T H E
A R T
O F
S O C I A L
T R A N S F O R M A T I O N
BREAKING POVERTY’S GRIP How growing up in concentrated poverty makes the American Dream less likely
DIGITAL LEARNING A P U B L I C AT I O N O F T H E S A LVAT I O N A R M Y
VOL. 22, NO. 02 | SUMMER 2016
Partnership brings financial learning to after-school programs
FINDING HOME Surviving servitude
Reconnecting family
Filling the gap
Overcoming labor trafficking and
The Salvation Army works to find loved
School becomes home for 600,000
reclaiming life
ones and complete families
children around the world
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CONTENTS Caring is a magazine of The Salvation Army dedicated to doing good. We bring together thought leaders to inspire, inform and activate you toward social good. We offer expertise and empowerment. We know you are a creative changemaker who is pushing your community forward, and we want you to join you in doing good.
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GOVERNMENT Surviving servitude
The Salvation Army combats
labor trafficking and helps survivors reclaim their lives. | BY MINDY FARABEE
FINDING HOME | SUMMER 2016
Vol. 22, No. 02 4
EDITOR’S NOTE
6
NEWSBITES
7 MY CORNER | BY BOB DOCTER 8
INTERVIEW
Painting a better picture
Art helped a former Los Angeles gang member find God.
| BY CHADWICK PHILLIPS 12 INSPIRATION
8
28 RELIGION
A place to call home
Does Scripture address the concept? | BY DAVID WITTHOFF
31 TECHNOLOGY
Digital learning takes off
The Salvation Army, EverFi and Target partner to boost after-school learning.
| BY CHRISTIN DAVIS
34 BUSINESS
Homeless to home
Illness and relocation left a family of seven out in the cold until they met The Salvation Army.
Breaking poverty’s grip on neighborhoods
| BY DEBBY BIELAK, JIM SHELTON AND DEVIN MURPHY
| BY KELSEY ATKINS 14 INITIATIVE
Restorative Court steers homeless from prison
Diversionary program helps low-level offenders work toward self-sufficiency. | BY JARED MCKIERNAN
Meth, money and madness
The art of social transformation
A new wave of artists are making change happen.
| BY PAMELA MILLER
40 EDUCATION
18 FIRST PERSON
36 ARTS
Filling the gap
Salvation Army schools educate more than 600,000 children around the world.
| BY LAURA POFF
| BY PAUL SWAIN, CAPTAIN
40
21 FAMILY
44 GOOD MEDIA
46 GOOD STUFF
Reconnecting family
Since the 1880s, The Salvation Army has worked to find missing loved ones and complete families. | BY LISA CULBERTSON
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“Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do... but how much love we put in that action.”
EDITOR’S NOTE
—MOTHER TERESA
YOU KNOW
that feeling of home? The indescribable, but familiar comfort of a place that is yours, that is safe and warm, filled with love and loved ones? When you unlock the front door after a long trip. When you get into your bed with crisp, clean sheets. When you stay home in pajamas while it’s raining with the windows open. When you turn on your favorite music after a long day. When family comes to visit. When you come home to a steaming crock pot dinner. When you sit down to watch your favorite show. When you’re the last one home and can hear family laughing inside. I’m sure you could add to the list. It’s an inescapable, captivating feeling of goodness that we long for, and seek after by nature. This issue is dedicated to the idea of “Finding Home,” literally in the case of one family (p. 12) and for 600,000 children around the world who live and learn in a Salvation Army school (p. 40). It also examines the effect of poverty on neighborhoods, and the place-based barriers that make the American Dream less likely (p. 34). And it addresses whether or not the concept of home can be found in Scripture (p. 28). Perhaps the feeling of home is one of completeness. That’s what The Salvation Army Missing Persons Program (p. 21) aims for with each family it assists. “When we can finally complete whatever missing link they’re looking for...we’re helping to fulfill something in them,” a caseworker said. Whether you are home, or on your way toward it, do good.
E D ITOR -IN -CH IE F Robert Docter, Ph.D. M AN AGIN G E D ITOR Christin Davis SE N IOR E D ITOR Jared McKiernan ASSISTAN T E D ITOR Mindy Farabee E D ITOR IAL ASSISTAN T Jackeline Luna ART D IR E CTOR Kevin Dobruck GR AP H IC D E SIGN E R Carol Martinez D IGITAL STR ATE GY D IR E CTOR Shannon Forrey D IGITAL CON TE N T COOR D IN ATOR Nicole Bouschet B USIN E SS M AN AGE R Karen Gleason CIR CUL ATION COOR D IN ATOR Anne Ducey
Caring (ISSN 2164-5922) is published quarterly by The Salvation Army USA Western Territory, led by Territorial Commander Commissioner James Knaggs and Chief Secretary Colonel Doug Riley. Send letters to the editor to caring@usw.salvationarmy.org. Subscription prices $15 U.S., $18 Canada and Mexico, $20 other international per year. Subscribe at caringmagazine.org. Subscriber services contact 562-491-8343, caring@usw.
CHRISTIN DAVIS is the managing editor of
salvationarmy.org, or Caring Magazine, PO Box 22646, Long
New Frontier Publications.
Beach, CA 90802.
Connect with Christin
Advertising inquires contact 562-491-8332 or
website caringmagazine.org
caring@usw.salvationarmy.org.
facebook caringmagazine twitter @caringmagazine
Article proposals or reprints contact
email christin.davis@usw.salvationarmy.org
caring@usw.salvationarmy.org.
TURN GOOD THOUGHTS INTO GOOD ACTIONS VISIT CARINGMAGAZINE.ORG SUBSCRIBE / GET HELP / VOLUNTEER / FIND WORSHIP / GIVE
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NEWSBITES
RELIGIOUS LIFE A new Pew Research Center study of the ways religion influences the daily lives of Americans finds that people who are highly religious are more engaged with their extended families, more likely to volunteer, more involved in their communities and generally happier with the way things are going in their lives, according to the latest findings of Pew Research Center’s U.S. Religious Landscape Study. These differences are found not only in the U.S. adult population but also within a variety of religious traditions, and they persist even when accounting for other factors, including age, income, education, geographic region of residence, marital status and parental status. However, in several other areas of day-to-day life—including interpersonal interactions, attention to health and fitness, and social and environmental consciousness—Pew Research Center found that the people who pray every day and regularly attend religious services appear to be very similar to those who are not as religious.
PROHIBITION ON ‘SLAVE LABOR’ IMPORTS President Barack Obama signed into law a prohibition on all imports produced by forced or child labor, closing a loophole that has allowed such products to enter the country for decades. The ban is part of a far-reaching trade bill passed by the Senate. The goods with the most child and forced labor listings, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, are cotton, sugarcane, tobacco, coffee, cattle and fish.
44.6 PERCENT
HERO FINDS NEW MISSION
Fewer than half of American adults work for an employer full-time—just 44.6 percent, according to the Gallup Good Jobs (GGJ) metric that tracks how many people work for an employer at least 30 hours per week.
Retired Army Ranger Marc Budnik, 38, now fights online child exploitation as a Human Exploitation Rescue Operative (HERO) based outside of Los Angeles. A joint program of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and the Special Operations Command in conjunction with the National Association to Protect Children, the HERO Corps retrains wounded Special Operations Forces in computer forensics and law enforcement skills to assist federal agents in fighting the exploitation of children online. While on his last of six deployments in the Middle East, Budnik—who was born in Poland and moved to the U.S. with his family at 6—suffered a gunshot wound to his arm during an ambush. He retired from the military in October 2015 and completed the HERO training. “This gives me a sense of need and mission, which could be lacking after military service,” said Budnik, who joined the military after 9/11. Today, he rides a Harley to work and hasn’t shaved his beard in nearly a year—a “bucket list” item. “I want to be always serving. Doing this, I continue to serve my country.” Now completing a 10-month internship with HSI, Budnik works with federal agents on cases of online child exploitation, serving warrants and cataloging evidence. “Anything posted on the internet is going to stay on the internet. It all lives in perpetuity,” Budnik said. “There’s a misconception of the child predator in a creepy van, watching kids in the park, but child predators are from every walk of life.” Take the time to protect your children, Budnik cautions parents. Something as simple as a photo of a child in a bathtub, he said, could be seen differently by a child predator. “Most are fairly organized, and they trade images like you would trade baseball cards,” he said. “The internet gives individuals access and support where they wouldn’t otherwise have it.” Budnik suggested parents, especially, instruct their children to “think before you click” and to be “inherently suspicious” of people they meet online. As he said, “The more educated we are on the possibility for incidents, the less apt we will be to fall into one.”
10TH
FACEBOOK CONNECTS Facebook’s initiative internet.org aims to bring the benefits of connectivity to the two-thirds of the world that doesn’t have them, bringing more than 19 million people online. Free Basics by Facebook provides people with access to basic websites for free—news, job postings, health and education information, and communication tools such as Facebook. Additionally, The Connectivity Lab at Facebook is developing ways to make affordable internet access possible in communities around the world and testing technologies, from high-altitude long-endurance planes to satellites and lasers.
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Among the 10 countries deemed “well off” on a ranking of issues by The Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality, the U.S. had the lowest overall score, performing particularly poorly on income and wealth inequality as well as safety net effectiveness.
The White House launched a new open data effort to improve economic mobility for all Americans, “The Opportunity Project.” By providing data to determine access to opportunity at the neighborhood level, it aims to help families find affordable housing, businesses identify services and policymakers to spot inequities in their communities.
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BY DAVID WIT T HO F F
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ADDRESS THE CONCEPT?
EVEN THOSE
of us who grew up in transition or without a traditional home still understand the idealized concept of a home. Home is a place to belong, a place to live, and a place to be safe. Our culture says “Home is where the heart is.” Home is a place where the soul finds respite. Yet, in Scripture, the concept of home is rarely discussed directly. In fact, one would be hard-pressed to identify such a concept in Scripture at all. Houses are discussed. Fathers, mothers, sons and daughters are spoken of. But the concept of home, that’s a more modern abstraction. However, when Scripture speaks about similar concepts, it does so through concrete terms that might strike many of us as familiar. In the Old Testament, home is a place to return to after living elsewhere (Gen. 30:25). Returning home is deferred in the conquest of the Promised Land until all the tribes had received their inheritance of land (Num. 32:18). Soldiers were not to go to war if newly married. They were instructed to stay home and take joy in their new bride (Deut. 24:5). Home is where one returns after a battle (1 Sam. 18:6). In Nehemiah 4:14, the people were instructed to fight for their families and their homes. These and many similar examples show us an Old Testament concept that is similar to our own idealized concept of home.
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DO GOOD Read the Scripture passages referenced in this article for more on the biblical concept of home
HOME CAN BE A SPIRITUAL CONCEPT... THE FINAL RESTING PLACE OF HUMANITY.
Volunteer for a Salvation Army program that provides home and more at westernusa. salvationarmy.org
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At the same time, one author revealed to us a concept of an eternal home. In Ecclesiastes 12:1-7, the writer paints a picture with metaphor about the end of life: “...man is going to his eternal home” (12:5). We can see in the Old Testament that home can be a spiritual concept as well, the final resting place of humanity. In the New Testament, home has many of the same physical concepts as the Old Testament and our modern contexts. But the concept of home takes an unexpected turn in the teachings of Jesus. In Luke 9:57-62, Jesus proclaims to those who follow him that “the Son of Man has no place to lay his head” (9:58). Does Jesus have a home? When someone asks to first go bury a father, Jesus replies with an unexpected answer, to let the dead bury the dead. Another person wishes to go say goodbye at his home. Jesus replies that no one who puts hand to plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God. In Luke 14:26, Jesus explains to a crowd that anyone who would follow after him must hate (miseo) his mother and father, wife and children, and brothers and sisters. This has been interpreted by Christians through history as hyperbole or simply a contrast, that we “hate” our family in comparison to how much we love, follow and adore Jesus. But I wonder if Jesus’ teaching in these instances is to show us a new spiritual reality regarding our families and our homes. Perhaps in de-emphasizing our natural families in the world, Jesus makes room for the spiritual family and the spiritual home we now have in Christ. Romans 8:14-15 says: For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba!” Ephesians 1:4-6 says: In love he predestined us
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for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. Colossians 1:13-14 says: He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. Our final home, our final family, is made up of the people of God bound together in the Spirit. When we meet, Jesus is there (Matt. 18:20), and when Christ returns we will live together forever in our eternal home, the kingdom of God. “And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.’ And he who was seated on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new.’ Also he said, ‘Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true’” (Rev. 21:2-5).
DAVID WITTHOFF is the Christian education director
for discipleship in The Salvation Army USA Western Territory. Connect with David facebook caringmagazine twitter @caringmagazine website caringmagazine.org email david.witthoff@usw.salvationarmy.org
PHOTO BY ALEX BARBER
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A NEW WAVE OF ARTISTS ARE MAKING CHANGE HAPPEN. BY PAMELA MILLER
N
“Rick saw what people believed to be the most dangerous block in Houston, and he saw it as an opportunity for how to use his talent to transform a neighborhood. Art was a catalyst to serve needs of community,” said Eureka Gilkey, executive director of Project Row Houses, which now takes up 10 blocks and 49 buildings. They house a vast array of programs—from artists’ residencies to tutoring for children, from public art gallery space to subsidized housing and mentorship for single mothers. Today, the Third Ward is thriving and Lowe is lauded as a forefather of social practice. Over the past 10 years, the movement has been gaining traction in academia. At least 10 schools, including Queens College, Otis School of Art and Design and Portland State University have established master’s programs in social practice art and young artists are flocking to them. “The social conditions in the country are ripe for social change. We see that in the elections now, with the strong showing for candidates from both ends of the political spectrum,” said Suzanne Lacy, department chair of Otis’ Public Practice graduate program. “There is a growing awareness of the impact of inequality…Young artists are connected to social movements or to their ideologies through social media, and this will inevitably affect their interests and their work.” That same socially conscious mentality is sweeping through museums, leading them to experiment with new ways to engage audiences—sometimes by looking beyond their own walls. The Queens Museum is considered a leader in the field. Five years ago, the Museum embedded Cuban artist Tania Bruguera in a storefront on Roosevelt Avenue in Corona, Queens, where she created Immigrant Movement International, a community space where art and education are used to empower immigrants personally and politically. The space hosts everything from computer and zumba classes to legal services and political protests. In 2013, the Tate Modern exhibited Suzanne Lacy’s The Crystal Quilt. Lacy is a pioneering performance artist who has been blurring lines between art and activism since the 1970s. She created The Crystal Quilt over two years in Minneapolis in the 80s to explore how aging women are represented in media and public opinion. The project culminated in a large-scale performance installation in a shopping complex with 430 Minnesota women over age 60 seated on a rug designed by painter Miriam Shapiro to resemble a quilt. The Tate acquired and exhibited representations of the quilts alongside photographs and a video documenting the live work.
inety-nine years ago, Marchel Duchamp kicked up a major fuss by taking ordinary objects—a snow shovel, a urinal, a bike wheel—and reframing them as art. Nearly a century later, a growing movement once again is looking to radically reimagine the relationship between aesthetic experiences and everyday life: social practice art. Unlike Duchamp’s revolutionary readymades, which spun an object with a purpose into something purely symbolic, this art form is purely pragmatic, and for the most part, it lives happily outside institutional walls. There is no brush stroke or bronze. There’s no stanchion on the sidewalk to direct ticket holders into an orderly herd. And there’s no need to appease curatorial gatekeepers because gaining entry is almost beside the point. For this generation, making art is about making change. Art is what art does. In the past, activist artists employed their creativity to signal a problem. Now, social practice artists are devising creative approaches in an effort to actually fix things. And they are starting with the belief that in order to change lives, you have to harness the imagination and experience of those whose lives you are hoping to change—in collaboration with them, in their neighborhoods, in their streets, even in their homes. The concept of social practice art began emerging a little over 20 years ago. That’s when a young artist named Rick Lowe found himself in Houston’s Third Ward, one of the city’s oldest AfricanAmerican neighborhoods. There, he eyed 22 abandoned shotgun houses from the 1930s, on the verge of demolition, long ago left for dead. Lowe began to imagine what it might be like to breathe new life into them instead. The term social practice hadn’t yet been coined. No road had been mapped. So Lowe did what groundbreakers do: he made it up as he went along. He brought in a mix of artists, local residents, church groups, architects and urban planners, and together they transformed the shacks into Project Row Houses, a unique hybrid of arts space and social service center. Lowe credits a high school student for sparking the idea. “He looked at my earlier political work [billboards], and he basically said it wasn’t what people needed. People needed solutions,” Lowe said in an interview when he won the MacArthur genius grant in 2014. “If you’re an artist and you’re creative,” Lowe said the teen asked him, “why can’t you create a solution?”
Migration Is, installation by Monica Villarreal. 37
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While some social practice artists do see their work find its way to such hallowed halls of museums, others see no need. Inspired by her personal experience as the daughter of a Korean immigrant and a Jewish New Yorker—raised on one grandmother’s denSign up for a workshop jang-guk and the other’s matzoh ball soup—artist with League of Kitchens at Lisa Gross hit on an idea that would unfold in the leagueofkitchens.com. kitchens of Queens. Learn about Project Two years ago, she launched League of KitchRow Houses’ social ens, a cross-cultural exchange achieved through safety nets initiatives at cooking and sharing food. Gross recruited and projectrowhouses.org/ trained women from a wide variety of backsocial-safety-nets. grounds—from Argentinian to Uzbek and everything in between—to lead workshops for the public in their homes. “It’s about recognizing the richness immigrants bring to our culture and society and elevates the experience of these women in a public way,” Gross said. Which is one of the reasons League of Kitchens has made a point of making it into the mainstream media. (This past January Stephen Colbert clowned his way through an “Indian Cooking with Yamini” workshop on The Late Show.) By recognizing the women for their cultural and culinary expertise through paid, meaningful work, League of Kitchens is an empowering flip of the script. So often, Gross notes, the intersection between immigrants and non-immigrants is a service-based experience—they work at dry cleaners or as dishwashers. “Here, the immigrant is the expert, the host, the teacher,” she said, “They are the one in control. They’re the person in power.” Nobody doubts that empowering the disenfranchised is a laudable endeavor, but some critics wonder where aesthetics come in. Simply put: is an Uzbek cooking class a work of art? “As an artist I can take inspiration WHAT IS SOCIAL PRACTICE ART? from both worlds— activism and art— Social practice art is sometimes called community and any world, and engagement, contextual practice or socially engaged artmake something inmaking. Its aim is to bring about heightened awareness teresting and meanof societal, cultural, ecological or political issues that are ingful,” Gross said. of immediate concern to that community. “As an artist you can be inspired by anyone and anything and make something new and you don’t have to feel confined.”
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“There is a growing awareness of the impact of inequality…Young artists are connected to social movements or to their ideologies through social media, and this will inevitably affect their interests and their work.” - Suzanne Lacy Art, she argues is about expanding ideas and definitions—especially within the world of art. “The art world can be rigid and conventional,” Gross said. “I reach a diverse and wider range of people beyond who would typically engage in performance art or public art.” “I think that aesthetics and politics and organization success go hand in hand in a social practice project,” Lacy said. “For instance, I might consider something more successful on one or the other of these bandwidths. In the case of aesthetics, these are determined by the disciplines, for instance, of installation or performance or video. In the case of politics, the accomplishment of a project might be to hone a theory or analysis, or reveal connections between systems. But on an organizing level, we would consider the impact of the project on people, the scope and size of the engagement, and possibly the ‘results.’” Ultimately, Gross addresses the issue in a way that many in her generation would likely relate to: she dismisses it. “In some ways, I left behind the art world. I think and work like an artist, but whether what I do is good art or not? I’m not interested in that question. Have I created a meaningful experience? That’s what I care about.”
PAMELA MILLER is a writer based in Los Angeles. Connect with Pamela twitter @pmmbrooklyn
ARE YOU AN ARTIST INTERESTED IN DEVISING A SOCIAL PRACTICE PROJECT? FIND YOUR INSPIRATION:
ENVIR0NMENT
DIVERSITY
Can lie youawake lie awake at night Can you at night picturing picturing the sea levels rise your the sea levels rise and still retain and still retain sense of sense of your humor? humor?
That’s a big one. Mind if we break it down a bit?
INCOME INEQUALITY
Did you read Thomas Pikettey’s “Capital in the Twenty-First Century”?
I think of it more as whimsy.
It’s the jester who can speak the truth. Yes, and now I’m all about historical context and the social contract.
WHAT’S YOUR PASSION?
No, I did a dramatic reading of it.
Also, have you been too busy trying to change the world to get to that ginormous pile of dirty clothes?
Great. I’m particularly interested in incorporating non-western perspectives.
Because you appreciate a theatrical flair?
I was thinking more about the African diaspora. How about indigenous cultures of the South Pacific?
Yes
KENYATTA A.C. HINKLE
Yes, and also because my friends couldn’t afford to buy a copy
LA POVERTY DEPT.
TOO MANY TO LIST
Yes
THE YES MAN
MICHEL TUFFERY
THE LAUNDROMAT PROJECT
Courtesy of LAPD (clock); movie poster for The Yes Men Save the World (Yes Men)
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“Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond
“Good Faith: Being a Christian
“The More of Less: Finding the
“Strong and Weak: Embracing
Fear”
When Society Thinks You’re
Life You Want Under Everything
a Life of Love, Risk and True
(Riverhead Books, 2015) by
Irrelevant and Extreme”
You Own” (WaterBrook, 2016)
Flourishing” IVP Books, 2016)
Elizabeth Gilbert, author of “Eat Pray
(Baker Books, 2016) by David
by Joshua Becker came about
by Andy Crouch, executive editor
Love,” digs deep into the author’s
Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons
after a casual conversation with
of Christianity Today, examines
generative process to share her
addresses living faithfully in a
a neighbor. Becker realized he
this unlikely mixture in the best
wisdom and unique perspective
sometimes hostile culture. If
was spending far too much time
leaders. It’s in people who use
about creativity. She offers insights
left unaddressed, they posit,
organizing possessions, cleaning
their authority for the benefit
into the mysterious nature of
the growing gap between the
up messes, and looking for more
of others, while also showing
inspiration, and asks us to embrace
faithful and society’s tolerance
to buy. So he and his wife decided
extraordinary willingness to face
our curiosity and let go of needless
for public faith will have lasting
to remove the nonessential
and embrace suffering. Rather
suffering. She shows us how to
consequences for the church in
possessions from their home and
than opposites, he suggests
tackle what we most love, and how
America. Kinnaman and Lyons turn
life. Eventually, they sold, donated,
strength and weakness are
to face down what we most fear. She
data-driven insights toward how
or discarded over 60 percent of
meant to be combined in every
discusses the attitudes, approaches,
Christians talk with people they
what they owned—and found more
human life and community and
and habits we need in order to live
know and love about the most toxic
freedom and more opportunity to
only when they come together do
our most creative lives. Whether we
issues, and how to keep believing
pursue the things that mattered
we find the flourishing for which
are looking to write a book, make art,
it without being judgmental and
most. His writing delivers a plan for
we were made.
find new ways to address challenges
defensive. They offer advice on
living more by owning less.
in our work, embark on a dream
being loving, life-giving friends
long deferred, or simply infuse our
despite profound differences.
everyday lives with more mindfulness and passion, Gilbert cracks open a world of wonder and joy.
CHECK OUT OUR NEW WEBSITE A fresh new look, inspiring articles, improved search and a “Do Good” menu to turn your good thoughts into actions.
C ARINGMAGAZINE.ORG
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KEEPCUP With a mission to
GOOD STUFF
encourage the use of reusable cups, a brother and sister cafe-owning team envisioned a sustainable cup that would work for specialty coffee as an alternative to disposable cups or heavy and breakable ceramic mugs. The result is KeepCup, the world’s first barista standard reusable cup that is BPA free and completely recyclable at the end of its use. Colors range from Cucumber ($12) to the chance to design your own mug. keepcup.com
CAUSEBOX Subscribe to Causebox ($49.95) and you’ll receive a new box each season with a selection of socially conscious products that in turn have allowed Causebox to donate more than 20,000 meals and support artisan groups in every corner of the world. causebox.com
ALTER ECO Based on the promise that food is fundamental to life, Alter Eco works directly
TAALUMA
with small-scale farmers
Taaluma employs disabled adults
to grow quinoa, rice, sugar,
in Virginia to make tote bags using
cacao and more, helping
fabric from various countries. By
them institute Fair Trade and
purchasing a tote bag (from $65),
organic practices to ensure
Taaluma provides microloans to
products that are reliably
farmers and business owners who
delicious, environmentally
live in that fabric’s home country.
responsible and socially just. The brand’s organic, fair trade Deep Dark Sea Salt
As the loans are paid back, the
LANDMINE DESIGN
company recycles the funds to buy
In “The MineField Village,” a stretch of Cambodia where the largest
chocolate bar ($3.99) is
concentration of land mines in the world is located, women often have to
crafted with 70 percent
make difficult choices to feed their families. Some leave for months at a
cacao and Fleur de Sel de
time to find work as migrant farm hands in Thailand earning less than a
Guerande sea salt, made
dollar a day, while human trafficking is a constant threat. Through Land-
free of emulsifiers, artificial flavors and soy. alterecofoods.com
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Mine Design, a job creation program of LightBridge International, women in the MineField can make a living from their own homes making jewelry like this three-tiered Rae necklace ($42). landminedesign.org
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more fabric. carryacountry.com