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Heading Back

by RitaGoldenGelman

I will be in DC late tomorrow night, ready and eager to get back to Let’s Get Global full time. While in Mexico, I’ve written to a lot of you on Facebook and by e-mail, that I would love to talk with or meet you. I’m hoping to get my act together over the next few days. To those of you who have my phone number, do call. I’m excited that so many of you want to help out… there are many of you who have far more experience than I do in education, PR, non-profits. I need you on the team.

And I should mention, I’m very much a team player. I need people to brainstorm with, others to contribute your expertise, and others to do research, and more to tell me about the schools in your community that you think might be good for our pilot group. We need you, your knowledge, your testimonials………..and if any of you are organizers who can keep lists and do some Excel sheets of our volunteers, we need you too.

Join us in a very important mission. And do read Rose’s comments below the previous post. I like what she has to say! You will too.

Thanks, Rita

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A Quiet, Thoughtful Afternoon in Mexico

by RitaGoldenGelman

So everyone (my son, Mitch, his wife, Melissa, and five-year-old Cris went off for the afternoon to La Paz, about an hour from here (Todos Santos). I opted to stay home where the quiet is wonderful. F0r the last hour I’ve been reading articles on The Gap Year, some from the US, some from England. I’m hoping to link to a whole bunch of them on the Let’s Get Global website (the one that I’m still working on). It doesn’t make sense for me to restate what has many times been so eloquently and passionately expressed.

I may take a couple of sentences from each article and then put in the link.

The hardest arguments to present are the ones that are based on statistics. There really are none. Oh, there’s the one that says young people who do a gap year are more likely to stay in college and graduate. And there’s the one often cited that 30% of college students drop out. Others say between 20 and 30%. And some go lower and some higher. In making an argument for funding, statistics are crucial. And no one has statistics, even about how many gappers there are. It’s kind of sticky to quote statistics if there are none that are official.

Last night over dinner, Mitch suggested, Think big, start small. I’m thinking he’s right. Maybe Let’s Get Global should start with, say twelve schools from different segments of the population and diverse geographical locations. Together we could create and initiate a plan, tweak it for the different populations, but basically keep it the same. After a few years we will have statistics of our own that we can present to a lot more schools around the country. And each year we could expand the number of schools involved.

I’d love comments and perhaps some suggestions of schools that you think would be good test communities. We’d like to take the test across economic, racial, urban, rural boundaries so we can come up with a strong picture of what happens when we bring our ideas into different areas. Our campaign in each community would be designed to include guidance counselors, student clubs, events, local fundraising ideas (for scholarships), and fundraising projects for the students, etc.

Would any of you reading this like to get involved in making this happen in a school in your community? It would be pretty exciting to be a part of the initial twelve. Please write to me at: info@letsgetglobal.org And feel free to comment here as well. Thanks, Rita

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A Contest

by RitaGoldenGelman

Nicholas Kristof, a columnist for the New York Times, has done this before. It’s a fantastic opportunity for someone. Just thought I’d mention it. rg

Nicholas D. Kristof For those of you who are in university, remember to apply for my Win-a-Trip contest: http://bit.ly/8vi8lb . And for the rest of you, please suggest places to go (probably in Africa) and topics to cover.

Announcing…(drumroll)…Win-a-Trip 2010! – Nicholas D. Kristof Blog – NYTimes.com

bit.ly

Announcing the 2010 Win-a-Trip Contest

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The Female Nomad: A Website in the Works

by RitaGoldenGelman

You can’t carry on a major publicity campaign if you don’t have someplace to send people. I mean, what good does it do if you get people interested and there’s no website to go to. So the PR has been on hold until we have a site. So has the serious fundraising.

We’ve had a blog (www.thegapyearsite.blogspot.com) to introduce LET’S GET GLOBAL and offer a way for supporters to send donations. And there’s this blog, which is just me keeping everyone on top of the movement and my life. We’re more than ready for a website. We’ve been waiting for a design that would satisfy everyone; I didn’t want something that looked like all the other sites out there. Finally, this week, we got a look that our board seemed to like. I know I do. It has a personality.

Starting from scratch isn’t easy. Especially when you really don’t know what you want. Dave Chase (www.davidechase.com) went through three designs before he came up with one that everyone liked. Dave is still a college student and talented. I think his design will appeal to the students we’re hoping to reach…. and to the funders and parents and educational establishment. How do you reach all those groups with one look? He’s done a lot of work and finally come up with an appealing and unique look.

The boxes have gobbledy gook words in them. It’s time to create the content. There’s a lot to think about. I’ve been making notes for a long time about what information we need to put on the site. I have lists, all over the place; but until I started to write, today, I didn’t think about what the tone should be? I’m leaning toward something a lot friendlier than most non-profit sites. Something more conversational than the others. Being a writer and the founder of LET’S GET GLOBAL gives me a chance to try out whatever I want! I’ll give it a shot. I’d like the site to be informal. Don’t know for sure if it will work, but I have lots of people who will tell me, one way or another.

And then, once there’s a website, I can focus on collecting and contacting appropriate foundations and philanthropists. If you have any contacts in that world, I’d love a suggestion and an introduction. Everyone is telling me that it’s all about contacts!! If you’ve been a nomad for 23 years, your contacts are a bit limited; I need you. Send me any suggestions you have.

If you’d like your blog listed on this site….over there on the right….let me know. I really am hoping to write something three or so times a week. And of course, I’d want you to include a link to this site on yours: www.birthofamovement.org Thanks.

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Rita Golden Gelman: Not My Week

by RitaGoldenGelman

What a week! It started when I drove an hour to a dinner appointment—a day early. It continued when I went to a McDonald’s that had no burgers! I wrote about that below.

But that was only the beginning.

Two days later I got an e-mail from the woman whose apartment I had sublet until mid-March. She was very sick in Peru and they were releasing her from the hospital so she could fly back!! On Friday. To her tiny studio apartment. I was out! I had to pack up my stuff.

When I got the news, I was staying in Virginia. But luckily, Janice, a long lost cousin-in-law, on her way to North Carolina, was spending the night with me in VA . (She knew where I was because she’d found me on Facebook.). Janice and I drove in her car to DC on Wednesday night and packed up six months of toilet paper, napkins, a gallon of liquid Tide, toothpaste, and a bunch of other stuff that I had piled in for the duration like soy sauce, fish sauce, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, coconut milk, and more. I was happy to have her car for the trip and her help in packing. Janice left to go south early Thursday morning.

I was flying to Wisconsin for the U.S. Servas conference on Friday morning; so, mid-afternoon on Thursday I started to pack. That’s when I realized that my purse, with my driver’s license, passport, about $70, and all of my credit cards, was on its way to North Carolina!! I had left it on the floor of the passenger seat.

I had no ID, no money, no glasses, no nothing!! How could I get on a plane with no ID? How would I get to Wisconsin without a penny? I couldn’t even get to the airport. I might have just skipped the conference except that I was giving the keynote speech at seven on Friday night. It was Thursday afternoon and my identity was on its way to North Carolina.

I called Janice. She was an hour outside of Durham. I called FedEx in Durham. Yessss. For 74 dollars, they could get it to me by eight the next morning. And by God, they did!

The plane was late. For an hour and a half I was writing the above story. Then I started talking to the woman sitting next to me. The conversation was so interesting that I stopped writing, turned off the computer and began to talk. I never saw the text again!

And not only that, but the plane was so late that I almost missed my speech. The good news is that the bus from Chicago to Racine was twenty minutes late. If it had been on time, I would have arrived too late to talk!

What a week!

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Rita Golden Gelman: MAY I HAVE YOUR ORDER, PLEASE

by RitaGoldenGelman

So everything was going great. I was researching foundations, writing a query letter to them explaining who we are, and making a list of things to do before I left at five to meet some unmet friends for dinner about an hour away. I was struggling with the letter….it all had to be right. The organization of the information, the words, the facts. The only thing in the whole world that I am a perfectionist about is my writing. For those of you who think writing is easy for writers, you might enjoy this quote from Thomas Mann. He speaks for all of us: “A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”

But I was doing it and the words were piling up nicely.

Then it was time to go. I left early because I’d never been to the town in Maryland where we were meeting. The drive wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been and I was happily listening to NPR in the almost rush hour traffic. Then, after I’d been on the road for forty-five minutes, the guy on the radio said something about “the weather on this fifth day of October …” No! Our dinner was on the sixth!” I got off the 495 highway going north and got back on going south.

I’d been thinking all the way about pupusas…a national dish in El Salvador that they served at the restaurant . Now I wasn’t going to have them. So I got to thinking about national dishes and suddenly I wanted, needed, craved a Big Mac. Yes, I couldn’t wait to bite into a Big Mac. I get that urge about once a year. This was my Big Mac day. I smiled in anticipation; but I had no idea where I would find a McDonalds. I decided that I would take my chances and hope that those yellow arches would appear. I couldn’t remember any along the way, but I stuck to the route home. Then, miraculously and by mistake, I turned the wrong way on South Van Dorn and there they were, inviting me to have my Big Mac. I got into a long line of cars, two of which were strangely trying to back out of the Drive-In order line.

I ordered my Big Mac and the voice in the machine informed me that they had no meat. I thought I didn’t hear right. I ordered again. No meat. No hamburgers. No Big Macs. But I was in a McDonalds. There had to be meat. That’s the definition of McDonalds. “We have no meat,” she said for the third time.

Now once upon a time I was in a vegetarian McDonalds in India….but this was Alexandria, Virginia. No meat really meant no meat. Apparently the truck with the meat never arrived. I ordered six chicken nuggets and a small French fries and drove back to the house where I am house-sitting. Not a good day!!!

Tomorrow it will be pupusas…and the good news is that I know how to get there.

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Rita Golden Gelman: From the Female Nomad: Too Much Information

by admin

For those of you who are not aware that papers multiply spontaneously, I have two things to say. First, I hate you for not experiencing this evil phenomenon. And second, how I wish I knew your secret. The papers in my life expand exponentially. As I write this, I can feel and hear them reproducing themselves like millions of lymphocyte cells endlessly and relentlessly reproducing themselves.

I am very much aware that you who are immune are part of a conspiracy to keep those of us who are plagued by this environmental disease from escaping its clutches. Oh, you give us lectures and lessons and you tell us about numbering pages, using organizational software, buying special notebooks and files and sticky pads and sticky labels. So we rush out and buy the equipment…but it never works. Many of us have brief moments when the disease is in remission, but always it flares up again, like herpes or malaria.

Those of us afflicted need those of you who are immune. At the moment I have three of you who are trying to help. I really don’t hate you; I need you. Liz, Hope, and DeeNice. I do appreciate your efforts, don’t stop trying, but I confess that I’m secretly afraid you will all abandon me when your frustration peaks, and then I will be left alone with a growing pile of disaffiliated papers, notebooks, recycled sheets and napkins and sales slips with scribbles on them. Surely it is a genetic thing. Just a few more generations and the fittest will survive and the piles of papers will disappear. But meanwhile, don’t go away. I need you.

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Rita Golden Gelman: Keep plodding, It will happen: Let’s Get Global

by admin

I’ve been nomadding around the world for 23 years. I have one friend who tells everyone that I’ve slept around a lot. And I have. In huts, in palaces, in airports, in cabins. Most of those years have been filled with the joy that comes with connecting across cultures. Everyone should have a chance to discover the world, to embrace the differences between people, and to applaud the humanity that we share. So let’s get our kids out there, shout it from the rooftops, Twitter it, set up a Facebook page.

Yeah. Sounds easy and logical. So why am I buried in papers, phone conferences, contracts, mission and vision statements, building coalitions, making lists, writing fundraising letters, and millions of other things I don’t thoroughly understand. I want to be out on the street, in the schools, making fiery speeches, rousing the passion of people who agree with me and convincing the ones who don’t. (I got good at that back in the sixties and seventies.)

Without a doubt, young people who experience an international Gap or Bridge Year will come home with a totally different perspective on life, the world, and themselves, having shared food across kitchen tables in Thailand, kicked a soccer ball in Argentina, plowed rice paddies in Bali, herded goats with the Maasai in Tanzania. Compassion, camaraderie , tolerance, humility, love are the by-products. And oh, the things that you learn when you cross borders!! There is so much that other cultures can teach us.

Patience, Rita. Keep plodding. It will happen. Follow the rules, jump through the hoops, do what you have to do to make it happen. There are so many really great people in this with me. It can’t happen overnight. But it is going to happen. In a few years high school seniors will be walking the halls and asking each other where they’re going next year.

OK. Enough railing. Back to writing to foundations who will help us, to individuals who are volunteering their time, to organizations who will join in our efforts. It is going to happen; I know it will. Patience.

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Rita Golden Gelman: SETTLING INTO A NEW U.S.LIFE

by admin

I’ll pick up in my next entry on my Spain visit. Vaughan Town was pretty amazing and Barcelona quickly became my favorite city….but I was so into changing the U.S. that I spent hours and hours Skyping about Let’s Get Global. Actually it was pretty appropriate to begin a global movement from out of the country. But more on that later.
Now I want to move into the present for a bit. I’m deep into the Gap Year project which we are calling Let’s Get Global. I’m on it 24/7. I’ve given up nomadding for at least a year, although I will probably be talking and traveling a lot, just not in exotic places.
I’m currently staying in a tiny studio apartment in Washington, DC. I’ll be there until mid-March. A couple of weeks ago I got a call from a family I had met in June (when I get back to the history of birthing this movement I’ll talk about them again); they were going to California for a month. How would I like to house-sit in Alexandria, VA? Sure, why not. So I have gone from a nomad with no home to someone with a city house and a country house! The invitation came with a car because there’s no metro in the part of Alexandria where my country house is. When I saw the car, I almost died. A silver Mercedes!
“Oh, no, “ I said. “I don’t want to drive that. What if…” He cut me off. “Rita, it’s a car,” he said, handing me a card from his body shop! So I’ve been hanging out at my country house in Alexandria for the last two weeks. A couple of days ago I drove from my country house in Alexandria to DC. Got lost, of course. But got there.

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