When we originally embarked upon our first project in Tanzania just over three short years ago, we set out to build a primary school.  Thanks to you, that work is done.  Hundreds of children now have a place to learn, play, and grow because Mama Lucy and thousands of strangers from all corners of the world dared to believe our shared love and gratitude would somehow be enough to make it so. Now, though, Gideon, Glory, Leah, Phineas and their classmates are growing up.  In less than a year, they'll be ready for secondary school. I want the same for these children as I want for my niece, Zoe: the best possible education - which is why I can't just walk away now that they're in seventh grade.  Nor can Mama Lucy. At the same time, we've reached an organizational inflection point.  We've learned what it means to heartfully partner with grassroots changemakers like Mama Lucy, and we've learned what it takes to inspire thousands to make loving, grateful investments in hope like hers. We believe we're nearly ready to make a strategic shift from our proof-of-concept project in Tanzania to relaunching Epic Change as a scalable, sustainable social enterprise that inspires soulful investment in hopemakers like Mama Lucy across the globe. Before we can focus our resources on moving forward, however, we feel strongly that we must ensure our project in Tanzania is truly complete, by building a secondary school that will transform Mama Lucy's students into self-sufficient young men and women with the basic education necessary to build their futures, and their nation.  While the primary school & children's home are now entirely self-sustainable through local sources of income, the expansion capital required to buy land and build a secondary school is a challenge. I'm writing today to invite you to become a seed investor & a collaborator in creating the future of Epic Change.  By becoming one of 200 investors to contribute $20 per month, you'll not only be building Mama Lucy's secondary school, but you'll also be invited to get further involved in shaping the future of Epic Change. Seed investors will receive:

• the ability to nominate & participate in selection of future Epic Change fellows;
• access to our invitation-only Facebook group, monthly global conference calls & internal working documents;
• recognition on the Epic Change website and at the new secondary school; and
• all the new possibilities that will emerge when 200 remarkable souls from across the Earth invest ingenuity and love to create Epic Change.

Invest Monthly	Invest Yearly
Select your monthly seed investment: Roots : $10.00 USD - monthly Soil : $20.00 USD - monthly Water : $30.00 USD - monthly Air : $50.00 USD - monthly Sunlight : $100.00 USD - monthly	Select your yearly seed investment: Roots : $120.00 USD - yearly Soil : $240.00 USD - yearly Water : $360.00 USD - yearly Air : $600.00 USD - yearly Sunlight : $1,200.00 USD - yearly

Our hope is to identify 200 investors by February 14th so that construction in Tanzania may start immediately to ensure completion by the end of the year. If you'd like to get more deeply involved, but can't make a financial commitment right now, just reply directly to this email so we can discuss an alternate meaningful investment of talent, influence, time and energy. I hope you're as excited as we are to plot the course ahead - for 420 children who dream of continuing their education in Mama Lucy's loving care, and for Epic Change. The truth is we just can't do it without you. With love and so much hope, Stacey & Sanjay

Posted: January 28th, 2011 under The Foundry.
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Last night after midnight, I received this amazing post from a gentleman I've never met. He introduced himself as Frank Minja, "a fortunate young Tanzanian working in America, while dreaming of East Africa." He wrote:

I have been meaning to share this story, ever since I visited Shepherds Junior School. Last September, I had the good fortune of visiting Mama Lucy Kamptoni who is running an exemplary primary school in Arusha, Tanzania. I had been following her work with great interest on twitter, and was in awe of her amazing collaboration with the dynamic people at EpicChange.org. Reading about her primary school students using twitter was one thing, but meeting them and Mama Lucy in person was another. I could not pass up the opportunity. After touring the impressive facilities including a well stocked library, neat rows of classrooms, gardens with vegetables and flowers, with the picturesque backdrop of Mount Meru, we finally stepped inside one of the classrooms. We walked into a classroom of beaming 6th grade students eager to find out who these visitors were. After an exchange of greetings and introductions, we had the pleasure of asking them what they wished to become when they grew up. One girl said "A doctor", another boy "A lawyer", another girl "A businesswoman", but the answer that struck me the most was from a young boy who said "Astronaut" ! The other career choices were understandable because role models for each are readily available in Tanzania. To the best of my knowledge and google, there is no Tanzanian or African astronaut, yet. I think the boy also went to mention a few words about Neil Armstrong, the first man to land on the moon. And so I asked him, half not believing, "why Astronaut ?" He said, "I want to go to Jupiter." "Why Jupiter ?", I prodded further. "Because it is the biggest planet," he answered, with the calm confidence of someone who has spent a lot of time thinking about this possibility. I was speechless. I remember thinking, here I am talking to the reincarnation of William Kamkwamba - the Malawian genius boy who was called crazy for building a windmill in his village, using scrap metal parts and drawings from a physics textbook. Here I was face to face with a young determined Tanzanian student, with the audacity to dream about going to Jupiter; when most of us only dreamt of going to America or Europe! How many more children like him, and William Kamkwamba are out there ? I share this story to remind us of the countless young genius children who should be given a chance to pursue their dreams and imagination, at whatever cost. The work Mama Lucy is doing nurturing these young minds is priceless, and deserves our best support - whether it be kudos and/or dollars. Preferably both. I hope many of you will consider supporting her work and her students by making donations here. When in Arusha, please take a moment to visit Shepherds Junior School, and say hello to the young Astronaut before he heads out to Jupiter!

Given what he wrote, he could only be speaking of Gideon, whom I introduced here a few years ago with this post & video interview. Gideon can occasionally be found blogging, tweeting, making chocolate chip cookies, and growing up in the home we built together out of the love for so many mamas across the globe. In just 338 days, Gideon & his fellow seventh graders will be ready for secondary school, and they're hoping to continue their education in Mama Lucy's loving care. If just 200 people contribute $20/month throughout 2011, Mama Lucy will have the seed investment she needs to build the secondary school that will transform these children into independent young leaders ready to transform their nation. Will you join us?

Posted: January 27th, 2011 under The Foundry.
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In high school, many US schoolchildren take on the task of memorizing Martin Luther King's historic I Have a Dream speech. Last week, as I was driving home from a dance class, I heard this excerpt on NPR from another speech given one year to the day before his death - a speech many in his inner circle dissuaded him from giving, afraid of its repercussions. About them he wrote:

Many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: Why are you speaking about war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent? Peace and civil rights don't mix, they say. Aren't you hurting the cause of your people, they ask? And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling.

I wish I'd have memorized this speech. I'd never even heard it. It surely is as resonant now as it was in 1967. He said:

As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they ask -- and rightly so -- what about Vietnam? They ask if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent... ...the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken -- the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

A radical revolution of values. Is that unwittingly what we've been seeking by asking people to change the world with deep love & heartful gratitude? Here's a transcript of the whole speech, and, below, a later version of this speech delivered in his own powerful voice: Tavis Smiley, who was being interviewed about the speech on Democracy Now, summed up his commentary with these few words, "We have to be compassion. We have to be love. We have to be kindness. We have to be what we want to see in the world." Amen. PS: This song is now planted firmly on the same circuit of my brain as the above speech, as our instructor had chosen it as our cooldown song just before I stepped out the door and turned on the radio to tune into the speech above. I defy you to listen to it and not have love stick with you all day long... Though all the lyrics I could find transposed said "Could you be loved, and be loved?", I could swear he's saying "Could you be love, and be loved?"

Posted: January 17th, 2011 under The Foundry.
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