Woodhull Institute For Ethical Leadership - Attention Women! Free Education!

"We believe that it is time to learn about, engage in and share stories of real women with real success," so say the fellows at the Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership. No a bad opening statement in a time when women are led to believe that cellulite free thighs are more important than an engaged mind.

Woodhull and Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty are working hard to change that perception. They want girls and women to know that they don't have to buy into the images they are sold by the media and large corporations. Woodhull and Dove have partnered to share success building tools through online training sessions that promote ethical development and empower women to act as agents for positive social change.

Young women care about the world around them but are so easily distracted by a culture that tells them there is no time to care. Girls have to update their MySpace and Facebook pages, shop at the mall, download MP3's, buy expensive clothes and cosmetics, watch the shows they TiVo'ed while they were at school, and text their friends on their new Envys. There just aren't enough hours in the day to be socially aware, too. This is hogwash. Girl's, please don't buy in.

Use your mind, develop your intellect and your heart. Use some of your time to learn about the
world around you and how others live outside your neighborhood. The Woodhull Institute has made it so easy. Instruction by women who've walked the path before you are just a click away.

They've provided fun and interesting video lessons on financial literacy. It is just as important to know how to manage your money as it is to know where to spend it.

Learn how to be an activist who gets results. There are positive and proven ways to publicize a cause and ways to push for the changes you desire. Every woman has an issue burning in her heart, something she cares passionately about. Learn how not to be afraid to make it happen.

Public speaking is an important skill that all women should embrace. It's been said that people fear speaking in public more than they fear death. Why are we so afraid to express ourselves and share our views? Move past the lump in your throat and speak out and up for what you believe in. Rashmi Sharma will teach you how.

As a mother, a partner in a relationship or in the business world, negotiation is key. What's even more important is how we negotiate. This is not a win at all costs world and when we realize that all of our lives will be better. Listen to a Woodhull fellow share the concepts of positive negotiation.

All of this is available FREE online in the form of video seminars at the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty website. This is one corporation that is making concerted efforts to empower women around the world. Kudos to them. And Kudos to an organization like Woodhull for providing this great resource of learning for all.

The Woodhull Institute is a prestigious retreat center for women located in upstate New York. They are non-profit and non-partisan. To understand Woodhull all you need to do is read their Credo. The last line is particularly meaningful...To understand that what we send out into the world comes back to us.

Amen and thanks to Dove and Woodhull for sending out into the world such a great and positive message. No doubt it is coming back to them in a joyous way. Take advantage of the free video seminars and start sending your best self out to the world.

One Million Masterpiece - Collaborative Giving Through Art

When I opened my email this morning there was a pleasant surprise waiting for me. My little drawing on One Million Masterpiece was chosen for inclusion in the OMM 2008 Calendar! My drawing is part of February. The category is love. How fitting, considering what I spend my mornings writing about. I posted my drawing on the sidebar so you can see it. So are you wondering yet what One Million Masterpiece is and how to buy one of these great calendars? Can you find my art in the snapshot below...lol...it's not easy. I'll give you a hint..it's 12 across, 7 down.

One Million Masterpiece was launched in 2006 with the goal of becoming a record breaking piece of collaborative art. One million people from around the globe would each be given a small square of the 80 meter by 30 meter finished product. They would use the adobe flash drawing tool provided on the site to create a work of art, doodle, whatever they wished. Then the completed art would be unveiled in London, UK on July 11, 2008 (World Population Day), as a sign of unity between people around the world.

Selling pixel space as advertising is not a new idea but the twist of using the concept for art and the betterment of mankind instead of profit is.

This ambitious effort is run by a group of volunteers who believe in the power of art not only to bring people together but to help change the world. Signing up for OMM is free but the staff hopes that you will upgrade your account to use the added features of the drawing board. When you do this the money is directly donated through their website to a charity of your choice. You can send the modest $6.50 fee to Save the Children Oxfam, ActionAid, World Cancer Research Fund, or the World Wide Fund for Nature.

At last update 27,123 artists are participating from 174 countries. That is a far cry from the 1 million needed to complete the project. The unveiling was scheduled for last July but has been postponed until 2008 in hopes that the target number will be reached by that date. As of May 2007, OMM had raised over $19,000 dollars for the listed charities. They hope to raise over 1 million by the completion of the project.

OMM is also an interactive community filled with active members. It's a social meeting place for artists and everyday people from the four corners of the globe. To quote the One Million Masterpiece website, "The One Million Masterpiece is an attempt to reunite people with art by turning an established relationship on its head. Instead of asking people to interpret the work of individual artists - we are asking the artistic community to embrace the collective work of every day people. Who is more qualified to deliver a message about our complex society than the people that live in it?"

I tend to agree but I found some people with descending views. They poo-poo the effort saying that it is nothing but chaos on canvas and that the world community will lose interest before it's completed, like a child with ADD. I say they are wrong and I'm proud to be part of history.

Go here if you would like to see a snapshot of all the pages of the calendar. To purchase an OMM 2008 Calendar go here. All the proceeds will go to the OMM project to cover fees for producing the art. No one, artists or staff, are paid from these sales.

Join me and claim a square. You can sign up to make your own drawing. Be one of the million to reconnect with art and charitable giving.

The Harlem Renaissance - A Spiritual Awakening

On a recent trip to New York City, my cab driver leaned out the window and said, "This is Harlem, you know, W.E.B. Dubois, Zora Neale Hurston, all that stuff." We quickly rounded the block. I barely had time to look back at the tall red brick buildings.

To my dismay, I had to admit that I knew very little about why this 3 mile square area of Manhattan was important. I'd seen movies about 1920's Harlem and heard the names of famous African-Americans tossed around at dinner parties but that was all I knew. In the small Southern town where I grew up, African-American culture was rarely discussed and if it was, it was always with a sense of dismissal or comedy. They were not to be taken seriously. As a teenager, I thought the only influential Black man in history was Martin Luthur King Jr. and even he was looked upon with a certain disdain.

I came home from my trip determined to learn more and fill the missing gaps in my history knowledge. Here is what I found:

The Harlem Renaissance, originally named the New Negro Movement, was a time of spiritual, intellectual, and literary awakening with an explosion of art, poetry and social thought. Between 1920 and 1930, almost 750,000 African Americans left the South, and many of them migrated to urban areas in the North to take advantage of the prosperity—and the more racially tolerant environment. The neighborhoods of Harlem drew nearly 175,000 African Americans, turning the area into one of the largest concentrations of Blacks in the world.

This instant community of determined, open minded people proved to be the perfect breeding ground for new thought proving the opportunity for group expression. It has been characterized as a time when social disillusionment was transformed into race pride.

Out of this environment came such influential people as poets Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen. Zora Neale Hurston and Nella Larsen wrote the first critically acclaimed novels by African-American women. They paved the way for giants such as Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Ralph Ellison and many others among a new generation of African-American novelists, poets and playwrights.


W.E.B. DuBois was the first African-American to earn a PhD. He once wrote to former President Rutherford B. Hayes, who in 1905 was the current head of a fund to educate Negros challenging him on his position that there was not one Negro in the country with the credentials to study abroad. DuBois anger about the statement caused him to apply to Hayes directly. DuBois was granted funding and sent to The University of Germany in Berlin. After which, Hayes assured DuBois that he'd been misquoted by the newspapers and never made the remark that angered him so.

W.E.B. DuBois went on to help found the NAACP and was the autocratic editor of it's journal "The Crisis" for over 25 years. He is called the father of social science due to his work in Philadelphia and tireless study and writings about his own social group. Martin Luthur King Jr. wrote of DuBois, "History cannot ignore W.E.B. DuBois because history has to reflect truth and Dr. DuBois was a tireless explorer and a gifted discoverer of social truths. His singular greatness lay in his quest for truth about his own people. There were very few scholars who concerned themselves with honest study of the black man and he sought to fill this immense void. The degree to which he succeeded disclosed the great dimensions of the man."

I love this quote I found - "Children learn more from what you are than what you teach." - W.E.B. DuBois 1987

I plan to keep exploring this part of history that seems to have been totally ignored by the adults in my life during my formative years. There are so many great Americans to discover and read about, so many to be inspired by, so many worthy of study by our young people. Maybe things have changed since I was in school and children are taught these things. It's sad to think that only college students who sign up for African-American studies are afforded this knowledge.