SPAN Jan/Feb 2014 by SPAN magazine

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014 Rs. 20

America :: diversity from within Catalysts of Change Ending Gender Based Violence

Unique American Towns

Social Development

Tweets and Status Updates For a Cause

U.S.-India Relationship

Facebook and Twitter have become launching pads for anti-violence campaigns and centers of conversation on how to make the world a safer place for women.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry meets young Indians Secretary of State John Kerry met young Indian leaders who have participated in State Department programs in the United States, at Lodhi Garden in New Delhi.

A new SPAN is coming! We will soon go live with our fresh look and features. The redesigned website will be easier to navigate and include new features like a blog section, discussion forum, photo and video galleries and online contests. We hope that the updated SPAN will offer you a more engaging online experience. To subscribe to the SPAN ezine, write to ezinespan@state.gov

January/February 2014

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Beyond the Melting Pot By Mark A. Grey

Making Development Work By Michael Gallant

Tech Divas On the Rise By Jane Varner Malhotra

Bringing the Government to the People and the People to the Government By Carrie Loewenthal Massey

Twelve-Month Checklist for Applying to Graduate School: 6 to 4 Months Out By Don Martin and Wesley Teter

A Creditable Venture By Jason Chiang

Majority Minority By Howard Cincotta

The War on Gender Violence Gets Personal By Carrie Loewenthal Massey

Q&A With Denice Labertew

Always Prepped... to Succeed By Anne Walls

Achievers

HIRO CHANG/Presidio of Monterey Public Affairs

Courtesy PublicStuff

Publisher Walter T. Douglas

Editor in Chief David Mees

Editor Deepanjali Kakati Hindi Editor Giriraj Agarwal Urdu Editor Syed Sulaiman Akhtar Copy Editors Raktima Bose, Shah Md. Tahsin Usmani Editorial Assistant Yugesh Mathur Web Managger Chetna Khera

Art Director Hemant Bhatnagar Deputy Art Directors Qasim Raza, Shah Faisal Khan Production/Circulation Manager Alok Kaushik Printing Assistantt Manish Gandhi

Front cover: A group of sculptures by Jaume Plensa at “Harmony Walk” in Houston. Photograph by John Bielick

Research Services Bureau of International Information Programs, The American Library

Women

23 Travel

Too Old for a Good Story? By Carrie Loewenthal Massey

CumulusHumilis/Courtesy Flickr

Promoting Diversity in a Fast-C Changing America By Steve Fox

Diversity

The 10 Best Small Towns in America By Susan Spano

Published by the Public Affairs Section, American Center, 24 Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi 110001 (phone: 23472000), on behalf of the U.S. Embassy, New Delhi. Printed at Thomson Press India Limited, 18/35, Delhi Mathura Road, Faridabad, Haryana 121007. Opinions expressed in this 44-page magazine do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. Government. Articles with a star may be reprinted with permission. Those without a star are copyrighted and may not be reprinted. Contact SPAN at 011-23472135 or editorspan@state.gov

Promo Promoting Diversity By STEVE FOX

Right: Greenlining Leadership Academy Fellows.

“

The more voices you variety of backgrounds,

the better the decisions you’re going to come out with.

”

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Photographs courtesy Greenlining Institute

have that represent a

he United States is well on its way to becoming what is sometimes called a “majority-minority nation”—one in which no individual racial or ethnic group accounts for the majority of the population. Although what the U.S. Census Bureau calls “non-Hispanic whites” now represent more than 50 percent of the population, it notes that within five years that will no longer be true for children under 18 and by 2043, no single group will be a majority. Rapid growth among Hispanics and Asians is driving much of the change— between 2000 and 2010 more than 50 per-

cent of the increase in the total U.S. population occurred because of Hispanic population growth, the Census Bureau says, while what it terms the “Asian alone” population grew by 43 percent, faster than any other major group. In addition, many people in the United States, including of course, President Barack Obama, identify as biracial or multiracial—there are 57 possible combinations of the six major race groups used by the Census. With so many different groups and such rapid change, the need is apparent for organizations that promote understanding and

ty. Done in partnership with the Rockefeller Foundation, the survey found that positive sentiments about opportunities from rising diversity outweighed negative concerns. It also found that 71 percent of Americans support “new steps to reduce racial and ethnic inequality in America through investments in areas like education, job training, and infrastructure improvement,” compared to just 27 percent who are opposed. “Most people realize that we are all in this together,” says Vanessa Cárdenas, who notes that President Obama’s election was a milestone. Cárdenas

Courtesy Center for American Progress

cooperation among these groups. Prominent among those organizations is the Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C., which is headed by an Indian American, Neera Tanden, who is an influential voice on U.S. policy issues. The Center for American Progress describes itself as an independent nonpartisan educational institute dedicated to improving the lives of Americans through progressive ideas and action. The center recently released a report, “Building an AllIn Nation,” that surveyed public attitudes toward increasing racial and ethnic diversi-

DIVERSITY

y in aFast-Changing

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014

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Quick facts http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/stat

Center for American Progress http://www.americanprogress.org/

Building an All-In Nation

Photographs courtesy Greenlining Institute

http://goo.gl/LJGUFJ

The Greenlining Institute http://greenlining.org/

is the vice president of Progress 2050, a project by the Center for American Progress which seeks to build an agenda that is more inclusive of the racial and ethnic makeup of the United States. “Having a biracial President has given Americans a lot of hope,” she says. “It has been an incredible experience to see a person of color achieve the highest office in the land, and we can identify with the struggles he’s faced. At the same time, while we have come a long way, we still have a long way to go.” Organizations at the state and local level play major roles in advocating for racial and ethnic equality, Cárdenas says. In California, the most populous state, the Berkeley-based Greenlining Institute has been active in the field for more than 20 years. Hyderabad-born Preeti Vissa, Greenlining’s chief operating officer, notes that “California and, I believe, six other states, are already majorityminority states.” Greenlining takes its name as the opposite of redlining, the now-outlawed practice of banks and other lenders marking off low-income minority neighbor-

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hoods on maps as places where they would not make loans. Greenlining grew out of and remains connected to the Greenlining Coalition, a long-active and diverse group of Asian/Pacific Islander, African American and Latino community leaders. Rather than different groups competing to get ahead, Greenlining believes in making the economic pie bigger for everyone. The organization works to provide equal access for lowincome and communities of color to health care, energy, philanthropy, telecommunications and the democratic process. “We all need to be upfront about diversity being a good thing,” Vissa says. “The more voices you have that represent a variety of backgrounds, the better the decisions you’re going to come out with. Our goal is to decrease barriers so that everyone can achieve the American Dream. We want people to realize that whatever affects one person affects everyone and that without equality we can’t be as powerful as a society as we need to be.” Steve Fox is a freelance writer, former newspaper publisher and reporter based in Ventura, California.

Civil Rights Act After decades of struggle for equality and civil rights, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law on July 2 of that year by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Though neither the endpoint nor the beginning of this struggle, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was and remains an important milepost in America’s ongoing quest for equality and freedom for all. The framework for this law was outlined in a speech by President John F. Kennedy in 1963. After Kennedy’s assassination on November 22, 1963, a renewed push for passage of this law took place in Washington with President Johnson leading the charge. He appealed to legislators saying, “No memorial oration or eulogy could more eloquently honor President Kennedy’s memory than the earliest possible passage of the civil rights bill for which he fought so long.” The law banned many forms of discrimination based upon race, national origin, ethnicity and religion. Important elements of the law include ending unfair voter registration requirements targeting minorities, and an end to racial segregation in schools, workplaces and public accommodations. In later years, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was enhanced with greater enforcement powers and gradually, the vestiges of institutionalized racism and Jim Crow laws were dismantled in America. This year will mark the 50th anniversary of the enactment of this law and though the journey is not done, the United States has made great strides for civil rights in the last half century.

Immigration as a Two-Way Street

By MARK A. GREY

M Above: New American citizens wave U.S. flags after taking the Oath of Allegiance during a special Citizenship Day naturalization ceremony in New York.

illions of immigrants begin their new American lives in cities. Since the 19th century, immigrants have propelled the rapid growth both of American coastal cities like Boston, New York and San Francisco, and their interior counterparts, including Chicago, Cleveland and Kansas City. For most immigrants, settling in large cities allows them to build enclaves with fellow newcomers who speak the same language, enjoy similar customs and practice the same religion. These enclaves have often been located near jobs that attracted immigrants. Although immigrants by the thousands still settle in large cities like Los Angeles, a growing number of immigrants instead choose smaller U.S. cities, suburbs and rural communities. In general, these

new settlement patterns reflect the availability of jobs, but they also reflect the availability of affordable housing and good schools. Immigration to smaller U.S. cities and rural areas is bringing new population and economic and cultural renewal to many regions of the country. But it also brings challenges for both the newcomers and established residents. One metaphor that is often used to describe the United States is the “Great Melting Pot.” This refers to the fusing of many different cultures, languages and religions to form one national identity. However, the “melting pot” notion is too simple. The process of transforming a country of many immigrants into a nation has often been slow and complex.

To share articles go to http://span.state.gov JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014 5

COMMUNITIES

MARY ALTAFFER © AP-WWP

Integration of immigrants to the United States is a vibrant, dynamic process that involves not just immigrants but receiving communities, public institutions and private organizations.

BEBETO MATTHEWS © AP-WWP PAUL SAKUMA © AP-W WWP

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Above right: Chinese Lunar New Year parade in Chinatown in New York. Right: People stroll along Mulberry Street, decorated for the San Gennaro Feast in New York’s Little Italy. CLARK JONES © AP-WWP

Top: Samiul Haque Noor with his food cart in New York City. He is originally from Pakistan. Above: Signs written in English, Spanish, Vietnamese and Chinese welcome voters to the Office of the Registrar of Voters in California’s Santa Clara County.

KATHY WILLENS © AP-WWP

New Interactive Map Shows

Languages Spoken in America n interactive, online map released by the U.S. Census Bureau pinpoints the wide array of languages spoken in homes across the United States. The map is accompanied by a detailed report on rates of English proficiency and the growing number of speakers of other languages. Released last fall, the map and the report show that Spanish and Chinese are the top non-English languages spoken in the United States, and most of the U.S. population is English-proficient. “This study provides evidence of the growing role of languages other than English in the national fabric,” said Camille Ryan, a statistician in the Census Bureau’s Education and Social Stratification Branch and the report’s author. “Yet, at the same time that more people are speaking languages other than English at home, the percentage of people speaking English proficiently has remained steady.” The map uses data collected through the American Community Survey from 2007 to 2011. The languages available in the interactive map, titled “2011 Language Mapper,” include Spanish, French, French Creole, Italian, Portuguese, German, Russian, Polish, Persian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Tagalog and Arabic. After selecting one of these languages from the menu, users will see a national population density map, with each dot representing about 100 people who speak the language at home placed where these speakers are concentrated. The map also allows users to zoom in to a smaller geographic area, where each dot represents 10 people. The dots were placed in a random location within census tracts to protect the confidentiality of speakers. The report, titled “Language Use in the United States: 2011,” details the number of people speaking languages other than English

When many people talk about immigration they use the word “assimilation” to describe how previous generations of newcomers became part of American society and thus played their part in the “melting pot.” But the term “assimilation” often misleads. First, it assumes that many of our immigrant ancestors quickly and willingly changed their cultural practices and spoke English. In fact, history shows us that many immigrant communities remained distinct for generations. Secondly, insisting on the assimilation of newcomers assumes that their integration is a one-way process in which only the newcomers make changes in lifestyle, cultural practices and language. Nothing could be further from the truth. Integration of immigrants to the United States is a vibrant, dynamic process that involves not just immigrants but receiving communities, public institutions and private organizations. It is true that newcomers must learn English, and come to understand American lifestyles and cultural practices, and must find jobs. These adjustments can be very difficult and can take several years, if not decades, particularly for those who lack job skills readily transferred to U.S. workplaces and for whom learning English is difficult.

at home and their ability to speak English, by selected social and demographic characteristics. It shows that more than half (58 percent) of U.S. residents 5 years and older who speak a language other than English at home also speak English “very well.” The report also shows that the percent speaking a language other than English at home went from 17.9 percent in 2000 to 19.7 percent in 2007, while continuing upward to 20.8 percent in 2011. Of the 60.6 million people who spoke a language other than English at home in 2011, almost two-thirds (37.6 million) spoke Spanish.

The increase in non-English speakers continues a trend dating back three decades. Between 1980 and 2010, the number of people speaking a language other than English climbed 158 percent. The American Community Survey, which supplied the data for the map and the report, provides a wide range of statistics about people and housing for every community across the United States. The results are used by everyone from town and city planners to retailers and homebuilders. It is the only source of local estimates for most of the 40 topics it covers, such as education, occupation, language, ancestry and housing costs for even the smallest communities. Text courtesy the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of International Information Programs. JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014

FRANK FRANKLIN II © AP-WWP

JOSE LUIS MAGANA © AP-WWP SETH WENIG © AP-WWP

Go Online Becoming American STEVEN SENNE © AP-WWP

http://goo.gl/bUEr6o

Top: Immigrants get help with filing documents at Casa de Maryland, a community organization in Langley Park, Maryland. Above left: Dancers celebrate the end of a torch relay from Mexico City to New York. Right center: Botanica San Lazarito in Queens, New York, is a shopping and cultural center favored by new Hispanic immigrants to the city. Above right: Yasin Aden (left), a resident of Boston and immigrant from Somalia, recites the Pledge of Allegiance during a naturalization ceremony at Fenway Park in Boston.

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Established residents and their institutions also are responsible for integrating immigrants. “Accommodation” is probably the best way to describe the give-and-take. Schools, for example, provide interpreters to communicate with newcomer parents. Law enforcement officials learn about newcomer populations through cultural competency training. Individual citizens also help by tutoring newcomers in English and orienting them to local resources. A growing number of U.S. workplaces make reasonable accommodations for newcomers’ religious needs as long as safety is not compromised. Recognizing and managing expectations on the part of newcomers and citizens alike also is important. Immigrant newcomers cannot be expected to learn English overnight or “assimilate” and adopt American customs and lifestyles in a few short weeks. Immigrants are certainly transformed by settling in the United States, but their new communities are transformed as well.

Debates and social tension about immigration in the United States often reflect unrealistic expectations that newcomers will swiftly learn and speak English. These expectations often underestimate how long it takes to learn English, especially for adults. Anti-immigrant sentiment is often expressed with complaints about immigrants who “refuse to learn English” or about bilingual signs in stores and hospitals. Despite these social and political tensions, debate—and rancor—about immigration are neither new nor impossible to work through. Similar debates have come and gone throughout U.S. history. They usually reflected broad changes in the economy and job markets. Over the course of U.S. history, immigrants’ countries of origin have changed along with the languages, customs and cultures they bring. Today’s immigrants face the same challenges as earlier newcomers in adapting to U.S. society and culture. And some U.S. citizens evince the same negative attitudes toward immigrants that their own immigrant ancestors encountered. Yet, despite the reciprocal challenges of adaptation and integration, immigrants continue to seek better lives in the United States, and U.S. society continues to be transformed. Mark A. Grey is a professor of anthropology at the University of Northern Iowa and director of the Iowa Center for Immigrant Leadership and Integration. He is also lead author of “Postville USA: Surviving Diversity in Small-Town America.”

Making Development Work

Neil Buddy Shah and IDinsight streamline social change with clients around the world.

By MICHAEL GALLANT

et’s say you’re trying to improve education across India,” says Neil Buddy Shah, 30, leaning forward in his chair at a café in New York City. “How do you do it?” A daunting question indeed, and one to which there are many possible answers. “You could hire more teachers,” Shah suggests. “You could invest in textbooks and other infrastructure. Or you could provide incentives for teachers based on improvements in their students’ performance. These are all potentially good ways to go,” he continues, “but the question is, how do we put money behind the best idea possible?” Answering such queries is what IDinsight, an international nonprofit organization cofounded by Shah, was created to do. Combining deep expertise in economics, public policy and data analysis, Shah and his colleagues have consulted with governments in Bihar and Andhra Pradesh; Ministries of Health in Uganda and Zambia; and organizations like the World Bank Group to examine the real-world impacts that each client’s social programs are having. IDinsight gathers and interprets what Shah describes as “rigorous evidence” to help its clients spend their money on programs that

Photographs courtesy IDinsight

effectively solve social problems—and not waste resources on ones that don’t. The organization does its work by fieldtesting ideas, and then interpreting the resulting data to figure out which strategies are most effective. “It’s similar to how the medical field tests if a new medication is effective or not,” says Shah. “To give a simplified example, if we’re looking at schools and had 500 across India to examine, we’d randomly choose 250 to get more teachers and the other 250 to get better textbooks. Over the course of a year, we’d look at improvements in learning. At the end of the year, we’d see which group was performing better and know which strategy was more effective.” Before helping to create IDinsight, Shah earned a medical degree from Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, after which he studied developmental economics at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. It was there that Shah became friends with classmates who had experiences working in India, SubSaharan Africa and other areas—experience that well complemented Shah’s own time working on social programs in Rajasthan from 2006 to 2007 and in Bihar and

ACHIEVERS

Below: Students at a government school in Hyderabad where IDinsight worked to help government officials improve learning.

IDinsight http://idinsight.org/ To share articles go to http://span.state.gov JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014 9

Karnataka in 2011. “We all had experience running the kinds of studies that IDinsight does,” says Shah, “but what we saw was that these powerful academic research tools could be used to directly help organization managers and government officials make the right decisions.” On a personal level, Shah’s motivation to

Tech Divas By JANE VARNER MALHOTRA

Courtesy IDinsight

Michael Gallant is the founder and chief executive officer of Gallant Music. He lives in New York City.

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hood,” she explains, “but I had an aptitude for math and science and I was kind of led down that path to becoming an engineer.” After two decades in the engineering and technology fields, she found herself in the heart of Northern California’s Silicon Valley, looking out the back door of her biotech company. The view? “An impoverished neighborhood, a neighborhood that lacks, and a neighborhood with lots of black and brown kids that were like me 20 years ago. That was my light bulb moment,” she says. “It was clear to me, we can’t lose another generation. We can’t afford it as a commu-

Black Girls Code and the changing face of technology.

nity, we can’t afford it as a nation, to have a generation left behind without having access to technology and tools that really changed my life, and that will change everything we know—and think we know—today.” Inspired to make a difference, Bryant embarked on a mission. She founded Black Girls Code in 2011, to empower more girls of color to become tech leaders and innovators of the future. The organization reaches out to minorities who make up a tiny percentage of the tech industry’s workforce: girls of African American, Hispanic and American Indian heritage. It is mainly run as

W Photographs courtesy Black Girls Code

An IDinsight surveyor measures a child’s midupper-arm circumference—a measure of child malnutrition—in Bihar as part of IDinsight’s effort to identify ways to address the problem.

streamline positive change around the world is due in no small part to his family heritage; though he was born and raised in a small Pennsylvania town, his parents were Indian immigrants to the United States via East Africa. “I think having those roots really gave our whole family a sense of global citizenship,” says Shah. He also credits the writings of John Rawls, who Shah first read as a freshman at Harvard, with pointing him on his current career direction. “Rawls made the argument that our positions in society are accidents at birth,” he says. “We don’t necessarily deserve what we have as far as position in society, given that so much of it is dependent on whether we were born in a rich country, or to supportive parents, or given good educational opportunities.” “Reading that book, and seeing how many cousins I had who didn’t have the same opportunities that I had been given growing up in the States, really impacted me,” he continues. “There was little else I could do, other than devote my career to helping expand opportunities for people around the world.”

hen Kimberly Bryant’s 12-year-old daughter showed an avid interest in programming, the Bay Area biotech engineer enrolled her in a summer camp at Stanford University. It turned out her daughter was just one of a handful of girls in the camp, and the only African American girl. The situation echoed Bryant’s own experience throughout her career in technology as one of the few women at the table, and one of the very few women of color. Bryant graduated from an inner city high school in Memphis, Tennessee. “I had no clue what engineering was; those people were not walking around my neighbor-

On the Rise girls who are new to the technology. But sometimes it isn’t only the kids who learn. “We’d have a girls’ workshop on a Saturday, and the parents just would not leave,” laughs Bryant. “They’d sit around, they’d hover. We’d try to corral them. Then the parents wanted to learn to code! So we started to teach them, and they built video games.” Eventually the organization created classes for parents on how to engage and support their children in technology once they leave Black Girls Code. “Tapping into that parental support, giving parents the tools they need to

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an after-school program and on weekends. From humble beginnings, with just 14 students attending their first workshop in San Francisco, Black Girls Code has grown in two years to reach thousands of girls, ages 7 to 17, in tech education programs across the United States. Black Girls Code partners with local companies, community organizations, schools and universities to create regional chapters that harness the power of community relationships. They incubate their programs in each area to meet the fast-growing demand, with over 50 cities now on the waiting list to start Black Girls Code classes and work-

Black Girls Code http://www.blackgirlscode.com/

Champions of Change: Tech Inclusion http://goo.gl/rF1DtO

Far left: A Black Girls Code workshop in New York. Left: A Black Girls Code student in Johannesburg, South Africa. Right: Kimberly Bryant, founder of Black Girls Code.

shops. Offerings include courses such as Build an App in a Day, iPad Film School and Game Design. The organization recently offered a popular one-day workshop in Miami, Florida called Build a Webpage in a Day. The course introduces girls to basic website structure as well as HTML through activities that make programming social and fun. In another course in New York City a few weeks later, young women gathered for a sixhour mobile app development session using AppInventor. With no prior programming experience required, the classes are geared to JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014

support their child-parent engagement has been one of the most positive and impactful additions to the program,” Bryant says. “The power of parents in the work we’re doing has been a pleasant surprise.” The Obama Administration is addressing the digital divide, including the underrepresentation of minorities and women in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) fields in the United States. In 2013, Bryant was honored by the White House as a Champion of Change in the area of Tech Inclusion. At the event, she described the difficult process of navigating a 20-year career in the male-dominated tech industry. “One of the hardest things was surviving as a woman of color in electrical engineering,” Bryant explained. “It’s hard to be the only one, it takes a tremendous amount of grit to get through that.” “If all software is created by men, then we miss out on the perspective of 50 percent of the population,” Bryant told MIT’s Diversity@ML. With a growing number of unfilled jobs in the computing industry, Bryant wants to be sure more women of color have the training and skills to partici-

Always Prepped... to Succeed By ANNE WALLS

Courtesy Black Girls Code

Fahad Hassan's

pate in the booming tech sector. With a more diverse group of developers and innovators, the industry will better meet the demands of the broader marketplace. Interest in the effort has been phenomenal, including a successful summer Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign. Bryant hopes that as more black girls learn to code, the digital divide will continue to erode. And the world will see more women of color leading tech innovation. And maybe a new view out the back door. Jane Varner Malhotra is a freelance writer based in Washington, D.C.

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online dashboard helps teachers give personalized attention to every child in their classroom.Hassan

hen you think of teachers in the classroom, you think of them standing up at the chalkboard, handing out tests or reading aloud from a beloved novel. While it may seem that teachers have the same schedule as their students, the reality is quite different. For teachers, the work doesn’t stop when the bell rings. In fact, because of increasing demands of the educational system, teachers spend a lot of time doing the paperwork of running a classroom. Enter the Student of the Month (some might say year) for teachers and educators everywhere: Fahad Hassan, founder and CEO of Always Prepped. Hassan’s company has created an innovative, online dashboard for teachers that keeps all of their essential information in one place. “Always Prepped is tackling the big data problem in education by aggregating and analyzing the most important elements of a student’s classroom performance on a single dashboard,” says its website. It aims

to help teachers identify trouble spots and give personalized attention to every child in their classroom. Hassan estimates Always Prepped’s technology can shave as much as 20 working hours from a teacher’s workweek, which means more time spent on instruction, professional development and advocacy. Hassan was born in Bangladesh and came to America at the age of 6. As a senior at Virginia Tech in 2007, Hassan started a company called Daylert which did scheduling for students on their mobile phones. Daylert got funding and, two years later, was acquired by a larger company. This meant an innovative entrepreneur like Hassan needed to find his next project…and start his next company. “Always Prepped’s original goal was to develop a way for parents to help their children at home with math and reading,” Hassan says. But as they developed this concept, they noticed more and more companies popping up who

State Department photo

Above: Fahad Hassan (right) speaks to students about innovation during his tour of Sierra Leone in 2013.

including parents and principals, over the next few years. As Hassan says, “There are a lot of different audiences that impact a child’s learning: teachers, parents, principals, tutors, psychologists. Our goal over the next several years is to integrate as many different apps— anything that kids would work on online—into our system so we can get a deeper understanding of each child.” When asked what advice he would give to aspiring entrepreneurs, Hassan mentions a 2013 trip to Africa on the invitation of the U.S. State Department. He went to Senegal and Sierra Leone and talked to students about being an entrepreneur. “What I learned is that the basic tenets of business are universal,” Hassan says. “In the U.S., I’ve spoken at some top tier institutions, and after the talk, people ask questions. I did the same thing in Africa and the most profound thing happened: I got asked the same questions in the jungles of Sierra Leone as in the auditoriums of Harvard. How to I raise money? How do I find good co-founders? How do I know if my product is a good market fit?”

The best two pieces of business advice Hassan has acquired over the years are: “Number one: stay simple. People try to complicate what they want to do—it’s the number one mistake of new entrepreneurs.” What about his second piece of advice? Hassan laughs, then says young entrepreneurs shouldn’t be afraid to be focused on making money. “If I was a football player, my goal would be to score touchdowns every day. If I was a teacher, my goal would be to teach kids every day. If you want to be an entrepreneur, you need to do nothing more than make a lot of money every single day.” Anne Walls is a writer and filmmaker based in Los Angeles, California.

Always Prepped http://www.alwaysprepped.com/

Fahad Hassan http://www.fahadhassan.com/

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014

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were doing the same thing—and offering it for free. Hassan realized he was caught in what he calls “an ed tech movement in this country, where everyone was really revolutionizing the technology of education.” So he stepped back and decided he didn’t want to be another business in a crowded field—but there was a happy side effect. Because Hassan had been talking to and working with so many teachers while developing his initial idea, he realized these very teachers also needed help as they had to do a lot of paperwork on a daily basis. “So I thought,” Hassan says, “why don’t we help teachers and principals really analyze their student data and help them in their teaching based on how the kids are performing?” In 2012, Hassan and his company did a complete about-face and restructured to come up with the Always Prepped platform that exists today. Its software targets kindergarten through 4th grade teachers and has become a runaway success. Always Prepped also plans to build dashboards for different audiences,

Entrepreneur

Lily Liu’s PublicStuff app re-envisions civic communication.

Bringing the

Government tothe People

and the People to theGovernment By CARRIE LOEWENTHAL MASSEY

The DEMO Conference/Courtesy Flickr

ou could call her a mastermind of civic communication—or, one in the making, no doubt. When it comes to improving the dialogue between local governments across the United States and their respective residents, entrepreneur Lily Liu is certainly off to an exceptional start. Named in Forbes Magazine’s “30 Under 30” list of social entrepreneurs in 2012, Liu co-founded PublicStuff, a digital application that lets citizens report issues directly to their local governments and then track the status of their complaints all the way through to their resolutions. Whether it’s potholes, graffiti, downed trees, disruptive neighbors or sanitation situations, residents can submit their concerns through any electronic device—phone, tablet, computer—and PublicStuff will route it to the correct city official and

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track its management throughout the bureaucratic channels. Besides the mobile app, people can also report issues through PublicStuff’s website. Liu conceived of PublicStuff following the completion of her master’s studies in policy and government at Carnegie Mellon University and some time working in the government field. When she finished school, she took on a position with the city of Long Beach, California, where she was tasked with implementing a public information service. She spent more than a year researching existing technologies and ultimately found the city couldn’t afford to purchase what it really needed, according to an article in Smart Planet. Convinced that there was a “better way,” Liu sought to develop her own solution. In 2010, after about a year of work-

Go Online PublicStuff www.publicstuff.com

Blogs by Lily Liu www.huffingtonpost.com/lily-lliu/ ing in her spare time on the technology behind the project, Liu quit her day job to devote herself full-time to PublicStuff, she tells Forbes. She created the application with fellow Carnegie Mellon alumnus, Vincent Polidoro, who now serves as chief technology officer of the New York City-based organization. Today, more than 200 municipalities throughout the United States use PublicStuff, according to the company’s website. They range from major cities like Philadelphia to smaller metropolises like Plano, Texas. But even if a city hasn’t officially subscribed to the service, its residents can still lodge complaints or requests, Liu says in Forbes. The PublicStuff Community team will manually direct the submission to the correct city official and track its progress; it just takes a little longer to complete the process at first, she explains.

PublicStuff’s enrolled governments actually have capacities within the app that extend far beyond addressing residents’ concerns. They can use the software to customize their entire web, mobile and app interfaces, Liu tells Forbes. And while helping to manage more everyday challenges like graffiti, utility issues and road repairs may be the app’s most popular focus, PublicStuff has also proven vital during emergencies: Philadelphia relied on it to field distress calls and keep residents informed during the destructive Hurricane Sandy in 2012, according to Smart Planet. In developing PublicStuff, Liu has emphasized making it accessible to all residents, no matter their languages of origin. From a multilingual home herself, Liu recognizes the need to make communication feasible and easy for

people who may not speak English fluently, she says in Fast Company. To do so, PublicStuff added a feature called One Voice, which provides real-time translation for more than 17 languages, sending messages in English to city staff and back to the residents concerned in their native languages. As the PublicStuff team continues to fine-tune the app and market it to more metropolitan areas, they remain focused on improving usefulness for both residents and city governments and “better defining what civic engagement means,” Liu says in Smart Planet. With all she has already accomplished in the civic space, Liu stands to be a powerful influence in crafting that definition for years to come. Carrie Loewenthal Massey is a New York City-based freelance writer.

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014

A Creditable Venture By JASON CHIANG

The White House honors John Herrera for his work as an immigrant innovator.

F Photographs by PETE SOUZA/White House photographer

inancial access—knowing what one’s financial options are and having products and services to choose from—is closely linked to economic prosperity,” according to “Financial Access for Immigrants: Lessons from Diverse Perspectives,” a report by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and the Brookings Institution. “The success of today’s immigrants...depends on their access to mainstream financial institutions that can help them save money, buy homes, access credit, start businesses, and otherwise build wealth.” One organization which has made a significant contribution toward fostering entrepreneurship and greater economic opportunities for immigrants is the $128 million Latino Community Credit Union (LCCU). Based in North Carolina, it is the first fully bilingual financial institution in the state. In 2013, the White House honored its co-founder, John Herrera, as a Champion of Change for his work to financially empower the underserved. The Champions of Change program was created to honor Americans who are doing extraordinary things to strengthen and

16 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014

inspire members of their communities. An immigrant from Costa Rica, Herrera is currently Vice President of Latino/Hispanic Affairs for Self-Help Services, a family of nonprofit organizations whose mission is to create economic opportunity for all. “This recognition reaffirms our collective, entrepreneurial vision of creating a financial institution for our immigrant community that is culturally adept and provides economic opportunity for all in North Carolina,” Herrera said after receiving the honor. “LCCU has been built on a strong, cooperative community spirit, turning member savings into opportunities to purchase and build homes, establish local businesses, and to meet the financial needs of their community.” In the mid-1990s, Herrera began working to help solve rising instances of violence against unbanked Latino populations in Durham, North Carolina. The “unbanked” are described by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation as those who lack “any kind of deposit account at an insured depository institution.” As cases of assault and robbery kept rising, nonprofit leaders from Latino grassroots groups decided to look for answers. They discovered that criminals were targeting Latinos for robberies, commonly assaulting them as they left the check cashers on payday. “(Latinos needed to) have a safe place to deposit their money,” Herrera explained. “They were like walking ATMs after payday.” According to Herrera, twothirds of the Latino Community Credit Union’s members have

never had a financial account in their lives—neither in the United States nor in their home countries. The Credit Union National Association estimates that approximately 60 percent of all Latino immigrants do not have access to financial institution services, compared to 10 percent of the total U.S. population that is unbanked. Immigrants’ access to financial services, particularly at mainstream institutions, can be hindered by factors such as low income, limited English language proficiency, cultural differences or a simple lack of experience with banks and other financial institutions. Herrera’s grassroots work with state and local leaders, community advocates, and the credit union community resulted in his co-founding of the Latino Community Credit Union (http://latinoccu.org/) in 2000 to help solve these challenges facing the immigrant population. Since that time, Latino Community Credit Union has become one of the largest Latino-focused credit unions in the country with 55,000 member-owners and 11 branches across North Carolina. It provides a range of banking services as well as financial literacy education. The credit union’s business model has been so successful in North Carolina that Self-Help Services has used it to expand in similar unbanked communities in Northern California, Los Angeles and Chicago. Their success is a pioneering example of how businesses can creatively meet a gap in the market for the underserved, championing diversity and equal opportunity for all. Jason Chiang is a freelance writer based in Silver Lake, Los Angeles.

Majority Minority

JWSherman/Courtesy Flickr

A group of sculptures by Jaume Plensa at “Harmony Walk” in Houston. The seven aluminum-framed figures represent the seven continents and a mix of languages including Hindi, Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Greek and Cyrillic.

Meet America’s remarkably diverse future.

By HOWARD CINCOTTA

DEMOGRAPHICS

he course of America’s population makeup for much of the 21st century is clear: one of increasing ethnic and racial diversity that will transform the nation from majority white to one in which no single ethnic group dominates in numerical terms. In other words, a majority minority nation. The shift is not a single event, but a process that is already underway, with majority minority states—California, Texas, New Mexico, Hawaii—as well as cities and communities across the United States. The United States is “increasingly multi-hued, multi-lingual, multiethnic,” a recent study by Pennsylvania State University concluded. Here are snapshots of five communities where the future is now—locations that register the highest rates of diversity, measured in terms of four major ethnic groups: whites, African Americans, Hispanics and Asians. Needless to say, each of these categories encompasses even greater diversities of national origin and culture—not to mention another fast-growing group: those of mixed-race background who increasingly see themselves as a distinct fifth category.

Houston, Texas From 2000 to 2010, Houston grew faster than any other U.S. metropolitan area—and

became one of the United States’ most racially and ethnically diverse cities, according to a study by the city’s Rice University. Much of that growth came from immigrants who have moved directly into cities in the South and Southwest, according to Professor Michael Emerson, one of the report’s authors. “This is the secret of Houston’s phenomenal growth over the past decade,” he said. The city built itself upon the foundations of transportation, oil and manufacturing; its port ranks first in international tonnage and second in

Sacramento, California California’s capital is not only one of the United States’ most diverse cities, but among its most integrated, with a larger number of people of different

ndia may be the land of cricket, but the Sacramento Kings are hoping Indians can learn to embrace American professional basketball as well, even without household names like LeBron James or Kobe Bryant. That’s the plan of technology entrepreneur Vivek Ranadivé, born in Mumbai, and now the Kings’ majority owner. The Kings have created a Hindilanguage website (www.kings.com/hindi) and arranged for the opening home game of the

2013-2014 season to be broadcast live in India. The Kings dancers, who traveled to India during the summer, performed a Bollywood number during the game. Our vision is “to make the Kings a global brand,” Ranadivé said in a media interview. “So we’ve been very focused on building our brand in places like India.” Next step for the Kings-India connection: touring the country and playing exhibition games in 2014. —H.C.

RICH PEDRONCELLI © AP-WWP

Courtesy NBA

Can the Kings I Conquer India?

WALLY GOBETZ/Courtesy Flickr

LIZ HALLORAN/NPR ELISE HU/NPR Kylelovesyou/Courtesy Wikipedia

Above: Mahatma Gandhi district in Houston, informally known as Little India. Top right: Chef Anita Jaisinghani owns Pondicheri, a restaurant serving her versions of home-cooked and street foods of India. Above right: Buddhist monks outside a Zen Mobile store.

total cargo tonnage handled. But Houston today is also a national center for health care and medical research, and home to NASA’s Johnson Space Center. This dynamic and diversified economy continues to generate the jobs and opportunities that fuel both Houston’s growth, and growing diversity. “Houston runs about 10, 15 years ahead of Texas, 30 years ahead of the U.S. in terms of ethnic diversity and immigration flows,” Emerson said in an interview with National Public Radio (NPR). That diversity can be found throughout the city, including the Mahatma Gandhi District, informally known as Little India, that is a center for Indian shops and restaurants that have helped launch a food revolution in a city that, a few decades ago, offered little more than steakhouses and Tex-Mex food. At Pondicheri restaurant, for example, chef Anita Jaisinghani offers variations on the homestyle cooking and street food of India, all with local ingredients. “Houston is an immigrant magnet,” resident Glenda Joe told NPR. “Texas looks like me. I’m half Chinese, I’m half Irish. I also do business; I work with universities; I also ride horses. That’s what Texas is.”

Left: Sacramento Kings center DeMarcus Cousins. Above: Vivek Ranadivé (center).

JIM HENDERSON/Courtesy Wikipedia Photographs by HIRO CHANG/Presidio of Monterey Public Affairs

SAMU SZEMEREY/Courtesy Flickr

ethnic and racial backgrounds living nearer each other than in many other cities. Time magazine named Sacramento the country’s most diverse city in 2002, and a decade later, it has become even more so. By percentages, according to 2010 Census figures, Sacramento is 14.6 African American, 18.3 Asian, 26.9 Hispanic, 34.5 white, 1.4 Pacific Islander or Native Hawaiian, and 7.1 who identify themselves as of two or more races. The state government remains the city’s largest employer, and despite the closure of nearby military bases and a decline in agricultural processing, the city continues to grow with people moving from the San Francisco area and immigrants from Asia and Latin America. Sacramento hosts several major institutes of higher learning, including 1 of 23 campuses of the California State University system, and the nearby University of California, Davis, whose noted Davis Medical Center is located in the city. Sacramento celebrates its diversity with an array of ethnic-themed events throughout the year. One example: Juneteenth, which celebrates the end of slavery in 1865. For Sacramento, that meant a parade and festival to mark a milestone for both African Americans and the nation. For its professional basketball team, the Sacramento Kings, diversity means building an international fan base—in India. (See sidebar.)

Jersey City, New Jersey This New Jersey city, located across from lower Manhattan in New York, has been part of America’s vast immigrant experience since the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The city’s Liberty State Park overlooks two icons of that heritage: the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island—gateway for generations of migrants to the United States. Jersey City has substantial communities of

Top far left: Dosa Hut at India Square in Jersey City. Top center: Navratri celebration at India Square in Jersey City. Top right: India Square, also known as Little India, in Jersey City.

Above center and above: Performances at the annual Language Day event organized by the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center in Monterey, California. The event showcased the cultures of the different

languages being taught at the institute through dance, skits and fashion shows. Of the 25 most diverse cities in the United States, as measured by Penn State researchers, 10 are in California.

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014

Go Online

Racial and Ethnic Diversity Goes Local

Jersey City

http://goo.gl/6hlQY

http://goo.gl/9lMo5d

In Houston, America’s Diverse Future Has Already Arrived

Vallejo

http://goo.gl/D9R3ol

Diversity in Sacramento

http://goo.gl/fSbC6w

Diversity statement: Honolulu http://goo.gl/WEMhwV

http://www.discovergold.org/diversity/

people who either immigrated from or can trace their origins to Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Vietnam, China, Haiti, Poland, Italy, Ireland, the Philippines and South Asia. “If America’s a melting pot, Jersey City is truly the melting pot and it always has been,” said Jerramiah Healy, who served as mayor from 2004 to 2013, in an interview with Bloomberg News. “We were the reception committee for the 20 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014

world and that really hasn’t changed.” The city is also home to the United States’ largest Egyptian Coptic community, which highlights another fact about demographic change: it can transform virtually every aspect of society and culture, including religion. Jersey City declined in the mid-20th century as railroads and factories closed, but it has since recovered with redevelopment of its waterfront and construction

of a high-rise financial and business district known as Wall Street West. With its relatively affordable housing and proximity to New York, Jersey City boasts one of the highest per capita concentrations of artists of any city in the country.

Vallejo, California By any demographic measure, California leads the nation in diversity;

INGRID TAYLAR/Courtesy Flickr Philippine Culture Committee

S.Miramontes/Courtesy Flickr

of the top 25 most diverse cities, as measured by Penn State researchers, 10 are in California. At the top of the list is Vallejo. In percentage terms, 2010 census figures showed the city to be 32.8 white, 24.9 Asian, 22.6 Hispanic, 22.1 African American and 7.5 two or more races. “We’re a culturally richer community for that kind of diversity,” commented city manager Dan Keen

in an interview with the Vallejo Times-Herald. But he added that residents, regardless of background, “want good city services, jobs, economic opportunity.” After agreeing to a recent sales tax increase, city residents voted on which projects they wished to spend the additional money. The top item was street repair and lighting. They also chose to fund community

Above left: A view of Carquinez Bridge from Mare Island in Vallejo. Top: Vallejo ferry terminal. Above: Poster for Pista sa Nayon, a festival of Philippine tradition and culture, in Vallejo.

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014

DANIEL RAMIREZ/Courtesy Wikipedia

MARCO GARCIA © AP-WWP

Left: The Lantern Floating Hawaii ceremony at Ala Moana Beach Park in Honolulu. During the Buddhist traditional ceremony, lanterns are cast into the waters off the beach in remembrance of loved ones who have passed away. The ceremony is held on Memorial Day. Below: The Byodo-In Temple, a nondenominational Buddhist temple on Oahu. It is a replica of a 950-year-old Byodo-In Temple in Uji, Japan.

gardens, improvements to city parks, and small scholarships for high school graduates to attend local colleges. The Mare Island shipyard, parts of which are a National Historic Landmark, is being redeveloped as a new commercial hub and residential section of the city. And like Jersey City, artists from the San Francisco area are discovering that Vallejo has ample affordable studio, theater and work spaces.

Honolulu, Hawaii Diversity is no novelty for Honolulu, Hawaii’s largest city, which has an Asian majority population. Asians today 22 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014

constitute about 43 percent of the city’s population, according to 2012 census figures, with large numbers who trace their origins to Japan, the Philippines, China and Korea. The second largest category: 21.6 percent who identify themselves as belonging to two or more races—a trend that is especially pronounced among younger generations of Americans in other parts of the United States as well. Honolulu, located on the island of Oahu, is a center for government and finance. But the main business of Honolulu is the same as for the rest of the island chain: tourism.

The most famous location within the city is Waikiki, a white-sand beach neighborhood. Other popular island destinations that reflect Hawaii’s history and culture are the landmark volcanic crater Diamond Head, the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum of Hawaiian history and culture, Iolani Palace, and the nondenominational Buddhist ByodoIn Temple, outside the city, built in 1968 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the arrival of the first Japanese immigrants to Hawaii. Howard Cincotta is a U.S. State Department writer and editor.

Drumsara/Courtesy Flickr

The Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad opened in 1882 and still carries passengers 72 kilometers into the heart of the San Juan Mountains.

America

TRAVEL

The10Best Small Towns in By SUSAN SPANO

This is the second of a two-p part series. Copyright ÂŠ 2012. From Smithsonian Magazine, May, 2012.

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014

ed 37 ~~/Courtesy Flickr

Al_HikesAZ/Courtesy Flickr

t would be a bald-faced lie to say that Durango (pop. 17,216) isn’t devoted above all to outdoor recreation, from mountain biking and black-diamond downhill skiing to Iron-man triathlons, white-water kayaking and rock climbing. But between adventures in the surrounding San Juan Mountains, people celebrate life Western-style in the old railroad and mining town’s lamppost-lined historic district, among art installations along the Animas River greenway, and at the nearby Music in the Mountains festival come July (heavy on the classical offerings, but a bit of pop, too), the

Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad www.durangotrain.com

Fort Lewis College Community Concert Hall, and the Henry Strater Theatre, a.k.a. the “Hank,” a showcase for vintage melodrama and vaudeville. Best of all, the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad, opened in 1882 and now a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark, still carries passengers 45 miles into the heart of the high San Juans, pulled by a coal-fired, steam-driven locomotive, with the occasional bluegrass band or cowboy poet onboard for entertainment.

Above left: The Strater Hotel in downtown Durango was built in 1887. Above: Visitors at The Palace Restaurant.

Left and above left: The Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad. Above: The Durango Mountain Resort is located in the San Juan Mountains.

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CumulusHumilis/Courtesy Flickr

Colorado

All aboard for mountain fun, plus classical tunes and—gasp—vaudeville.

BETTINA WOOLBRIGHT/Courtesy Flickr

Durango

Photographs courtesy Butler County Tourism & Convention Bureau

Right: The Butler County Courthouse is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Far right: The Maridon Museum focuses on Asian culture.

ines and factories come to mind when people think about western Pennsylvania, but forests and farms stretch across the state, punctuated by small towns like the seat of Butler County north of Pittsburgh in the Allegheny River watershed. Butler (pop. 14,000) is an American classic that grew up along a trail blazed by George Washington, sent in 1753 to discourage French settlement along the frontier. Farmers followed, giving the region its country character and prized hand-built barns. The town serves as a business and cultural hub, with its own baseball team, thriving downtown, community symphony, theater and barbershop chorus. The Maridon Museum, founded by local philanthropist Mary Hulton Phillips, houses an excellent collection of Asian art, and the Butler County Historical Society maintains an old settler’s cabin, schoolhouse and the landmark 1828 Lowrie Shaw House. Butler owes its star on the map to the Jeep, invented just before World War II at the town’s American Bantam Car Company and still celebrated in August at the Bantam Jeep Heritage Festival.

KEITH SRAKOCIC © AP-WWP

Pennsylvania

An old-time rural hub as down-to-earth as its most famous product—the Jeep.

M Right: Marcie McDonald (left) and Ron Allen drive over log obstacles on the Jeep Playground at the Bantam Jeep Heritage Festival. Below right: Visitors at the Butler Street Festival.

City of Butler http://cityofbutler.org/ Courtesy Butler County Tourism & Convention Bureau

Al_HikesAZ/Courtesy Flickr

Butler

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014

PATRICIA WHITE/Courtesy Flickr

TONY FISCHER/Courtesy Flickr

With mock couture, edgy movies and ironic motels, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s no cow town.

Visit Marfa www.visitmarfa.com 26 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014

Above: El Cosmico, the vintage trailer park at Marfa (right).

t’s just a flyspeck in the flat, hot, dusty cattle country of southwest Texas—closer to Chihuahua than Manhattan. But it’s cooking, thanks to an influx of creative types from way downtown: filmmakers like the Coen brothers, who shot “No Country for Old Men” in Marfa (pop. 2,100), indie rock bands and others who have brought such outré installations as Prada Marfa, a faux couture shop in the middle of nowhere by the artists Elmgreen and Dragset. Cultural camp followers arrived on their heels to open galleries, bookstores, gourmet food trucks and lodgings (in a historic Pueblo-Deco hotel and vintage trailer park called El Cosmico). It may have all started when people first noticed the Marfa Mystery Lights, an optical phenomenon popularly attributed to UFOs and celebrated with parades, battling bands and exhibitions every Labor Day weekend. Or in the early ’70s when New York artist Donald Judd landed in Marfa to plant his massive minimalist sculptures on a decommissioned military camp outside town, the core of the collection now at the Donald Judd and Chinati foundations. These days—move over Austin—an Our Town grant from the NEA is helping Marfa’s not-for-profit Ballroom Foundation create the Drive-In, an open-air art space designed by the cutting-edge New York architectural firm MOS.

Marfa

Texas

Bottom: Dan Flavin’s large-scale work in colored fluorescent light at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa was completed in 1996.

ANTHONY CITRANO/Courtesy Flickr TIMOTHY BROWN/ Courtesy Flickr

KATHERINE STRICKLAND/Courtesy Flickr

Below: Prada Marfa, an installation by artists Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset, 42 kilometers outside Marfa.

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014

Naples Florida World-class music, design to die for and palm trees: What’s not to like?

ven when it’s snowing somewhere up north, around the historic Naples pier they’re catching mackerel, opening beach umbrellas and looking for treasure in the surf. Grandkids are building sand castles, pelicans are squawking and the Gulf of Mexico is smooth as far as the eye can see. Travelers have been coming to this small town on the edge of the Everglades ever since the late 19th century, when you could reach it only by boat and there was just one place to stay, the steeple-topped Naples Hotel, connected to the pier by a track with a cart for moving steamer trunks. Back then the visitors were chiefly sportsmen drawn to the abundant fish and game of southwest Florida’s cypress swamps. Once the Orange Blossom Express train reached Naples in 1927, followed a year later by the opening of the cross-peninsula highway system the Tamiami Trail, sun-seekers

KIM SENG/Courtesy Flickr

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arrived in boaters and bloomers, many of them Methodists from the Midwest who thought the drinking started too soon after Sunday church service in West Palm Beach. So when the snow flew, say, in Cincinnati, they decamped to winter retreats in Naples with wide sleeping porches, pine plank floors and whirring ceiling fans. Palm Cottage near the pier is a sterling example of classic Florida vacation cottage architecture. Built in 1895 for the publisher of the Louisville Courier-Journal, it is now headquarters of the busy Naples Historical Society, which sponsors walking tours through the town’s winsome historic district and bougainvillea-lined back alleyways. Sure, Naples (pop. 20,115) has malls and high-rise condos. Touristy development has taken over bayside docks where fishermen used to haul in giant grouper and tarpon. Traffic clogs the ritzy Fifth Avenue South shopping and restaurant district.

If most of the folks you meet are over 65, in Naples old age looks pretty golden. Ask a duffer with a fishing pole how he likes his martinis and he’ll tell you the third one’s always beautiful (Methodists notwithstanding). A fair percentage of the snowbirds are retired executives with cultural expectations and the means to pursue them. So the town has an astonishing concentration of deeply rooted cultural institutions like the Naples Zoo, located in a tropical garden founded in 1919 by botanist Henry Nehrling; the Naples Players, a community theater now in its 59th season; and the almost-as-venerable Naples Art Association, at the Von Liebig Art Center in Cambier Park. “A group of people wanted this little winter paradise to have the same cultural features as Northern cities do,” says Kathleen van Bergen, CEO of the Naples Philharmonic. The Phil, born [32] years ago of an

Ebyabe/Courtesy Wikipedia Chiot’s Run/Courtesy Flickr

Above: The Naples Pier is a favorite location for sightseers and fishermen. Top left: The Naples Botanical Garden has 4 kilometers of walking trails and six cultivated gardens. Top right: Built in 1895, Palm Cottage is the oldest house in Naples.

Naples www.naplesgov.com

amateur group on nearby Marco Island, is a renowned orchestra with a state-ofthe-art concert hall visited by the likes of Kathleen Battle and Itzhak Perlman. From September to May, it holds 400 events: classical and chamber music performances; concerts by pop stars; galas; Broadway musicals; and lifelong learning programs, along with appearances by the Sarasota Opera and Miami Ballet. Bronze sculpture by the Spanish artist Manolo Valdés and massive art glass by Dale Chihuly spill over into the lobby from galleries in the adjoining Naples Museum of Art. Its chiefly modernist collection got a new star in 2010: Dawn’s Forest, Louise Nevelson’s last and largest work of environmental art. Dozens of art galleries line Third Street South, just a few blocks from the designated Design District. Meanwhile, at the Naples pier, there’s bound to be someone at an easel, with a palette provided by the Gulf of Mexico—all sky blue, sand white and aquamarine. JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014

Courtesy Staunton Convention & Visitors Bureau

Virginia

taunton—drop the u to pronounce it like locals—looks west to the Appalachians, east to the Blue Ridge, at the heart of the Shenandoah Valley. The town (pop. 23,921) played its role on the early frontier and as a staging center for the Confederate Army, bred America’s 28th president (a highlight of the Woodrow Wilson Museum is the 1918 PierceArrow limo he used after negotiating the Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War I) and nurtured the Virginia School for the Deaf and Blind and Mary Baldwin College. But Staunton’s latter-day rejuvenation was based on something more prosaic-sounding: In 1908 the town created the city-manager government model, laying the foundations for growth that garnered such cultural assets as the Dixie Theater movie house, Mockingbird Roots Music Hall, Heifetz International Music Institute, the outdoor Oak

Grove Theater and, above all, the American Shakespeare Center, housed in a landmark re-creation of London’s Blackfriars Playhouse, where original staging techniques such as roledoubling are replicated and the dramaturge doesn’t shy away from a bit of Elizabethan bawdy now and then. Staunton’s National Historic Register red-brick downtown has galleries, a camera museum, an old-fashioned trolley and Tiffany window-lined Trinity Church. Up the hill at Victorian-era Thornrose Cemetery, there’s a separate section holding the remains of almost 2,000 Confederate soldiers, while the band shell in nearby Gypsy Hill Park serves as the summertime home of the 70-piece Stonewall Brigade Band, founded in 1855 to feature the then-novel saxophone. Susan Spano is a New York City-based freelance writer.

UR Living Learning/Courtesy Flickr

A Shenandoah mix of Confederate relics and Elizabethan theater.

30 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014

Above: The Frontier Culture Museum at Staunton tells the story of the people who migrated to colonial America and of the life they created in the new country. Right: Beverley Street in Staunton is a classic Victorian main street. Below left: The American Shakespeare Center. Below center: A scene from “The Taming of the Shrew” at the Shakespeare center. Below right: Gypsy Hill Park. Bottom right: The Staunton trolley service runs on three routes. Below far right: Mary Baldwin College.

Photographs courtesy Staunton Convention & Visitors Bureau

Staunton

www.visitstaunton.com

JEAN BOYD

KATHY FRAZIER

Visit Staunton

32 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014

KATHRYN DENMAN/Courtesy Flickr

Too Old for a Good Story? By CARRIE LOEWENTHAL MASSEY

Young adult literature is as much for grown-ups as it is for kids.

To share articles go to http://span.state.gov JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014 33

LITERATURE

iding a subway in any major American city, you are likely to see a few things among the adults on the train: sleepers, hand-held video game players and numerous readers of young adult (YA) literature. Adults reading kid books? Yes, in droves. Adults account for 55 percent of purchases of young adult literature—which publishers gear toward 12 to 17 year olds— and these grown-ups aren’t buying the books as gifts for the younger set, according to study results from Bowker market research. So what’s the allure? In today’s hectic culture, young adult literature can offer an escape to magical worlds while simultaneously conveying raw and real emotions that touch the hearts of younger and older readers alike. “Reading a good young adult novel is like listening to your favorite playlist,” says Kate Bedard, 34. “It brings out the teenager in you.” And it’s the teenage years’ “inherent drama” that is at the core of young adult literature and drives the genre’s appeal, according to New York City-based literary agent Adriann Ranta. “First kisses, first loves...the fear and humor of messing things up when the stakes feel so high...There’s something for everyone to appreciate in YA because we recognize so many of the subjects in ourselves,” Ranta says. Bedard appreciates the books’ humor, too. “A lot of adult lit tries to be more important than it really is. …I find the writing for young adult books to be clever. It’s usually really funny,” she says. The writing translates well to the silver screen, as well, which has helped spark the young adult craze and repeatedly sell out movie theaters across the United States. “Publishing and film are very parallel industries, now

Young Adult Books Attract Growing Numbers of Adult Fans http://goo.gl/zbqkrr

Your Favorites: 100 Best-Ever Teen Novels

Go Online

http://goo.gl/GKy6pQ

Young Adult Library Services Association http://www.ala.org/yalsa/

Young adult best sellers http://goo.gl/mYgDXa

adult literature may not be all the rage forever. Ranta fears “we’re in a bit of a bubble,” and she predicts that five to 10 years from now publishers will turn to more “new adult” fiction, targeted toward 20-somethings. In the meantime, however, editors still seem to seek “cool YA ghost and witch stories and sci-fi,” and continue to publish “amazing new voices” in the category, Ranta says. She does caution, however, that “vampires are a bit passé.” No matter the popular vote, Bedard pledges her faith to the genre. “I’ll always look to YA,” she says. “I get more attached to the characters and think they are more relatable. It’s not going to go out of style for me.” Carrie Loewenthal Massey is a New York City-based freelance writer.

prettybooks/Courtesy Flickr

more than ever, and I think the success of “The Hunger Games” and “Twilight” in Hollywood has fed the YA boom the same way the YA boom is feeding Hollywood. The films have surely expanded the audience of those willing to pick up YA, since both of these series have been so ubiquitous in general culture,” says Ranta. Beyond the blockbuster series, Ranta has several favorites. They include “Code Name Verity” by Elizabeth Wein, which shares a tale of young female pilots in World War II, compelling for “its sheer adventure and totally heartbreaking story of friendship,” Ranta says. She also recommends “A Monster Calls,” written by Patrick Ness and “gorgeously” illustrated by Jim Kay, which tells the story of a boy who copes with his mother’s illness by “(possibly?) inventing a timeless monster.” And finally, “The Miseducation of Cameron Post” by Emily Danforth focuses on homosexuality in small-town Montana in a style that “was so beautiful, and funny and sad,” says Ranta. Light topics these are not, but part of what makes young adult literature so magical and attractive is that its language feels “very immediate, like the actions are happening as we read,” says Ranta. The reader witnesses “the new experience of love, loss, addiction, self-reliance, etc. reform[ing] the character into someone very different.” And, Ranta adds that this transformation usually, though not always, resolves “with a sense of hope for the future.” Despite its popularity, however, young

This article is the third of a series on what to do in the 12 months leading up to submitting your graduate school application.

Twelve-Month Checklist for

Applying to Graduate School 6 to 4 Months Out

to where you live. Many institutions recruit in areas they have identified as strong or developing markets. 3. Another option is to take a virtual tour of the facilities. Most admissions websites offer this option. 4. Make sure to evaluate your visit on your spreadsheet (see the September/ October edition of SPAN for a sample research spreadsheet) as soon as possible after your visit. Reputation, rankings and reality are very different things. When it comes to reputation, while an institution may be wellknown or considered prestigious, this does not mean it has to be on your final list or that it has the best program for you. As mentioned earlier, rankings are useful. But remember that those publishing them are looking to sell what they publish. If there is considerable difference between one ranking and the next, it is likely that good

EDUCATION

6 months before applying 1. Most applicants will not have an opportunity to visit the campus before applying— that’s ok. But if you have the opportunity, a campus visit is a unique chance to see if the school is a good fit for you. Institutions usually offer two ways to visit. a. Most institutions provide opportunities to visit the campus during the academic year. Visitors can usually attend classes, take a campus tour, meet current students and talk with someone in the admissions office. b. Some institutions also have special campus visit programs, which include sessions on the admissions process, financial aid, housing, student life, career services and more. These special programs often take place in the fall. 2. One alternative to a campus visit is to find out if admissions information sessions, also called receptions, are being held close

As we suggested in our previous articles, graduate school is not something to take lightly. It involves a major investment of time and personal resources. Be sure to do your “due diligence” and get all of the information you need.

By DON MARTIN and WESLEY TETER

To share articles go to http://span.state.gov JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014 35

methodology is taking a backseat to selling copies of the ranking or is designed for advertising purposes. Finally, it is what is real for you that is most important. It is your time, energy and financial resources that are being spent. 5 months before applying 1. Prepare for standardized tests. Be sure to take a look at the websites of programs you are interested in to see which tests may be required. On your research spreadsheet you have a column for application requirements. Start familiarizing yourself with both the logistics of taking the tests, as well as actually doing some practice test taking. 2. Explore available resources for test prep. In India, visit or contact an EducationUSA Advising Center and library to learn about the resources available to you. Also, as most graduate school applicants are asked to take the GRE or GMAT as well as an English-language assessment, there are primary sources of information

you should review. These include: a. The Educational Testing Service in Princeton, New Jersey (GRE and TOEFL iBT) b. The Graduate Management Admission Council in Virginia (GMAT) c. International English Language Testing System (IELTS) d. Pearson Test of English (PTE) Academic Should you not score as well on your test as you had hoped, take it a second or even a third time. This does not make you look less competitive in the application process. Rather, it demonstrates that you are trying your best to perform well on the test. 4 months before applying 1. Narrow your list of options down to those to which you will submit an application. 2. Take a close look at your research spreadsheet. Which of your options have the highest evaluations, based on your research and admissions information you received?

3. Focus your time and energy on a limited number of options. 4. Be careful about applying to only one institution. If you are absolutely certain that this is by far the only option, be sure to prepare yourself for whatever decision you receive. It is important to keep all the information you have gathered on all of your options until you have made your decision about where you will attend and have actually enrolled there. Should plans change in some way or you decide to hold off on your graduate studies for another year or longer, you will not be starting from scratch when you resume the research process. Don Martin is a former admissions dean at Columbia, University of Chicago and Northwestern; and author of “Road Map for Graduate Study.” Wesley Teter is a former regional director for EducationUSA in New Delhi. He is also the editor of the multimedia outreach campaign, 10 Steps to Study in the United States.

By DON MARTIN and WESLEY TETER

36 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014

n the competitive landscape of U.S. graduate school admissions, a reluctant and tepid letter of recommendation can be the difference between being waitlisted and being admitted with funding. Veteran higher education consultant Donald Asher argues that “Interestingly enough, the more competitive the program, the more the letters count in the final decision-making process. All the finalists for these programs will have outstanding grades, academic preparation and test scores; the committee will decide based on the essay and letters of recommendation.” Here are five tips to consider as you prepare your applications: 1. Select your letter writers carefully. Many international applicants mistakenly believe that endorsements from high-level executives or senior academics will impress a U.S. admissions committee. This is not true. A persuasive letter from your current supervisor about your career potential will carry more weight than someone higher up who does not know you very well. 2. Your letter writers are busy people. Approach them early and give them at least four

to six weeks to write your letter. 3. Some applicants are tempted, or even encouraged by their recommenders, to write their own letters of recommendation. This is unethical and could mean the end of your plans for graduate study. Instead, discuss what makes you a great fit for that specific program. Keep in mind that whenever a letter appears suspicious, U.S. admissions staff will “red flag” it and verify that the letter was, in fact, written by the sender. 4. To help your writers draft the letter, request a meeting well in advance of when you plan to apply. Come prepared with your grades, an example of your best work, a CV and a copy of your latest statement of purpose. It is critically important that your recommenders understand which programs you are applying to and why—only then can they prepare a customized and compelling letter for you. 5. Your academic and professional career is a marathon, not a sprint. Be sure to send each professor and recommender a sincere thank-you card once the letter has been submitted on your behalf.

The War on

Gender Viole Gets Personal By CARRIE LOEWENTHAL MASSEY

One in Three Women reignites community activism, raises awareness of violence.

ne in three women throughout the world will suffer...violence in her lifetime; she will be beaten, raped, assaulted, trafficked, harassed or forced to submit to harmful practices such as female genital mutilation.”—From “Not a Minute More: Ending Violence Against Women,” a 2003 report published by the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM). It’s this statistic that shocked Cheyla McCornack back into action, initiating her second round in the fight against gender violence. A veteran of the front lines in the war on violence against women, McCornack started working at Seattle Rape Relief in 1976. One of the oldest rape crisis centers in the United States, the organization had a “very progressive and feminist” approach, McCornack says. She would visit low-income housing projects and provide direct outreach to the women living there, while also focusing on outreach to underserved populations. The organization closed down in 1999. McCornack saw her early work bring about real change. But she also saw the movement to fight gender violence shift during the next 30 years, evolving from the community activism she knew to a more corporatized shelter system supported by big organizations that focused on fundraising. She came upon UNIFEM’s report when at a crossroads in her own life, and it

38 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014

helped her decide what she wanted to do next: create an organization that would once again be a catalyst for change. In 2005, McCornack co-founded the aptly named nonprofit organization, One in Three Women. She set out to develop relationships with people and groups engaged worldwide in combating gender violence. Her favorite partnerships are with those who “want to challenge oppression…and are much more progressive than the status quo,” she says. Based in Seattle, Washington, One in Three Women helps other small programs with everything from developing their leadership capacities to overcoming technical hurdles, implementing structures for fund development and creating strategic plans. Some of the organizations with which it partners include PAVE (Promoting Awareness, Victim Empowerment), a nonprofit organization with offices in Washington, D.C. and Chicago and founded by a victim of sexual assault with a mission to “shatter the silence and prevent sexual violence through targeted social, educational and legislative tactics,” and The Unifying Center in New York City, which provides mental health services to men and boys around the globe, primarily those who are victims of trauma or abuse, in an effort to help them not turn violent.

Photographs courtesy Cheyla McCornack

nce

One in Three Women www.oneinthreewomen.com

UN Women www.unwomen.org/en

Etsy shop http://goo.gl/1nZS5g To share articles go to http://span.state.gov JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014 39

WOMEN

Carrie Loewenthal Massey is a New York City-based freelance writer.

Far left: Cheyla McCornack. Above left: Masks made during a project with Yorgum, an Australian organization that offers counseling services. Above: A charm created by One in Three Women as part of its Speak My Name campaign.

Go Online

One in Three Women also started a campaign called Speak My Name, which offers a way to keep alive the names of women who have died as a result of gender violence. Family members or friends of the deceased can go to One in Three Women’s Etsy shop and order custom-made charms that feature the victim’s name. “People want that personal connection to the person who died and they want to show it to others. It’s a powerful way of continuing to honor the victim,” says McCornack. Along with the charms, sales of all of McCornack’s original art available in the shop go to support the organization’s efforts. McCornack is also committed to raising awareness of gender violence. To that effect, One in Three Women sends a quarterly newsletter to nearly 7,000 people, which highlights projects on which the organization is working and other efforts going on in the field. Victims of violence often contribute poems or stories. Through all of its outreach and assistance to those fighting gender violence, One in Three Women has one overall focus: changing that UNIFEM statistic. “Our goal is to make that [one in three] number a zero…to go from one victim to none,” McCornack says.

HEMANT BHATNAGAR

Denice Labertew Denice Labertew is the director of Advocacy Services for the California Coalition Against Sexual Assault and works with community-based programs and universities locally, nationally and internationally to help build more effective responses to sexual violence, domestic violence, dating violence and stalking. She has been an advocate working for eliminating violence against women for more than 20 years. Labertew visited Mumbai, Chennai and New Delhi in December. Excerpts from a Google hangout with SPAN magazine. Can you talk about your experiences in India? It has been a really amazing opportunity, I didn’t know anything about India before I came and have had the opportunity to learn a lot about the work that is actually happening here already. Obviously, issues of gender based violence and violence against women are at the forefront right now and there are so many collective movements of Indians really doing some of this work at a grassroots level. So I was excited to really be part of learning about their programs and may be supporting some of their development.

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With all your wealth of experience that you have on working on these issues in the United States over the last 20 years, can you talk about some initiatives or strategies that you have seen that have been the most impactful and successful in the United States to combat gender based violence. I can think of about three sorts of models that have been really helpful. The first being a real focus on community engagement around addressing the issues of violence against women in the United States. So, models that grow up within communities instead of take a top-down approach. One of the models that I am thinking of right now really looks at taking community members and building their capacity to go out into their own community and do a lot of the work around supporting survivors, providing resources and doing prevention work. Another initiative that has really been successful in the U.S., in terms of prevention strategies, has been looking at prevention very comprehensively. That could include, and should include, everything from really effective responses and laws that support survivors of gender based violence and violence against women to empowerment-based development programs for women, addressing masculinity and healthy masculinity for men and boys, looking at healthy relationships and a lot of these awareness campaigns or social norms change campaigns. When you talk about masculinity you would say then that men in society

have just as much, if not more, of a role in combating gender based violence against women? Absolutely, and we look statistically actually at the perpetration of violence against women, gender based violence is overwhelmingly committed by men. But in addition to having the role of actually stopping assaultive behavior it is important for men to look at their own ideas about masculinity, to be willing and able, even if they would never even consider abusive behavior, to step in with their peers and to stand beside women in addressing this issue, become partners in the movement to end gender based violence. What specific strategies do you think could be effective to help end violence against women in this country and are those the same strategies that have been effective in the United States? I suppose that the response to the second question is really that the strategies that we have used, in particular around community development, I think would be actually helpful based on what I have seen here in India. Some of the amazing work that’s happening at a grassroots level in India could really be supported in its development to take on this issue from communities. I have met many college students, I have met many women’s groups and young men’s groups who are really interested in creating change in Indian society and to develop their capacity and create skills for them will actually begin to address it from the inside.

U. PRASHANT MITRA/The Telegraph

S. Ambassador Nancy J. Powell visited Jharkhand in November and interacted with teenage football players who have competed at national and international football tournaments. These girls from rural Jharkhand were trained by Yuwa India, an organization that teaches girls to play football and promotes health and education. Founded by an American, Franz Gastler, the organization believes that “Team sports provides a powerful platform for young women to gain confidence to make a change in their world.” http://yuwa-india.org/

olice chiefs from major U.S. cities and their technology partners met with representatives from Indian law enforcement agencies at the first India-U.S. policing conference in December in New Delhi. “Today’s conference will be a dialogue—a sharing of best practices among peers. India’s population is larger but we share similar security interests. Together we can help each other hone our skills, adopt new techniques, and better ensure the safety and security of our populations,” U.S. Ambassador Nancy J. Powell said in her remarks at the conference. http://newdelhi.usembassy.gov/sr051213.html

Photographs by RAKESH MALHOTRA

HEMANT BHATNAGAR

ender-based violence remains an epidemic of global proportions that cuts across every country, every social and economic class, ethnicity, race, religion, and education level,” U.S. Ambassador to India Nancy J. Powell said at an event marking Human Rights Day and the conclusion of the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Based Violence, in December. “Worldwide, nearly one-third of women have experienced physical or sexual violence. This is unacceptable and must serve as a call to action from all of us, wherever we are in the world,” she said at the event organized at the New Delhi American Center. The Ambassador also announced the winners of a social media contest on “Ways to increase awareness and reduce gender based violence on college campuses.” Aishwarya Chandok’s entry was adjudged the best. Zubair Malik and Ganesh Khatiwada were the first and second runners-up. https://www.facebook.com/americancenternewdelhi

ucknow University became the first North Indian university to offer a new, inter-disciplinary American Studies certificate and diploma course based on a curriculum developed by American Studies professionals in India with support from the Public Affairs Section of the U.S. Embassy. Professor S.B. Nimse, the university’s vice-chancellor (second from left), along with Assistant Cultural Affairs Officer Joshua Polacheck (left) launched the course on December 20, 2013 at an all-India conference on American Studies, with attendees from elite institutions across India. The curriculum is flexible enough to be used for certificate and diploma courses at universities and colleges across India. http://goo.gl/VQTxHx

T.G. VENKATESH

SIMRANJEET SINGH

Registered under RNI-6586/60

New York’s first and only all women’s mariachi band, Flor de Toloache, toured India in November and performed in Chennai (above), Amritsar (left), Hyderabad, Kolkata and New Delhi. The band’s tour was organized by the U.S. Embassy’s Public Affairs Section. The mariachi band represents the shared heritage and culture of the United States, Mexico and Canada.