Welcome: RainMakers & ChangeMakers
Cross-Cultural Cooperation & Collaboration Creates Community & Change
Every movement forward, every small change, every evolution requires cooperation and collaboration - whether its plant or animal cells working together, individuals using their collective brain power to solve problems, or communities, cultures, or countries coming together to address shared challenges. Nothing can be done alone. Nothing has ever truly been accomplished in isolation.
Welcome to RainMakers & ChangeMakers, a newsletter that highlights the collaborative work of individuals and groups with whom I have first-hand experience. R&C posts will offer interviews, stories, cameos, art and photos of the givers and doers who collaborate to move the needle in the areas of poverty relief, food insecurity, climate change, and sustainability. My goal is to inspire and energize you (and me!) to take small steps together to be the change we want to see in the world. Ultimately, the more we do together, the more connected we become, the more we realize “them” is "us”, and that we are all part of the same large human family.
A Little Bit About Me
I came of age during the Cold War, when the Berlin Wall was up and the people on the other side were supposed to be the enemy. To me, they were an enigma. I wanted to get to know them. I wanted to break down those walls. I was a teen when the Berlin Wall finally did come down. A world opened up! We could see who was on the other side. Excited to connect, I started penpal relationships with other teens in several Soviet Union republics and I used my meager earnings from my first few jobs to pay for Russian language lessons. With this as my background, I was determined to be a diplomat, thinking that diplomats changed the world for the better - bridging divides, creating peace, and preventing more war.
Becoming a diplomat didn’t happen for many reasons. Ultimately, I’m glad I didn’t become one, officially. I would have been disappointed and frustrated having to tout the US Government line, protecting and advancing US policies and interests abroad. Instead, I gravitated to a less onerous version of the same thing: international development. Specifically, I worked for a Washington DC based organization that supported nonprofit development and women entrepreneurship in the Former Soviet Union. Within a few years, I was disillusioned. I dropped the international work but kept the microenterprise development. I moved to Vermont to run a microenterprise loan fund for ten years. I spent four more years there to raise my family and then moved to Boston where I now work for a community development finance institution called BlueHub Capital, bringing capital to communities that have suffered disinvestment and discrimination for too long.
Outside of my career trajectory, my volunteer life has been very rich. And, looking back on it, I realize that I actually have always been a diplomat, but of the best kind… the informal and personal kind. For the 14 years I lived in Vermont, I spent a good chunk of my life outside of work helping people from different cultures and socio-economic backgrounds find common ground, develop personal relationships, and care for one another, the community, and the earth.
Whether it was organizing local seed swaps that led to starting a community garden, organizing a food co-op and sharing learnings from that effort, facilitating cross-cultural understanding of newly arrived Meskhetian Turk refugees by organizing social gatherings or serving as an interpreter or as a writer to tell their story, hosting or teaching English to refugees from Bosnia, Armenia, or Azerbaijan, organizing cash mobs to support local businesses, or leading litter pickup initiatives by starting a local Keep Methuen Beautiful chapter, I can attest to the amazing outcomes that can be acheived when working together.
More recently, in the past 7 years, I’ve come to know and cherish a dozen or so individuals working in the sustainable agriculture and community development field in East Africa. It started by supporting the work of Omito Abraham Owuor, founder of K5Village in Kenya, a permaculture demonstration site. I raised over $5,000 in 2018 through a “Walk for Water” campaign, whereby I walked 6 miles every day for 90 days to raise awareness and funds related to the lack of clean water access in rural Kenya. From that effort, I also started RainMaker Design (founded 2018), a craft-based social enterprise located on Etsy.
All of my crochet items are sold to benefit either projects in East Africa or dog rescues in New England. I also just completed the first phase of a second fundraiser for K5Village, raising $4,000 to finish a structure and purchase a 10,000L rainwater tank.
This area of my life has since grown to include supporting the work of several others including a permaculture, skills training, and art group in Nakivale Refugee Settlement in Uganda. I have
, founder of the Africa Permaculture Support Network (a Facebook group comprised of givers and doers), for much of my recent experiences. Ted is someone I plan to feature as one my first ChangeMaker interviews. Stay tuned! Meanwhile, you can read more about our June 1st online art expo featuring the work of young refugee artists here!
Indeed, my experience shows that through developing rich and deep personal connections, many amazing things can happen. People become accountable to one another. They start to care for each other’s quality of life. As a result, opportunities to improve the lives of others (who are now no longer “others” but our dearest friends) reveal themselves - opportunities that would have previously been invisible but for the personal connections made and nurtured.
You are a RainMaker. You are a ChangeMaker
What I’ve learned through all of my experiences in community organizing is “Lead By Example” and “Want Change - Be the Change” (Gandhi and everyone else who has coined this term is spot on). When there wasn’t anyone to do the work, I just found a way to do something. Anything. Even the smallest efforts produced results. Granted it often took extra time and effort, but the results were always beyond my wildest imagination.
It just takes a little bit of time, thoughtfulness, care, compassion and follow through to generate energy to mobilize people to work together. Once people are mobilized and energized and networks are established, the work takes on a life of its own and the impacts multiply.
My main point here is: it doesn’t require a special person to be either a RainMaker or a ChangeMaker. You too can be a RainMaker and/or a ChangeMaker. You probably already are in fact!
RainMakers - These are the facilitators, the networkers, the funders, the supporters. They bring a wide variety of resources, financial and otherwise, that were heretofore unavailable, locked up, or inaccessible to others.
ChangeMakers - These are the doers, the active change agents, the on-the-ground, make-it-happen organizers that channel local resources (and resources from RainMakers) to many others.
Rain & Change Makers - These are the people who manage to do both. People who leverage their resources and networks to do the on-the-ground work in tandem with others. Jose Andres of World Central Kitchen comes to mind. Or, Bryan McCormack, an Irish arist who empowers refugees through artistic self-expression via his organization Yesterday/Today/Tomorrow.
What To Expect From This Newsletter
I am a natural storyteller. I’m also an artist. I also enjoy photo-journaling my experiences. RainMakers & ChangeMakers (R&C) will provide you with a window into the daily lives and struggles of people who are measurably moving the needle in areas such as poverty relief, food insecurity, mental health through art/self-expression, climate change, sustainability, and much more.
RainMakers & ChangeMakers will include:
Stories of real life RainMakers and ChangeMakers to inspire you.
Reflections on my own experiences of being both, past and present.
Art, photo, and video shares to further illustrate the power of RainMaker and ChangeMaker collaborations.
Here are two examples of the writing I’ve done so far to highlight ChangeMakers:
Invitation: You Too Can Celebrate R&C’s
You likely have your own RainMaker and ChangeMaker stories to tell. Perhaps it’s your own story? Or, maybe you know someone who plays the role of one, the other, or both and you’d like to give them props and recognition. I encourage you to write those stories on your own Subsack and share them with me by tagging me here. Or share your stories here in the comments.
Creating a network of RainMakers and Change Makers to support and encourage each other is a dream of mine. This newsletter is me ushering that dream into reality.
I hope you will subscribe and become part of this family of RainMakers & ChangeMakers!
So great to get the back story, of how you got here, really grateful to have a chance share your drive and optimism, keep up your amazing work Emily.
I salute you ✋