Last year Ode launched its first annual Intelligent Optimists Issue where we featured people who are not famous yet but should be because of the work they are doing to bring positive change to their communities, their countries, and the world. As part of this special issue, we would like to hear your nominations, too: tales of ordinary people who do extraordinary things. Just tell us who your nominee is and write a few lines explaining why this person is special and why their work is important. Nominate your favorite Intelligent Optimist!
Kim Reynolds is helping battered women and their childrens in her area, south western Colorado. She took a basically selfish pursuit, ice climbing and rock climbing and turned it into a fund raiser for women's shelters and services. Kim created Chicks Climbing which presents women's rock climbing and ice climbing workshops taught by some of the world's best climbing guides. Chicks Climbing has raised more than $145,000 to date by including fund raisers in the workshops -- two public slide shows and live auctions support The Tri-County Resource Center in Montrose Colorado, a non-profit organization serving Ouray, Montrose, and Delta Counties. We passed the $108,000 mark for money raised at our most recent Chicks with Picks ice climbing clinic, and we are now their largest donor! The Center is in its 22nd year of operation and offers shelter and resources for women. They provide a safe house for women in transition, counseling programs for abuse and sexual violation issues, three crisis lines, a 24-hour crisis hot line, and more.
Furthermore, Kim R. founded the dZi Foundation, Read more...
Joshua Langlais' project, i heart strangers is a photography and narrative portrait series that explores the ideas of social trust, community, and sheer perseverance. Every single day (for the past 500+ days), Joshua walks into his surroundings, into his community to find and photograph a stranger.
One stranger seems easy enough to find, but not all strangers have a willingness to participate in getting their photograph taken in such a chance encounter, and even fewer strangers have an inclination to agree to signing a model release form. The project results in a display of truly touching portraits, usually diptychs, a close-up of the strangers face, juxtaposed to a shot of the stranger in their environment. Read more...
Caitlin McCarthy, a Massachusetts High School English teacher, screenwriter and former marketing and public relations expert, has all the necessary qualities and gumption to make sure her State Senators know all about matters arising for victims of DES (diethylstilbestrol). Caitlin is pushing hard, lobbying for a National Apology for DES, the world’s first drug disaster, and her commonsense initiative is fast gaining attention in the U.S. and overseas.
Known as the "hidden Thalidomide," DES was an anti-miscarriage drug, a toxic and carcinogenic estrogen, prescribed to pregnant women from 1938 until 1971 (and sometimes beyond). With its harmful effects of cancer and reproductive abnormalities, DES has wrought havoc worldwide on the lives of millions of women given DES, and their children exposed in the womb to this drug. The drug was a top money-maker for Big Pharma ! In spite of all the medical proof (from 1953), the FDA only withdrew its approval of DES for humans in 2000. And to this day, not one drug company has ever apologized or accepted responsibility for the DES tragedy. Read more...
Virgil Stucker, founding Executive Director of CooperRiis Healing Community, has integrated his life with therapeutic communities since 1975 when he first started working at Gould Farm. Gould Farm, founded in 1913 in Massachusetts, is one of the oldest and most effective models for psychiatric rehabilitation in the country. While our country was putting psychiatric patients into asylum facilities, Gould Farm was placing a pitchfork in their hands and helping these individuals recover their lives through everyday work, belonging, and acceptance.
There are perhaps two dozen such communities in the United States. Many of them are in rural locations on acres of farmland, most of them include gardens and farm animals to support the needs of the community; often staff and their families live and work on-site in a casual family-like atmosphere. All of these communities work to affirm strengths and rebuild lives for some of the most neglected and courageous individuals: those who have experienced a serious mental illness such a major depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Through hard work, retreat from the hectic pace of life, participation in a loving and accepting community, and sound clinical practices, people leave with a stronger sense of self and purpose. People regain their lives. Read more...
Nichole Warner is first and foremost an amazing wife and mother. She is dedicated to the well being of her family above all things and this trait shines through in her day to day activities, and in the love she shows her five children and her grateful husband. Nichole had vision in the early 90's while vending at Grateful Dead shows throughout the country to bring beautiful fair trade goods to people in the U.S., and help to alleviate poverty in third world countries by giving people a means by which to earn a decent living.
After losing an 11-year-old daughter to a car accident in late 2004, Nichole took a step back for a while, and re-merged to go after her dream. Still in progress, her strength of overcoming obsticles shows through as Unity-Fair Trade Marketplace is thriving, getting more visits every day, and slowly moving toward the goal of making a real difference in people's lives. Read more...
Mark Juarez, CEO of The Happy Company, built a successful business with one product, the Happy Massager, and unlikely corporate values such as "Integrity Before Profit" and "Work Is Love Made Visible."
Most recently, he wrote a novella, "Charlie's Thinking Cheese", to share his ideals of kindness, generosity and unwavering optimism with both young and old. C.H.A.R.L.I.E. stands for Community, Happiness, Appreciation, Richness, Learning, Imagination and Environment. With Charlie's story, he aims to foster stronger community participation and support, a deeper respect for both the young and the elderly, and a profound sense of the goodness of life. Read more...
Geraldo Vallen is initiator of the Jointhepipe.org foundation. After a succesful career in advertising, he has now committed himself to redistributing drinking water in the world in a fairer way. He realised the irony of the fact that in the developed world people are wasting 70 litres of water every day, while at the other side of the world people do not have drinking water at all. On top of this, people are buying millions of bottles of water every day, which end up as waste, while the best and more environmentally friendly drink comes straight out of the tap.
Geraldo's aim is to promote tapwater and to make it "fancy" again - so that we would all only drink tapwater again, instead of paying for bottled water that has to be produced and transported. For this a design bottle has to be created, out of which people would be able to proudly drink tapwater and would be able to make a statement. The proceeds of the sales of these bottles (and later also carafes) could be used to support drinking water projects in developing countries. Read more...
D.C. Vito and Dr. Katherine Fry started The LAMP (Learning About Multimedia Project) back in September 2007 to address the lack of basic media literacy training in New York City schools and communities. Particularly because New York is one of the most media-saturated environments in the world, D.C. and Katherine thought it was important for people to learn how to think critically about and talk back to the barrage of media messages we receive every day.
In addition to her role as LAMP co-founder and Education Director, Dr. Fry is also a professor of media studies at Brooklyn College and travels the world to speak at conferences and conduct academic research. Co-founder and Executive Director D.C. Vito draws upon his background in politics, community organizing, mapmaking and the corporate sector to grow The LAMP into an organization which has taught nearly 700 students in its brief history. LAMP workshops cover news literacy, advertising literacy, digital literacy, cyberwellness, storytelling and more, and are frequently integrated with other school curricula on topics such as violence and criminal justice. Because workshops are free, The LAMP is able to reach communities and populations which are considered at-risk or under-served. Read more...
Kim Isley is amazing. She is a public high school English teacher who began a high quality online business planting trees as gifts. Check out this excerpt from her website.
"New information about climate change has created an urgent need to focus on the environment even more than before. I got the idea for Trees for a Change when I was reading that one of the best things you can do to fight global warming is to plant a tree. Planting a tree in the name of someone you care about really seemed like the perfect gift idea: it benefits the planet, it makes you feel good to be giving a unique and personal gift, and it makes the person you are planting the tree for feel good because something wonderful has been done in their name and because you didn't give them a gift they will eventually get rid of at a yard sale." Read more...
Anna Chojnacka is a co-founder of 1%CLUB. 1%CLUB is a marketplace that connects smart development projects with people, money and knowledge around the world.
In Anna's words, “the 1%CLUB is about power and powerlessness. We live in a world where economic means are very unequally divided. At least you can independently make sure that a part of our means ends up where you think it would be most useful!” Read more...
