Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the first Global Peace Building Center webinar for educators, entitled Women, Terrorism, a Conversation with Dr. Kathleen Kingst. My name is Ann Louise Golden, and I direct the Global Peace Building Center here at the U.S. Institute of Peace. On behalf of all of our team, I'd like to thank you for joining us this afternoon. The Global Peace Building Center is the USIP's public education program, which focuses especially on engaging the next generation of peace builders. We do a lot of work with and for educators, and we place great value on the work you do to bring knowledge and skills to young people, to equip them to engage effectively in this complicated world. So we hope this new webinar series will be a great resource that will provide you with new ideas for teaching your students about important issues of conflict and peace. Today we're focusing on women tackling terrorism, and frankly, this topic could not be more timely. First, because our news headlines seem increasingly dominated by threats and instances of terrorism around the world, but also because this is Women's History Month. Each March, the Global Peace Building Center and USIP more broadly celebrate the important contributions of women to peace building. And today we think it important that we understand the ways in which women are taking us down to prevent violent extremism in countries around the world. They are often leading the charge in their own communities and making a difference in ways that it is important for us to understand and that deserve all attention. So we are thrilled that our colleague Dr. Katherine Keynes does hear this afternoon to share her expertise and a new action kit her program has developed on this subject. Now let me turn the mic over to my colleague Megan Chavalowski, who will facilitate the rest of the conversation today. And I would like to thank her and the rest of our team for their great effort in putting this event together, and I look forward to seeing you again at future webinars. Great. Thank you for the welcome, Annelise. I am so pleased to be hosting this webinar and to have you join us. I'm also really pleased that we have a lot of people in attendance, which is fantastic. I took a quick note of where everyone was from, from what I could tell. We have participants from California and Florida. And I was just thinking that I hope you have warmer weather than we're having right now on this early spring day in D.C. We have participants from Michigan, Massachusetts, our neighbors in Maryland and Virginia, Oregon, Washington, D.C. And then folks are joining us from Tanzania, Nepal, the Czech Republic and Uganda. So I'm really glad to see a few old friends. Hello, and to welcome some new faces to our webinar. And if I missed somewhere where you're from, please send it in. You'll see a chat box, a question and chat box on the right-hand side of your screen. And my colleague will let me know where you're from. I want to make sure we have everybody. We also have in this room, even though you can't see everyone else, we have, of course, Dr. Kathy Penist sitting next to me. We do still have Annelise Colgan and my colleague Denison Staples, who will be helping us gather questions and comments. And we have my colleague, I mean, Abulitsky, who is going to be live-tweeting us a bit. So we have a whole room here, even though you can't see everybody. So if you would like to tweet about this webinar, I think you see a hashtag in the corner of the slide, which is GPCWebinar, and we encourage you to tweet about it throughout. So this webinar's reminder is going to be recorded. So it will be available on our website. You can find it later this week. And just real quick, I'm going to check with Denison to see if there are other places that I missed. OK, so I got everybody. Fantastic. So I wanted to review with you really quickly the agenda. So we all are on the same page. So we, program Annelise, I will really quickly go over some logistics, since this is our first webinar. So we're all on the same page. And then we will hear from Kathleen. And then following our conversation with Kathleen, there will be an opportunity for questions from our participants and an opportunity to make some classroom connections. You'll see a link on this slide, which leads you to the PDF of the Action Kit that Kathleen will be talking about. So I think Denison will also send it to you in the chat box. So if you'd like to download it, you can have it there with you right now. So please, I want to encourage you to participate. Send us questions and comments so we can make this as useful as possible for you. So to review logistics really quickly, letting everybody know all participants are muted, you're all muted. So grab a cup of coffee, eat a snack. It's fine, we won't hear you. If you'd like to send questions and comments, you can do so through the question chat box. As we talked about, you can see it there when they're pointing to it. And Denison, my colleague, will gather them and ask Kathleen them if they're with you today. So just as a reminder here, your dashboard disappears. It sometimes does that if you're doing something else, so you can make it reopen by clicking on that red arrow. And if the Global Key Building Center staff sends you a message, a little message icon will appear. So you just click on that and you see a message.  And Denison will try to help you as much as possible. So since you're going to be hearing a lot from Denison, I wanted to give him a chance to say hello. So go and jump in. Hi, everyone. We're so excited to have you here today. I'll be working on the technical side of things and looking forward to your comments and questions. Thanks so much. OK, wonderful. Let's get started. Without further ado, I'd like to really welcome Dr. Kathleen Keynes. Thank you for being here. I wanted to tell them a little bit about you, so they know who you are. So Kathleen is the director of our Center for Gender and Peace Building here at USIP. And the center focused on gender impacts of conflict and post-conflict transition on both men and women. So this is probably something to come up as well when you speak. She is the co-editor of the book, which I have here, Women in War, Power and Protection in the 21st Century, which is a very powerful book. And it really confronts stereotypes about women as victims of war. And instead focuses on the critical role that they play and should play in peace building. So you can find us on the USIP's website if you're interested or online. But in addition to Kathleen's expertise in gender and conflict, she's also worked for 15 years in the international development field and has regional expertise in Central Asia, and where you put extensively on the impact of post-Soviet transition on women. So a variety of experiences, and I'm so glad you can be here. And I just want to echo, Ann-Lise, in saying that we really think this conversation about women preventing violent extremism is incredibly timely and proving more important. So I was thinking when I was putting this together, one of the reasons that we thought this issue would be really important right now is that whenever I'm reading the news, and especially these days reading about the challenges that confront the world in dealing with violent extremism, I'm feeling very disheartened. There's not much out there about the good news. And so that's why this conversation is so important right now to be giving us the good news of what people in communities are doing. So I'm really glad to have you here to be sharing these stories with us. And I'm going to turn it over to you to get a chance to talk about the action kits and fill us in on it. So thank you all, and it is really my pleasure and honor to be at the first webinar, and I'm really excited. Well, I first want to just say a few more thoughts about my background only because I think it will help you understand some of the motivations and the processes we've used in terms of understanding the roles and possibilities that women play in preventing violent extremism. I was on the ground during the collapse of the Soviet Union and then its transition and it's setting up here in countries where there was only one country. And it's very interesting to watch a society come to terms in terms of transition. And one of the very, very first things you see in a transitional space, whether it's a disaster, an economic change, a war, or a change in government, or in this case, a huge change in governments, is that the question of gender roles start to be discussed. It is a basic tenant in the field of anthropology that gender is really not another name for women. In fact, men are gender beings and in fact, gender is something that is very much learned in our everyday communities, our families, of course, in our schools, religion, institutions. We learn what are the roles that are acceptable for a man, a woman, a girl, a boy, and which roles are not. And furthermore, gender is really also a much larger understanding of one's identity that crosses between masculinity and feminities. I think it's important to begin there because too often we oversimplify gender and over-homogenize the concept that gender means women and women are of some kind, one unit and they're very similar, we all know. All of that is not accurate. But it's important in the policy shaping world that we remind in our design of projects, in our attempt to make a difference that we actually don't do more harm, that we understand truly the diversity in gendered identities. So if that's one takeaway from the next few minutes, I hope you have that one down, that gender is not another name for women and it's critical that we see gender in all its identities and also flexibilities because what we do see and we are seeing right now, and what Megan was talking about, picking up the newspaper, I do the same and I'm like, oh my goodness, what is happening to our world today? And I also have middle school children who ask the same questions. So as a teacher, I empathize with you and your role of trying to help young people make sense of the enormous transitions going on in the world and certainly in terms of gendered identities. I would add here that as societies undergo some kind of rapid transition, as we're seeing in those societies that are very much affected by a violent extremist movement, what we see is that gender roles are among the first things that become situated as to what you can and cannot do. And one of the areas that I think is worth spending a moment talking about is the fact that we may focus in on women during this discussion, but I'd like to just for a second talk about young men in this process because one of the working theories of a fellow anthropologist of my Mark Summers and a former USIP fellow here talks about what happens in societies and countries where there is a sense of failed adulthood. In other words, as a young man in some societies, there's certain rights of passage or certain things that you must acquire in order to be considered a man. And that sense that maybe you can't do it in the society you're working in is one of those ideas currently being contemplated about why the surge of violent extremism in these countries undergoing rapid and if you want radical change, I'm thinking Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and of course Syria. But we see it in our own countries as well. And I understand we have people from perhaps Nigeria and it's a country we're working in as well. So in saying that here, I wanted to introduce the concept that when we're talking about preventing violent extremism, we're talking about a very gendered process. In other words, it's not a silo, it's not something over here, a little box, okay, and now we're gonna work with women on this. It is, we know that gendered identities are, in fact, being instrumentalized in many of these violent extremist groups. It is very clear what you can wear, what you can eat, what you can do, what you can't do by the fact are you a man or a woman? And it is becoming more and more obvious that there is this kind of segregation going on in which there are rules and expectations for both men and women. So what does this all mean? Now I'm going to answer a little bit more about why all of this matters in the security field. And it's impossible to talk about violent extremism without talking about security. And one of the other takeaways that I hope you is either written down or it gets reworked into some lesson plan here today is the fact that we have over the last 20 years as an international community made enormous headway in the security sector in understanding that, by the way, security is a gendered field and that it has been more or less organized in a very masculine approach to protection and also a sense that men go to war, women and children stay home.  When we talk about security center, what are we talking about? What is security in that context? Well, in this context that I'm talking about, I'm talking about the organized institutional sphere of influence that understands what is happening in the world and how using militarized forces, militaries, police and other security actors to help bring control back to a society of country that has lost control has been affected by violent conflict or violent extremism. Why I brought security into the picture is in order to understand this shift going on about the role of women and their empowerment in the security field, we have to understand that 15 years ago, the United Nations Security Council, that means a very elite group of countries focused on the security of the world. We're not talking the General Assembly, which includes all countries of the world, but this is a select and powerful group of security countries focused on how to maintain a peaceful world. They passed the Security Council Resolution, which is now nicknamed 1325, and many of you may know of it, many of you may not, but I wanted you to have it as a marker because I don't think we can really understand women preventing violent extremism unless you understand this particular security resolution because it is an international agreement and it has conditions that we sign up to say it matters to the world. And 1325 was very simple in the sense that it for the first time recognized that women were not only needing to be counted in war. I mean, for many, many centuries, we counted only soldiers who died in war. We did not count the women who maybe were nurses, who were maybe on the front lines and some other capacity besides carrying a gun, but we did not count them in the casualties, nor did we count the fact that in many of these wars, sexual violence against women and men, for that matter, and children were not considered a criminal act. And so when we think about 1325, it's critical because it was a game changer in how we began to understand the security sector and to say women are not only victims in war, we need to count them and acknowledge this, but they are also powerful providers of peace, and they are often the majority of the people left after a war. Take Rwanda, 70% of the survivors were women out of that genocide. So we have to begin to count women into the story of security. So 1325 really is an important marker. 15 years ago, this particular resolution was passed and out of that resolution has come many other resolutions, what we call the sister resolutions, to address other nuances of women in war. And now we are beginning to talk about women in violent extremism. They are not the same. We know that violent extremism happens in countries that are not in a violent conflict, but we also see in the world today in countries like Libya that has gone through a violent conflict and violence of war, and now also dealing with violent extremism. Syria is another example. So what is the concept of women in violent extremism? So three years ago, we embarked on a very interesting, if you will, pilot study to really ask the question, how could women actually prevent violent extremism in their multiple roles, mothers, teachers, professionals, market, in the market, maybe as a religious leader, but they play many roles of influence. And what are they already doing and what could they do better if they had basic understanding of what is radicalization, what does it look like? What should you be looking for?  So it's like putting on a new lens. I love Abby Disney, who was the producer of the film you may have seen, Pray the Devil, back in the house.  What we're trying to do is understand not only violent conflict through the eyes of women, but also violent extremism. So these studies, the first study really looked at what are women already doing, and we began in two countries, Nigeria and Kenya. And in these countries, there is not a war per se, but there are extreme acts of brutal and violent extremism.  Being a woman who is really a leader looking at this issue is especially dangerous. So I say that because I deeply respect these women who have stepped up to take on this role of leadership in their societies. So let me tell you a little bit about what that looks like. For example, I'm going to begin with Marianne who lives in Garisa in the northern part of Kenya. She's been working to engage teachers because teachers are with kids, as you know, eight hours a day. They hear, they watch, they observe things that sometimes parents, and certainly really busy mothers who are attending to maybe other children also dealing with food and in these communities we're talking in villages. So there's not the added advantage that many of us live in, electricity, running water. So they are busy people managing a household. And so Marianne began to work with teachers about how to look for signs in both boys and girls of radicalization. Very simple, this is not rocket science. You know, a changing interest, an obsession with a certain kind of idea or perhaps ideology or certain kind of dramatic shift in religious practices. All of those things, and of course, all of these are context driven. She began working with teachers. Well, not only has it helped the teachers understand more about what's happening in these classrooms. And again, this is right on the border of Somalia and so there are refugee camps very nearby. So they are dealing with very complex human systems and changing systems, transitions, if you will. They felt very positive about being a part of this, if you will, early morning system. They also, because they began to talk to one another as teachers about this, they didn't feel so alone about it. It's, again, this is not rocket science, it's about communication. In the same way, I will lead to Delhi, India where Archana works in a radio program. It's called Mothers on Air. And she really gives voice to this issue of radicalization in these small villages or mid-sized towns. We're not talking urban environments here. We're talking about giving voice to often people and especially women who not even had a voice in their own family. And so she has developed these listening thoughts where mothers are able first to talk among themselves about their concerns of violent extremism. And then eventually, through the radio, talk about it. Now, so we have to imagine is a situation in which this woman, in one case, and they talked about this one woman who really did not want to go on the radio. She said, nobody will listen to me. Nobody listens to me at home. Why, not even my own children. Why would anybody listen to me on the radio? But eventually, she did go on the radio. And she had a lot to say. How did she get there? How did she move to Kuala Lumpur? She wanted to go to Kuala Lumpur. Well, that is what this one program called the Mothers School. It's out of a program called Women Without Borders. And it is been launched by Dr. Edith Schlaufer out of Vienna, Austria. And it's been basically piloted now in six different countries. And what's interesting, these countries are very diverse, obviously, but the process has been really similar and the results are very exciting because it also follows, if you will, the wisdom of 1325. And that is, as women have voice, they are themselves empowered. You cannot empower somebody else. It is a process of self-empowerment as they are able to talk about what they are witnessing, what their own knowledge is. It's not coming from outside, it's coming from within the community. So much of it is about dialogue, listening, and recognizing what they can do better together than they can do alone. Maybe I should stop there and take a break. Yeah, take a break. I wanted to show, we have a couple of slides here. I wanted to show some slides from your action kit, first of all, because they're beautiful, to give people a taste. And I think some of the things that you'll see in the titles here, the different sections of the ones that you hit on, art is just incredible. And I think you can also find activities in here, exercise, it's all right. Shall I, because I know that we're looking with, I know, very talented teachers. Part of the action kit is really two things. We wanted to make something that is really what I would call 101 to the violent extremism. So we asked nine different experts that we know to write something that was, what I said, out of the box, a little around the corner. Tell us what we should know in the future about women preventing violent extremism. So the essays are short, about 500 words, each really meant to be stimulating and informational, but not academic. Here's what would be helpful to think, multi-dimensional about many roles women are playing, mainly for good in preventing violent extremism, but we do need to recognize, just as boys and men are being radicalized, so are girls and women. And we should not be blind to that fact. And the motivation, we're still learning a lot about why. For example, the young women in London got on a plan to Istanbul and joined the extremist group known by some as Daesh, by others as ISIL, and by some as the Islamic State. Well, in the exercises, it talks about asking participants what are the areas in their community where women have a lot of influence and what areas do men have influence over? And what we have found in all the work we've done is that you may know something about violent extremism and you may not, but everybody has an opinion on gender. It's a great topic to be in, any discussion about. And certainly, there are a lot of complaints. And don't do this, women don't do that, and whatever else. But it begins a conversation because what everyone recognizes is whatever the gender roles they grew up with have changed, the rules of the game have changed. And some of those rules are being used against women. Some of them are being used against women. And we have to understand that before we can begin to understand the spheres of influence. In addition, it talks a lot about, we have a couple of resources in here. What's the difference between dialogue and debate? We see sometimes in working with groups that in their educational process, they have, if you will, conflated dialogue with debate and or conflated debate with dialogue, we'll see which way either way will work. But the point is that sometimes we don't listen enough. And that is a problem when you're trying to solve a community problem. And that's why the third section is all about engaging communities. Because in many ways, the foundational blocks for really preventing violent extremism begins in identifying the problem. You know all of these. As teachers, you do this every day in your classrooms, identifying the problem, talking about what are the various solutions and actions to make a difference. And it, again, is a very process-oriented effort. There is no silver bullet.  It takes leadership. It takes hope in that leadership. And we are fully convinced that women are key in our global efforts to stem violent extremism. Thank you. And going back to the dialogue and debate, that's also something we find so important as well in the power of teachers. Students do a lot of debating in school. We don't do as much dialogue. We learn the rules of debate. That's right. We do. We do rules of dialogue. And so that's something that we have a lot of activities on is how do you become really good at listening and communicating. So please take a look at this because there's a lot of great exercises. I wanted to follow up on and show a couple pictures here. I have two slides of some photos of the women that you were talking about. And when they were here to share their work at the launch of your action kit, but also in the celebration of what they're doing, so they can learn lessons from each other. So I have a group photo, and then I also hear some photos of these women in action during the three days they were here. I was wondering, the two women, Mary Ann, and Archana. Archana, are they in any of these photos? I'm afraid you can't see the one on the far right. Yeah, Archana is the woman I'm speaking with there. I'm in the blue. She's from Delhi. And she's the one who has worked with community radio and the listening clubs. And she has really, you know, you can imagine the reach when you have great people that are listening to you. And she has really, you know, reach when you have radio. And, you know, the dialects in India are... Yes. I think you might know that. Hundreds. But she actually works in the various times as well. So this is great impact. You know, so much of what we think about today is social platforms and cell phones. And those are powerful force. And we know, especially among young people, because certainly social media has played a role in enticing young people into these violent extremist groups. But I think what Archana and then Tasneem, I'm looking to see if you have a picture of Tasneem. She's from Pakistan. She is also doing this kind of parallel universe in terms of radio. But I think what they really helped us look at was that we need to also think low-tech. When radio is low-tech, it doesn't require a television, a phone. People can be working while listening. And it has enormous impact. And these dialogue shows that they run so that it is this kind of discussion, listening, asking questions that women do call in. And they are not afraid, because they're hearing things that are one familiar to what's going on in their life, but not having to show their face, but only a voice. It gives them some sort of privacy protection. As I said, this is dangerous work. And it also helps them recognize, and this is critical, that they're not alone. We think a lot about, hear a lot about the young people who perhaps become extremists and commit violent acts, but we know less about its impact on the family unit. And there's, for many, great shame, great isolation. And so it's not only the loss of the child into a violent community or violent extremist community, but it is also being ostracized in the community. So there's great sense of isolation. So what these radio programs do, or I like it, Mothers on Air, they help close that gap, maybe gives them a sense of listening to what other people are doing to make a difference. And I always say that peace-building is really about human imagination. And when we see an idea that another community is doing to make a difference, we go, yeah, if they can do it, I could do that. And it's contagious, just as we see their violence is contagious. But good acts, good deeds, good efforts, and good teaching is also contagious. And we need more to make sure these stories are out there so that when you open your newspaper tomorrow morning, I'll feel inspired. So on that note, I mean, why aren't these stories out there? So they are happening and we're hearing these success stories here. And maybe here at USIP, but why aren't they making it into the headlines? I don't know, it's more people. Well, media, they just go to find these stories. And that is a great, that is a good question. Because these, the flatness of the world, if you will, with social media has many good stories out there. And so we do have a chance to select. And we hand through our social platforms, Twitter, Facebook, and other such efforts, actually learn about the stories and spread those good ideas. But we have a long ways to go with print media. And it is still not the first thing that's put on the first page. But there are a lot of other good stories throughout. Turning to the middle. So I wanted to ask you a question about young people. So it's like spreading the stories and inspiring people through hearing stories that are now well. And one thing we do in the Institute is hear it in the local Peace Building Center, but also in the institutes. Really strongly in the ability of young people to enact change, to drive change. And we encourage people to take action to build peace. But then the question of course is always, okay, but what can I do? And especially when it's such a, the issue is so huge as is this issue. And so I'm wondering if you have advice for young people about what they could do, how they could get involved in some way. Whether they're here in the US and learning about this in the classrooms, like participants and teachers, or maybe they're in the other countries that are represented here as well. Any thoughts you had? Well, first of all, they should visit USIP's website and especially the Global Peace Building Center where there is curriculum on peace building and always great ideas and a good dialogue that you carry on with students and teachers. I think that's very important to have what is called a community of practice. I have a couple of feelings about to your question. One is because of the social media platforms, there are so many positive things you can do. The one thing I say to my own kids is the first place to begin is do not buy into any kind of bullying. First, stop there. Don't let negativity control the social media platforms. Put out good ideas. It starts with you, yourself. So take a stand first and not wait. Second, I'm impressed by the number of young musicians, actors, actresses who have taken positive stands and helped young people look at opportunities for social action. I think that is a way forward and one in which there are many young people engaged. I also think that within schools there can be ways that as parents and teachers we could create better campaigns. We have the science fair. We have the history fair. Do we have a peace building fair? Good ideas for bringing peace into the world. So we get a sponsor. We get sponsors from the local restaurants that create a trophy. We have to incentivize peace. I'm going to put a plug in here for peace clubs. We just started an initiative called Peace Clubs that lets students take the idea of what an action they want to take and run with it. It teaches them what skills we need in order to take action on this issue that's really important to you and your community globally. Then tell us what you're doing. Take this action and let us know what happened and how it went so that we can share your story. It's an example of a peace building fair. If anybody out there starts to think it's a peace building fair idea let us know. We have a peace club or any other ideas. I want to make sure we get to some of our participants and make sure we have a chance to ask some questions. I'm going to turn it over to Denson and see if he wants to share some questions or comments that people have shared with him. Absolutely. We have actually a slew of questions. I hope we have time for that. There is one question here by Bridget Schultz and another educator also who has asked for you to talk more about how women are disproportionately affected by extremism. It seems that more and more women are joining extremist causes. Why do you think that is? So the two-part question. Would you mind just throwing out three questions in case I can connect them? Absolutely. We have another question here about what is the role of men in supporting women who are trying to prevent biomechanism? Is there a role for fathers or the young boys and male students that we teach as well? We have a third question about you touched on this a little bit, Kathleen, talking about how technology can be leveraged for peace building, but a question here from Pakistan about people in communities who are not well resourced. Especially those in the non-profit sector, what are some actions that they can do to help reduce the risk of radical infusion? Great questions. Thanks so much. I'm actually going to begin with the role of men and indeed fathers. We have started an initiative here at the Institute of Peace called Men, Peace and Security. The reason is that we need to engage men in this effort of course gender equality, but also to help understand many parts of the world. Men do play the role of gatekeeper and so we are trying to more and more in our work engage fathers in their role as a father and helping them understand that in having a daughter be educated is really not only economically smart but also it gives voice to, if you will, that security sector that I mentioned earlier in which women have voice and recognize things that are going on in the family or in the community and say, I'm really concerned because something's changing here. It is an actual security action. So we're very engaged in making sure men are part of the storyboard. One of our participants was a man, Omar from Zanzibar, and he has been very engaged in the mother schools and after running five mother schools in Zanzibar on preventing violent extremism he said, I really have to get the fathers engaged. It's not enough that this burden is left to the mothers. It has to be a whole of community effort and I don't think anyone could have said it better. It really starts with the parents communicating about what they're seeing and ways that they can help protect their community, their families. The question about are women portionally affected? Absolutely. I mean, there is no doubt what we're seeing in, I am thinking very much about Iraq right now and Syria, Libya. Women are in part deserted. They are being brutally physically and emotionally and sexually hurt. They are having their children taken from them. There are many things that are really criminal here. This is not about war, this is criminality and we see the euphemism of children or child brides, but really we're talking about the trafficking of human beings. So indeed, they are extremely vulnerable and what we're seeing in the Syrian refugee camps, for example, you have a lot of women, you have boys, you have girls, you have perhaps elderly men and women, but you have no young men and what is happening is that they need number one, they need dialogue, they need education, they're asking for better understanding about what's going on. I mean, three years ago they were living an everyday life and it's as if you might as well have called it a tidal wound. It's like overnight their worlds have turned upside down and they're traumatized, so we need more education on post-traumatic stress, what it means in the family, there are so many skill sets that the world has and some of what they need is information. Information person to person is fabulous in some of these settings we know it's dangerous and so again to the question from Pakistan. One of the examples given a couple of weeks ago in a community where there was not electricity for radio or battery powered radios, they resorted to a chalkboard in the middle of this small village and they would write messages for those who were illiterate, they had somebody who explained the message, what the concern was were worried about this and so they were in sense of public translators. So the board was there and people could just write up their concerns or if they could not write because literacy becomes an issue here and that's why radio is such an incredible force for good. Thank you. Do we have, I think we have time for one or two more questions. Sure. I have one more ready to go and it looks like another one is coming. The next question is about you talked about the importance of regarding men as gendered beings. What are the practical consequences of this shared thinking? Oh that's a great question. Well I would say that one of the terms that we have been using in our work and again we work in the field of comfort prevention and peace building and so we work on something that is the acronym is DDR disarmament, demobilization and reconciliation and reintegration such as tours as well. But one of the things we see is that in a war zone and now we see the violent extremism you create these kind of status symbols of hyper masculine guys and you know the six pack the guns, the violence and what we know certainly from the violent conflict arena is you can take the gun out of their hand but you don't take the gun out of their mind and this is a famous quote by a special representative who is with the UN but the problem is that we reinforce these really what in the southern hemisphere they might call matismo but we call it hyper masculine ideals that do not allow men to be kind of a gentle father doesn't allow men to cry doesn't allow men to go to a doctor because a real man doesn't go to a doctor. We could spend an hour just talking about what are all the stories that men have been told about what they can do or can't do to be a real man, right? So it has a lot of impacts on women and that's why we're working on the man pieces security agenda because we can't stop violence against women until we engage men and helping them deal with the violence that they have experienced we see cyclical violence very few men are violent but of the violence committed in the world most is committed to the violence so we're trying to tackle violence against women through engaging men in the multiple roles that they really have open to them just like women have multiple roles of being also very strong empowered and capable leadership in the security field Did we have one more question? Okay, fantastic, which leads us right into classroom connections because this is a webinar for educators of course where we'd love to hear from our participants about how they see this issue and what we've been talking about connecting to their work to your work in your classrooms or elsewhere so please if you have any thoughts please send them our way and we'd love to share them with everybody In the meantime I wanted to make sure we connected you to some of our resources as well to help you start this conversation in your classroom or educational space so as you see here the Global Peace Building Center has a lot of resources for educators as well as for students on gender peace building so there's a whole list here, I won't read through it you can read them, I will add though I wanted to point out that in that list is an expert that is an opportunity to come to a forum on our website and submit questions and of course this month's questions go to Kathleen's team so if you have further questions after this and didn't get a chance to ask them, this is a forum to do so but it's also a place where you can bring this topic back to your students or young people you work with and see if they have questions and they can submit them to Kathleen's team so this is a way to continue the conversation after this I also did want to encourage, we do have an educator forum on our website as well where you can go and continue this conversation amongst yourselves amongst each other and we can direct you to that so you can learn more about Kathleen's work as well and their center, the center on gender peace building and the websites there and I wanted to point out that you're going to be editing video interviews and making them available so you can actually hear some of the women doing this work talk about doing it so you can tell us where and when they might sign those that would be great. Well, you can find the Action Kit on our website and very soon hopefully by the end of May it takes a while, we have 15 interviews and we are going to put them into vignettes so you can look at what's going on in various countries and different approaches innovative approaches to making a difference fantastic, thank you. Do we have any classroom connections? So we have one AP World History teacher who picked up on what you were discussing, Kathleen, about casualties being counted by soldiers killed rather than a broader formula for doing so and so the teacher asked, can we wanders and ponders now how those numbers would change if we included casualties of women and civilians as well so that justice could impact our teachers teaching world history and think about how they teach and allow most violent wars in history. There is a great question here from Abigail Shearer Robinson who asks about working with young people, how do we identify someone who is being radicalized all the way to the point where we can take action to evade or mitigate or stop the radicalization of an individual? Do we have an anecdote or insight into what the process of radicalization looks like from the individual? Thank you for the connection to our teacher. It's an important change to the way we think about how we teach statistics and history and who's affected. What are your thoughts on radicalization? There are a lot of great resources and maybe we can add those to this classroom connection but what we do know is that the change of character among the youth is gradual and often it doesn't affect just one person but we see perhaps other family members or peer groups also coming along into this, if you will, vortex. I will tell you that it is in some sense context-driven but there are clear indicators that, you know, change of behavior is the big one. Change of what the focus of their activities. The change in ideas or combativeness or aggressiveness. There are all sorts of indicators that have been put together and the United Kingdom has probably done some of the deepest research on the issue of radicalization and we can also connect you to the sites of different that has quite a program on this. I did want to mention, if I could, as to why it is important to see yourself as a parent or a teacher a critical interlocker. Sorry, I'm like losing my voice here. Kristen Fair, who is an American academic, sampled 141 jihadis and 35% of them were inducted through family and friends. The others, you know, possibly online through a mosque or through a church but not in this case church but a mosque. The key is, though, family and friends are critical here and this is where the community can play a very important role. Thank you. That's about all we have time for today. We're exactly at 5.30. I'm going to take two extra seconds of your time to just tell you about some next steps. Please stay tuned for our next webinar. We're really hoping we found this useful and engaging. We'll let you know when the next one is coming up. After this webinar closes, there's a very brief survey. I promise it's 30 seconds. So please answer it, I promise, and it will help us improve our webinars for the next time. Please feel free to reach out to me if you want to follow up on this webinar or on any of our resources. You have my email address and phone number. Please contact me. And I just want to say thank you definitely for joining us and thank you. I'm leaving much very hopeful. I think these stories are inspiring, give us a greater context, but also leave us with a sense of hope of how we can fight these issues. So thank you so much. Thank you very much for the opportunity. I look forward to talking to you all. Thank you and thank you all for joining us. Really appreciate you being here and your questions and comments. So thank you and have a great night.


So thanks everyone for joining in today and I hope everyone of you had a good lunch and so with that, let's start with the session. Awesome, thank you. Okay, so what I understand that it was just lunch and after this, I hope no one sleeps in the session and today we are going to learn something really not new, but let's do a revision. What is agile humor or is humor if it required? Okay, what's the agenda? Well, first agenda would be please enjoy the memes that I have actually really tried very hard to find for you for this session and if you like the memes, please give me a thumbs up. Well, I sound like a YouTuber, I guess. Why we are here today? So I will tell you a small story. I was actually, I'm a big fan of stand-up comedy and of course the Indian one. I'm Indian, like my origin is Indian. Right now I'm an Australian citizen, but then you can never take the Indian out of me. That's what I can say. So there's a new show in Amazon Prime and where like, you know, celebrities would come up on the stage and they will learn how to do stand-up comedy. Really loved it, but when I was actually watching it, what I realized that, hey, there's so much of similarities in like stand-up comedy and agile coaching. Now I know this might sound bizarre, but think about it. Okay. So I will ask you to actually think about that question. And the question for this moment is, is human needed for agile coaching? Now what I also realize, because I think I forgot to introduce myself. So who am I? I'm Soma Mazumdar. I'm an independent agile and Kanban coach and trainer. I'm based in Sydney, Australia. And if you would like to connect with me, that's my details up there. So please connect with me. I would love to chat with you. Okay. So let's make it a bit more interactive. What you can do, you can just take your phone and just scan this code and go to Slido. And when you go to Slido, could you just put in there what according to you sense of humor is? Like if you can put in like, you know, a couple of words there, maybe. So are we ready? Also give me some kind of cue so that I know that you are also receiving everything I'm trying to convey. Maybe a thumbs up would be great. Yes. Okay. Okay. We have a few things coming up, which is good. Okay. I love that answer life. That's so, so good. Let's give everyone a few more minutes. Relaxing is very, I can relate to that. Motivation. Love it. Love. Yes. Awesome. I think, oh, human. I love that. That's so cool. And thank you. Thank you, everyone. Let's get back to our thing. So yes, whatever was there is so relatable. Now, what is actually sense of humor? It is a combination of everything that you have said. But at the end, it's actually someone's, you know, ability to perceive emotions and also appreciate it. Now, when we think about it, now, the definition on the screen, if you don't agree with it, please blame Wikipedia because that's the source of it. So don't blame someone. Now, when we think about sense of humor, what are the benefits? Some of the benefits that I have learned and have been able to observe through different stand-up comedies and everything, or the movies that I watch, is that, you know, like everything that I see there, let's take the example of the stand-up comedy. Whenever a stand-up comedy, like a comedian comes on stage, one of the first things that I have seen or observed is that they really learn how to fail fast. Because if some of their jokes doesn't work, they actually improvise it on the spot. They learn how to take feedback from their audience. So they would actually look around and see that, okay, if the jokes are working or not, if the punchlines are working or not, and if not, they would change it, they would improvise it based on the situation, based on the context, based on the context of the room. They built rapport. So when you can make someone laugh, that's the best kind of, you know, the ice-breaking. That was one of the answer in the Slido as well, which is true. Also, as a stand-up comedian, if sometimes your show doesn't go well, you learn how to handle rejection, which is amazing. And I would like to take the example of the famous comedian and actor Kapil Sharma. So if we remember the incident, what happened to Kapil Sharma in 2017, I'm not going to go into details, because I'm sure most of you would know or remember that incident, where his career was like, you know, the rock bottom after the incident that happened in Australia, the flight in Australia. But what he did, you know, after that, he just bounced back. Like it took some time, but that's how the agile coaching world also worked, right? So we do not have a plan. Like, yes, we do plan, but sometimes the plan doesn't work. And what we do is that we always take feedback from the context, from what's changing around us. And based on that, we change our approach. So that's what I would say. Now, when it comes to humour, humour is present in all cultures, but different in each. I'm sure when I try to say things, you know, like, which is very specific to Indians, it wouldn't make sense in Australia. So once in my first workshop in Australia, I was actually trying to explain. So that was a workshop on EQ. And I was trying to explain the audience that, okay, I would say that I am more like a human labrador, where I do not understand that how much space I should give to others. Because growing up, I am a Bengali. And I have always learned that, you know, like, it's okay to care for each other. It's okay to ask those, you know, like normal questions, which seems very normal to us back in India. But here, people would mind. Like, for example, when I was in India, I wouldn't, I wouldn't think twice before asking someone something a bit personal, like, hey, are you married or single? But here I would, because sometimes it's not taken in a very positive note, because it's like invading someone's privacy. So again, what I'm trying to say here is that humor is very specific to our upbringing to our culture. And so, like, sometimes, whenever we are trying to crack a joke, maybe we need to be more aware of our surroundings. Maybe we need to figure out that where we are, based on the context, the joke might work or might not work. And what I've done here is that I've just coded a reference.  And I cannot understand why. Maybe that's where it is coming from that maybe I do not understand what like why that was such a big hit in that time. And what is the reason I cannot connect with that. So again, the link is there. If anyone is interested, I can definitely forward you the link, you can have a look. It's like a one minute video. Now, when we are talking about, like, we are talking about humor so much. Well, first, I actually just pause and ask if there is any question. Yeah, so something in the chat so far. Yep. But can I ask all of you who are here, do you have anything to share on the cultural aspect of humor? So, Anjali says it's really important to consider this because you can really offend someone to turn them off. So. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Thanks, Anjali. Yes, and I have done that, you know, like multiple times and talking from my experience. So this whole talk is based on my experience and observation, what I have faced coming from a different culture to a different culture. And also, like going into the world of agile coaching, we sometimes think, you know, agile coaching is not only about processes and framework, it's about real people. And when it is about real people, all these things are very much applicable. It is always based on the context. You cannot just go and apply a solution to a problem. I mean, the problem might seem similar, but then if the context is different, if the background story is different, everything changes. So again, when it comes to humor and agile coaching, there are so many similarities. Like for example, if we are talking about the benefits that we have learned about humor, the same thing applies to agile coaching, because all those benefits helps us to build our relationship with other people, with our coachee, with our client, with customer. So it's really, really important to understand the context. And who likes to go into a boring meeting, you know, like where no one talks, no one says anything, it's just like, look at a screen and then get out of there. It's boring also, we don't know if it is productive or not. So getting a little bit of humor in your coaching would always be a good idea. Well, I do not have a very good sense of humor, but I think sometimes I just make people laugh somehow. I'm not sure how many of you are laughing because I cannot see you all, at least I hope you are enjoying the memes. So the coaching stance is actually the humor stance. And why is that? Whenever it comes to humor, it is always about the EQ. So as a comedian, as a stand-up comedian, you have to have a really high EQ. So the EQ about your social awareness, because when it comes to EQ or emotional intelligence, there are four elements to it. The first one is self-awareness, where you should know how you can control your own emotions. The second part is self-regulation, where you should know how you can, like what triggers you, but then how you can actually manage that emotion. The third one is social awareness, which is really important as a comedian, but also as a coach, because you need to understand who is sitting around you, who are your customer, your client, your coaches. So if you don't understand them, you won't be able to help them. So that's where the social awareness part is coming from. Empathy. Connecting with your audience as a comedian and also connecting with your coaches as a coach is really, really important. So the coaching stance is actually the humor stance. And let me know what you think about that. This is something totally based on my observation I've come up with. So it's not there or verified by any source. So again, we are getting to the end of the session. So in order to be a good comedian, a successful one, you have to have a really high EQ. You really need to be observant, need to be a good listener. And again, in order to become a successful coach, you need to have all these qualities or traits. So in order to be a successfully funny coach, you have to have a very high EQ. And it is not impossible to grow your EQ. So grow it. That's the whole talk is about to find out the similarities between coaching and comedy, comedy and humor, and how maybe we can learn from the other world and apply it in the coaching work and make our coaching stance better. So if I have to ask you one question, is there anything that you are taking away from this talk today and applying it in your day to day world? So that would be it. Thank you. So to be honest, now I understand better why my Gile coaches keep on laughing throughout the day. Well, I try to. But I do understand that the Gile coaches, they really need to read the room, understand their audience, so as to pivot on the fly and ensure they are able to deliver it to the audience they are catering to. Yeah, I think this also quotes the Ford Agile manifesto responding to change over following a plan, which is my favorite one. And also the first one, right, individuals and interactions over processes and tools. So if you think about it, everything that a stand-up comedian does is actually so, so similar. There's not much difference. We just try to create and put them into boxes, but then there's so much we can learn from each other, the different roles that they're out there. I was just saying, you know, how EQ applies in so many places and so I love how it was brought in here in terms of our role as Agile coaches and how Samayu related it to having, you know, a sense of humor and what a person who's a comedian has to consider and think about and how similar that is to how we approach our work as coaches. I loved it. Thank you. Antili, do you have anything to share about your experience that how important EQ is as a coach or like it applies to every role actually. I shouldn't be saying coaches. Oh, absolutely. And I think for coaches, it's absolutely essential, but I think for every one of us, I think that's, you know, often we refer to it as a power skill because it really supports everything else that we do, right? Like if we are not aware of ourselves and of our surroundings, our environments, then it's very, very hard for us to be effectful and impactful. So I think EQ is like foundational, but a sense of humor, I love that because it can really cut through some very tense situations. And when we can laugh at ourselves and, you know, laugh with other people, it kind of releases tension, keeps, you know, creates a safe environment, which is another thing that I think that we, it's so important for us as coaches to be able to create and a sense of humor can really, really make a big difference in that, in creating just psychological safety in a space. Yeah, that's really a good point, which I forgot to mention. Thank you, Anjali. Yeah, psychological safety is absolutely important and sense of humor can actually help you to get there. Yeah. Thank you so much. All right. We are at the end of the session now. So we will be closing the session. Thanks, everyone. And thanks for this wonderful session. Thank you. Thanks, everyone.


Welcome everybody to the next episode of DSCI Insights and as today's guest, I have Sugatric Uluru, who is the director of the Trailblazers program within DSCI. I don't want to explain a lot about the program because this will be her task today, but I can tell you that it will be an exciting focus into new way of approaching and diversifying talent within supply chain. So Sugatric, welcome and thank you for being with us. Thank you Marco, thanks for having me. So let's kick start and then deep dive maybe into something which can give our audience a clear picture of what inspired Digital Supply Chain Institute to create the Trailblazers program. Sure. So through our conversations and especially my conversations with the DSCI members over the past few years, some of you, some of those conversations you've been part of, I had the opportunity to conduct interviews with numerous women leaders in the supply chain industry and during these interviews, we discussed their personal strategies, professional growth strategies and one recurring factor that stood out was the significant role of a mentor in their success. These women leaders attributed a substantial amount of their achievements to mentorship and consequently, we have launched the mentorship strategy leadership program under the Trailblazers initiative, which aims to promote women leadership in the supply chain industry. And this is a topic of interest to all our members and our mentorship program will have a high-touch approach where each mentee will have a dedicated mentor along with practical life sessions focusing on digital supply chain leadership. And the overarching theme of this program and this initiative is to enhance collaborative learning and network building among early stage women professionals in the supply chain industry. This is really a very insightful, thank you very much for it and also very motivating and empowering. And it seems to me, especially because the program is entering into its third year, the empowerment is one of the, let's say key foundations. So having that in mind and pro-activity, which you have shown with the team and with the members is can you share then what you have learned or observed during the program in first two years? Yeah, I mean, we had great two years of the program. We started in 2021 Mark, as you said, and we called it 21 for 21 and we are in year three now, which we are about to call it as 23 for 23. And it is widely acknowledged, as we all know that the mentorship is a valuable resource in the professional development of individuals, right? However, through my two years of leading this program, I've come to realize that having access to an external mentor, someone outside of one's organization and network is even more valuable. And although we initially established the program as a mentorship and a leadership crack, the program organically evolved into a safe space for participants to discuss workspace hurdles and issues openly. And we introduced something called the open mic sessions, which have been particularly, particularly well received, allowing individuals to bring up questions and receive feedback from their peers in a small group setting. And that said, my main takeaway from this experience is that women in the supply chain industry require more avenues to collaborate and share best practices. And I'm delighted that a program has become one such avenue for women professionals to connect, learn from one another and grow together. Thank you for that, Sugathri.  And if you survive first two years and get successfully to the third, that means that, you know, you have the value, right? So it seems like you're graduating with that. And I think it won't be a value for everybody. If I don't ask you, you know, what have the participants said about the program and what have mentors said about the program? Because creating these kinds of things is nice. Having these ideas is great. But if you don't serve those for whom it's created, then, you know, it's a lost opportunity. So what's what were what were their inputs? No, that's a wonderful question. I mean, it's been such a gratifying experience personally reading this program and mentoring activity has been highly successful. That said, we had like 80% of the mentor-mentee pairs establishing or maintaining effective relationships. And of course, some pairs didn't work because, you know, whether they didn't have the right rapport connection. But out of the 80% success rate, like, you know, we have witnessed participants receiving promotions, some secured new jobs with the help of the mentors. And our participants have expressed deep gratitude for the program and the guidance they have received from the mentors. And vice versa, you know, the mentors have also gotten a chance to understand what's happening in the industry across various companies through their mentees. So I would say many of our mentors and mentees have expressed a desire to continue the relationship with the program and give back to the program in any way they can. Talking about leadership, it's always about, you know, like certain plans, ideas, but then as well, not everything in the plan goes accordingly, as they said. And thank you for being so open to say that certainly in most of the cases it worked. That's why the program is going forward, but there are certain things which, you know, didn't work and we learned from them. So having that in mind is how does the program prepare emerging leaders to lead the digital supply chain transformation? I think this is one of the most commonly asked questions. All the participants who apply for the program are curious to know this answer. So what I would say is to keep it short, we do have like mentorship is a huge part of the program, but apart from that, we also have live sessions where we cover a breadth of topics including what is the digital supply chain? What are some of the enablers for digital supply chain transformation? We also teach them digital supply chain integration concepts by which I mean, you know, we do have subject matter experts at the Digital Supply Chain Institute who lead these live sessions and they have a case study based approach in some of the live sessions and overall our program is designed to build an understanding of the digital technologies and strategies that underpin successful supply chain transformation while also developing the leadership skills and capabilities necessary to lead and manage the change effectively. So we deal it, like we have a holistic approach in terms of how we train the participants and you know, so far we've received great feedback in terms of what they've gained from the live sessions. So having in mind everything you shared so far, training blazers are a very collaborative effort, right? And call it an ecosystem, you know, on its own. And it's not only for the mentees or the mentors to be part of it, but a significant role can be then played with the organization, right?  So in that sense, from your point of view, and I think that can be a very important message for those who are considering or, you know, willing to go down this route is why should an organization support this kind of initiative? And how do you think it aligns to their talent goals? Yeah, great question, Marco. And I think it's very important to have support from an organizational standpoint to take this program to the next level and have like more sort of exposure to it. And if there are many areas, I think, which will be useful for an organization from a talent development standpoint. First, investing in women's leadership training can help organizations develop their talent pipeline. And we all agree on this. By providing training and development opportunities, I think organizations can help women build the skills and knowledge they need to take on leadership roles within the company. So this in turn can help to build a more sustainable talent pool. That's number one. And number two, improved performance. Research has been showing that companies with more women leadership roles tend to perform better than those with fewer women in leadership roles. Women bring unique perspectives and so has diverse teams. By investing in women's leadership training, I think organizations can help to foster this kind of performance enhancing diversity. And number three, gender diversity. This is on the top of the list and priority for most of the organization. Women's leadership training helps organizations increase gender diversity. Women are often underrepresented in leadership positions, especially in supply chain. It's changing. It's changing for good, but I think the rate at which it's changing is not enough. So by providing training opportunities again, specifically for women in this supply chain space, organizations can help address this imbalance. And all these will lead to better employee branding or employer branding. Supporting women's leadership training can also help organization to enhance their branding by demonstrating a commitment to diversity, inclusion and talent development. And I think these days, especially when talent retention is the most important factor for most of the organizations, having this sort of priority and employer branding is the key. And supporting programs like us will help not just individuals, but the entire organization having a better supply chain in general. Thank you very much, Sugathri. I think in a short period of time, we have covered a lot. And on the other side, it's always nice to have top leadership on one side, but on the other side to have practical applications and programs like Braille Blaise-Hersies. And I salute you and your team for the efforts, persistence, and then as well, what you have created in the last two years going into the third. And I think this is a clear example of how things and investments related to talent can change pieces of very traditional parts of the industry related to supply chain. And it can bring innovation and as well, excitement and motivation for transforming. So thank you for being with us. And this has been another digital supply chain institute Insights. And we'll keep on promoting the things which are related to value of supply chain transformation. And we invite you as well to join us in the next session.


name's Janie Stewart and this is my home in Ashland, Oregon. And like everybody, I'm old enough to have quite a long story. So I moved to Tekelma in 1970 to join my friends there. I was at that point a single mom. My kid was almost three and I was ready to see the world be really different than it had been. And that was, of course, the Vietnam War and a lot of disenchantment in every direction. So happened at that time that I had friends who had friends in the Bay Area who had moved to Magic Forest Farm. And I went to visit them and kind of fell in love and decided that I wanted to stay. And I was very clear that being a single mom in Marin County was a difficult life. Very just, I couldn't figure it all out. I couldn't figure out how to earn a living and raise my child and do do all the things. And it looked so good to live with other people who would help you. Some people that would help you take care of your kid and people that would, you could produce together. And I felt like I moved really far away from civilization and I felt like we were reinventing the world. And really, this place where we lived was only 20 minutes down to the town of Cave Junction. But at that time it seemed like it was hundreds of miles away. It seemed really remote. And I never left the farm for ages. I just stayed there and I was a worker bee. I always was busy doing this or that important thing. For people to live communally, you have to make some agreements. You have to have some shared goals. You have to have shared goals, shared values, shared respect for each other, different ways of being and doing and thinking. When we started out, how I got to the commune was not different than how many people did. So I had friends there and I went to visit and the founders of the farm were friends of mine when I was a high school girl. By the time I went there I was 25. So quite a bit of time had passed that we stayed friends but not in close contact. Then I had one of my very good friends at the time in the 1969-1970 was a woman from the Bay Area who helped me. She was just a good friend and really the person that showed me how to change a baby's diapers and how to know what to do when they cried and all checked the safety pins. So she was ready for a radical change in lifestyle and she moved to the farm. She went to meet the people at the farm and then eventually moved there herself. Then I went to visit her as well as these other people. I was just thinking. I wasn't planning to move. I was just thinking about how to have my life be different. That was a hard time being separated and having a child that cries and whatever. So this person I was so fond of and close to and one of the and we only agree we had lots of things we agreed about and we do today but we're very different kinds of people. When I came I was it was in my personality to kind of make friends with everybody. Everybody. I was not a threatening person and not I didn't overdo my opinions about things and I wasn't dogmatic and so I was invited to stay. It was a big deal to be invited to stay. As the years went and that was how the group formed was whoever was there loosely anyway whoever was there could invite new people to come. At the same time there were people marching through southern Oregon looking for land looking for who they could join and there was an assumption about in there was an assumption about Tekelma out in the alternative community that there was free land there and that wasn't really the case. What was really the case was the founders at Magic Forest Farm were an organized intentional community group in the Bay Area before they came to Tekelma and there were several other groups that had the same you know had they'd have meetings in Berkeley and organized and they really tried the earliest people the people that came there in 68 and 69 thought they were coming with very clear intentions about how they would live what they would share how they would build things how they would educate their kids very and then once they were there they you know reality came and people came and needed things and wanted things and so and different factions emerged among the group among the you know so if you were somebody that wanted to do a certain kind of work you were more likely to be able to stay and live there there were people there were some very creative artistic people who made the strong argument that it was just as valuable to paint a beautiful picture as it was to weed the onions so though there were huge amounts of political discussion or it not I don't mean big global I mean internal politics about how what you had to do to live there and who could live there and we eventually at some point we reached a mass that you there's no more room for any more people and at that point we decided that we could tell people that they couldn't live there and that was a huge huge to go from anybody who wants to be there could be there to whoever we were self-appointed we could say no you can't live there it was this complicated in the times because there were people who were saying no to somebody who really there was no difference in how they each arrived there it was just you know more of a pooling of being this kind of person or that kind of person and and so so who actually lived there evolved and it was a rough evolution for a few years but people's some very hurt feelings and some very angry people and people asked to leave and people vibed out and just it was not elegant and it was a learning process and over by the I'd say by the mid 70s it was the even by 72 73 it was very clear the direction we had become clear and evolved but those first few years were really poorly defined and and not handled very people's feelings weren't handled very well and the structure was just vague nothing was written down to say these are the rules it eventually did work I mean the the family is still connected absolutely that's right why was it so successful okay you don't want to sound like too groovy or anything I don't I'm not I don't think but I think that the people who remained connected and who are here to kill my east whatever that were a core of people who had really profound respect for each other and a lot of love of you know in a not hippie-dippy way just really appreciated qualities in each other I think there were plenty of conflicts and this person you know even as the years went by people it would change who was you know things worked and didn't work I think the fact of having children together was very much of a bonding experience I think we did some really hard things I think the hardest thing we did was we shared money and and that was for me that was really hard and so we had to at least we may not have loved it but we had to at least practice a level of trust that that certainly not the American way you know so that was hard some some of the stronger personalities had really superb highly values that you just had to really respect having Jim come and be you know help us form the medical community was huge you're very and he he's as you said he's a very not-assuming person but the fact of having that focus and feeling the how good we were doing in the world that really helped the co-op the school we had a school we had the labor co-op we had the clinic we had some community land we you know there were some and then all these various shared properties it held in different ways and we're so a lot of things to make us be integrated into each other's lives and I guess I have to say that was just like a real real respect for one another well so much traditional ritual wise things but we we kind of invented rituals as we went along and we didn't you know you could question was was dressing like a hippie was that a ritual you know and then some of the dresses some of the thing you know we're you know so we identified ourselves to the two outsiders by dressing similarly and sharing you know that kind of thing we didn't do thing we do like parties for certain events the solstice the early on we started doing a lot of people that with the Jewish background and we would do a Passover or this thing or that thing but not the some places had like actually even subgroups in the area had certain ritualized things we had things that I would say were tradition we developed lots of tradition and maybe depends how you define ritual we didn't have like we didn't have shamans and and drum you know things but music groups emerged drum groups emerged and I just was remembering in I think it would have been 72 in the early 70s when women's movement was taking off and we didn't come to the rules of the women's movement quite by reading the newspaper because we didn't read the newspaper but eventually we figured you know we clearly were learning how to be individual self-actualized whole people and the women learned how to do so it almost became some of the things that the women were going to do almost became ritualized and my friend and I used to come over here for a women's group because we felt like we needed that stimulation and it wasn't hadn't yet quite arrived there you know and by another year or so it it was there so we had so many things that were unspoken rules that might go to a little bit ritual like how we made the bread how we chopped the wood how we all that kind of the things that we needed to do certainly were ritualized but they weren't you know I don't know how they weren't church like or or that kind of thing but I I felt in myself and I felt among my friends that we were not we didn't want to have burdened some leadership or cultish rules or that kind of pretty individualistic and as some time went by I had to I could see I figured out that I wasn't really the best communal person and eventually moved from Majae Forest Farm to another less communal but also shared property across the valley there and kept my friends stayed connected and lived more individually and less communally in the process I learned a lot of things I learned carpentry skills I learned working skills are very active with green side up I think you have some of that footage they're very proud of being a part of the formation of an organization that allowed women to earn the same money as men and it was very controversial back in the day it wasn't wasn't really eagerly accepted and especially at first but it you know it took hold and so I planted a lot of trees and I did a lot of organizational work and that allowed me a set of new the organizational work allowed me to see a different set of skills that I could cultivate I didn't know I didn't think of myself as somebody that could do that kind of thing that well and became pretty effective and then well years went by and by the mid 80s 50 I guess 15 years went by I planted my first tree in 73 or 74 and I planted my last tree in 84 85 but forming a labor co-op was a very idealistic thing to do and I really grew in the process I really learned about my own competence more and then an opportunity came to earn money a different way I needed to do something different I was never a very strong tree planner anyway but determined and then I needed more money it was time for my kid to go to college it was time to just aging out of physical labor and an opportunity came to move over here to Ashland or to start working over here in Ashland and I we as I said we worked on houses and repaired them and prepared them to sell and make some money and it was a small group again some one of the people was one of the very same magic forest farm people and another neighbor and whatever so we got to continue in the tradition of everybody's work being valued the same way and or equally and did quite well with that did you know made enough money to have a life and for years I tried to live in two places and boy that was hard work all day and work all night and go home and work all day and all night some more and seeing that took kept us busy for a number of years and at that point I it became clear it was time to do the next thing do something a little different than painting and carpentry and whatever it wasn't gonna work for me indefinitely so it was time to go back to school and I had lived in San Francisco in the sixties and had three quarters of a degree completed you know are taking the coursework or and I didn't have a very clear plan of what I wanted to do but my intention was that I would find my I needed a degree to be able to work in social services and social services so you know I think I was raised to grow up and work in social services either that or teach and so when I went to explore what was possible and so you was very generous and very friendly and the person who the contact person I had helped me with looking at what I'd already done what I got my transcripts from the sixties came in tiny little print and and we figured out what we could do and a two first of all I got lots of credits for classwork that I'd taken like community college things along the way that I wasn't even gonna count I didn't even think they you know like art classes and stuff and then I got connected with the sociology department because they were the most of the ways that I had different credits and stuff that looked like the most accessible degree in the shortest amount of time I think I was more interested in having the degree than I was in content of my education I know I was so one of the wonderful things that happened was I was able to have quite a few credits for writing up something about life on how how a commune worked how our communes work how you know they for the sake of it being a an academic project I did some research about traditional communes and old you know if the old onitis and those kind and then the new new ones and but they were very generous with accepting my expertise that I had just acquired by being there and I don't remember anymore how many credits I got but I got a lot of credits for doing it I had to learn how to use a computer that was a really hard I was so hard things would happen I you know I'd write up something and then I would lose it I don't know where it went it's still out there somewhere but but so I inadvertently I learned how to do enough technical work to make it last I also had to wait meal up sometimes in the middle of the night to save my paper or find it because I couldn't find it anymore anyway I would I got I was very happy to do that and in the process I made friends with a number of people in the sociology department at that time and they'd all be gone now they're all because they're my age and there were four people there who had done they they were academics but they had done a similar kind of lifestyle experience up here in in off a dead Indian road somewhere and then out of it all one of the things that I did then for years was come back to some of the classes and talk to the class about how commune how they how they were formed how they grew what the some of the issues were what was the difference between cult communes and charismatic leader communes and and the our group was very we did not have leaders we didn't really welcome leaders somehow or everybody we didn't we didn't ever go that route of following somebody it was not a very good nobody was very interested in just following so made lots of interesting ideas and interesting conflicts and interesting discussions but it wasn't like the people whose children went off to wherever and that was just not even a possibility so so then for years I did I was able to make a contribution back to SLU by going in and talking to classes and stuff and it was very flattering you know I appreciated getting to do that and the degree that I got just having the goal of having a degree was what I needed to get to work into social services in this community and at that time so that was I think I got I think I finished school in 989 maybe or 90 and almost didn't matter what degree I had I was then able to find find work in social services I just needed to you know to do all the pass audits and whatever you just needed to have something so my first job was at Dunhouse my first job being and having the great education that I had and I was a volunteer coordinator I think it's an incredibly valuable social service and to the women who are survivors of violence having a place to go is just huge having a place to feel safe and it seemed like we were always full there were always lots of people there and in my naivety I didn't I I tended to really I started out really believing everything I did there were some funny stories where people just made up situations they were escaping from that they weren't really they just were taking advantage of the services so I didn't come into social services understanding the extent that people learn how to work the system but having there were times that I felt like we did really save somebody's life I have I've had a pretty privileged life so it wasn't in my own experience and I think there was some value I could be outraged on behalf somebody's behalf or be sympathetic on somebody's behalf or look at their situation I wasn't too close to it I had so some people that work in especially in the field of domestic violence are so triggered by reliving their own experiences and by my good fortune that wasn't my case at all so I could do I felt like I could do really good work with people you know I met doctors wives I met policemen's wives I met lots of people that were on the lower echelons of society that were struggling couldn't leave because they couldn't you know we're going to be able to buy milk for their kids whatever so I really really learned a lot about how pervasive the the issues were and I think I did pretty well with helping people make logical you know try to with my nature to try to figure out a solution to a problem not everybody wants you to do that and you know the longer I work in social services the better I understood that but in the in the early times we did meet somebody at Safeway and take them you know bring them to the house and make them swear to not telling their husbands and had a little cloak and dagger aspect I think it did really help people to feel I think probably the most helpful thing was the validating you know in in the big picture people just needed some encouragement they needed validation they needed practical ideas like how to get money how to get food stamps how to close their clothes their children that kind of thing so so on the physical aspect of providing shelter is obviously a huge issue today still for so many people and then adding in services and compassion I think I think it was a really important function um boy did I learn about how organizations work in that in that experience I was really naive because the organizations I'd worked with before were self-selected and this was I assumed a certain amount of autonomy and privilege of being able to decide what I wanted to do and how I would do it and all the and those maybe weren't the most useful they weren't really the skills that that group at that time was looking for so much and one of the things that was really an experience but one of the things that happened was the organization at that point in time had some um very generous funding from a family who owned a there's a beautiful house just down the road and the terms of the funding somehow the owner let the agency have it for I don't know a dollar a year some token amount but the man retained some kind of a voice on the board and a voice on the in the operations and was very concerned that Dunhouse not in any way appear to be a radical organization and at that time at that time there was a national domestic violence coalition that was a very significant organization it was you know shaping laws and and making the issues be very well understood by the public and there was a conflict about um whether we could or could not belong to that organization and most of the staff wanted and felt like of course we should that's the way to be informed it's a way to know what's happening around the country way to have access to legal information you know and I was I just talked the way I talk but I was very clear that I thought that was a terrible idea to not be a member and um somehow that got me that opinion got me identified with being a problem in the organization and uh and this guy had a lot of power he had a lot of money and people up the ladder in the organization really wanted access to the funds that he could provide so he got to run the show and they imported they brought in you know they brought in somebody who um um we were all pretty naive about HR laws and that kind of thing um but he they brought in somebody from California who understood the system you have a corrective action plan the person doesn't follow or whatever and in a matter of very short matter of time me and several other people were fired so that they could change over the situation to be more pleasing to the people that had potential money and it was a shattering experience for me and for several of the other people and it was the kind of thing that if you're an innocent coming from the country and moving to the big city and wanting to help people and I mean I had nothing but good intentions and uh I was just stunned I just didn't even know how I was going to get back on the horse and then you know things changed and I was able to move into another social service job that I I worked with adolescent girls for 20 years and uh ran a program and did you know it was all that was ancient history but it was a very traumatic experience to come out of um the innocence of just wanting to be a helper in the world to learning about how what underlying motives drive organizations and at that point one of the people from the the college did some some documenting of the story the details of the story with another woman and me so that and her goal was to educate people about how organizations work and uh I I don't know what became of that footage but it was a you know it was a project she was going to work on and she was uh she was a uh terrific person and I had to take a statistics class from her you know the previous year or two and I really was not a good student and she I was so it was just torture for me and she was so she said come on just you know you can do it just do it you know and what and encouraged me and somehow I made it through that class and then out you know with attribution theory you don't like somebody that is making you do something you don't want to do so then I got over it and did that and I really liked her after after I didn't have to do statistics anymore do you want her name here sure Cecile Burrill you've heard of her yeah well she's a storehouse and I would love to know if she's still around I haven't seen her so her her people so the people if you want names then the people who helped me her Ian Couchman and my favorite person was Johnson who's just a wonderful guy and I know I see him once I haven't seen him recently but he's around still but we've all got to be I'm 75 so you know they're not working but so those guys were all very receptive to growing me up without turning me into an academic or they might have wanted to but okay so where can I so from there I went to work at another organization and that was called Lydia Springs Girls Program and that grew then the years went by and ironically enough Dunhouse and the Lydia Springs programs merged and but by then things had changed was not an issue and I did I only needed to have a degree I didn't have a degree in adolescent psychology and you know I was like a personality fit I was able to feel really good about that job and really grew and was very comfortable and because it was so close I didn't I might have done better financially to have tried to move up the career ladder but I loved working right here I could be at work in one minute you know so it was just great and then I also probably would have taken continue some education but I had some pretty catastrophic health issues at the early 90s so it worked out great for me to just have a job that was right there and feel good about my clients and feel good about what I was doing and I guess I have to thank SOU for giving me the the piece of paper that made it so I could get the job