Making a Difference

No I wouldn’t give you false hope on this strange and mournful day. But the mother and child reunion is only a motion away.

Paul Simon

Mother and Child Reunion

This is the first of a two-part series on the topic of choosing to change lanes to become more socially engaged at a grass roots level. Since publishing Changing Lanes, Susan and I have come across several remarkable change artists who have deepened our understanding of the issues related to effective social entrepreneurship. Two such women, Robin Smalley and Connie Duckworth, are the inspiration for this series. I was privileged to meet each of them through completely separate circumstances, but tonight, as I verified their website links for our blog, I discovered that Robin and Connie are connected to one another. They are each 2008 recipients of the Skoll Foundation Award for Social Entrepreneurship. I’m flabbergasted that I got to meet two of the eleven recipients from all over the world, but I’m not surprised that Robin and Connie received this special recognition for their work. When you read their stories, you won’t be surprised either.

Are you tired of listening to everyone around you bemoaning how the world is going to hell in a hand-basket? Does all the hand-wringing drive you nuts but you haven’t come up with a more potent response than writing checks to several worthy charities or political organizations? After making the contributions, do you wonder if your mney is being well spent? Despite the bazilllions raised over the internet for Katrina and tsunami victims and for the various political campaigns, I know that we Boomers haven’t begun to tap the wellspring of desire to give back to society that we feel at this transition point in our lives.            

Faced with the choice of how to use your newfound liberty from the time-constraints of a 24/7 career, you may wonder, “Isn’t there something I can do that would have a real impact and be more satisfying than just making a monetary gift?” In our chapter entitled Pay it Forward, we quote the poet and business consultant, David Whyte:              

“We take to the road of midlife not as the beginning of disengagement and retirement but as a newer and profounder path to meaningful work, the work of belonging in a deeper way to those people and things we have learned to love.”           

After we completed the initial research for the book, we have had the privilege of meeting more inspiring change artists whose stories of reengagement we want to share with our readers. If Robin Smalley’s lane change story doesn’t get your juices flowing, you might want to call the paramedics to get your heart started again.

Robin’s first lane change came at 41, her second a 48, and now at 52, she describes herself as having “come alive for the first time ever.” Raised by parents who were both itinerant performers, Robin got accustomed to dealing with new situations—like 12 different schools in 12 years. This independent young woman seemed to do everything before everyone else, traveling to Europe on her own at 14 and going off to college at 16. At Tufts, she met her life-long friend, Karen, who seems to guide her steps even to this day.            

She aimed herself at a career in television, believing that she could make the greatest social impact doing news and documentaries. She’s held every job from publicist to writer, director and producer. One of the first women to join the Directors’ Guild, she recalls attending meetings with only four other women surrounded by 2,000 men. Her specialty was the hour magazine format, working with the likes of Leeza Gibbons on shows dealing with controversial subjects like teen pregnancy, alcoholism, drug abuse and consumer issues.

Gradually, the exploitation TV genre replaced the magazine format and Robin no longer could justify working 6 days a week on total “crap.” She found herself envying her architect husband Jeff who worked at home, whereas she was missing out on witnessing their daughters’ first steps. She desperately wanted to change lanes but her income and DGA sponsored insurance were hard to walk away from. So she entered into some tough negotiations at home. By asserting that it was her turn to feed her soul, she got Jeff to take a job with a firm to secure steady income and insurance.

Some time before this, while on hiatus, Robin had volunteered with Street Lights, an organization that grew out of the L.A. Riots to train and place inner city kids in TV productions and commercials. The experience convinced her that she wanted to do something in the Not for Profit world. She started her own consulting business out of her home, helping other NFP’s with their publicity needs. Even though the family finances were cut back by 75%, she was HAPPY! They managed because they had never lived up to their income level, her parents helped with the kids’ education, and they cut back on all their expenses aside from travel, which is held as a sacrosanct expenditure in their household.           

Then, as often happens, serendipity struck but more importantly, Robin was paying attention and answered the call. Through a media project on adolescent reproductive health she helped produce at her daughter’s school, she was offered a real job to work on similar public health issues as executive director of a Not for Profit. What she knew about Public Health was pretty minimal but she did know how to talk to media people which served her well in making her transition.

So far, this lane change sounds more like a walk in the park, but life is rarely so accommodating. In a two year period, Robin found herself in a battle with breast cancer, her mother died suddenly, her step-father died as well, and then Karen, her best friend and the godmother of her kids, went into the hospital for minor surgery and never came out. This time, the always resilient Robin broke down and suffered a depression that would not release its grip.

What saved her was the cajoling of Karen’s brother, Mitch, an OBGYN in South Africa. He convinced her to spend a week there so she could experience the work he was doing to prevent the transmission of the AIDS virus from mother to child. Mitch did this work out of his car but had managed to set up seven sites and had raised $80 thousand. Very laudable, but a drop in the bucket relative to the magnitude of the problem. Robin fell in love with Cape Town and with the challenge of applying her producer skills to take Mitch’s small operation to the next level. She called Jeff and said simply, “I have to do this.”

Now Jeff was normally a homebody, whom Robin couldn’t get to move across town to Santa Monica let alone half way around the world. But he bought into the move to Cape Town with an enthusiasm that completely surprised her. Indeed, Robin came to believe that it was her mother and Karen conspiring together in heaven to get her out of her funk and engaged in what she was meant to do.

In countries where there is one nurse for every 650 patients and no doctors, no safety nets and no welfare, mothers2mothers enlists the help of the HIV infected mothers themselves to train pregnant women on the preventability of transmission of the disease to their children. They provide hot meals along with the sense of sisterhood needed to overcome the stigma of infection so that the women return for their lifesaving doses of nevirapine. A key feature of the program is that they pay the counselor mothers a living wage which gives them status in the community and the courage to leave abusive relationships when necessary.

To become a mentor mother and receive this compensation, the woman must first disclose her infection. Imagine the courage it takes to make this admission! Without m2m, these women might never develop the self-esteem to imagine a life for themselves that isn’t all about going to funerals. They can make a difference for themselves and for their communities.

Robin threw herself into the effort, staying up nights to master all the arcane acronyms like AZT and ARV that abound in the AIDS world. Her passion for the mission is infectious. As executive director of mothers2mothers, Robin went to work and grew the program to 73 sites and a budget of $11 million funded mostly from private donations. On a trip to Africa, Laura Bush became a convert to the cause, and has invited Robin, Mitch and six mothers in the program to the White House. It isn’t a stretch to point to this exposure as a major factor in the President’s commitment to conquer the AIDS epidemic in Africa. We may not all agree with his methods, but his commitment is genuine.

 After a year, Robin had to return home to be near her ailing father, but she continues the work from here. m2m now employ over 600 HIV positive mothers and is helping over 50,000 infected mothers a month. Robin continues to extend their reach by setting up sites in seven countries and developing partnerships with UNICEF (in Swaziland) and Bill Clinton’s foundation (in Lesotho). She does tons of public speaking, wins many awards, and gets to go to the White House and Congress. But her heart is in Africa with the mothers.

Robin is convinced that the only way to save the continent from the epidemic of AIDS is to work at the grass roots level, one mother at a time. This seems to be a recurring theme about effective ways to give back that we will take up again in part two of this series. The point is that we as individuals can make our efforts count by getting personally involved at ground level. If we can’t go to Africa or wherever ourselves, we can at least make sure that the organizations we give our money to do more than just help us feel good. They must be accountable for getting results.

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