Reviewer: Leonardo Silva I work at a university and I get to work
with young people every day, and I love my job. I am so inspired by the students
that I get to work with. The bottom line when I work
with my students is, "Do you know how to get stuff done?" We talk about this so much
with my students that we just call it GSD, "Do you know how to GSD?" We talk about it so much
we put it on a T-shirt. And here's how you know
if you know how to GSD: Do you make excuses
or do you make things happen? Have you ever said
your campus has a bubble, or are you not so afraid
of imaginary bubbles? And are you affix into hoping maybe
someday do that cool idea you've had in your head for a while,
or are you actually going to do it, are you just going to do that cool idea
that you've been working on? Because it is my job that,
when you graduate, you'll have a BA, but it's also my job for you to get a GSD.
I want you to know when you graduate, that you will have something
on your rsum, and you'll know that you can manage
a community project and own it, that you can really get it done. And it doesn't matter to me
what your major is or your double major, very fancy, or your minor. It doesn't matter to me
what year you are in school, GPA. And, regardless of where you're
coming from or where you are going, anyone can do this, anyone can GSD.
So, the first thing we teach is that you have to listen
to the community, alright? So, when you do community-based work,
you don't walk in and say, "What's broken here,
and how can I fix it for you?" That's a terrible question, right? The question is, "What is your vision
for you community, and how can I bring value?" Those are two really
different questions, right? One starts with what's wrong,
and one starts with what's strong. And we should always lead
with our strengths. So, when we empower students
to get out and to do community work, we should train them
not to be superheroes, but to be super listeners. So, Jennie was an intern of mine, and she was studying,
doing her research on food deserts, which is an issue of access
to fresh produce, and listening is a very important part
of the research that we do.
Now, you can study food deserts
with maps and surveys. You could try focus group,
you can look at demographic data but, to do the kind of work that we do,
you really need a sense of place, you need to get into the community
that you are trying to impact. So, I told Jennie to walk around in this
red box until she found fresh food, and I said, "When you find fresh food,
take a picture of it and text it to me." So this is what she found.
She found one basket of apples.
And you can see that it's surrounded
by candy and chips and a slushy machine. So you can study food deserts by maps,
but you can study it by this picture too, and they're both the same parts
of the same issue, right? And so, we talked
to the people in this area, but we'd also talk to people
who know a lot about food, such as farmers. So, this is how Jennie came up
with her GSD project, and we call this the Veggie Oasis. So we go to the farmers' market
every Saturday and, between the last sale and when
farmers are packing up to go home, volunteers go up to them and say, "Hey, if there's anything you're not
taking back to the farm today, would you donate it to us?" So, we gather this food
in these gigantic wheelbarrows, we pile it into cars and we drive it
six blocks into this food desert, and we set up tables just like these
and we give away the food for free.
This is beautiful, locally-grown,
healthy produce, and people love it. And it costs nothing for us
to do this program. And to connect these dots,
all it took was some volunteers who really cared about this issue and were
willing to give their time on a Saturday. So, Veggie Oasis has given away
over 10,000 pounds of produce over two summers, and this is a completely
replicable program.
It's been very exciting
for our students to manage this. So, I would encourage you
that, if you have a great idea, if you have half of an idea -
half of an idea is OK - that you take your idea for a walk. It's got to get out there, because good energy
and good things and good people are attracted to good ideas, but, unless you get it out there,
no one will ever know. So, we're always looking, right,
for your idea or someone else's idea to make that magic 1 + 1 = 3, right, that, if you find the right connection,
it's going to be this fantastic thing.
And we call this kind of layering
good, better, best. So, this is Iggy. Iggy is the one not wearing
the Shakespearean outfit. Iggy took my grant writing class
and, in my grant writing class, we write real grants for real
nonprofits to raise real money, because fake money is useless.
So, she took my grant writing class, she is an English lit. Major,
she loves Shakespeare. We paired her with the local
Shakespeare festival, and she wrote a grant to bring
a hip hop Shakespeare artist to town. And that's really cool, that's good.
We paired her with
the local alternative school, and they don't have a ton of resources
to offer arts programming, and they figured out a way
to wrap a summer camp around this artist, and that's better, right? So, again, that "1 + 1 = 3." And then the school
was so excited about this that they figured out a way to give academic credit to the kids
who took the summer camp, so that the kids in that school
could stay on track to graduate, right? And that is definitely best. And there was one kid in the summer camp
that got to graduate on time because of this camp. So to that kid, that was like a whole
other level above best, right? That was awesome! He was done! And that wouldn't have happened,
except for Iggy's grant. So - You know, when we started Iggy's project, we weren't trying to increase
graduation rates, right? That was not the plan,
but when we took her idea for a walk, that's kind of what happened.
And I think today,
when we try to do good things, we get forced into logic models and inputs and activities and outputs
and outcomes and measurements and 10 percent of a baseline
over three years, and it's really difficult sometimes
to figure out what you are measuring. And sometimes I worry that we're
measuring things that don't matter, and things that matter
aren't being measured. And sometimes I really wish
someone would do a logic model on the efficacy of logic models, to see whether we should be
jumping through all of these hoops, right? Because we try to plan like this,
and box A leads to box B, but, really, life kind of looks like this. And so I think it's time for a new way of planning and evaluation
of the things that we do, because we need to train students,
to be creative and flexible and adaptable, and they need to be able to think on their
feet and make decisions in real time.
That's the kind of leadership we need, and we need to train them
to be that kind of leader. This is a picture of the first
tool library in the state of Illinois, and it's here in this community
over on the west side, and it was started
by my student named Matt. And, when I first met Matt, he was a sophomore accounting major
from a suburb of Chicago, and that might not seem like a straight
line to being a founder of a tool library, but he did it, because no one knows
how to GSD like Matt. So, he started the tool library.
This is a free tool-lending service.
You can come in and check out any of these
tools for free as you'd check out a book. So, he started in the back office
of a nonprofit, on the west side, with some donated tools. So, from the time Matt had this idea
to the time he loaned his first tool was eight months, right? And we did planning, we made boxes,
there were arrows, there were lists, you know, we did that, but we also knew that we would learn a lot just by opening the door and seeing
what was happening, who was coming in the door,
who was using the tools, what kinds of things that they needed. So, you launch GSD ideas
when you are ready, and not necessarily
when it is perfect, right? Because that learning in real time
is really, really valuable.
So, for those of you
who like the measurables, there's 670 members
of the tool library now, there's over 800 tools in inventory,
and we've done over 2,000 loans and that is successful, right?
Check, check; very successful. But also, there's a woman on the west side who got to repair her front porch
because of these tools, so she can sit out there
on lovely fall days, right, in good weather, while kids are walking home from school. And I don't know how you measure that, except to say that's the kind of thing
that makes communities really special. So, one thing that you can all do, as we are empowering
young people to get stuff done, is to be very enthusiastic
when they come to you with ideas, right? Your first impression makes an impression.
Even if that idea evolves over time, your big yes gives them the green light to think about big things
that they can do. So, I want you to give them
a big yes, right? So, imagine I want
to loan people chainsaws, Yes? Yes! We should definitely do that, right? (Laughter) I want to start a Spanish radio program
on the campus radio station. Yes! Okay, great! Let's do that! I want to teach
free music lessons to kids, and then I'm going to take grant money
and buy everyone ukuleles. Yes! We should do that, right? And I want to take that gray wall and I want to turn it
into a beautiful mural.
I'm going to get a bunch of kids together
and that's what we're going to do. Yes, absolutely yes.
We should do this, right? So, we've done all of these projects
and a whole bunch more, and after you say yes,
your job is to then be glue, right? They're young, they don't have
the social capital that you have, so we're counting on you
to get them connected to those other half ideas
swimming around out there that they need to talk to, right? Who should they talk to, who should
they call, where should they go? What should they visit?
What TED talk should they watch, right? So that they get inspired
and they can keep their ideas in motion. So, thank you for sharing
your social capital with our students. It's very, very valuable.
And, students, I will tell you, if someone is gracious enough
to loan you their social capital, you'd better not mess it up, okay? Don't do that. Social capital
is very precious. So, like I said, I work at a university, and we do this kind of work
with our students because it is important, right, because we believe
the community is our classroom, because this work is co-curricular,
it is not extra curricular. This kind of learning
is really, really important.
We're very serious about our job to raise leaders who are going
to work across sectors, nonprofits and for-profits
and higher education, and communities of faith,
local government, and just being great neighbors too, right? So, we're very serious about this job and I think, it would be great if every student really did have
to graduate with a GSD. Along side with their BA. Imagine what our
communities would be like if more kids were graduating with GSDs. Imagine what our campus would be like, imagine what our classrooms
would be like, and our schools.
That ripple effect of getting students
to do this work is very, very valuable. So, my lesson to you is: anyone can GSD, and everyone should. Thank you. (Applause).
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