 Good afternoon. Buenos dias, bon dia, bonjour, and hello. Welcome to our very first Y-Line Network Facebook Live web chat. My name is Melissa Dilber and I work here at the U.S. Department of State on the Y-Line Network team. The Y-Line Network is a vibrant community of young entrepreneurs and change makers from Latin America and the Caribbean who are committed to fostering economic development and prosperity, security, human rights, and good governance in the hemisphere. Members of the Y-Line Network like yourself, hello, have access to digital resources, training, and network opportunities, and a chance to connect with senior leaders in business and government as well as other young leaders working to create change in your community. If you're not already a part of the Y-Line Network, you can sign up at Y-Line.state.gov slash network. That's Y-L-A-I.state.gov slash network. Speaking of change and creating change in your community, we're here today to talk about just that. Problem solving through community action is the first live interactive chat that is part of our Y-Line Powers Communities initiative. We're going to look into the ways that you can reach out to the community beyond just your immediate surroundings to help address needs that are perhaps in your business or in your community itself. How do you engage people around a cause? How do you find them? What tools are out there to help? And why do it in the first place? What's the point of community action? Luckily, we have an expert on social responsibility and community action with us today. Jeff Franco, the Vice President and Executive Director of City Year D.C., is here to chat with us and answer your questions about engaging with your communities, the benefits, the hardships, and to talk about the free online course Organizing for Community Action that is available on our website, Y-Line.state.gov, right now. Joining us for this chat, too, are our friends at the Y-Line Network in Mexico City. Hello. How are you? Hi, everyone. Greetings from Mexico City. We're very excited for this opportunity to have a number of questions answered about community organizing. I'm here with some colleagues from the Embassy. My name is Frances Westbrook. Excuse me. I'm one of the Americans here at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City. I'm here with my colleague Miguel Angel Vasquez. And over on the other side is Benjamin Madina. He's here helping us with our technology. And we're here with interested parties of Mexico City who are interested in hearing more about the topic. And we do have some questions for our guests. So without ado, I'm going to turn the microphone over to you and we can ask our first question. Thank you. Hi, how are you? My name is Ingrid Roscos, CEO of Yuliet International. And when we are talking about, my question is directed to Jeff. When we are talking about community action or problem solving through community action, a word comes to me that is commitment or engagement. How do you engage community to make things happen? Well, thank you first of all for having me here today. This is a great honor. And so hopefully I can provide some insight at least to what my experience has been. As far as getting commitment from the community, I think that as I can speak, especially here in Washington, D.C., I think we're fortunate because we have a lot of people here that want to change the world, that see themselves as change agents. And so it's a little easier sometimes to get them motivated to actually serve with us. But I'm always reminded of the famous quote from Margaret Mead, never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. And so I think it just takes a lot of grass work root proactively on the part of whatever your organization may be. In this case, it would be City Year. We have, I'm not sure if you're familiar with our organization, but we're like an urban peace corps for 17 to 24 year olds. So we have a cadre of approximately 200 young people that have given a year of their lives to work full time as service volunteers. In this particular case, we work mostly in the school system and underserved communities. And so we really rely on our young people to motivate the larger D.C. community to serve in our projects. One thing I would suggest, one thing that has worked very well for us has been when we have a service project and we want community volunteers to become involved, we do a lot of the front work before they get there. So for example, one of the projects we'll do is we will beautify a school in a poor part of the neighborhood and we will spend weeks there on end getting the projects ready to work. And so when the community volunteers arrive, it's like what we would call a turnkey project. Everything's ready to go and the young people are actually the ones that are serving the other young people or adults in the community. So I think proactivity is incredibly important. I think what I have found is that most people out there want to serve, want to give back. They just are not sure how to do it and your organization can be that organization that facilitates service happening in the community. Okay, excellent. Thank you very much. And we have one more question from our participants here in Mexico City, Alicia. Hi, hello. Thank you for having me here. Alicia from Green Momentum based on the development manager. I guess my question is also directed to Jeff and I wanted to ask Jeff, what's the best advice you would give young leaders to encourage others to follow them? I know you have a vast experience in different leadership sectors, but you could sum up what's the best advice you could give them to encourage them to be good leaders or moral leaders. Yes. Thank you for the question. I've been doing this work for about 10 years and I think the best advice I could give any leader is that they feel a genuine authentic passion for what it is that they're leading on, what's the cause they're working on. I think that comes through immediately. I would say any success that I've had or I've had via my organization is because I'm very passionate about young people. I'm very passionate about working with students. I'm very passionate about working in underserved communities. And I'm a big believer that it takes a village to help make communities stronger. And so I think that I have such a passion for it. I think that comes across. I've seen other leaders that are good leaders in terms of leading a team but may not necessarily be as enrolled in whatever the mission may be. And I think that comes out as well. So I just can't emphasize enough to... I really talk about having a vocation, that cross-road or intersection between your greatest desire and the world's greatest need. And I think that for people that stand in the intersection and I can certainly say that I have for the past 10 years, it's amazing how you're able to enroll others to be part of that movement as well. So especially in this work, which is really hard, sometimes unforgiving, you have to really have an incredible desire and commitment to effect change because I always say that it will be a struggle but if you really are passionate about it could be a beautiful struggle. And so I just think authentic leadership really wears their heart on their sleeve of what they're trying to lead and it's amazing how people will follow that because I think people are hungry to be led by people like that. I really like... Thank you so much for your questions, Mexico City. I really like that phrase, beautiful struggle. I know that you can often get lost in a struggle or an entrepreneur can get lost in failing, not succeeding, getting knocked down once in a while again. So it's nice to be able to perhaps have a perspective to look at it and say, hey, I like this struggle. This is going to help me in the long run. I would love to, Jeff, ask you a little bit more about yourself. So to come back to you and your roots and your organization and talk more about City Year, what brought you to DC or are you from here originally? How did you get involved with City Year? What would you like to tell our audience about the City Year? And also, do you have a connection to Latin America or the Caribbean or any sort of background that you'd love to share? Sure. So in terms of my background, I was born in Cleveland, Ohio. I'm not sure if you might be familiar with that. It's a smaller city north of here. But my father is from Dominican Republic. So I have spent my entire life, although living here, going back and forth to Dominican Republic for a long time now. And so my mother is actually American. Her family is actually from Poland. I have an interesting mix, but I've always felt a very strong kinship to my Latin American roots. And so I love getting involved in anything, whether it be traveling to those countries or actually working with them. And having opportunities like these is just really, truly an honor for me to be able to do this. I moved to DC about 20 years ago. And like many people that moved to DC, I came here for school. I was doing graduate work in international affairs. And it became home. I was involved in many different things prior to City Year from doing internships with the State Department, both with the Mexico desk here and also with the Department of Commerce in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. So the international space is something I've really enjoyed and I've always been very comfortable with. City Year was something that really, I always felt that I was led to it. I was introduced to this organization through a former mentor and supervisor of mine at another company. And it was just, I mentioned that whole intersection that I was lucky enough to find that intersection for the first time in my life in that type of work. And so I referred to it briefly, but City Year, we're an education nonprofit. And so our mission, and we're in 28 cities across the country, we also have sites in Johannesburg, South Africa, and I believe three sites in the United Kingdom. And our mission is really that every child deserves a quality education. And what we find oftentimes in the United States is that in underserved communities and poor communities, generally speaking, communities of color, they don't oftentimes have the same opportunity. And so education equality for us as an organization has become a civil rights issue. And so so many things are being dealt with in those communities with the kids that come into the building. And the question that we asked ourselves at City Year was, we have all these young people, the 17 to 24 year old, some just out of college, some out of high school, and what would be the best way that we could affect change in this community? And we really felt like having them serve in these schools because they are essentially near peers. So they're close enough in age to the students, that they become friends and buddies, but they're still old enough in age with their mentors. And so the way we look at the schools that we serve in is we feel the gap between what the student actually needs in terms of support and what the schools are able to provide. And so we have teams of these young people, we call City Year AmeriCorps members, that serve all day, every day in these schools from the morning bell through the after school program as near peer tutors, mentors, and role models. So they become not only role models for the kids they're serving, but also for the larger community. They wear a uniform, they wear a red jacket that says City Year on it. And really identifiable from the people in the community, these same young people run these projects and programs that we do in terms of beautifying schools. And so they lead adults in the community. We've had the Secretary of Education to serve with us, President Obama and his whole family serve with us on Martin Luther King Day a few years ago. And so I love seeing young people really being leaders for the larger community. I think they really serve as role models, for the kids that they're supposed to be providing these interventions with, but also for the community that we mentioned that want to serve, that want to give back, that want to make their communities greater. And they can look at City Year as being an organization that can help find them those avenues and how to do that. That shows them it's possible, first of all, and then there's also venues and where to go and that people are interested that they can engage in that way. And they become intrigued by these young people because they're giving a full year of service. And for adults that are already in their full-time jobs that don't have the necessary bandwidth to do something like that, they admire these young people. They start thinking about when they were young people and here they are giving year of their lives and it affects these young people for the rest of their lives because they understand the power of service. Martin Luther King said, everyone can be great because everyone can serve and so we really buy into that in our culture with City Year. Your community, rather City Year, is pretty much 100% dedicated to social responsibility to this leadership and giving back. But what about organizations that aren't entirely about that outreach and community action? Are there organizations that work with someone like yours like City Year? Do you have any advice for people who perhaps have a business that they're running that's not similarly 100% dedicated, but how could they do something? What's that something somebody could do? Yeah, so truthfully the work that we do is a public-private partnership. So when I talk about the support we have to do the work that we do, AmeriCorps is part of that, which is actually federal government support for the work that we do. But we have a number of corporations, individuals, other non-profits that we partner with in all the work that we do. So we're a large non-profit, but we're still small compared to the challenges that are out there in the communities that we serve in. And so we have companies that will actually provide volunteers to these service days that will actually do service with their young people in the schools. We'll have companies that will provide financial support for us to do the work that we do. We'll have other non-profits that, for example, have a particular craft that they provide in a school, but may not necessarily have the volunteers for it, and they'll ask us to help provide some of our AmeriCorps members to help provide that support. So we're always looking to partner with other organizations, but hopefully we wouldn't exist without the partnership from AmeriCorps, from the companies and from the individuals that believe in the work that we do. So someone, if their organization that they work with is not a non-profit or, in fact, they shouldn't perhaps feel hesitant to reach out to a local non-profit and say, hey, how can we help? How can we partner? No, on the contrary. I think that non-profits want to find that because we know that we can't do what we do without them and the companies also realize that they have their own mission to accomplish on their end. They can't dedicate their souls full time to this. We are, and we can help partner with them to do it. So we've had plenty of firms that have done just that that will say, can we send 100 of our employees to serve with you one day? And we would love it. We get the human power to help us and they get to learn about an organization that's doing great work in the community. So it really is a public-private partnership. I love that. You had mentioned that the dedicated year of service affects people for their whole lives. It's one year, but the ripple effect lasts quite a while. How do you stay in touch with City Year members after their year of service? What sort of things do people go on to do after they've really dedicated some time to something like your initiative? What path does that open for them? I think generally speaking I think young people get to kind of strengthen their social justice muscle and I think once they get a taste of that it stays with them. So we have had young people that have done this year of service as a gap year before they go on to graduate school or medical school or law school. Many of them actually here in D.C. and other cities that City Year serves in after their year of service in the schools they will actually be hired by the school to be teachers in the school because the principal gets to see this young people in the internship and gets to pick the best ones to serve in their school. They become incredibly committed to the children incredibly committed to urban education. Some go on to other careers but they always know they need to give back and they always are looking either via City Year or other avenues to do it. I've talked to many alumni there's probably over 30,000 City Year alumni in the country right now that are either serving in public service in the government or they became a physician but gives a certain month a year to service in other countries like for Doctors Without Borders and they credit that to their year of service to City Year that it really transforms their lives in terms of how they see their service moving forward. So this is you could also call it a resume booster I mean these are for young people so they're just starting out maybe the resume isn't that deep or involved is that something that employers see when they see City Year in someone's resume what does that tell them about this individual? Yeah I mean I think that City Year is both a dropout crisis prevention program but it's also a leadership development program for the young people that serve with us and so people that know City Year know that year of service is a very rigorous year for these young people so they get a living stipend that's very small so they have a hard to survive during the year especially an expensive city like Washington DC but they are doing nothing but eating, sleeping and breathing service and serving their students in the schools and we do a lot of training in terms of how to write a resume registering to vote social justice issues, how to interview so when they finish City Year many companies, organizations find them as really attractive candidates because they believe that they've already been through this rigorous process so they're going to be really great employers for their companies That reminds me that on the Wiley website we also have blogs and resources for how to improve resumes interviewing, networking and we also have a suite of online courses one of them features our dear friend Jeff Franco himself it's called Community Organizing for Action and I think it would be a really helpful place for someone that wants to go out and get organized is that something you would recommend for people to check out our course and talk about it a little bit I would totally recommend it I think that there's so many best practices out there and so rather than reinvent the wheel I find myself doing it all the time always looking at other organizations of what they're doing, I think this is a resource that you can just go and really find videos and tutorials in the world I would find it very helpful to have a one stop shop to go find that What would you say I would recommend anybody to go check it out right now but for today in 2017 in the field of outreach and organizing, engaging volunteers are there any other good tools or how could someone leverage social media to get a word out about an initiative someone might be doing how would someone publicize what they're doing or talk about their work How would you get that word out what's a good way to do that Social media has leveled the playing field any person sitting in a park bench can start tweeting things out or things on Facebook and it can actually be used for a lot of good so for our organization I am constantly using Twitter Instagram, Facebook LinkedIn to promote service projects that we're doing or initiatives that we're having to get people involved we have an e-newsletter as well which is pretty common for a non-profit but I think the powerful tool is really something like Twitter I'm trying to remember there was a non-profit that I think it may have been the leukemia lymphoma society but they did the whole water dump the ice bucket challenge they raised millions of dollars via that and that was started by social media so it's amazing if you come up with an interesting idea and it gets traction you could get a great following or if you're an NGO or non-profit you could actually raise money in doing it and so we do that all the time we also do live events here in Washington like we do a dinner gala where we invite different folks that are interested for our current supporters to come to it so it's a celebration of the year of service but it's also a fundraiser for us but we never stop using social media I'll be tweeting all this out as soon as this is over but it's a combination of social media and then what you said before genuine authentic passion the ice bucket challenge didn't go viral, didn't pick up traction just because it exists they picked up traction because there was passion behind it bringing those two things together is maybe a more of a recipe for success very much so and it has to be a hybrid of all those things you can't do your promotion just via social media you also have the leader that's out in front they're actually meeting with the people and have a very clearly defined mission and then have types of events whether it be like a fundraiser gala or a service and event at school that's bringing people together to get them to serve but to learn about your organization and so that's kind of how we spread the word and really the viral spreading of the word something that's more powerful than other ways of spreading the word so that's why we're constantly doing external events I want to ask more about that but I'm going to do a quick final plug for the online course if you would like to take the course it's up on the website right now once you've taken the course you will receive a certificate of completion that you can print out and share and show anybody that you'd like to prove that you've taken this course also I would love to encourage people to consider taking the course and using that as a community action event once you've taken it feel free to teach it to other people if you want to come back say to the Benjamin Finken Library if you're in Mexico City and use some computers and invite other people to take the course and make it a group activity that could be a fun thing to do we have a free toolkit with step-by-step instructions on how to organize, recruit, lead a class something like that and I would love to send that out to anyone who'd like to anyone who's watching here so feel free to email me Melissa at ylai and I will happily send you the toolkit and work with you on how to teach an online course like the one that Jeff was in but your question rather your comment on social media and the publicity that you do it reminds me of something that I saw on Facebook earlier from someone in the Y-Line network so doing good is something that we all recognize and appreciate but how do you talk about it what is considered appropriate publicity and what's that line between bragging or being too open is it ever inappropriate to talk about the volunteer work that you're doing the thing your organization might be doing how do you invite people in somewhere so is there sort of a line or is there something to think about that I mean in our case we're serving in schools as guests of the principal and teachers that are at those schools and so whereas we want to increase test scores and increase graduation rates we know we are just one partner in the process of making that happen so I'm always very sensitive that to thank first and foremost the teachers and principals that lead these schools to me the true heroes and heroines that are doing the work really tough work and working with these students so we want to be recognized as a strong support of the work that they do but I just you have to be careful with that because you don't want to toot your horn too much because again I always remind our AmeriCorps members that we are guests in the building we are not to save the world we are one component of it and so I do think you need to be careful with that because and again I think the authenticity is where this comes back to the authenticity is like if our genuine interest is in changing the lives of these young people that serve with us and providing and maybe helping even the playing field in terms of the education space and the schools that we're serving in and I think that that's our main focus and I think that the work will speak for itself without us having to toot our own horn too much about what we're doing but I always call it like the balance I would describe as humble swag humble swag hashtag humble swag having the humble swag so like I don't know what else you call it but I just think it's like you want to we're not going to be quiet about the work that we're doing but we also want to recognize that we are part of a larger community that's trying to affect change are press releases part of the work that your organization does do you reach out to press about events or things that have happened we do in Washington I'll do op-eds on occasion on particular topics that would be of interest to the community and then press releases especially for large service days our service day on Martin Luther King Day we usually get around a thousand volunteers from the community so we're the largest service project happening in DC that day and so we use press releases one of the ways to promote what we're doing and then we usually try to get the mayor to attend or someone from a VIP person from the government and we'll promote that as well have them speak at the event as well thank you I'll stop asking all the questions for a moment and let's turn to our friends on Facebook and Twitter for some of their online questions if you're ready this is a question from Deryal in Grenada in some places taking action in the community can be subject to political pressures in your view is discretion a good practice when community action is subject to these kinds of political pressures and are we doing the right thing by not asking for our names to be publicized or even mentioned so yes I think the short answer is yes that discretion is really important you know I'm trying to think of topics or things that have happened on our end where we had to use discretion I think that as the leader of the organization I need to be always very aware of that parents and like just you know we deal with a lot of different stakeholders here in Washington for me it's like the mayor the chancellor of the school system the city council even you know the president of the united states the congress just because they reside here and so I'm always trying to make sure that for example we're not a political organization so I make sure that we don't take any political position on what we say or do and that's an example of discretion I think we have to be careful how we do things but we're there to support service and to make our communities better and whatever way we can do that we want to do that we want to be a unifier in that sense so I think you always do have to use discretion in terms of how you go about the service thank you and a question from Annika in Guyana how do you encourage a community that is not your own to be involved in a project that you see would be beneficial to their community members to have potential infiltration which maybe touches on what you were saying about your volunteers they're not there to save the world they're there in service so how does someone enter a community that isn't theirs to be of service I think that's a real sensitive topic as well because in the work that we do we're working mostly in underserved communities and we are an organization where diversity is an important thing for us but in our core we have young people that are from those communities and mix that are from different parts of the country and so again it's something I always try to remind of not only our AmeriCorps members but certainly the people that are volunteering the greatest pride I have is that this allows us to be a convener of getting people that are in parts of the community that are doing their regular work to serve in other parts of the community and forget those people in those communities to serve with them as well so I think I see us as a bridge builder and I think that that's another way to look at it again we're not there to save the children we're not there to save the community we're there to partner with them I think we're lucky as an organization because we've built that street cred about they know that the parents that are there knowing that our young people are working with their kids and have their best intentions in mind so when they see somebody with their red jacket they're there to work with us or a great organization and so I love bringing people that maybe aren't always getting into that community to come there and serve and get them to have again that humility of we are visitors in your community and we just want to lock arms with you and help in any way that you see fit so again I think it's all about deferring to that community respecting the people that live in that community and showing that authentic way of wanting to serve and help and partner and do what they can to support one another you mentioned the partnership that sounds key to the question that we just had if she's looking to do some work in that community find a partner who is of that community so make that bridge happen first and foremost and let that be the door opening to get in for us that partner is the school the school is oftentimes the center of the community and so that principal and those teachers are working every day with our organization and so they love our organization so when we get an event together and we ask that principal will you host this event to your school more times often than not they're saying yes we'd love to and then they get on the podium and they talk about this is what city does for my babies in my school and that engenders the whole community that's there saying wow like they're doing great things so that's just one way to do it and I think you do need to find a way to kind of interweave that where you can partner and just really show that authentic desire to help right and another one another question is from Pedro in Ecuador how do you recruit volunteers if there are not very many non-profit organizations where do you look for potential volunteers so our organization has about 3200 city or AmeriCorps members serving in 28 cities so we from an organizational perspective we have a recruitment department that visits schools we visit high schools and colleges around the country and are providing this as options for students when they finish school to do this year service after their year of service they get about a $500 US dollar education award that they can use towards school but I think one of the things I'll say especially in my travels to I was in Argentina and Paraguay visiting young people is that I see the same desire from those young people to serve as I do from the young people here and so I think the challenge sometimes is what this particular person mentioned which is is there a non-profit that can absorb those young people to be able to do their service and I think that could be a call to action for people that either have small non-profits you have this incredible surge of energy from youth in these countries some of them like Paraguay it's like amazing how many young people actually make up the whole population in that country like that's an untapped resource that the government and or a non-profit really needs to find a way to leverage because they're dealing with all kinds of challenges and social challenges there as we are here so again I just think that the young people are just such a great way to start adults as well but young people are just idealistic and they have this energy and they want to change the world and so we tap that at our organization so we probably get we probably turn away three out of every four young person that applies to Duke City or Washington DC because we have too many applicants so I just think young people anywhere in the world want to change the world we have to better leverage that resource at that point I would say to Pedro and anybody else who is wondering how to recruit volunteers feel free to contact us at the Y-Line Network we would love to put you in touch with other Y-Line Network members who are young, engaged, energetic people like yourself and perhaps you can form your own group to see a cause through another question we have now is from our colleagues at Education USA in Guadalajara they ask how would you motivate young people in making change in their own communities in a society where community service is not a social value so again this is what I saw a lot of when I visited I visited a number of different schools in both these countries and in Dominican Republic for that matter as well and it is a challenge because they I see a sense of frustration from the young people because they want to do something and they're not sure how to do it so let's remind our young people here what a luxury they have that they want to do service and there's an organization that has a structure to have them be able to do it but City Year began in Boston almost 30 years ago and there was no organization like this that existed there were two people that came together and said we need something like this we need an organization that could support young people that want to serve their communities and they started it in a very small way fast forward 30 years later we're in 28 different cities including Washington DC but it has to start somewhere so like there's fertile ground I think in these countries to say you know when we talk about the beautiful struggle this is certainly it which is how in the world do you do it where do you start I mean I think you start with that one person that wants to do that service and you figure out how you can build that movement in that country it took a long time to build that movement here but the opportunity is ripe in these countries that I've seen for young people to serve it's it sometimes isn't part of the mindset I've seen that not as ingrained in the culture but it's hard to find young people that just don't really believe they can change the world and I just think if you can tap into that energy and put structure around it well then you could actually change the world at least that world that you're living in right and why not try give it a shot it sounds pretty amazing so finally two questions that go together about keeping volunteers motivated and engaged Luis from Venezuela wants to know how can an NGO leader maintain the motivation of volunteers and Diego from Brazil would like to know how can you help volunteers access educational resources for helping their communities like diving in on a new course so the young people that serve with us do a year of service I mentioned it's a long year so there's always a lull in terms of when they may not feel as energetic as they do at the beginning of the year it's my job as a leader to try to keep them motivated so I'm always reminding them to think about why they've decided to do what they're doing they are part of a cause bigger than self and sometimes that's something that can shake and stir one up when you start thinking of like I'm tired this is too long it's too hard and I think when you think of a cause greater than self that is where the sacrifice they're willing to put in for the work that they're doing so I think that's when the leader really needs to step in I'm not really doing the service that they're doing I'm really a spokesperson for it and also making sure that we keep the machinery running but I also try to be an inspiration to these young people I think it's funny but I think these young people when they see me with kind of this young exuberance for what they're doing and they're like oh look at that old guy he's so excited about service we can do this I would say that that is really an important part of the leadership is to remind people why they're doing what they're doing and that it simply isn't easy if it's easy then you probably wouldn't need to be doing it and the second question was the second question was about how do you help volunteers access educational resources for helping communities like finding a new course of training like do you have training or resources that you provide your volunteers so we work a lot with other organizations that help do trainings for us so either other non-profits or some for-profit organizations that would trainings for us and they do it pro bono oftentimes so we'll ask them to do it great thing about running a non-profit is you can ask for anything for free but we always are trying to make sure they have educational opportunities for our young people because that's also something that keeps them motivated that they feel like they're continuing to be developed and grown within our organization and again I just think you find a great deal of generosity in the community when you approach an organization and say this is what we do this is our mission would you help and support us and it's amazing how many people say yes to that and so I think another piece to this is you just have to simply ask and declare what it is you're doing and make the ask when you're doing it because a lot of people don't want to make the ask it's amazing just because they don't want to hear the no well if you don't ask you're not going to know if it's going to be a no or yes I just think that it's exciting for me to look at the opportunities that I've seen in Latin America as an example of like I know this challenge is to it but wow there's also a lot of opportunity and what a role model that could be, what type of press that could bring about someone starting an organization like that just ask so we're going to throw it back to Mexico City for a moment is there anybody else who would like to ask a question from our audience there yes I think my colleague Jose would like to ask a question Jose Celis hello Jose hello Jose Celis from the National Solar Energy Association which are the most typical failures that you have saw how could you avoid to be in that situation, thank you so the question is what are the most typical or common failures that you've seen and how can one avoid those situations and then I would add my own personal do you want to avoid those situations and necessarily avoid failure I mean falling forward is sometimes a good thing right I think that yeah I mean I don't think we I would seek failure but I think at times that we have failed as an organization or I have failed as a leader those were the greatest learning experiences for me and for stretching us as me as a leader or us as an organization one of the examples that comes to mind is you know we had a great relationship with the school district and we had a new chancellor come on board and I think I just made the assumption that it was just going to continue that way and that person didn't really know me or the organization that well and it kind of set us back a little bit which is a side note to be careful with assumptions you make about anything or anyone but I think that was a great learning experience it made me return to my humility about not making assumptions that we were something that we're just going to be accepted or embraced that we constantly had to make sure that we were serving and informing and educating the people that we were serving in that community but I can say that those failures really are the ones that had us grow I mean in the last 10 years we've nearly tripled in size as an organization in terms of the amount of people serving an organization in the schools that we're serving in and there was a lot of tough times in learning how to be an education nonprofit we didn't know we were kind of learning as we went along building the train as it went along the tracks and so I think that those failures that we made during that were amazing because it never took away from the core authentic desire for us to serve those communities it keeps coming back to the authentic leadership and authenticity that that was there and so when we did fail all organizations and people around us were there to kind of give us learning lessons and best practices is how to get better at that and now we're in a place we don't make those mistakes anymore so failing is a beautiful thing I think in the long run as long as you get back up maybe you'll make different mistakes and then you'll learn again and then you'll change again and then you'll grow again the mistakes I don't think ever end no they don't Mexico City do you have another question for Jeff? Yes we do. Omar? Hi, hi Omar Zepeda from Crayamas well in Latin America we have many cultures the cultural point of view is different in your experience is this important? How do we deal with it? So the question is for example in Mexico we have many different cultures that are important to have different cultures and how can they work together how is that effective? Yeah I think the different cultures really makes for a rich conversation and real opportunities in terms of how you go about whatever service you're providing I think that when I think about Washington particularly there are particular cultures that we're stepping into when we step into those communities and I think again that sensitivity and how we can really embrace that culture to make us a better organization and to make our service even stronger so I find it is a very powerful thing and again I think a lot of people agree with this that you know to really let the community take ownership of what's happening and for them to look at your organization as a support advocate and champion of the work that you're doing I think makes the biggest difference in the world because it all depends on how you approach your service you know if there is something that you needed personally let's say there's a lot of ways I could approach you in offering support some ways that you just maybe would be offended by or other ways you'd be like oh okay again authentic right? this person wants to help and I appreciate that and then you'll be able to get a partnership that way Is there a way that you demonstrate that you recognize that culture is different or that community is different or that you're not there and that you're listening? How do you show someone or a whole group of someone that you hear them you see them? I think exactly what you just said is that I really whenever I'm meeting with organizations or communities or schools I try to do very little speaking initially I really want to hear what it is they're dealing with and how we would use our services to be there and I think it's the biggest as a community we just need to listen better I think we don't listen enough and I think that really permeates another area so the last thing I want to do is enter a new community and tell them what's wrong with it and how I'm going to fix it I really want to hear tell me more educate me you know being transparent and kind of powerfully vulnerable and so I oftentimes tell the schools that we're in teach us how we can better serve you like rather than telling them how we're going to serve you teach us what it is the needs that you have so I can make sure that the goals we're making are plugging into the goals that you have that was one of the mistakes that we made as an organization I think we first started is that we had our goals that we thought were needed in the schools and we just wanted to implement them without really stopping to listen to the leadership of well this is actually what we're being measured on this is what we need to accomplish and now that's changed the dynamic so now we listen and we try to make sure that our goals are aligning with their goals and they appreciate that because now they see a real value in it that's huge so that's one of those big learning opportunities that you have so back to our friends online for another question we have Jean Gabriel from Haiti what strategies should we use to overcome obstacles that stand against community organizing if you face a road block how can we how do you overcome an obstacle like that well I mean I think that again speaking and thinking specifically about the work that we do here the obstacles that we have had at times have been maybe people that have not necessarily believed in what we did or didn't feel like we really had the expertise and education to be doing that service we're surfacing all types of learning lessons that I've had over the years beautiful struggles beautiful struggles but that specifically was a great it was a humbling experience but also a great learning experience because I was sitting in a room with somebody who was an important decision maker for the school district saying I don't think your young people are capable of doing X, Y and Z I think they're capable of doing this instead and so I really had to listen think about what are the deal breakers, what are the things that we're just not going to move on but then what are the things that we can I just think again the listening and the compromise made such a big difference so I think that the obstacles that stood in the way sometimes the immediate knee-jerk reaction is to put a line in the sand and dig in and say we're not going to really move from our position we have a mission as an organization we're not going to change the mission but we also want to be flexible to the partners that we're working with so I think that again the humble swag idea is that really listening to others in terms of what they vision city or to be what I see is like we are just like another arm of support that this principal and the teachers have to making sure these young people get the education that they deserve and so as long as they see us as that and not some obstacle for them that's coming into their building then we're able to really move the ball in the right direction but again the obstacles just like the struggles are constant they never end running it I've learned running a non-profit of our size that when there are victories to really celebrate those victories and I always tell my staff the same thing because there is a failure an obstacle that's right around the corner from the victory celebration so enjoy it make it last maybe make it a long celebration and keep it rolling so another question from Suzanne from Barberos how do you get feedback and support from the community when you face challenges soliciting feedback through surveys have you ever surveyed your community to hear how it is you're doing and received comments that way so we survey our community all the time it's a way for us to get an idea if we are or need to tweak the way we're providing our service so we will do surveys with all of our teachers that have city or AmeriCorps members from along with the principals at any of our service projects when we have like a thousand people come to it they'll get a survey to say what went well, what didn't go well what suggestions would you have and then after that we as a team staff will debrief we would do ripples and joys but then we also do positives and deltas deltas is a nicer way to say criticisms of things that we've done so we go through all those surveys seriously and look at the deltas especially we'll even do a self critique of our work so we as a staff will say what were the positives and what were the deltas of that service products that we did and what should we change for the next one that we do so we're constantly reevaluating how we're doing the service that we're doing and we're constantly taking the feedback from the teachers and principals very seriously because our ability to return to that school that next year is very dependent on them wanting us back to come in the first place so I think Mexico City we have time for a few more questions from you and if you would like and then we'll end the chat with another question from the audience but Mexico City if you would like I believe you also have an announcement about the Y Line Network opportunity for members in Mexico perhaps you could tell us about that real quick and then we'll take your question and then come back to our online audience thank you so much well as you know Y Line has been a very effective program for the Americas but Mexico has been very active and we have now one Y Line program for Mexicans it's coming in September and October and we have Sofia Perez who is representative of Real Momentum the contractor who's implementing this program for a very quick announcement hi hello everyone thank you Jeff first of all for sharing with us all your knowledge and experience this is very useful for all people who are trying to change the world everywhere so I just want to take a bit of time and announce that we are launching the Y Line Mexico Network here in Mexico this is a new regional chapter of the Young Leaders of the Americas initiative which is sponsored by the US Embassy the Y Line Mexico chapter has a double objective one is to transform the best Mexican entrepreneurs into extraordinary leaders which is the same objective as the Y Line and also to prepare Y Line alumni to become mentors and further their leadership we will have a competition format we're going to have two sorry five boot camps in some of the biggest cities in Mexico these are in Monterrey Ciudad Juárez, Guadalajara, Cancún and Mexico City if you participate, if you're selected you will receive training in leadership and entrepreneurship and you will have access to mentors and there will be a pitch competition this pitch competition will define a winner in each of the boot camps and those five winners will then go on to participate in a grand final which is a capstone program it will be a three-day program in Mexico City and here you will have advanced training and more mentoring we will visit stakeholders and do a lot of networking and we will end the program with a final pitch competition again which will define the winner the national winner of Y Line Mexico and this winner will be awarded a trip to attend the acceleration program at the Miller Center in Silicon Valley so it's a wonderful opportunity to get a lot of training and well, if you are the winner you will have a very nice opportunity to go to to go to a fellowship program in the Miller Center so if you are Mexican you are very very much invited to participate and if you're not Mexican, but you have a Mexican friend please tell him or tell her we are in Y Line Mexico we have the we are receiving applications right now the deadline is the 24th of July so there is not much time left hurry up but you will find out that the application form is very straightforward just go to www.YLimex.org YLimex is a single word just www.YLimex.org and you will find all the rules and everything you will find where the dates and everything it will be a piece of cake for you to fill the form and just go ahead and join us, we'll wait for you thank you so much thank you so much let us do this announcement thank you, sure thanks so much so if there are no more questions from Mexico then I believe we have time for a last question from our online audience so I would say the question is where do we go from here what advice would you give to young leaders who are looking to take the next step to make an impact in their community what could somebody do today, tonight, maybe even tomorrow well there's the the Y Line network and I think the resource that's available so I think that's a great start but I think that you know, this is kind of coalition building and I think that if you have an idea which we should always remember that any great thing that's been achieved has started with an idea the next step would be to declare what that idea is and to enroll people to want to become part of that idea or whatever it is that you're trying to accomplish I think as young people that opportunity exists I think that's a great player out there and think about who is in your network like who is in I call it a relationship world because I think that's more symbiotic more back and forth as opposed to just one-way network and so I think that who is in that network who could be influential to you that could help you accomplish what you're trying to accomplish that's how things happen as our relationships and the people that know everybody are able to make things happen so I think as a young person who could you get enrolled with you to start partnering and designing this alliance to create this change you're trying to create in your community whether or that may be there's just so much opportunity in terms of the internet and the web and social media to really build it's a lot of work but to build that coalition and build people that are supporting what you're doing I think there's an organization I'm not sure it was in Mexico, Techo I mean they had that so I know that was in Argentina but that was a grassroots initiative as well so I just think that young people have the advantage of they can make anything happen and they even know if they're obstacles in the way and they're going to be failures along the way I just find like when you have somebody who's really committed to making something happen they're not going to let anything get in their way to making that happen so I think that look and do your research find this great program that you just mentioned sounds amazing for somebody who really wants to get involved in something like that there are plenty of opportunities out there it's just about uncovering them and then just being committed to really making that happen knowing that there will be disappointments along the way there have been plenty of disappointments over the years especially when we started and now we're enjoying a great deal of success in serving the community but that came of there are a lot of blood sweat and tears from lots of people to make that happen so I would love to see initiatives like a city year here take off in other countries where you form organizations that let youth serve their communities I think no one would argue that we need more people serving in their communities to make this world a better place so get in touch if you would like to start City Year in Latin America, Caribbean we'd love to hear that you're doing that but in all seriousness the first thing you can do check out yli.state.gov and make an ask just speak your intention out today, tonight to your community and see who picks up who joins you and who's interested in supporting you thank you so much to everyone thank you Jeff for taking time out of your busy day to join us here thank you gracias a nuestro amigos en la ciudad de Mexico for coming out to the Benjamin Franklin Library for participating in our chat and thank you to everyone online for watching sending us your questions remember if you'd like to take the online course of community organizing for action visit yli.state.gov we would love to hear and see all of the great work that you're doing in your communities and we would love to share that work with everyone else in the YLI network so please share your stories share your photos online using hashtag YLI Empowers and we thank you again so much for joining us and I hope to see you next time at our next chat thank you