welcome

"We have a powerful potential in our youth, and we must have the courage to change old ideas and practices so that we may direct their power toward good ends."
—Mary McLeod Bethune

September is commonly the month that kids go back to school, leaves in the Northern hemisphere begin turning from green to gold, and harvest is on the mind of farmers. For most centuries, youth have been taken for granted. From Hammurabi's Code to the Industrial Revolution, children have been treated with very little, if any, respect. But this is a new era. We have come to see the beauty and value of youth, that our influence on young people determines our future and their future. This month we're taking a look at the wide open potential that young people bring to social change work in all forms: activism, art, and spirituality.

We celebrate events like the International Day of Peace and Yoga Month and gear up for SIT for Change this month with the hope that those who take up our work after we can't, will see, bring, and do what we didn't.

the transformation code:

INcite with angel Kyodo williams

Over the past year, I've been making the sometimes painful transition from working harder to working smarter, often against the grain of long-established habits instilled by ideas about work ethics and the meaning we assign being at some work "place" doing work "things" in a work "way." I'm all good with taking time off...what I need is not having a great divide between the two. At the moment, I take advantage of technology to build a bridge to something altogether different. I take more and more working vacations, or workations.
This workation, I read The Talent Code (Bantam Dell, 2009) in which author Daniel Coyle frames a "code" for talent. This code consists of three elements. Though he presents them in a slightly different order, I offer them in chronologically:

• "ignition," instigating motivation fuel
• "deep practice," the act of installing natural broadband and,
• "master coaching," building the skills in others

We're at a great place in many ways and yet, there's something that hasn't yet clicked—there are still energy leaks that allow momentum that we gain (think: the herculean effort of synergistic collaboration generated for Obama's election) to peter out in such a way that it feels like we're starting from scratch again and again.

Over the next few months, I'll look at some of the barriers we experience—some known and acknowledged, others not so much—and by the end, we just might have something we can apply with precision to all aspects of the work we do for change to get better results, more predictably and more consistently, that build on each other and are sustained over longer periods of time. That like clockwork, in a phrase: we make more effective movements.

ITHS
The Talent Code's catchphrase is "Greatness Isn't Born. It's Grown. Here's How."

Through myriad discussions that he revisits over and over again, probably the most important gift Coyle offers is to liberate the notion of talent from mysterious and amorphous ideas that leave us in a gray space of some kind of magic that only certain lucky people possess and therefore you either have it or you don't and you go the way of the rest of the lemmings, pre-determined to live out an unsatisfactory life. He unpacks, reframes and then repackages talent and hands it back to us as what it should be rightfully understood as: skill. What's great about that is we're generally in agreement that skill isn't pre-existing; it can be taught and, once taught, it can be grown. The proposition here is that we have what we need and who we need. Then what's tripping us up? ITHS or...It's The How, Stupid. Time to get to the how.

If this were a book, I'd make the catchphrase "Movements Aren't Stumbled Upon. They're Generated. Here's How."

The central concept The Talent Code asserts is to define skill in this way: "Skill is myelin insulation that wraps neural circuits and that grows according to certain signals."It succinctly states that "...the story of skill and talent is story of myelin."

Mye-what?
The short story of myelin is that for a long time we've focused on neurons and the firing of their circuits being key to making things happen. Which is still true, but that firing is like a light switch: it's either on or off. If it's off, nothing happens; if it's on at the wrong time, it doesn't matter. Turns out the neurons are held within an infrastructure that was long referred to as just "white matter" [ref]. Among other things, the white matter contains myelin. And because myelin is literally insulation that wraps around the neural circuits, it keeps the energy of those firing circuits from leaking. Up to 3000 times improved information processing for better results, more predictably and more consistently, that build on each other and are sustained over longer periods of time. In a word, more effective.

More than being able to do stuff, skill means stuff happens when it matters. Skill is the right stuff at the right time.

Three Keys to More Effective Movement
When I think about such a code in movement terms, I see three familiar things:

Motivation—what Coyle calls "ignition"—requires energy passion and commitment, which are most often put in play by having locked into a powerful vision of our ideal selves and future around which we organize and energize.

From master coaching, we gain the endurance we need to carry movements through temporal illusions so we can weather innumerable Tea Parties and understand the setbacks they cause as mere moments in political time. Movements may look like they suddenly "spring" out of nowhere, but it's mentorship provided by our elders that keeps us on course. Being able to grow stables of "talent" in the form of inspiring leaders, strategic organizers and damn good people is sustainability that matters.

Vision, Practice & Endurance
In the end, there are no surprises as to what we need to make movements work. In some configuration our current movements have had all three things but haven't had them altogether.

Much adieu has been made about the Arab Spring, but while its scale is impressive and initial impact admirable, upon reflection it has thus far been plagued with the same thing that stymies our movements here at home: (perceived) lack of coherence of the elements needs to transform an uprising into a truly sustained movement. Enough of the right stuff at the right time.

Next time we'll look at what gets in the way of skill and what we can do about.

We need more than just a Spring, we need Summer, Fall and Winter too.

Let's build our movement-making skill and break the code of transformation.

—yours in truth, aKw

dedicated to all the People that strive on behalf of our humanity.

angel Kyodo williams, the "change angel," is Founder Emeritus of Center for Transformative Change. She now serves as a Senior Fellow and Director of Vision. A social visionary and leading voice for transformative social change, she is the author of the critically-acclaimedBeing Black: Zen and the Art of Living With Fearlessness and Grace.

 Blog: new Dharma: live, love & lead from the heart
 Facebook: Like angel here
 Twitter: Follow angel for tweets of wisdom on Change
 Web: http://angelkyodowilliams.com

angel Kyodo williams' next public talk:
 Thursday, September 15th @ CXC

newDharma Talk

The Six Paramitas
As we enter the 27-Days of Change the six paramitas represent not just ideas about how we can best do things, but pure intentions to live our lives transformed. We all have a "head" way of thinking about these virtues, effort, patience, generosity.... But listen here and begin to understand how to hold them with great intention, letting go of what you believe they mean.

"Do you understand the difference between ordinary giving and transcendental giving? With ordinary giving, you get to do the giving. With transcendental giving, you don't. It's as simple as that. The giving still happens, but there's no separation in that act. There's not, Oh, that guy needs something from me, and so I'm going to give it to him and doesn't that make me great. It falls away. The quarter or dollar leaves your hand and simply is passed on and there's no residue of reaction left behind. You just keeping moving in your life without fixation on "the you" that gave or even a fixation on "the him" that needed something...It all dissipates; it all dissolves into just what was called for..."

 Listen to The Six Paramitas
 Read  The Six Paramitas
 More  newDharma Talks

activists, allies & agents of change

Sarah Crowell | The Politics of Dancing

[image: courtesy Sarah Crowell]

Sarah Crowell has taught dance, theater and violence prevention to youth and adults for over 20 years. She has run programs at Destiny Arts Center since 1990 where she currently serves as Artistic Director. Sarah received 9 California Arts Council Artist in Residency grants for her work at Destiny and a National Endowment for the Arts grant to author a curriculum guide for artists working with teens called...

Sarah Crowell has been dancing since she was a child and, being from a family of activists, knew that she would grow up and do something related to social change--she'd always hoped that she'd be able to connect it with dance. So it shouldn't surprise anyone that she works with Destiny Arts, the organization that combines dance...
 Read more...
 Sarah Crowell & the Rex Foundation
 Mini-Interview with Malia Movement
 2011 Women's History Hero: Sarah Crowell

resources for change…

Girls, Inc. develops researched-based programs that encourage girls to take risks and master physical, intellectual, and emotional challenges. There is also a focus on math and science education as well as pregnancy and drug abuse prevention. Media literacy, economic literacy, adolescent health, violence prevention and sports participation are also some of the topics that are focused on. Find your local Girls Inc. chapter.
 Girls Incorporated: Inspiring all girls to be strong, smart, and bold

LYRIC's mission is to build community and inspire positive social change through education enhancement, career trainings, health promotion, and leadership development for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning youth, their families, and allies of all races, classes, genders and abilities. Learn more about LYRIC.
 LYRIC: Building Community & Inspiring Social Change for LGBTQQ

Immigrant Youth Justice League (IYJL) is an organization based in Chicago that is led by undocumented youth. They work towards full recognition of all immigrants through education, leadership development, policy advocacy, resource gathering, and mobilization. Read more about IYJL and their current activities.
 Immigrant Youth Justice League

Youth Speaks is where the voices of young people matter. The organizations puts youth in control of their intellectual and artistic development, placing particular emphasis on literacy. The Youth Speaks Web site has an abundance of information on programs and resources.
 Youth Speaks: Brave New Voices

quote of the month

support deep change

transform. is published by the Center for Transformative Change (CXC)

CXC is the first national center entirely dedicated to bridging the inner and outer lives of social change agents, activists and allies to support a more effective, more sustainable social justice movement.

We name, frame and advance Transformative Social Change by both developing practices and programs for agents of social change and working in collaboration with leading organizations to help shape this emerging movement. Most importantly, CXC reflects the field and the movement back to itself by publishing the transform. blog and monthly journal, thus strengthening our collective identity, community, and shared vision.

This long-term vision for shifting the paradigm of work for justice, changing the WAY change is done, will fundamentally alter broad-based social change at its very core—from inner to outer—resulting in a more just, equitable society for all.

Great vision takes great action and our work is not possible without the generous support and partnership of individuals like you. The publication of transform. is made possible by your direct contribution. No amount is too small…so make your contribution to deep change today.
 Donate to CXC
 Visit the Center's website
 What is Transformative Change? Find out HERE

what's new

[image: Legacy Logo]

Soweto's Legacy
When the word Soweto pops up in the popular consciousness, two things that are seemingly extreme can come to mind. Soweto is the place where students led protests against the Apartheid South African government in the late 1980s and early 1990s. A hub of revolutionary activity, it is also one of the places with the least amount of educational opportunities and support for its youth.
 Read more...
 Learn more about We Believe & Darryl Arnold Pitt

Center for Transformative Change is a project of Transformative Change (formerly urbanPEACE), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational organization whose mission is to inform, incite and empower a broad-based, presence-centered, transformative social change movement.