and receivers of cards affected, but so are those who witness this process by visiting the website. Kindness is contagious.”
Additionally, the website also features inspirational quotes, acts of kindness in the news, links to other sites promoting acts of generosity, and updates on the project. Please visit http://www.icanpassiton.com to see the site and get more information.

In 2004, Kevin Burch gave 1,000 pounds to Pump Aid, a charity that works with local residents in Africa to install pumps to produce clean water where it would otherwise not be available. He forgot about the donation until, much later, a personal, hand written letter came from a child in the village giving thanks. Burch was moved by the letter, and had always intended to get more money to Pump Aid, by he was stopped by the limits of his own personal finances.

When he began Landmark’s Self-Expression and Leadership Program earlier this year, Burch became more determined than ever to raise more money for Pump Aid. He started a clean water for kids website that tells of the work that Pump Aid is doing, and included an easy button for anyone to give money. Moreover, he made a video about his own personal story and commitment to the charity. This video is shown below. Go to Burch’s Clean Water website to get involved or contribute to Pump Aid!

Jessica Kizorek is a Self-Expression and Leadership program leader for Landmark Education and a founding partner of Two Parrot productions, a video production company that specializes in getting out the word about worthy charities around the globe. Kizorek also recently wrote a book, titled Show Me: Marketing with Video on the Internet that helps readers use video to market their businesses in a variety of ways. She was recently interviewed by the Networlding Blog about her non-profit work and its relationship to the Self-Expression and Leadership program.

Tell us about your non-profit work and how you got involved there.

My father and I are both involved in this organization called Landmark Education. I lead the SELP (Self Expression in Leadership Program). He did that program, and his project was to go over to Thailand and, while there, to videotape and do a short documentary for a non-profit organization. He consequently was deeply moved by using his expertise with camera and video to communicate what these people were doing over there. He was so moved by it, as was I, that we really saw an opportunity to create a business model that was primarily philanthropic in nature. We donate a lot of our services to these on-going projects. In Tanzania, for example, we’re working for an organization called Kids of Kilimanjaro. The kids in this neck of the woods have to walk two hours to get to school. Because it’s so poverty-ridden, they literally did not have the food it took to walk four hours a day. This organization started a school lunch program. All the kids get fed at school, and the attendance rate is close to 100% now. So we go over there and shoot these films and do it free of charge. They pay for the editing on the post-production side. We do about 8-12 jobs like that a year.

How do you fund these projects?

We use the frequent flyer miles we’ve built up over the years. We donate our time.

We typically work with projects that are outside of the United States, but they have to be pretty significant sized. They pay about $15,000 on the post-production side of things. It requires that they have a marketing budget. But a lot of these organizations would never be able to afford what we provide them.

Before, having a website used to be enough. But now, people are so oriented around audio visual communications that when you can’t communicate that way with potential donors and potential givers, organizations are really missing out on an opportunity to pull people’s heartstrings.

To read the interview in its entirety, read the Jessica Kizorek story on Networlding. There’s also more information about Jessica, her book and her business at the Two Parrots web site.

Ivan Vega lives in the Humboldt Park neighborhood of Northwest Chicago. As gentrification continues to expand into the Puerto Rican part of the neighborhood, it has become more difficult for residents and businesses to stay connected to their heritage. Out of doing Landmark Education’s Self-Expression program, Vega decided to start a project and contribute to the community he loves. His goal is to inspire community members about their heritage by having them take part in documenting the Puerto Rican Flag. Vega is calling his project The Flag Project (TFPR): Bridging the Gap Between Communities.

 “Puerto Ricans have been displace since the mid-1960s, causing them to relocate,” says Vega. “Out of this, Humboldt Park was the first Puerto Rican community created. Now gentrification threatens encroaches on businessess and families, forcing them outside of their community.”

The project honors and creates an awareness of the flag as both a symbol of pride as well as an item of historical significance. By pairing up young students with professional photographers, TPFR seeks to capture the Puerto Rican flag in its many forms around Chicago and the Humboldt Park community, which will then be displayed in a photo documentary.

A collaboration of student, community and professional photographs are being combined in a three part series of poster collages, which will be displayed in an exhibit this fall and then made into a community book. The posters will also be displayed at the Puerto Rican festival/Fiestas Puertorriqueñas which runs June 10-15.  Throughout the festival TFPR will supply disposable cameras at a booth for the community patrons who wish to take part in the process of documenting the Puerto Rican flag.

Vega raised the money for the posters, and enrolled American Family Insurance to provide him a free booth at the festival.

If you would like to obtain more information on this project, or to schedule an interview with Vega, please contact Elizabeth Hoffman at (414) 315-9944 or email eh.prflagproject@gmail.com.

Chicago resident Sean Parnell is a kind of local celebrity–He is well known for his Chicago Bar Project, a website that reviews practically every notable bar in Chicago. Perhaps less well known is Parnell’s work to combat urban blight. While taking the Landmark Education Self Expression and Leadership class, Parnell decided to take on the problem of abandoned buildings and vacant lots in the city’s poorer neighborhoods that go beyond being an eyesore to being an active danger and impediment to the rejuvenation of the city. The Chicagoist, a leading local website, interviewed Parnell about both the bar project and the Abandoned Lot Project. Excerpts of the interview about the abandoned lot project appear here. 

“In the self expression and leadership program you embark on a project of your own choosing, your own design. They have a couple criteria about it – your project goes for three months and there needs to be some measureable result, to hold yourself accountable for the things you’ve done. And in the leadership component is getting others involved. And also at certain times in the project stepping away and letting others step up, to see if they can do more than just something by yourself. Because if you’re really going to have an impact in your community and beyond, those are the sort of things you should do. Is have others involved, and sometimes lead and sometimes follow.”

I started the Abandoned Lot project out of my frustration and shame that great parts of a great city are living in third-world conditions. I love Chicago and I have yet to find a place I’d rather live. But when you take a drive down to the south side and the west side, Austin, Lawndale, East and West Garfield Park, go down south to Englewood, Back of the Yards, Gresham – they look like there’s been a war. There’s bombed-out homes, a lot of them have been torn down, thanks to the city’s Fast Track demolition program, which has its pros and cons.

But I’ve been very frustrated and ashamed about how since the riots in the sixties, huge swaths of the south and west side have lain in waste. Abandoned buildings mostly on the west side, some vacant lots, which is kind of the reverse of the south side, where you do have a number of abandoned buildings but you have an incredible number of vacant lots. And if you think about the economic conditions down there, there are very few grocery stores, very few restaurants, a handful of bars and these are not the fun places on the north side – these are all nasty, hole-in-the-wall bad places, except for a handful of blues bars that offer something more than just alcoholism.

Anyhow, I wanted to do something that had a positive impact at the community level – never done a community project, and I thought, “well, what am I good at?” I just explained what I was interested in, but how could I apply that? Well, I created the Chicago Bar Project and that’s given a lot of exposure to bars in a very positive way. What if [I] take it in the opposite direction and expose some of the things that are really bad about the city? That these abandoned buildings would be allowed to lay vacant for sometimes 20, 30, 40 years? Because abandoned buildings are magnets for drug activity, and fires, and all kinds of illegal activity – and they’re just dangerous. Staircases can collapse, floors can collapse, there’s rats in there. They’re magnets for bad things.

And think about, what if you owned a property next to an abandoned building that sits vacant for 20 years? What’s that going to do to your property value? That can affect the property value of the whole neighborhood if it’s an especially bad one. So I was hoping to enact some positive change, and try to get some of these places dealt with. I had to pick five to fit within the scope, but I thought “what am I going to be able to do in three months, that will have an impact?”

There is lot more to this interview with Parnell, both about the Abandoned Lot project and other topics. Go to the Chicagoist to read this interview in its entirety.

You might find it suprising to discover that the famously afluent Brentwood Area of Los Angeles is home to a non-profit that provides vital services to Homeless People. There are estimated to be as many as 3 million homeless people in the United States. The living conditions that most homeless people find themselves in make even basic personal hygene a struggle. When it comes to dental care there are virtually no official services available to the homeless.

Dr. Jay Grossman is a dentist in the Brentwood area of Los Angeles County. Since 1992, when Dr. Grossman began “Homeless Not Toothless” in the Landmark Self Expression and Leadership Program, it has provided over 1 million dollars worth of free dental work through over 30 different dental practices in the Los Angeles area. Each of these dental practices has delivered the care without any financial compensation. Having a smile back not only boosts people’s confidence, it can make it easiser for people to find meaningful employment. The dental practices that make up homeless not toothless are committed to raise the pride and dignity of the homeless through quality dental services.

Most recently “Homeless Not Toothless was featured on CNN.

My project was to build a ‘house of hope’ for orphans of AIDS victims in KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa.

There are many children who have lost their parents through HIV/AIDS or violence in the country, KwaZulu-Natal having the highest level of 40 % HIV in the country. Children live in crumbling mud huts unable to repair the leaking roofs because their father has gone. They are unable to feed themselves as they don’t know how to grow vegetables and maize. The government doesn’t know about them as they aren’t on any government programme. They are literally starving!

I always wanted to do something to help underprivileged children in a foreign country. I was already planning to visit South Africa anyway, so I contacted AIDS Africa who gave me the details of Gods Golden Acre(GGA). I met Heather Reynolds the director of GGA on my first visit.

I take volunteers over to Cato Ridge in the Valley of a Thousand Hills, near Durban. It takes 3 weeks for a group of 10 volunteers to build a house of hope out of concrete blocks and a corrugated metal roof. At weekends we relax by the beach or take a safari in the nearby game reserve. The cost per person is about £1,200 including flights, accommodation, food and weekends away.

For my project I said that by the end of the course I would have 5 volunteers and raise £2,500. I actually found 11 volunteers and raised the £2,500.

Since then, I have taken 19 volunteers over including myself in 2 groups and built a second structure. Between the two groups they have raised over £40,000.

I am so proud to be part of this charity that I now continue this programme and as a way of contributing to society I will support GGA in the coming years by arranging more groups on an annual basis. I am putting together two groups at present for 2007 and have more people interested in volunteering in 2008.

In addition, some people are unable to volunteer themselves and are separately fundraising for GGA.

I was coaching on SELP so it wasn’t a new programme for me. What I got out of the project was that anything is possible. Think big, not small. You don’t know what you can achieve. I couldn’t have believed I would be so successful and that I would exceed all my expectations. Greater things can be achieved with my own coach. There were two occasions when I was stuck and my coach helped me through and gave me great advice that enabled me to reach higher and higher. I learnt that people are very happy to contribute where I initially felt awkward by just asking. One friend thanked me for giving her the opportunity to sponsor us when she couldn’t volunteer herself. Greta things can come out of nothing, sometimes just a casual conversation in the corridor. Telling everyone what I was doing meant more people could contribute in some small way. One lady I met at a birthday party told a friend and her friend is now going with us next year.

I have also found a way of contributing to humanity which I hadn’t expected and which makes me feel good about myself. None of this would have been possible without the SELP programme.

Nick Bailey