Tag

Education

Jan 07
0

#SaveBmore – Why You’re Only Hearing About Income Inequality Now

By | #SaveBmore, Tinted Lens | 6 Comments

Income inequality is rattling around the collective consciousness of late on the backs of President Obama’s remarks and Pope Francis’ denunciation of trickle-down economics in the first lengthy writing of his papacy. The gap between the poor and the super-rich in the United States has been steadily widening for decades but only recently has it risen to the top of the agenda for the media, citizens and politicians.

Why? Why only now? Why has this issue been largely ignored for so long?

Because the effects of the wealth gap for the past several decades have mostly been felt by people of color.

Here is where I could trot out the numbers highlighting how the middle class has shrunk since the 1960’s, the map of the U.S. if land were distributed by wealth, the comparison of CEO pay ratios, or the number of hours of minimum wage earning it takes to afford an apartment. But I’ll leave that for others.

According to the 2008 census, in Baltimore City, half of all African-American households earned less than $35,000 per year, while only one-third of white households fell under this low-income threshold. The prevalence of poverty among black city residents is almost double that for whites. While the Black middle class makes up 40 percent of the African-American population, this has always lagged behind the number of middle-class whites. This smaller number of middle class citizens is attributable to the wealth gap between blacks and whites. In 1984 there was an $85,000 difference in the wealth of white households over their black counterparts determined by an Institute on Assets and Social Policy (IASP) study; over the following 25 years, it ballooned to $236,500. That’s a $151,500 increase!

IASP attributed the national wealth gap to home ownership, household income, unemployment, and financial support/inheritance while writings on Baltimore have highlighted education, pathways to careers and discriminatory hiring practices as our major obstacles. In a city that is 70 percent black, this level of poverty and inequality drags the entire city down.

How do we save our sinking city? Well, according to the Baltimore Ethical Society, we can overcome our apathy and get mad about it. Spread the YouTube video on inequality; if you’re in a position to hire, re-examine how you’re evaluating candidates of color; mentor disadvantaged youth, or better yet, give them apprenticeship opportunities if you work in a trade. Consider cooperatives as your next start-up business model and utilize Community Wealth by looking to and building on a neighborhood’s existing assets.

The shocking thing is, what will #SaveBmore is already here (as my fellow ChangeEngine blogger Robyn Stegman argues). We have the population, we have the innovators, and we have the entrepreneurial spirit. What we need is for the two Baltimores to talk to one another and we’ll set the world on fire.

Oct 03
0

Redesigning Education

By | Art & Social Change, Of Love and Concrete | 2 Comments

For the past four weeks, I have been working for the Baltimore Design School. I’m convinced that design changes humanity and that our pedagogy will transform our students’ lives. Design makes finding a place to stay along the super highway of information easier. It makes us look good. It makes us feel good. Design influences human experience. But how do you teach design to 12-year-olds so that it sets them on the trajectory to success? Recently four thoughts have resonated as I contemplate what design is all about…

Design is about details. Steve Ziger is one of the co-founders of the Baltimore Design School. He is also the principal architect of Ziger/Snead, the firm that designed the new $27 million dollar building that is shaping a future of Baltimore city filled with designers. He is excited about many MANY aspects of the physical building but there are some bits of information that he is giddy to share with just about anyone who enters.

“Did you notice the buttons?”

A number of the sinks — yes, bathroom wash basins — in the building were generously contributed by a local concrete firm. Embedded into a number of those sinks are buttons. Clothing buttons to be precise. Those buttons were salvaged from the building. Prior to its 30 years of abandonment, the building was the home to the Lebow Coat Factory. Those buttons are a nod to the rich history of the space. They are a minute detail that captures much more than physical space.

Design is about collaboration. Fans of “Mad Men” can probably tell you who the driving force of creativity is for Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. Don is the man. Similarly many non-architects could name a few of the 20th century’s most famous visionaries of 3-D art. The genius of the individual has been on display through much of history. Things have changed. Ideas and information are accessible to far more than the guy with a 150 IQ. In 2013, and likely beyond, it is teams and collaborative efforts that will create masterpieces time after time. Good design is design that has many perspectives to shape it. The design school building abounds with spaces for designers, staff, and community to gather and discuss.

Design is about the audience. Paul Jacob III spent the better part of the early 2000’s leading RTKL. The respected  firm has imagined and created breathtaking buildings that span the globe. In a conversation about design, Jacob said that “one of the happiest moments for an architect is taking a client into a building and them seeing that it is theirs. It is their story, their message and their vision.” Good design is about the audience and more importantly, audience ownership. Much like art, engagement and expression moving beyond the creator is extremely important. The common areas of the Baltimore design school are gallery spaces. Many of the walls of the hallways, cafeteria and gathering areas are “tackable” surfaces. What is created in the classrooms is not truly complete until it has been shared with others.

Design is about unexpected relationships. John Maeda is the president of the  Rhode Island School of design. RISD is among the greatest institutions of artistic education in the world. In a 2012 TED talk, John cited the ability to make connections where no one else can as the essence of what good design is all about. It is the surprising placement of two distant colors next to each other. It is the introduction of two polarizing personalities that creates a global enterprise. It is the connection between a state senator and the president of an art institution that created Baltimore Design School. It is the use of a hundred-year-old building to educate the future change-makers of Baltimore city.

IMAGE CREDIT. [www.baltimoredesignschool.com].

Sep 23
0

The Trouble with “Good Schools”

By | Social Enterprise, The Thagomizer | 6 Comments

If I had a nickel for every time someone called my high school “ghetto” I would be able to retire by now. In truth, our building was written up in Architectural Digest when it was first built and our school had amazing teachers and students. Yet, as a result of changing community demographics our school was no longer thought of as a “good school.” As Graham Couch, a fellow alum wrote:

“It was diverse scholastically, economically, racially, every which way. Its students and teachers were more a snapshot of the actual world than most places could offer…The view from elsewhere, as I often heard it, saw Sexton as a tough building, its diversity not necessarily considered a strength.”

Last week, community members and alumni of my high school gathered to welcome back students after a tragedy. Earlier in the week three students were ambushed and shot in the neighborhood by the school. The incident did nothing to help our reputation, in fact it reinforced many of the stereotypes people had.

When I was reading the coverage of the event I began to compare the narrative of Sexton’s tragedy to other school shootings. Fault for violence in an urban environment is often laid with the communities and people. Yet, rarely in mass school shootings, like Columbine or Newtown, does the media blame the environment. You don’t see people moving out of the suburbs or rural areas because they believe they are “dangerous for their kids.” Yet, statistically, mass shootings are more likely to happen in those settings. As Richard Florida points out in his article on the subject:

“By our accounting, more than 80 percent of America’s 21 worst mass killings identified by the Hartford Courant took place in suburban towns or rural areas, including each and every one of what the paper identifies as the five “worst school massacres in U.S. history.” More than two-thirds of the 61 mass shootings that occurred between 1982 and 2012 according to a list and map compiled this year by Mother Jones can also be traced to a suburban or rural location.”

He offers an explanation for this trend:

“Urban public schools are much more diverse across racial and ethnic lines. Yes, there is fighting and bullying like anywhere, but kids can view them less as personal attacks and more as group behavior. And often times, kids band together along these racial and ethnic lines. Just the opposite is likely in schools in more affluent suburban areas. Not only are these schools more economically advantaged, they tend to be much more homogenous. Since everyone is more or less “the same,” kids who are picked on are more likely to feel personally victimized. There is little to help diffuse the resulting anger or anxiety, so it festers and feeds off itself.”

Suburbs are incredibly effective at creating social isolation. They are usually absent of shared community space and activities that build a sense of community. Yet rarely do we talk about the “dangers of suburbia” in the same way we focus on the “dangers of the city.”

This media bias has a terrible impact on the lives of city dwellers. The perception of my school as a decrepit, violent, slum couldn’t have been further from the truth, but it started to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The decline of Sexton was accelerated in 1996 when Michigan passed “Schools of Choice,” which allowed students to choose which school they attended regardless of what district they lived in.

Seven miles away from Sexton, just outside of the city limits you can find Holt High School. Inside, the walls sport large flat screen TVs and every classroom is equipped with the latest technology. It’s easy to see why a parent might choose that school over my alma mater where there sometimes aren’t enough textbooks to allow students to take them home. And so Holt got students, active and supportive parents, and funding while Sexton lost the resources they needed to improve education for their students. The disparities between the two widened.

Theoretically, school choice programs are supposed to encourage competition. Yet when one side gets to choose their players and the other must make do with what’s left, how can you compete? Since students elect to go to a school outside of their district, the school isn’t obligated to accept them. That means schools can kick out children for discipline issues, sending them back to their original school. “Good” schools can choose the cream of the crop, which boosts their test scores and furthers the impression that their school is better, which attracts more funding and students.

The combination of policy, media bias, and community perception is harmful to both students who stay in schools like Sexton and move to schools like Holt. Diversity is the strength of Sexton — students benefit from being around people of diverse backgrounds, race, class, and viewpoints. People who move out of the district miss out on that. The media reaction to the shootings at our school furthers the segregation of our educational system and that makes no one safer. As my sister wrote after she learned of the violence, “Sexton is great school full of good kids in a peaceful community. I need to start seeing more news about that, not this.”

Apr 22
0

Educating for a Chaotic World

By | Social Enterprise, The Thagomizer | 3 Comments

With unemployment remaining a serious issue in the United States, many students are returning to school in hope that it will give them a leg up in the workforce. Formalized education is supposed to confer upon students a higher status that allows for greater opportunities, yet sadly this is not always the case.

Growing up in Michigan, you would always hear people lament of the days when you could graduate high school and go over and get a decent job at the auto plant with a wage large enough to support your family and a decent pension. In fact my high school was strategically located just across the street from a GM plant so young students could graduate and get their union card on the same day. Unfortunately as G. Asenath Andrews, the principal of Catherine Fergueson Academy points out now, “If you don’t finish high school, you can get a job at McDonalds, and if you finish high school, you can get a job at McDonalds.” What’s the incentive for education then, if after twelve years you still find yourself with the same options?

So the question, then, is how do you create an education system that expands a student’s economic options? Perhaps the most direct solution to this problem is job training. For example Youth Build employs low-income youth to build affordable housing in their communities while getting their GED or high school diploma. The youth in the program get on-the-job training and leadership development in the program that prepares them to enter the workforce. At my own high school, General Motors offered full scholarships for students in engineering as long as they promised to work for the company for two years after they finished their schooling. Colleges around the country are also working with industries to create professional programs that help train students for available jobs.

But what happens when the economy shifts again, and the skills you have are no longer applicable? How do you train students not only for the jobs available now but the jobs in the future? That’s where 21st Century Learning comes in, a framework for teaching students the skills they need to succeed in our new economy. Instead of focusing solely on knowledge (i.e. reading and math test scores), they focus on giving students the tools they need to find out and apply information to real world problems.The 21st Century Framework focuses on the 4Cs – Critical thinking and problem solving, Communication, Collaboration, and Creativity and innovation. It shifts the role of a teacher from being a sage on the stage, imparting knowledge to students, to being a guide on the side who helps students find the information for themselves. In this way they are preparing students for the lifetime of learning necessary to succeed in this economy.

One example of 21st Century Learning in action is the Dewitt Creativity Group, which re-imagines a school as a center of creativity for the community. As founders Jason LaFay and Jeff Croley state, “This is an economy that requires people to develop and exercise skills and forms of knowledge such as: critical thinking, technological proficiency, willingness to accept the differences of others, networking, constant reinvention of the self, and the ability to design and implement innovative concepts/practices. Without these skills and forms of knowledge individuals, communities, and countries will fail to prosper.”

To train students for the new economy they’ve turned their classroom into a center of creativity where students work on initiatives such as the Adopt-A-Business program, where students gain real work world experiences by providing creative services to businesses. In this program, students are presented with real-life problems. They have to research, propose, and implement solutions, teaching them how to apply their education to business needs.

While I was working in Detroit, I got to work with Catherine Fergueson Academy, a school for young pregnant women and mothers committed to providing a relevant education that prepares them to succeed. Their school puts their students in real-world work places and engages in discourse and dialogue on setting and reaching their educational goals. One of the first things you’ll notice about the school is they have a working farm in the back where students are trained in how to grow their own food and agribusinesses, how to make a profit selling the products of their harvest. Students take care of bees, an orchard of fruit trees, vegetables, and even goats and rabbits.  The farm teaches them a new way of thinking about the planet and consumption, how to take care of themselves and their family, and how to make money.

In order to become successful in this chaotic economy we need to train our students to become part of what Fast Company calls Generation Flux. “What defines GenFlux is a mind-set that embraces instability, that tolerates–and even enjoys–recalibrating careers, business models, and assumptions.” From the earliest age, young people are asked to identify what “they want to be when they grow up” but what happens if the world no longer needs automobile workers or firefighters? Members of Generation Flux need to be able to pick up new skills quickly, solve problems, and make connections to constantly create new opportunities. In order to train this new generation we need schools to become hacker spaces, labs, and incubators where students can experiment, collaborate, research, and apply what they’ve learned.

Today much of my career has been built on working with social media. But when I graduated high school, Facebook was still exclusive to college students and Twitter hadn’t been invented yet. There were no classes on social media in college but I was able to build the knowledge of the new technology on my own and apply what I had learned about best practices in communications to this new medium. To succeed in today’s economy a student needs to be a detective to figure out how to learn whatever skill is relevant to the day’s realites and connect the dots between what is already known. We need new systems of education that are focused on building skills for the modern workplace and once again providing an education that opens doors for new economic opportunities.

IMAGE CREDIT: Courtesy of Bill Owen
Apr 11
0

A How-To Guide for Social Change?

By | Homelessness, The Race to End Homelessness | No Comments

Despite the recently beautiful weather beckoning to everyone to spend their days outdoors, it is an exciting time to be a student in Baltimore. For years, students and teachers have complained of dreadful facilities — from broken equipment to roach infestations to undrinkable water, Baltimore schools were not a safe place to learn. Transform Baltimore, an agency determined to update all Baltimore school buildings through an aggressive $2.4 billion loan and rebuilding plan by 2020, has been organizing students, parents, teachers and legislators to follow a funding model to change the face of schools in the city.

Sound Familiar? Baltimore is in the middle of another long-term plan to change a social issue. While Transform Baltimore is an eight-year plan and The Journey Home is a ten-year plan to end homelessness, both are ambitions road maps to change. Unfortunately, as I have mentioned before, we know that one of them is not really working. As Baltimore’s Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness passes its fifth birthday, there are more people experiencing homelessness in Baltimore than when the plan began. A new draft of the plan was released earlier this year, but the new draft so greatly disappointed service providers that the city council needed to intervene and ask for revisions.

Will the bright futures of improved Baltimore schools go the way of the plan to end homelessness? It is possible that the next few years could see failed development, unfinished renovations and continually crumbling existing schools, but something tells me it won’t be that way. Transform Baltimore has taken impressive steps to ensure that it can succeed. Even though The Journey Home is approaching middle age, its authors could learn a lot from Transform Baltimore.

• Communication: Transform Baltimore began with community organizing. It has over 30 member organizations that represent youth, parents, educators, and community members. Meetings began in 2011 to gather ideas and plan for rallies and demonstrations. This organizing allowed for the perspectives of multiple stakeholders to share ideas and get involved in the project. While the first draft of Baltimore’s Ten Year Plan involved stakeholders, the rewrites failed to make use of the many experts on homelessness in Baltimore. The Baltimore City Housing Authority has the most housing resources in the city, but was not invited to comment or contribute to the plan’s rewrite.

• Best Practices: Baltimore’s strategic plan is based on a model that has been successful in three cities. Indianapolis, Buffalo, and Greenville, South Carolina are each in the process of dramatically updating their school buildings. It was by examining these school districts that Baltimore was able to create a financial plan that would provide necessary funding for this project. As I have lamented before, Baltimore has stayed woefully close to home when planning to end homelessness. While the consultant for the plan was actually Canadian, there is little evidence that practices from any other city struggling to end homelessness were ever discussed.

• Funding: In early April, we learned that Transform Baltimore lobbying has been successful. A bill that would commit $1.1 billion for school building and renovation passed both the house and senate, and is on its way to Governor O’Malley’s desk. The new draft of the Ten Year Plan fails to demonstrate where much of its funding will come from. Funding for ending homelessness has primarily been focused on keeping shelters and existing agencies running, rather than on new solutions.

Baltimore students and educators deserve nothing less than excellent school facilities. It appears that Baltimore might be on the way to providing this, making the city a true leader in education reform nationwide. If this plan is successful, it will mean supreme growth for the city’s young people, but also a strong model for the city’s population experiencing homelessness. A road map for social change is a valuable asset, one from which other advocates might learn.

IMAGE CREDIT. [Allford Hall Monaghan Morris]
Jan 03
0

2013 ResolvED

By | Education | No Comments

When I was a teacher, I made my annual resolutions in August.

I will not grade papers in bed.
I will eat lunch.
I will have a social life this year.

Much like the late-January decrease in gym attendance, I usually had sheets stained with red ink and highlighter fluid and was back to raiding the vending machines by October 1st.

Lately, I’ve noticed a trend in thematic resolutions versus quantitative resolutions. Instead of resolving to “lose 10 pounds,” we resolve to “be healthy.” We pledge to be brave, be disciplined, be frugal, be honest.

The thematic approach to reform fits nicely with trends in education. Even the most data-driven reformers are beginning to realize that learning is less about scores, more about growth. Teacher motivation is less about salary and hours, more about motivation and autonomy.

Here are my prescriptive resolutions for stakeholders in teaching and learning to make 2013 “the best year ever” for education.

Teachers: Be Fearless.

Trust that you know what’s best for your students and stick to your guns. If curriculum, tests, and policies don’t make sense for you and your students, push back (thoughtfully, intelligently, peacefully). You are the teacher. Your playing small does not serve your students well. If you have a union, use it well. Organize other teachers and campaign for better professional development, more comprehensive evaluations, more flexibility with curriculum, smarter school spending practices.  When you advocate fearlessly for yourself, you also advocate for your colleagues, your students, their parents, and the community at-large.

Parents: Speak Up, Show Up.

If you think a school system is failing your child and other students, speak up. This doesn’t (necessarily) require controversy, picketing, legislation. If you’re concerned about your student’s progress, call the teacher and ask how you can help. She’ll be thankful for your support. Even better – call your student’s teacher to say “Great job!” once in awhile. You know that warm, fuzzy feeling you get when you receive a good report? It works both ways. A little positive praise goes a long way. If you have the time, show up at school once in a while, even if it’s just for 10 minutes. Your presence will do wonders for your child and other students. If you want to get involved at a higher level, by all means: blog, tweet, and campaign away.

Principals: Lead from Behind.

This quote has gotten muddled in recent foreign policy scandals, but the phrase is derived from a Nelson Mandela quote: “It is better to lead from behind and to put others in front, especially when you celebrate victory when nice things occur.” By granting autonomy and leadership privileges to your teachers and students and refraining from micro-managing them, you not only empower staff and students, but also allow more time for observing classrooms, providing feedback, and cultivating local partnerships. When teachers feel a sense of autonomy over their curriculum, class environment, professional development and resource selection, passionate instructional leaders will blossom and thrive. When students assume leadership roles in school (through student council, hall patrol, internships, and teacher assistantships), school culture will improve with ease.

Reformers, Pundits, Thought Leaders: Think Progress.

Some of the public commentary on public education is downright vitriolic. There is an enormous spectrum of opinions on how to “fix” American public education.  Let’s try to find some common ground, folks. There’s no need to attack people and policies with such venom. Let’s remember the students – isn’t that the whole point? Let’s think about progress, instead of tearing each other down. Let’s value different experiences, different perspectives – wouldn’t we teach our students to do so? Let’s disagree with civility. Let’s propose solutions and encourage experimentation and innovation. Some of the language I witness among educators would have warranted detention in my classroom – and definitely an apology letter. Instigating hyper-polarity among educators and other stakeholders will only stagnate reform. If we’re educating future congressional representatives, we must model more productive politicking.

 

Dec 20
0

Stand to Reason

By | Education | No Comments

In the wake of tragedy, we scramble to make sense of the senseless, derive meaning from the meaningless, identify causality (or at least, correlation) in the randomness.

We…

politicize
criticize
proselytize
sanitize
quantify
qualify
verify
justify 

the violence.

Our ability to reason is a hallmark of humanity. 

And humans have been trying to make sense of violence among men for thousands of years.

“For as humans are the best of all animals when perfected, so they are the worst when divorced from law and right. The reason is that injustice is most difficult to deal with when furnished with weapons, and the weapons a human being has are meant by nature to go along with prudence and virtue, but it is only too possible to turn them to contrary uses. Consequently, if a human being lacks virtue, he is the most unholy and savage thing, and when it comes to sex and food, the worst. But justice is something political, for right is the arrangement of the political community, and right is discrimination of what is just.”

– Aristotle, Politics

“Hence arose the first obligations of civility even among savages; and every intended injury became an affront; because, besides the hurt which might result from it, the party injured was certain to find in it a contempt for his person, which was often more insupportable than the hurt itself. Thus, as every man punished the contempt shown him by others, in proportion to his opinion of himself, revenge became terrible, and men bloody and cruel.  This is precisely the state reached by most of the savage nations known to us: and it is for want of having made a proper distinction in our ideas, and see how very far they already are from the state of nature, that so many writers have hastily concluded that man is naturally cruel, and requires civil institutions to make him more mild; whereas nothing is more gentle than man in his primitive state, as he is placed by nature at an equal distance from the stupidity of brutes, and the fatal ingenuity of civilised man. Equally confined by instinct and reason to the sole care of guarding himself against the mischiefs which threaten him, he is restrained by natural compassion from doing any injury to others, and is not led to do such a thing even in return for injuries received. For, according to the axiom of the wise Locke, There can be no injury, where there is no property.”

– Rousseau, Second Discourse On the Origin of Inequality

In the wake of tragedy, we search for meaning.

To reason is human. 

Dec 10
0

The Boundaries of Learning

By | Education, The Good Plan | No Comments

My high school wasn’t the typical “Breakfast Club” layout. Littered with courtyards and porticos, the architectural character emphasized well-groomed spaces and study coves over locker-lined hallways and linoleum floors. Several weeks ago I walked the campus for the first time in a decade. Having become a planner in the interim, my eyes saw the landscape differently, Read More

Nov 08
0

A Four Point Plan for the Next Four Years of Education Policy

By | Education | No Comments
  1. Decentralize Funding – Bloated bureaucracy and red tape at the district level creates unnecessary logjams at the school and classroom levels. As teachers and students move increasingly towards individualized and highly personalized teaching and learning, the system must decentralize decision-making about curriculum, funding, hiring, technology, professional development, and evaluation to the school and classroom level so that education professionals can make decisions that are appropriate for their school and students. In Baltimore, CEO of Public Schools Andres Alonso decentralized school funding and gave principals full autonomy over their school budgets. This allows principals to collaborate with teachers and the community to assess the needs of the school and prioritize funding dollars to provide the appropriate resources. Furthermore, by valuing every teacher salary in the budget at the mean cost to the district, this budgeting structure has completed eliminated Last-In-First-Out hiring practices.
    Read More
Sep 26
0

525,600 Minutes of Fire

By | Design, Social Media | No Comments

Sometimes things we intend to do (no matter how earnestly) somehow get pushed off the to-do list and fall into a dusty corner. That’s usually where design for good ends up—a smoldering ash in a fire fueled by deadlines, paying clients, administrative duties and, well, work. We set out with the best of intentions and then shiftily look at our feet when asked about our progress on outside projects or what we’re doing to make a difference.

That’s why it’s impressive to me that a design and branding agency makes the case for spending an entire year with a pro bono client. That’s enough time not only to ensure that the creative work gets accomplished amidst other surprise deadlines that inevitably pop up, but also time enough to establish a strong rapport and fully understand the client’s needs. Cayenne Creative, out of Birmingham, AL, selects one lucky non-profit annually and goes all out. Furthermore, they partner with select vendors to offer discounted services to the organization. They begin with a laundry list of all the sorely-needed communications projects and tackle them starting with the most important. This is part of their F.I.T.B. Initiative, aptly named because of the passion behind the flame, the “fire in the belly” that sparks Cayenne’s creative thinking and their mantra for why they do the work they do.

Think about how much more effective you can be when you focus all of your energy in one direction, versus trying to spread it out. — Cayenne Creative

In 2010, Cayenne selected Birmingham Education Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to improving Birmingham’s schools, for their F.I.T.B. Initiative. The work won them several local, regional and national Addys, as well as recognition in the latest September/October 2012 Communication Arts design annual. It’s eye-catching and vibrant—a fresh approach for a conventional cause.

Our goal was to humanize the foundation by calling it “Ed,” and to inspire people to engage, to raise their hands, to say, “I have the answer. I am part of the solution. I am Ed.” The red desk became an icon, a guerrilla tactic, and a way of creating a cognitive link to the campaign.

I see this year-long collaborative process as a win-win for both non-profit and design studio. The pros are many. The agency doesn’t have to spend all the precious billable hours on pro-bono work crammed into 3 months, rather, the work can be spread out over a longer period of time. Which in turn, allows for a more extensive, polished final product. And let’s face it, a lot of firms do social value work on the side because it’s an opportunity for creative freedom and a chance to win a prestigious industry award. Better work is bound to come out of a longer courtship.

There are great design firms out there currently doing work 24/7 for the greater good. And while very admirable, it’s not realistic for everyone. So what is the best business model for incorporating work with social value with the bread-and-butter clients? Should it be a separate entity that thrives alongside everyday projects? Can it be incorporated seamlessly into everyday workflow as second nature? Or is it about giving ourselves a pat on the back and a trophy in the conference room?

A year long commitment to a project that might not pay the bills is a stretch for any agency. But it’s one worth taking. It might just be the fuel that your belly needs.