The inequitable distribution of hope

Photo by Valeria Koulikova

This weekend the kids at our Saturday English School (SES) program had turkey for the very first time. We told them it was chicken…really large chicken. They had just arrived to the US this year, this was their very first Thanksgiving celebration, and turkey is a weird meat that they were not going to touch. After they eat the turkey and like it, we then say, “Ha ha, you just ate turkey and you liked it!” That’s how VFA rolls, following the motto for the SES program: “Curiosity, Perseverance, Deception.”

Over 120 kids showed up, middle and high-schoolers from all over the world. The program, done in partnership with Seattle World School (SWS) serves over 15 languages. I stood near the door and scanned the room, inspired by the students, some of whom take two buses to get to our program each week.

Whatever crappiness I feel for whatever reason is put into perspective whenever I visit our programs and talk to our kids. Half of them don’t speak much English at all, all of them are low-income, and few have any support from their families at home, since their parents work two or three jobs to try to make ends meet or have little knowledge of the school system. Sadly, we know from current statistics that half of these new arrival students will not graduate from high school. We work with the school and other nonprofits to try to stem the tide, but there will always be kids whose futures remain uncertain.

Lately I’ve been thinking about the distribution of hope and morale in our society. The schools with the highest percentage of low-income kids and kids of color also have the fewest resources, I know this. Their PTSAs are not as active or as well-connected; they can’t raise hundreds of thousands of dollars that could equip their schools with enrichment programs and fieldtrips and new computers. The inequitable distribution of resources is easy to understand, though it is still an uphill battle to change things.

But the kids and families also face more subtle inequities. The gap in hope is not something we talk about often. It is intangible, but it is there. A simple example is homework. We don’t think much about homework; homework is a good thing. But I remember what it was like to be a kid who just arrived to the US, who didn’t speak much English. Every day for a long time I would dread doing homework. Not because I wasn’t a good student, but because I had no one at home I could turn to for help. Mom and Dad worked all day and came home late, and even so their English was nonexistent. With homework, kids who have supportive and watchful parents will get them done and feel a measure of pride. For kids who don’t, it can lead to frustrated erasers burning holes in the paper, followed by the guilt and shame of failure and bad grades.

Another example is the enrichment programs like art and sports. For many kids, these are things they are good at. Even if your family is poor or you can’t speak much English, you can still be a good artist or singer or soccer player. I remember the first few years after we arrived to the US. By fourth grade, my English was still pretty crappy and I didn’t talk much at all. But I loved art because I was great at it. My stained-glass snowflake, made out of black construction paper and tissue paper, was a masterpiece of geometric genius. When the world was crazy, and it often was, drawing something and doing a good job at it brought some semblance of sanity and balance and self-worth.

We know these enrichment programs are great for kids’ morale and motivation for learning. These programs are not frivolous. They keep students wanting to come to school. Especially for kids who face so many barriers, they are critical for giving them a sense of hope. But the lack of resources at poorer schools means that they have fewer of these programs.

Seattle World School, with whom my organization partners for many of our programs, understands the importance of imparting hope to kids. They know many students can’t get homework help at home, so there are after-school programs and Saturday morning programs. They know the importance of enrichment programs like art and photography, so those programs are prioritized; at SWS, the students are amazing artists and photographers. This is an amazing school.

And now the school is under attack. Actually, every couple of years it is under attack. This school keeps getting moved around all over the city, since parents don’t speak enough English or have the same resources to write blog posts and emails to advocate for their school to remain in a stable central location. The school board and various superintendents keep promising to find a permanent home for the school, raising our communities’ hopes, and every couple of years, this promise gets broken. Our new superintendent agreed to settle it permanently at a school called TT Minor, and now some school board members are trying to move it again, claiming the school is needed for other population of students. Of course there will always be some other population of students, great ones, whose parents are much better equipped to be advocates.

I called one of the school board members who were supporting the idea of moving the school down to Southeast Seattle, a terrible idea, since recent-arrival students come from all over the city, so the school has to be in a central location. She agreed to support our wishes for the school to remain at TT minor. Now, disappointingly, we find out that she turned around 180 degrees again, co-sponsoring a proposal to move the school down to Southeast Seattle.

I was staring at the 120 students eating their first Thanksgiving meal, thinking about how much they go through every day and how next year we have no clue where the school is going to be. I was getting more and more pissed off at how crappy and horrible and unfair things are, how in Seattle the loudest voices always win, and how hard it is for our families to be as loud when most don’t speak any English or know how to type, so they can’t email board members or show up at school board meetings to testify. And because of that, their kids keep getting deprioritized and screwed over, in resources, in hope, in morale.

This week, the school board will be voting on this terrible proposal to move Seattle World School down to Southeast Seattle, and thus breaking yet another promise to our struggling students. We’ll keep advocating for the school and its students and families, like we have been doing for years. But it seems so hopeless…

“Mr. Vu,” said one of the students, snapping me out of my bitter reflections. Hanh was one of the students in our after-school program who could barely speak any English and was two or three grades behind when she arrived a few years ago. She graduated from the program and came back to help other kids. “I passed the test. I became US citizen.” She pulled out her original naturalization certificate, along with four photocopies, to show me. “The ceremony was last week.”

“What!” I said, “You should have told me! I would have been there for your ceremony.”

“I thought you…maybe are busy or something. You busy all the time.”

“I would have made time,” I said, “Anyway, I’m proud of you.” I was very proud of her, more confident that she would land among the 50% of the kids who will graduate from high school and have a decent chance to succeed. She flashed a grin full of shiny braces and headed off to get some food.

Hope is not the Pollyanna “everything will be OK” sort of sentiment, but some sense that one’s actions may lead to something good, that it’s not all in vain, that someone is looking out for you, that adults can keep their promises sometimes, that there is some sort of justice in the world, even if it comes rarely. Hope is what keeps great kids like Hanh going. Hope is one of the most critical things we nonprofits bring to our communities, and when it is not equitably distributed, we must help to bring balance.

Related post: Reflections for Thanksgiving

Europe’s nonprofit structure: The good, the bad, the stylish

The past few days have been intense, filled with 10 to 15 hours daily of meetings with government officials, local business leaders, education leaders, city planners, etc. The lunches and dinners are also packed with interesting stuff. In Copenhagen we toured the city by bicycle, learned about the port’s development while riding down the canal on a boat, talked with top officials of the Danish Parliment, got a briefing from an association of employers, had dinner with an industry leader in her office, toured and chatted with the publicly-financed radio and television station, rode the light rail and learned about its development, spent a night at a wine maker’s mansion and learned from him the challenges employers are facing with the inheritance tax and the high costs of hiring workers, toured a “ghetto” where many of the immigrants are living, and sat through a beautiful opera where I was struggling to stay awake after 12 hours information.

Each of those events would make a great blog post, if I had more time and weren’t so lazy. With everything being so fascinating, I didn’t think it was taking a toll on me, until one of the other fellows told me “Every morning, it looks like someone had broken into your hotel room and beat you.”

“Oh yeah?” I said by way of a comeback, “well your face looks like a smorrbro [the traditional Danish open-faced sandwich] that had gone bad.”

The above is only half the stuff we have been doing, though. Between meetings, I have been able to talk to the locals, interviewing the taxi drivers on their views of the welfare system, questioning waitresses on their thoughts on the education system and the European Union. Each of us fellows also get paired up for one-on-one meetings with local leaders around topics pertinent to our work back home. For me, those topics include immigrant integration, the nonprofit structure, the education system, and where to find good chocolate. I only have a couple of hours until our dinner meeting, so I’ll focus on the nonprofit structure and will explore the other topics, as well as how Europeans perceive us Americans, later.

The nonprofit structure, as we know it, does not really exist in Europe, as least not in Belgium and Denmark, where I’ve had a chance to explore. Or maybe it does, but not nearly to the same extent that we do in the US. I had dinner with an Executive Director of an umbrella organization that is trying to build capacity of the local groups here. Right away I could tell that there is a marked difference between our two countries, as “Laurent” looks young and healthy, even stylish, in contrast to us EDs in the US, who are worn, gaunt, beaten down by time and stress, our hair gray, our faces marked by crisscrossing wrinkles, the results of too many annual events and endless nights worrying about budget gaps and which staff we may need to lay off.

“Almost 100% of my funds come from the government, who set the money aside each year,” said Laurent, chewing on his gnocchi with pesto sauce at the modest Italian restaurant we were in, “so 90% of my time is spent working on improving programs.”

“90%!” I said, nearly spewing my Belgium Leffe Blond beer onto Laurent’s boyish face and fashionable scarf. “What…what about fundraising events?” I asked, “Do you ever do those?”

“Never,” he said, and I had to drink some more beer to keep from crying. The people here pay high taxes, which go to take care of basic needs of the public like food for the low-income, and healthcare and education for everyone. Individual donations are rare, as most people consider themselves already giving what they could to the greater good through their taxes. With the State taking care of so much, there are few nonprofits here, and those that exist seem to get dedicated funding set aside for them each year, allowing them to not worry too much about sustainability. They can focus on their work. In a way, this is a remarkable system.

On the other hand, there are plenty of weaknesses. The government cannot possibly take care of everything, leading to huge gaps in services and innovation. It has made me think of how ridiculously creative nonprofits are in the US, with programs to teach kids leadership through gardening or cooking or radio, to help seniors through art or dance, to build community through biking or neighborhood cleanups or whatever. These are things that seem to not be as prevalent in the two countries I’ve visited. Some of the gaps are vital services that have not risen to the level of national attention; for example, the plight of abused children in Denmark, who go unnoticed by the government and general public, as few nonprofits exist to amplify their voices.

Another weakness is who gets funded. If you get a slice of government pie for your organization, you’re pretty good. If you don’t, finding funding will be incredibly difficult, as individuals don’t give, and major corporations, also paying high taxes, do not feel an intrinsic obligation to give to local causes. “They give to the local football [soccer] team,” said Laurent, “because it is tangible. Everything else, they think the State should take care of it.”

It is especially challenging for the immigrant and refugee communities, whose unique and diverse cultural needs cannot possibly be handled by the government. These cultural associations have a hard time in the US, and doubly so in Belgium and Denmark and I would guess other countries in Europe. Most are volunteer-driven, falling under the umbrella of an organization like Laurent’s. And Laurent, an ED here, does not understand my point about the importance of funding these groups to move them out of the voluneer model and into a sustainable one with full-time staff and professional credibility. “If we fund them to hire full-time staff,” he said, “and the staff leave, they take with them all the connections to the community. Volunteer community leaders, however, usually stay, so there is sustainability.” This mimics the inefficient model we often see in the US, where nonprofits led by communities of color are deprofessionalized, paternalistically sheltered under the aegis of a “wiser and more sophisticated” umbrella organization that absorbs 95% of the funding while the smaller organizations do all the direct service work. Here it might actually be worse.

In Denmark, the social welfare system seems to be even stronger, which means nonprofits have even less of a presence. I talked to “Hannah,” a woman who is passionate about her work with abused kids and I was shocked to learn how little the government knows about and protects this vulnerable population. Hannah has been having a hard time finding funding for her work.

“People see me on the TV,” she said, “and they send flowers and chocolates, saying what a hero I am.”

“Flowers and chocolates?” I said, “you need money! Tell them to send you money and get their friends to send you money!” In my righteous zealousness, I started elaborating on the US nonprofit structure, with its ED and board and development director and program director and strategic plans and individual donors and stuff, concepts that are completely foreign here. Hannah’s eyes lit up. “Please,” she said, “email me about your American nonprofit structure. Maybe you should move over here and help me set this up!”

This is kind of a tempting prospect. Maersk, the Danish shipping company, just last week donated $200 million to the Danish education system. From what I hear, this is very generous, but the Danish education system is well funded by taxes. This gift from Maersk would be much better spent to close the cracks in the social welfare system, cracks that passionate people like Hannah are trying to tackle with very little experience and support.

Despite all the flaws of our nonprofit structure in the US, a structure that ages and burns us staff out and makes us resemble beat-up leather shoes, it nonetheless has some great stuff going on. We are more creative, honing our programs to target specific needs of our clients. Our donors and corporations feel more of a sense of duty to help strengthen our community.

Still, we can learn a whole bunch of stuff from Europe, too. I would love it if funding were as stable so that we can spend more time—90%!–on actually improving our services instead of trying to keep our organizations surviving for one more year.

I’ll be thinking more about these things as I visit the other European countries. I just arrived in Lisbon today and will be observing Portugal’s various systems. Will write more later. There is a lot to think about.

Community Engagement 101: Why Most Summits Suck

Hi everyone. I just came back from Port Orchard for a friend’s wedding. A day-trip with 3-month-old infant is grueling. It was like writing a grant. A cute, drooly, moody grant who spit up all over my suit. I’m exhausted. That is to say, I don’t know how this post is going to turn out. This may not be my finest post, but I am committed to getting a new post published every Monday. Like I’ve been telling the baby, “Consistent adequacy is always better than inconsistent excellence.” And also: “Please don’t throw up on Daddy.”

***

A few months ago, I received a request from a staff at the City of Seattle’s Department of Critical Services (DCS)*. “Vu,” said the staff, “can you gather a whole bunch of Vietnamese people so that the Director of the Department of Critical Services can come and listen to their concerns? We’ve already pulled together mini-summits with three other ethnic groups: Spanish, Somalis, and Canadians.” (Kidding about the Canadians).

Sigh. Despite my best efforts, this seems to happen a lot in Seattle: “Let’s get a bunch of ethnic people together and listen to them. I bet they’re just standing around; they’ll love to come to a meeting and be listened to, especially if we have hummus and baby carrots.” It is very well-intentioned, and usually ineffective in the long-run. Sometimes it is just insulting, especially when the hummus is all chunky and grainy and not smooth, like high-quality hummus should be.

Summits, conferences, and other gatherings, when used right, can be powerful tools for community engagement. Kind of like a blender. You get a blender and make some awesome margaritas, and people are like “this is the best party ever.” (This may be the worst analogy ever). These gatherings can connect people around a common cause, equip them with skills and resources, and energize everyone to take action. They also look cool: “Ooh, look, 500 people attended! Snap a picture for our annual report! (Make sure you capture the diversity).”

But lately summits have become the default shortcut for everything:

• We need to demonstrate to funders that we are doing stuff. Let’s have a summit!
• We need to kick-off our collective impact initiative. Let’s have a summit!
• Our strategic plan needs input from communities of color. Let’s have a bunch of mini summits!
• We need a cool picture for our new brochures. Let’s have a summit!
• We need to spread awareness of a critical issue. Let’s have a giant summit and get a national speaker to keynote!

I and a bunch of other people in the field are sick of summit-like meetings, especially as tools for engaging communities of color. It’s like taking a blender and trying to make an entire meal with it, blending the salad, blending the entrees, blending the dessert (I’m not giving up on this blender analogy).

Here’s why most summits suck as a tool for engagement:

1. They give a false sense of stuff actually getting done. Sweet, we placed sticky notes and stickers on easel papers and drew visions of an ideal community. Yay! We did stuff! (Hey, we got people to vote using sticky dots on easel paper and write their ideas on sticky notes! Yay! We did stuff!)
2. They give a false sense of hope and then usually lead to nothing, especially the community input gathering sessions. Time and time again, we ethnic nonprofit staff rally our communities to various listening sessions. Time and time again, little if any of our community members’ suggestions are ever implemented.
3. There is usually very little follow-through with relationship building. Summits are enticing because you can kill 50 to 500 or more birds with one stone. After that, though, 90% of the generated energy tapers off because there are usually no funds allocated for staff with the language and cultural skills to continue to develop the relationships.
4. Funds to organize summits are inequitably distributed: I’ve seen so many summits that pay consultants and event coordinators, and allocate nothing to ethnic organizations to do outreach work. So what happens? The paid consultants and/or event coordinators start calling us up to ask us to do outreach for free. It’s very annoying. We got stuff to do, like, you know, running programs and stuff.
5. The worst part of many summits, though, is that they supplant actual effective community engagement practices. They make people think “Yay, we engaged the communities of color, since they came to our gathering!” Then they might not bother with the one-on-one meetings. One-on-one relationships are the basic building blocks of community organizing and engagement. Absolutely nothing can replace it, and it is totally time-consuming.

Anyway, I told the staff at the Department of Critical Services bluntly that I didn’t have time to rally a bunch of VFA clients for his boss to listen to, and that I didn’t think these types of meetings would be effective anyway, consider how annoyed our community members are with the lack of follow-through from previous gatherings. What would be effective, he asked. Well:

• Meet with community leaders one-on-one, on their own turf. Go yourself, don’t send your assistant. It’s a respectful thing to do, and the relationship building will pay dividends. Stop it with this “I’ll come down from the mountain once a while so that the people may rejoice in my presence” business. That’s not what you mean, but that’s what it feels like when the only time the community sees you is when you’re pushing some project.
• When you meet with people, ask them to refer you to other people, and meet with those people one-on-one. It’s time-consuming, meeting with individuals, getting coffee, listening to them tell their life stories, finding out about their hopes and dreams and their worries about their kids, etc., but you cannot engage anyone until they feel like you know and understand them and vice-versa.
• Be where people are. There are tons of places people are already gathered: Senior programs, churches, temples, youth groups, etc. Go down there, meet the coordinators, go multiple times, build the relationships. Attend organizations’ events.
• Budget for outreach staff who can do on-the-ground relationship building year-long, and not just during summit time, along with funding  for translations, interpretations, childcare, food, and transportation for community members when you have events.
• Budget for funding for ethnic nonprofits to collaborate with you to do your work. If you value the outreach work these CBOs do, build it into the budget.
• Do your research to ensure you’re not repeating something that another organization has done and published a report on. It’s frustrating to have to answer the same questions over and over again.
• If you are going to have a summit, do all the above, and also commit your team ahead of time to actually accept and follow-through on whatever action steps are decided at the summit, if that’s the will of the community, even if you may not like them. So often the only things that get implemented are whatever aligns with the summit organizers’ preconceived agenda. Well, that’s just stupid and tokenizing and a waste of people’s time. If you’re going to get community members’ input, trust and act on their recommendations.
• Funders: Fund on-going, on-the-ground relationship-building work, and fund communities-of-color-led nonprofits to do it.

Gatherings are enticing, since you can reach more people in a shorter amount of time. When it works, it can be awesome, like a Vitamix blender, which can make delicious hummus and can puree a digital camera. Lately, it’s been sucking, a lazy and superficial way of engaging communities of color. So many of the community members I interact with are so skeptical of any more “coffee chat with so-and-so important person” or “summit to discuss our concerns about the education system” that they’d just laugh in my face if I ask them to come to one more thing. I don’t want them to laugh in my face. I get plenty of that from my family for being in this line of work.

(*This is a pseudonym. There is no Department of Critical Services at the City of Seattle)

For more on community engagement, check out “Being a Nonprofit with Balls” parts 1, 2, and 3, which launched this blog and gave it its title.

When Wombats Go Wild: Cultural Competency at the Mezzo and Macro Levels

Last week I delivered my keynote speech in front of 300 or 400 people at the Northwest Development Officers Association (NDOA)’s spring conference. I think it went pretty well, except that my light jokes at the expense of hipsters may have offended some people. A young man came up to me after the speech and said, “Maybe next time, you might want to refrain from making fun of some people. I mean, I’m not a hipster, but if there were any in the audience, they may not have liked to be made fun of.”

Look, nonprofit work is plenty serious and very stressful, and if we can’t make gentle fun of hipsters and their asymmetrical hair, skinny jeans, and ridiculous glasses at a conference for fundraisers, then there is no hope for humanity.

Anyway, the speech was about cultural competency and community engagement. It was 35 minutes long and I swear only about 3 minutes total were spent ribbing on hipsters and their Pabst Blue Ribbon and weird, weather-inappropriate scarves. (29 seconds were spent making fun of “gluten-free” people who don’t have Celiac disease).

Since the speech was so long, I thought I would summarize the main point. Basically, “cultural competency” is a term we throw around a lot in the field, usually with metaphors like “Cultural Competency is not a destination, it’s a journey” and “Culture is like the engine of a car: You don’t see it, but it is integral to and greatly influences the car” and “In many cultures, staff are expected to make the Executive Director lemonade on demand, so get to it!”

What I’ve been seeing is that the discussion of cultural competency usually stays at the micro level, the differentiated interactions between individuals: Take off your shoes when you enter an Asian person’s house; hugging is not big in some cultures, so don’t hug everyone you meet; it’s not “Chinese New Year” it’s “Lunar New Year” since many Asian countries celebrate it besides China; label food, especially when you serve pork; just because a person doesn’t make eye contact, doesn’t mean they’re trying to be disrespectful; etc.

With so many cultures in existence, it is impossible to understand and be fluent in all of them. When we mean well, but because of our gap in knowledge we screw up, I call that being a cultural competency wombat, because wombats are cute and cuddly and they probably don’t mean any harm. I have been the recipient of wombat interactions, and I have been a wombat on numerous occasions. All of us are wombats from time to time, and it is OK, as long as we learn and don’t make the same mistakes.

But cultural competency extends beyond the micro level. At these higher levels—organizational, systemic—where our inherent wombattiness can cause some serious damage. Or at least, be extremely annoying.

When Wombats Go Wild, Mezzo Level

When you have some color in your background, you’re a person of color. This is easy to understand. In the same vein, when an organization is led by communities of color and serves communities of color, it’s basically an organization of color. And when a school is 95% kids of color (and we have several in Southeast Seattle), it’s basically a school of color. We have to understand that it’s no longer just an issue of people of color, but whole organizations and schools and neighborhoods of color, and the challenges faced by an individual of color is replicated at these higher levels too, and cultural competency must extend to these levels.

One challenge, for example, is that organizations of color become that one kid in the class that has to teach everyone about his culture. Or that Spanish speaking kid that has to help other kids with their Spanish homework.

Seattle has a strong emphasis on inclusion. We LOVE getting input from everyone on everything, and we know it is essential to get the communities of color’s input (even if we do absolutely nothing with it). Which is why my organization, the Vietnamese Friendship Association (VFA), gets hit up for everything. Each week we get at least two or three requests to recruit our Vietnamese clients for some focus groups—on education, safety, transportation, sewage overflow, you name it—usually without a single thought that we may require funds to do the work.

Inclusion is commendable, but if it doesn’t come with resources, it becomes a burden on organizations of color. I was on a committee that was in charge of allocating a bunch of money. We were reviewing a list of requirements to put in the RFP. Among the requirements were “Applicants must get input from communities and families of color.” That sounds great. But what happens, at least in Seattle, is that mainstream organizations cannot reach the communities of color. So then they contact organizations like VFA and Horn of Africa and Filipino Community of Seattle and East African Community Services to get help. These sort of well-intentioned “inclusiveness” opens the floodgate. It’s like if you’re a teacher and you’re teaching a lesson on Latin American countries and you said, “Pick a Latin American country and write a report. But before you turn in your report, check in with your classmate Pedro to make sure it’s accurate.” So now all the kids descend on Pedro. It’s not that Pedro does not want to help, but he has his own challenges and his own report to write.

The funding for “inclusiveness” is usually never equitable. In fact, most of the time, it’s never even a consideration. Two weeks ago someone called me to ask us to help recruit Vietnamese clients for a focus group. They hired an outreach staff, but she had no luck getting people to sign up for the focus group, so they called me. I said, “So…basically, you got some money to hire a staff, but that didn’t work, so now you’re asking my organization to do this for you for free?”

Some requests are as ridiculous as some hipsters’ hair. One time a mainstream organization contacted me asking for help. “Can you spread the word about this community event?” the rep asked, “Also can you look these documents over to make sure they’re translated correctly into Vietnamese? It’s due in two days, so if you can get back to me by tomorrow, that would be great.” (I sent her a link to a translation company). We nonprofits of color do not have magical unicorn outreach power. Engagement of communities of color takes five times as much effort, since we’re dealing with language, transportation, socioeconomic, and other barriers. Even for VFA’s own workshops and community meetings, it takes calling our clients multiple times before they show up. Most don’t have emails and Google calendar. They have to be reminded a week ahead, three days ahead, one day ahead, the day of, and then relationship building follow-up the week after. This sort of work, if it is valued, must be funded. Just like people of color face challenges, nonprofits of color face challenges. Schools of color, neighborhoods of color face challenges. Often, it’s in the form of “Well, we can’t fund them because they don’t have much capacity. But we still want them to be involved. That will make them feel good to be asked to be involved.”

At this level, funders should try to distribute funds equitably, and try to contract directly with organizations of color if that is what the work entails. Mainstream organizations, if you need help with outreach, build sufficient funds into your project budget to compensate nonprofits of color for their time and expertise.

When Wombats Go Wild, Macro Level

At the systems level, that’s when we see how critical cultural competency is. For the past couple of years, I have been chairing the Southeast Seattle Education Coalition (SESEC), a collaboration of nonprofits of color, schools, families, and community members working together to improve schools in SE Seattle, the most diverse quadrant of the City. 8% of SE Seattle is White, compared to 43% district-wide. 72% of the students are free and reduced lunch, compared to 43% also. 22% are English Language Learners, compared to 10%. We have awesome restaurants down here, and also the most struggling schools. Seattle Public Schools grade their schools from 1 to 5, with 5 being the highest in performance. In SE Seattle, with some of the most amazing educators, only a single school is graded above a level 3. That would be Mercer Middle School, Level 5. Over 50% of kids of color will fail to graduate from high school.

It’s been like this for decades. And the lack of cultural competency at this level is pretty glaring. For example, I was attending a meeting on SE Seattle a while ago, and we talked about these issues, and a school board member was there. Everyone was upset by the disparities in SE Seattle. The school board member stood up, the sun dappled on her hair, and a hush fell over the room (I’m trying make this story more interesting, since this blog post is pretty long). “These numbers are unacceptable,” she said, “I need all you guys to send in letters and emails and bring your community members to show up at board meetings, because without an army behind me, there’s nothing I can do. Parents at other schools organize and send 50 emails, and they get what they want, so we have to do the same.” People murmured their agreement, vowing to rally the troops.

That was totally wombat, because the intention was good, and at first it makes sense. A man stood up, his face gaunt with time and planning too many annual dinners, his back hunched from too many meetings. “We can try to do that,” he said, “because our parents must make their voices known. At the same time, many of our parents don’t speak much English. Some have never touched a computer, much less know how to send an email. They work several jobs, so they might not be able to join meetings. How fair is this system then? While we build the capacity of our families, we MUST also change this system.” This system that exists, where the loudest voices win, is culturally incompetent and has been perpetuating inequity in education and other areas for decades.

We see this lack of cultural competency play out again and again at the macro level. The Families and Education Levy, for example, is supposed to help schools like the ones in SE Seattle. But the grant application is ridiculously complicated and burdensome, which is fine if every school had the same resources to write it. But the schools that have the least capacity to write these grants are the ones that most need the grants, as usually they’re the ones with the most kids of color and low-income kids. I was helping a school with this grant. This school has 97% kids of color. The principal and I locked ourselves in her office for several days to write this thing, and by the time we were done, the narrative was 28 pages long. It was the most ridiculous grant I had ever written, and it was like giving birth. (I know all about the pains of giving birth now that I have witnessed it first-hand). Another school, with even more needs, did not apply.

Cultural competency is extremely critical, especially when the injustices that we are trying to address usually disproportionately affect communities of color. The concept has been tossed around a lot and beaten into all of us, but usually only at the micro level. What we have at all levels are often well-meaning people who are trying to help, but all of us naturally impose our own perspectives on to things and people. If VFA has time to recruit people for their workshops, why can’t they recruit the same people for my focus group? If I can access social media, other people should be able to. If I can write a 28-page grant, why can’t these school principals? If some parents can write emails and testify at school board meetings and write op-eds, why can’t other parents? These wombat assumptions are annoying, but at the higher levels, they can be deadly, silently perpetuating the cycle of inequity while all of us are talking about whether it is culturally appropriate to shake hands with some clients or not, or whether we should take off our shoes.

Tips for not sucking when you’re on a panel

This week, I was asked to speak on a panel to a bunch of social work students on working with refugee and immigrant clients. Panels are like the lunch buffet of information sharing. It is a group of people with knowledge of a certain topic, asked to speak together with the hope that at least one of them will say something interesting. It is a great idea for our attention-deficient culture, but it is often poorly executed, oftentimes due to the panelists themselves.

Now, the average attention span of an audience member is nine seconds, so it was frustrating when the first panelist took 21 minutes to introduce herself, going into details about her childhood upbringing, her first trip to Disneyland, her favorite color, that one magical night when she tried peroskis for the first time, etc. The second panelist, an otherwise delightful woman, took cue from the first and spent 17 minutes telling her life story. The students, thinking this might actually be a clever real-time demonstration of how to communicate with refugees and immigrants, paid careful attention.

So I thought I would provide the following tips on how to be a dynamic, interesting panel speaker. If you are ever asked to be on a panel, please review these notes below. Many of these tips also work for other speeches, such as wedding toasts and eulogies:

• Tip 1: Prepare. It is important to be ready. Many panelists make the terrible mistake of not preparing for the panel. Several days ahead of time, make sure you prepare yourself by informing your friends through tweeting and updating your Facebook timeline that you will be on a panel. Have a friend come and take an awesome picture of you from the audience.
• Tip 2: Try to go first or last. Being first allows you to set precedence. If your intro is only one minute long, for example, the other panelists will follow. I prefer being last, which allows me to listen carefully to the other panelists’ points and then synthesize, which makes me look extra smart, e.g., “Yes, I agree with Mark’s statement; theretofore, and indeed, a strength-based approach is the best return on ROI.”
• Tip 3: Talk like a human being. Panelists sometimes get this inflated ego, like oooh, I’m on a panel, I’m an expert. Then they try to sound intelligent, using a language that I call “expertese,” which is very annoying. The only time you should try to sound smart is when you’re talking to grad students, in which case, it is not only appropriate for you to use jargon, but also expected of you to make up some terminologies that sound real, for instance, “Post-modern misoxenistic tendencies among the media are challenges newcomers to the country face on an almost morpholateral basis.” It makes the students feel smart. They pay a lot of money for their degree, so it’s nice to boost their ego.
• Tip 4: Tell hilarious jokes that are related to the topic. For example, “A Program Director, a tutor, and a refugee family with two small children walk into a school. The school asks why the long faces? The Program Director says, ‘You don’t have enough culturally appropriate services for immigrant and refugee students and families, so they’re struggling academically.” (I may need to work on my punch line).
• Tip 5: Gage your audience’s reaction and energy. Watch their body language. If they’re yawning or stabbing themselves in the eyes with the corner of their binders, they’re bored out of their wits, and it’s time to ante up on the jokes.
• Tip 6: Use strategic cussing. Mild expletives like “pissed” “damn” and “hell” make people think you’re passionate. Sprinkle them in once a while. For example, “Politicians always think ‘why don’t these refugees and immigrants ever attend a town hall meeting? Don’t they care?’ That pisses me off!” Remember, you’re trying to talk like a human being, and that’s what humans sound like, dammit.
• Tip 7: Tell stories. Audience members love good, relevant stories. Nothing is more effective than stories. Statistics are very helpful (“Over 50% of immigrant and refugee students will not graduate from high-school”), but a good story can humanize the message and help to drive it home. Make sure your story has a point though: “And eating that peroski for the first time was when I realized how difficult yet wonderful it is to be in a new land.”
• Tip 8: Get audience participation. It wakes them up. And why should you do all the work. Try to call on specific people in the audience. If you know their name, that’s great, but if you don’t, it’s appropriate to call them out by their distinguishing features, “The best way to work with refugees and immigrants? I could tell you, but first, what do you think? You, young man with the cold sore, what say you?”
• Tip 9: Get into a fight with other panelists. The whole point of getting people together is so they can bounce off of one another. But panelists tend to be self-contained. That’s just boring. Either agree with someone, elaborate on others’ statements, or else respectfully disagree. At every panel I’m on, I try to get into at least one verbal fisticuff with another panelist. Just try not to make it personal, like “Oh yeah, Ed? Well your FACE has a responsibility to learn English and assimilate.”
• Finally, Tip 10: Wear the appropriate clothing. I always wear glasses and a red button-down shirt. Glasses convey wisdom, and red suggests power. Then, I leave the top two or three buttons of my shirt unbuttoned, conveying a subtle sense of sexiness. Wisdom, power, sexiness. All good panelists project such an aura.

I hope those tips are helpful. Share this with any of your friends who tweet or post on Facebook that they will be on a panel. (Also, check out NWB’s 12 Tips for Not Sucking as a Panel Moderator). If all of us can learn to be better panelists, maybe, just maybe, we can achieve world peace in our children’s lifetime.

Or at least panels wouldn’t be such boring-ass events to sit through.

A different kind of retreat

Hi everyone. I just joined Twitter. I have 9 followers. Is that a lot? I don’t know. If you want to follow, it’s @nonprofitwballs #confused #stilldontunderstandhashtags. On to this week’s post:

Over the weekend the Southeast Seattle Education Coalition (SESEC) had our retreat. Whenever we have a major event, I tend to freak out, believing that all sorts of things will go wrong. I get night terrors, waking up in cold sweats screaming, “We gave people the wrong address! The zombies are coming!” (I should probably refrain from watching TV when I’m stressed out).

OK, first some background. Southeast Seattle is home to the most diverse zip code in the nation, 98118, which means ridiculously delicious ethnic foods. Unfortunately 98118 is also home to some of the most struggling schools. Seattle Public Schools District grades its schools from 1 to 5, based on absolute scores on tests as well as how fast they’re improving, with 5 being highest in terms of achievement. Of the 20 schools in SE Seattle, only one school is above a level 3, despite some of the most amazing and dedicated educators working here.

SESEC was formed for a couple of reasons. First, education reform in Seattle has been really contentious, with people blaming each other and throwing rocks. Reading comments on any article on education is like peering into the darkest recesses of the human souls. The tension is everywhere. I’ve seen friends literally get into fist fights at the Farmer’s Market, arguing about charter schools. OK, not literally, but there definitely was vigorous head shaking and vague threats of squishing the other person’s organic heirloom tomatoes. SESEC believes instead of fighting about stuff we don’t agree on and threatening to damage prized organic produce, why don’t we work on stuff we can agree to, like parental engagement and extended learning programs.

Another reason we were formed is that while in Washington State we have many efforts to improve schools, communities of color are not well represented. It is alarming and a symptom of a not-quite-effective system when the “achievement and opportunity gap” most impacts kids of color, and yet the communities of color are barely there at these tables that are making major policy recommendations. We communities of color in SE Seattle must be in the front leading and painting a vision where all kids are successful. “All Fives in Five,” we say, our campaign slogan to push for all schools down here to become a Level 5 school within 5 years. And we believe we can get there if we all work together.

A year later, we now have about 50 organizations and schools working in collaboration, one of the most diverse coalitions in the State. That’s why we had to have the retreat, to prioritize our goals and develop an action plan, and why I bolted up in bed screaming, “Pork sandwiches?! Nooooooooo!!” (With so much diversity, having culturally appropriate food is very important).

On the day of, I had gotten up early so that I had extra time to freak out. I was worried that people wouldn’t show up, or they couldn’t find the place, or the babysitters we recruited would flake out and the children in the childcare room would escape and run amok, or that people would find the retreat useless, or that one more of my favorite characters would die on Downton Abbey. I was worried about whether we had enough stickers for when people started voting on the advocacy priorities. Each person gets five and a half star stickers to vote with. What if we didn’t have enough stickers?! People who didn’t have stickers would then have to vote by writing their initials like animals and the retreat would be a failure!!!

38 people showed up representing over 25 different organizations. The attendance was great, but I was still stressed. Our facilitator had her baby on a sling. The baby started making loud baby sounds. At one point, we could hardly hear a guest speaker because some children were curious and left the childcare room and climbed on to their mothers’ lap and started asking questions such as “can we get some stickers?” Arrg, I needed to crack down on the babysitter in the childcare room, I thought. For various activities we broke into groups. “If my five-year-old son is looking for me,” said a mother, “can you let him know I’m in the basement with a group?” How could anyone concentrate with children running around?

Then, as I watched our facilitator, whose baby was now snuggled up asleep in her sling, I realized something. In my worries about having an efficient retreat, I lost sight for a moment of why we were having it in the first place. This is what the community looks like. This is our community. We cannot retreat from our community. It is diverse. It includes children and babies. Most of the people in the room were not professional lobbyists or policy analysts. These are direct service providers and parents and educators, people who gave up six hours of their Saturday after working hard all week to be here.

After I took a breath and calmed myself down, I looked around the room and saw how awesome it was that so many people came, and what a great community we had. At least 60% of the room were people of color from all over the world. One Somali mom, for whom English is not her first language, told us it was her birthday. It was her birthday, and she was here in a church foyer working to improve the education system.

The groups took turns reporting out. The five-year old had found his mother and was happily eating a cookie. His mother started reporting on what her group had discussed. “We believe that every school needs a counselor or case manager, or both,” she said. The little boy, not missing a beat, shouted, “My mom is right!” The room broke into laughter. “We first need to map out which school currently has which resources in this area, and what they need,” she continued.

“My mom is right again!” said the little boy, “that’s two times now that she is right.”

The day was a good learning experience for me. Most times the purpose of a retreat is to withdraw from civilization so that we have time to think. But I have seen this to become the default in social justice work, where in the drive for expediency, we leave behind the people most impacted. They become the “for whom” we do the work, the recipient of our fight for equity. It is an ineffective model. When we do this type of work, it cannot be “for” the community. It must be alongside the community, and the Southeast Seattle community looks like this room. The babies, the little kids, the parents fighting hard to understand the discussion, they are not a detriment to the work. They are our community; they are our strength.

Overall, it was a good retreat. I can relax for a couple of days before starting to freak out about our annual dinner.

Are you a cultural competency wombat? Take this quiz to find out

The term “cultural competency” has been thrown around a lot. For instance: “We must be more culturally competent in our outreach efforts in order to synergistically shift the paradigm for collective impact.” And also: “Stop being so culturally incompetent! In many cultures, staff are expected to make the Executive Director a mango lemonade while he naps!”

We all agree that Cultural Competency is a good thing, but do any of us really understand what it is? I mean, sure, there are tons of research papers and books and stuff on the subject, but who actually reads them when we all have so much work to do and Season 3 of Downton Abbey just started?

Cultural Competency is complex, and we can delve deep into it for hours. But for this post, I just want to spend a few minutes discussing cultural competency and how it manifests in the basic logistics of community engagement. Let’s begin by checking to see how culturally competent you currently are.

Question 1: You are leading a committee to talk about community safety and you want to ensure participation from residents of color. Where should you have the meeting? A. At my office downtown; it’ll make it easy for everyone, since downtown is a central location. B. At the local bar, since it’s an informal place where people can be free to express their opinions. C. Maybe a library, or a community center, some place with easy parking.

Question 2: You are thinking of having food at this meeting. What should you order? A. Prosciutto finger sandwiches, baked brie and dried pears, crudités and olives, accompanied by a nice pinot noir. B. Grilled pork banh mi’s (Vietnamese sandwiches), spring rolls C. Pita and hummus, chicken skewers, fruit.

Question 3: You want communities of color to be well-represented at this meeting. How should you go about outreaching? A. Send out flyers, emails, and Facebook messages. B. Call up the various ethnic organizations and ask them send out word to their community members. C. Have information translated and placed in ethnic media such as newspapers and radios, send staff to physically visit various places with translated materials.

Scoring: Give yourself 0 points for every A answer, 17 points for every B, and 900 points for every C. If you got 0 to 900 points, you are a cultural competency goblin. If you have 901 to 1816 points, you are a cultural competency wombat. If you have 1817 to 2700 points, you are a cultural competency platypus.

Now that you have your score, let’s get on to the tips to make us all become more culturally competent!

Tip 1: Do not assume a person of color is culturally competent. How dare you automatically think I am qualified to talk about cultural competency! People of color can be just as culturally incompetent as everyone else. Why, just over the holiday break I managed to offend people from at least four separate cultures.

Tip 2: Ask questions, but check your assumptions. Assumptions lead to annoying questions like “Vu, what’s the best Vietnamese restaurant in Seattle?” How the heck would I know? A better question would be “Vu, do you know what the best Vietnamese restaurant in Seattle is?” (“No clue; I’m vegan.”)

Tip 3: Be where people are. I mean literally, geographically. Come down to the neighborhood. Ironically, I’ve attended a bunch of meetings about cultural competency that are held downtown, known to many of us as “The Maze of $8-Per-Hour Parking and the Endless Gnashing of Teeth.” Move your meetings around and check out all the cool locations where real people naturally congregate. Expecting people to come to you all the time is culturally insensitive. Plus, you can learn more about people and cultures by being where they are.

Tip 4: Have food at your community events, but try to avoid pork. Sounds kind of harsh, since bacon is so delicious and they’ve incorporated it into so many great things like chocolates and vodka. But several cultures and religions avoid pork, so you can make it easier on yourself and ease the mind of a ton of people by just not having it there. At VFA, whenever we have a public event, such as our Tet Celebration on 2/8, we just don’t have pork, since many of our friends who may attend are Muslim. When in doubt, go with chicken.

Tip 5: Be considerate of circumstances and challenges. Take into consideration childcare, transportation, and other factors as you engage communities. Not everyone has a car or knows how to take public transit. Have volunteers to watch over children and have appropriate games and activities for them.

Tip 6: Be careful giving out swag items. I was attending a meeting regarding improving the education system and how to get communities of color to be engaged in the process. At the end, as we left, we were each given a gift bag. I looked inside. It was a bottle of wine. Each person got a bottle of wine! Several cultures and religion do not encourage alcohol consumption, so this was in poor taste, especially in combination with a serious discussion on education. Swag items are fine, but make sure they are appropriate. Pens, note pads, travel-size hand sanitizer, flash drives, and food, especially vegan chocolates, are good. Avoid alcohol, weapons, and stuff made of leather or other animal products.

There are so many different cultures, and each culture is so complex, that it would be impossible to be completely competent. Competency, then, is an evolving process, a sense of self, and a willingness to ask questions and challenge one’s deeply-held beliefs. Or something profound like that. Look, I only scored 934 points, and Downton Abbey is on.

Being a nonprofit with balls, part 1

Recently, a new nonprofit came to meet me at the VFA office, which I appreciated, since I’m a very busy person, and meeting at my office allows me to watch a second episode of “The Daily Show” on hulu.com. This particular advocacy organization was trying to advance education in Seattle, and they wanted to see about collaborating with VFA. “Luke” came on time and was very friendly.

“Two separate people mentioned you, Vu, as someone we should talk to,” he said, beaming. He went on to present his concept, which was not altogether a horrible idea for advancing education. But I had this sinking feeling in my stomach. He was going to ask VFA to pull together a focus group.

“We’re trying to really engage communities of color, so we’re hoping you would do a focus group of 15 or 20 people for us to listen to.”

Every week, VFA gets some sort of request to rally our community members: “Vu, the seawall is breaking! Can you recruit several immigrants and refugees to give input?” The following week: “Vu, the combined sewers are overflowing! We want to get the Vietnamese community’s thoughts!” It is rarely anything fun: “Vu, a delegation is going to Hawaii to study the effects of hula and mild inebriation on nonprofit executives’ burnout rates, and we’d like you to come.”

“To be frank,” I said, “we are at capacity. We have only three full-time staff here at VFA running several programs and projects. I’m afraid that unless there are resources provided, I cannot ask my team to tackle any additional responsibilities.”

Luke looked perplexed and started talking about the importance of the effort he is trying to advance. I told him that if he wants effective collaborations, he should go to his funders and advocate for a more equitable financial support of organizations that are out there on the ground doing direct work so that we can have more capacity for advocacy. He became irritated and extremely defensive.

“Well,” he said, “I can’t go back to my funders and say ‘Vu won’t play ball unless we give him money.’ I can’t do that.”

Luke must be new to Seattle. In a city known for process and indirectness, it was rather refreshing to hear him talk.

“Play ball? Listen, Luke, we small ethnic nonprofits are knee-deep in balls! We have balls flying at us from every corner, from the City, from the County, from the School District, from organizations like yours. Usually without any funding to support our operations. We can’t juggle your balls for you!”

Kidding, I would never say that; at least, not while sober. What I said was, “The traditional ways of engaging communities of colors do not work. If you want to rally a few people to ‘listen’ to, then I am sure you can succeed in the short term. If you want long-term impact, I am telling you that you and others will need to shift your traditional way of doing and funding things. You can either hire a multicultural team of outreach staff, or you will need to work with cultural organizations; either way or preferably both, it will take resources because it takes much more effort to reach communities of color.”

He was visibly annoyed. “I am not looking for a handout, Vu,” he said, “you know what, if you just write down how much it’ll cost to pay for a few hours of someone’s time to call up people and how much facilities and food and other expenses will be, we’ll figure out a way to pay for them.”

I told him I didn’t have time to sit down and figure out his budget for him. And that even when there are resources, sometimes we have to turn down great projects because they do not align with our strategic plan.

“That really saddens me,” he responded, “and when this effort is huge and successful, and the Vietnamese community’s voice is missing, we’ll both understand why.”

I smiled. There was no point arguing further with him.

“All right,” he said, “how about this? We get lunch, you and I, and you bring just one Vietnamese client. Just one. You know what they say, the journey of ten thousand steps begins with one step, so can you do that? Just one client.”

“Luke,” I said—

“Just one!”

“Do you know what it takes to coordinate even something as simple as that? First I have to figure out which clients I know, then I have to call up four or five of them to see if any are interested. If one is interested, I have to find a slot that works with your schedule, my schedule, and this other person’s schedule. Also, I’d be more than glad to have lunch with you, but I am 90% certain that a client will not join, because they work during the day.”

Our time was up. I started feeling a pang of guilt. Perhaps I was a little too harsh. “Listen,” I said, “I want to be sure there is no misunderstanding between us—”

“Oh, there’s not,” he said, smirking, “I heard you loud and clear.”

“I don’t BS,” I said, staring him in the eye, “if you want real community engagement, help change the traditional way of doing things.”

I walked them out and sat down at my computer to write my follow up thank-you email. Was I out of line? Was I taking out some sort of unconscious frustration on Luke? I don’t doubt his or his organization’s intentions. Perhaps he just came at a bad time. Every month, we get a dozen similar requests, usually from well-meaning and well-funded organizations. The VFA staff work ridiculous hours managing programs and several capacity building and other projects. I’ve never worked with a more dedicated team. Is it unreasonable then for me to feel protective and to get annoyed at people like Luke, who seem to think we have unlimited time and that we are selfish when we refuse to “collaborate”?

Luke responded back, and we are having lunch in a couple of weeks. I’ll keep you updated. [Read Part 2]

Being a nonprofit with balls, part 2

Two weeks ago I had lunch with Luke, whom you may recall from “Being a Nonprofit with Balls.” Luke had come to VFA a couple of months ago asking us to rally 15 to 20 community members for a focus group. I had just woken up from my daily ED power nap and was kind of groggy and in no mood to be accommodating, so we got into a fistfight. Of course, this the nonprofit field in Seattle, so by “fistfight” I mean that we threw big concepts, hoping to wound each other with phrases like “authentic engagement” and “equity.” I told him that we small ethnic nonprofits are overwhelmed with similar requests from well-meaning organizations who are trying to be “inclusive” and that we just didn’t have staff capacity to do it and that he should go back to advocate for more equitable funding if he really wanted to authentically engage the communities of color.

We decided to have lunch, and I was looking forward to it. While I thought Luke’s approach was ineffective, I appreciated his refreshing directness. He arrived on time at my favorite restaurant. Since he was technically my elder, I poured him tea.

“So, how did you get to where you are?” I asked. He told me of his journey and of his philosophy on life, which is basically that if you serve others selflessly, the Universe will reward you.

“I moved up here, didn’t have a job. I was at this event, and I met Ted, who is a millionaire. He told me about this thing he’s trying to do to improve education, so I said that sounds great, how can I help? And he gave me a job.”

“That’s great,” I said, wishing that I knew more millionaires so I could be selfless around them.

“Listen,” he said, “that thing with asking you to put together a focus group, that was garbage.”

“It’s OK,” I said, “we get asked all the time. We know people mean well.”

“It’s just, how do we get the communities to the table? We keep inviting them.”

For the past several months, I’ve been on this bent about community engagement and funding equity, especially around education. After talking to Luke, I realize that he’s a nice guy, but his approach is very indicative of the standard approach to community engagement, which has gone nowhere. People wonder, Why are the communities of color refusing to join our table? We’ve invited them countless times. Don’t they want to work with us? We’ve prepared place settings for them and everything!

The reality is that whoever hosts the table has the majority of the power. They can shift people’s seats around, kick them out, refuse to share the recipe for coconut cornbread, or whatever. It is challenging to have authentic engagement when people feel like guests at a table and not a co-host. “Inviting” people to the table is not enough, since this is symptomatic of not engaging people at square one, when the table was being created in the first place.

“Community engagement must begin at square one,” I said. “Too often efforts get to square three or four, usually well-supported by funding at each step of the way, before people stop to realize, ‘Hold on, we’re not doing a good job reaching underrepresented communities.’ They scramble and backtrack, but it may be too late, since funding usually has been allocated without these communities in mind. So then we get asked to participate without being provided resources.”

“Another thing,” I said, “the people most impacted need to lead the effort. This is especially true with an issue like education, where the ‘achievement gap’ is basically kids of color. If this is the civil rights issue of our time, then the people most impacted need to be in the front leading. Allies and supporters are critically important. This work cannot be successful without then, especially since they have the relationships with funders. But they must be on the side or behind supporting the people most affected by inequity. Too often we see well-meaning people coming into the neighborhood saying ‘Hey, we know what works best for you. Come join and support our efforts!’”

“Also, people think that presence equals engagement. I’ve been to numerous ‘community input’ events that are fully attended by diverse communities. VFA has rallied our community members to these events. They have interpreters and UN-style headsets, and the room looks beautiful and inspiring, and no doubt pictures of the event will be posted everywhere afterward as proof of how effective the outreach and engagement was. Many of our community members leave going ‘Huh?’ Then they don’t see any results and feel that their time was wasted, and VFA loses credibility with them for inviting them. They may not understand all the concepts presented, but they know enough to feel shafted and tokenized. Presence is only one-half of engagement.”

“Here, try this vegan lemongrass chicken,’” I said, taking a break from my lecture, which I realized had been welling up for the past few years. “Having names on a list does not indicate engagement,” I continued, “VFA and other ethnic nonprofits get asked to join various coalitions and efforts. Because we are so busy doing direct service, we sometimes say ‘Yeah, go ahead, sign us up and use our name. We’ll drop by occasionally.’ This is a horribly destructive practice, as it stymies responsibility on our part to actively lead in the effort, and it reinforces the system of funding inequity and poor engagement. Funders looking at this list of ‘members’ may not be aware of how actively engaged they actually are. Heck, some organizations on the list may no longer even exist.”

“Finally,” I said, “direct service organizations have tremendous potential for advocacy. After all, they work directly with families and know their needs and can mobilize them to change policies and practices. But we are not funded to do that stuff.”

This was a lot of information to take in. We paused for a while to eat our food. “So what can I do to help?” he asked. I thought about it for a second. For the past year and a half I’ve been involved with the Southeast Seattle Education Coalition (SESEC), which is mobilizing the communities of color and allies to work together to improve education in Southeast Seattle. This is one of the few efforts actually led by the local communities of color to address the achievement gap. We are tired of being “invited” to the table. We must be a table. Trouble is, communities of color are not as connected to funders and decision makers, so we’ve been struggling with funding.

“Introduce me to your millionaire friend Ted,” I said, “I want to talk to him about SESEC.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” he said. We continued our conversation until the bill came. “I’ll pay,” I said, but Luke insisted on getting it. I could have fought for the bill, or at least to pay for my share, but I knew he felt some guilt, and this was his way of appeasing. I let him pay. I guess it’s my way of being selfless.

Last week, Luke emailed me saying he had talked to Ted and that Ted was willing to meet with me. I followed up to schedule a meeting. I am going to meet with a millionaire. Will keep you updated. [Read Part 3]

The case for nonprofit partying

In a month, we’ll be having World Dance Party, a giant multicultural dance party and potluck. It’s free and usually draws over 200 people of all ages and backgrounds. Of all the projects VFA takes on, this one is unique. There is no fundraising, no programming. No one will present on cultural competency. There will be no surveys or focus groups. No one will be asked to put dots on a flip chart. People will eat and dance. That’s it.

So what the heck is the point? Fun. The point is fun. We as a society are stressed as all-get-out, and those of us in nonprofits are probably even worse for wear. The pay could be higher, the workload lower. We spend all our times calculating, with every meeting, every event needing to have some sort of agenda. No wonder we are burning out, with some of us considering running off to raise llamas in the Andes.

World Dance Party started two years ago, when I was invited to an Aging Your Way event held by Senior Services. I had no idea why I was invited; despite my rapidly greying hair, I’m actually not a senior. But it was a good way to avoid work and get free food, so I sat in a room with 50 other people as we envisioned a community in which we would like to grow old. Most of us do not think about our own aging, preferring to be in denial about the cadence of time and the looming approach of the Inevitable. But during those four hours, we confronted the existential and realized there can be joy and hope in growing older, no matter what our popular culture leads us to believe.

“We should have a time bank where we could help each other out using our talents,” said one voice. “We should have more handicap-accessible spaces,” said another. One by one, people stood up to shout their ideas. More gardens. More bike lanes. A multicultural heritage festival. Then, a man rose to his feet, an Asian man, his shabby clothing and unkempt hair indicating that he worked for a small nonprofit. “We should have a giant multicultural dance party, where elders and kids and people of varying backgrounds can get together and teach each other different dances. Seniors can teach youth Disco. Kids can teach seniors to Pop-and-Lock. Salsa! Merengue! Bollywood! Everyone brings a dish to share. Booze. There will also be booze for those of age!”

“Well, those ideas are just brilliant,” said the facilitator, “Now, we’re going to break into groups to actually work on implementing them.” If that man who suggested the multicultural dance party knew he would have to do actual work and organize it, he probably would have remained silent, munching on his pita and hummus.

We have put on seven World Dance Parties now, several organizations working together to coordinate each one. Each event has drawn 150 to 250 people of all ages and ethnicities. We have had dances from multiple countries, from the Horah to Bhangra to Eastcoast Swing to Tinikling. At each World Dance Party, I get a vision of what our society should be like: diverse, everyone interacts with everyone, joy radiating from every face, a giant plastic bucket of cheese puffs on the potluck table. At one point, I stood back to observe the crowd, sipping on a beer. 150 people were holding hands, engaged in an Israeli dance, while others in the room were talking and laughing. Kids were dancing with older adults. Asians were learning West African dances. It was moving. That’s the kind of community I would like to grow old in.

I wasn’t the only one who was awed by the magic in the room. A lady who was also standing back to take in the scene came up to me. “Isn’t this wonderful?” she asked, gazing at the crowd, who had now moved into a line dance called the Wobble, “we should send this out to the universe, this energy, this pure happiness. If you and I were rich, if we each owned a yacht, could we be any happier than we are tonight?”

I thought about it for a second. Then I turned to her, slightly misty-eyed, and said, “How the heck would I know?!” I work for a nonprofit, I said. How would I ever know what it’s like to own a yacht? I mean, how much do those things cost anyway? $5,000? $10,000? I’ll never have that much money! Oh, God, I’m going to die without having paid off my student loans!

OK, maybe I had one too many beers. My new friend’s point was well-taken. Seldom do we see such joy. Our organizations work to fill critical needs; rarely does a nonprofit mission statement include the words “to increase happiness.” We do not prioritize it. Oftentimes we feel guilty, as if providing happiness is less important than basic needs. A party is frivolous, we think. But isn’t happiness ultimately what our work is about? I would say that bringing people a sense of community, of joy, of humor, of connection to their neighbors, is just as important. That is why VFA will always help organize events like WDP.

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A few months ago, we posted an announcement on our website, selling off the naming rights to our cubicles:

Let’s face it, life is short, and all of us are on a quest for immortality. People with the means can have their names on buildings and stadiums: Carnegie Hall, the Trump Tower, the Monsanto Lab for Frankensteined Produce, etc. Naming buildings costs millions, which none of us have. However, with only $1,000, you can have your name on Executive Director Vu Le’s cubicle forever. That’s sixteen square feet of immortality, and every time someone passes by, they’ll be reminded of your greatness.

Well, I’m happy to announce that we have sold off our first cubicle, thanks to the generous donations of two amazing SVP partners. The ribbon cutting for the “Emily Anthony and Julie Edsforth Cubicle for Youth and Community Engagement” will happen at VFA’s first annual Halloween party on October 30th at 6pm at the VFA office, and all friends of Emily and Julie are welcome to come and witness this historic event. If you are interested in immortalizing yourself or a loved one by having your name emblazoned on a cubicle, please let me know. Hurry! These cubicles are selling like hotcakes! (If hotcakes sell at approximate one cake every three months.)