 Buenos dias, bonjour and hello. Welcome to the Y-Line Network Facebook Live web chat. My name is Melissa Dilber and I work at the U.S. Department of State on the Y-Line Network team. The Y-Line Network is a community of young entrepreneurs and change makers from Latin America and the Caribbean. Y-Line Network members have access to digital resources, training network, trainings, networking opportunities and the chance to connect with senior leaders in business and government. If you're not already part of the Y-Line Network, you can sign up at Y-Line.state.gov.network. That's Y-L-A-I.state.gov.network. But let's get to what we're here to talk about, community action. This web chat called build your enterprise through community action is part of the Y-Line Powers Communities Initiative where we look at ways that you can reach out to the community beyond your immediate surroundings to help address needs in your business or in your community itself. We have an expert on social responsibility and community action with us today. Hilary Binder Aviles, a leading development expert, 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 called Organizing for Community Action that is available on our website Y-Line.state.gov right now. Hilary has 25 years of experience working with non-governmental organizations, NGOs, to strengthen their capacity to build stronger, more inclusive and equitable communities. Currently working as an independent consultant, she worked for many years at Mosaic, the Center for NGO Development and Plural Realism. Hilary was also a co-founder and volunteer executive director of Solisol, a grassroots NGO and is the lead author of the NGO Handbook. So first we'll have Hilary to talk about her background to work and then we'll turn to our online audience for their questions as well as Y-Line network friends who are watching on Facebook. Hello Facebook friends! Feel free to post your comments and questions in the comment section of this live stream or by using hashtag Y-Line Empowers on Twitter and we'll make sure they get asked. Are you ready? Okay let's go. Hilary, thank you so much for being here today. Thank you for having me. We would love to learn a little bit more about yourself and like a little bit about your work and if you have in particular a connection to Latin America and the Caribbean. Yes, I'm glad you asked. And Buenos dias to everyone in our audience. I'm so happy to be here and to share with you about some of my experience in taking action to make your community a better place. And I have been working for many, many years with NGOs, non-governmental organizations to help them achieve their mission, their dream for how they want their community to be better and to make people's lives better whether that's youth or children or women or people with disabilities. And it is so important for NGOs to have partners. And so a good part of my work is also helping NGOs build relationships and partners with people like you, with entrepreneurs, with businesses, with professionals who can bring their expertise and experience to benefit the NGO. So I'm very passionate about just people being able to make a difference for others and take their own passion to really make a difference in the world with what you have, your resources and your knowledge. And so my connection to Latin America is that when I first moved to Washington, D.C. quite a few years ago now, I wanted to make a difference. I wanted to do something and I didn't really know what. I just knew that I wanted to make a difference for people. And a colleague of mine said there's this wonderful organization right here in our neighborhood called the Latin American Youth Center. And it was a center serving young people who were from families that had migrated from Central America, a lot of people who were coming at that time from Honduras and Guatemala and El Salvador, as well as countries in the Caribbean and were making a new home for themselves here in Washington, D.C. And people needed a lot of support with learning the language and with learning how to navigate the city and young people wanting to go out and we went on field trips and things like that. And so that has led for me to a lifelong journey of being a community activist and organizer and I continue to work in the Central American, primarily Central American community right here in Washington, D.C. Thank you so much. And that personal part of how you came upon this passion and it's sort of a passion work from inside and something that I can clearly see you instill in others and we're really happy to have you here for that. Let's dive right into the matter at hand and the subject of this web chat, social responsibility. What is social responsibility and why does it matter? I think there's a lot of definitions for social responsibility and I think, you know, for me, I think it's ultimately about caring about the world around you, caring about the people around you and saying, if I care, I need to be responsible and take responsibility for the well-being of my community, right? And so I think when you're starting out and you say, I want to get involved, I want to be socially responsible as an individual, as a business, as a professional, as an entrepreneur. It's really good to... First, I think it's really helpful if you have a partner, a team of people that you can get involved with. It can become a little overwhelming or maybe a little intimidating if you're on your own but if you have a team of people and you can work together to get engaged in the community, then it makes it a lot easier and a lot more fun. And I think the first thing to do is for your team to say what does social responsibility mean to us and what is our definition of it? Is it about making a difference? Is it about, you know, some people get into social responsibility, not what I would say maybe for some of the wrong reasons. Like, we just want to look better. We want to enhance our own reputation and I think it really needs to be about your definition of saying, why is this important to us? Because we want the world to be a better place for everybody, not just me and my family. Then I think once you kind of say, well, what do we mean by this? So what is the difference that we want to make? What do we care about the most? Do we really want to work again with kids, with children who are coming from backgrounds where they don't have access to the same resources that maybe I had? Do we really want to work on the environment and the health of our community when it comes to green spaces and clean air? Do we want to make sure, look at health care issues and how people access to housing and healthy environments. You need to decide that. There's so many things that we can work on. So what do you care about? And then I think the next thing is also to say, what is it that we don't know about what the community needs? What do we need to find out a little more? Maybe we do care about youth, but maybe we need to listen to some youth and find out, what's it going to take to make your life better? What kind of support and help do you need? And also then to ask yourselves again, what do we have to offer? So what do we have to give? Our time, our knowledge, our skills, our passion, our resources. And then to really say, what is the community going to gain? So if we come, we have a team of 10 of us and we're going to volunteer at a center and we want to get involved and build a relationship. We're going to learn a lot. We're going to feel really good about ourselves and that's wonderful. But what are those kids going to get? What are the youth going to get? Being really clear about what is it we want to give and how is the community going to benefit? And I think that's just a really important place to start before you kind of jump in to do some reflection on your own, you know, what you want to do and why you want to do it. To be thoughtful, have a little bit of foresight, looking ahead like you said and having, I like that last one, what will the community gain from our involvement? It makes such a big difference to know what success looks like a little bit for your individual actions so that you can know and see and feel when you've reached that, right? Exactly. So now that we know a little bit more about what it is, what social responsibility is and why it matters and the questions we need to ask ourselves, what's next? What is the next step for somebody watching this web chat right now? What's the next step for them to take? So let's say you and your team, you've sat down, you've sat and had some coffee and talked about your dreams and what you care about and why you want to make a difference and how you want to make a difference. And let's say you've said, okay, we really, we want to help youth. We want young people that have come from perhaps poorer backgrounds and haven't had as much access to the opportunities that I've had. Potentially, you know, to say what is it, how can we really help make sure that they can thrive, right? They can become their own leaders and do well in school and get into higher education and develop a profession and really, you know, lead good lives, right? So now, the next step is what I like to call doing your homework. We need to do your homework and by that I mean research. What else, you know, who else is out there that's already involved in these issues or working in the community? There's so many groups that already exist, whether they're formal NGOs or informal groups of community residents who come together to address issues in their community. And I think it's really important for us to find out who else is working on the issues you care about and ask to me with them, learn about what they're doing, to what they say their needs are and, you know, find out what is it that they need, what is it that they, you know, what do they need, what are their dreams, what are their desires, what are their, you know, gifts and strengths and how can you complement that because, and I'll just share a little example when I was working at Mosaica, our non-profit NGO support center, I would often have people come and ask if they could meet with me and they, you know, perhaps were people who were professionals or they had a business and they would come and say, I want to do something. And I, you know, I think that, you know, I have all these, you know, my colleagues, my alumni from my college, we want to mentor young people so we want to create an NGO to mentor people. So that's wonderful. You know, there's some other NGOs out there that have mentoring programs. So why don't you find out, you know, instead of creating something new, see what else exists. I know some programs that really need volunteers. They need volunteers to mentor, but they also need volunteers, you know, who can help them write grant proposals and they need volunteers who can help them with their, you know, technology and with their social media. And so, you know, sometimes we just think immediately that we want to, you know, we just want to go, you know, help someone and that's wonderful. That's wonderful. There's a lot of groups out there that are doing that that could do even more with your support. So do your homework. And when you find a group that you can partner with and you've really sat and met with them and said, here's what we can offer, it's really important to, to really make a commitment and follow through. Again, you know, it's very sad to say that I've worked with many community groups that have well-meaning people come and show up and say, hey, I want to help and they don't come back. Or they show up once and, you know, or twice. And it's, you know, it can be very, it can be, you can almost do more harm than good when you don't follow through on a commitment you make. So you're, you as a, as a socially responsible person need to take your commitment to that social responsibility very seriously. And form a long-term relationship. I, I'll give you another example of, and this is another youth organization I work with here in D.C. that formed a relationship with a university. The students, and it started out as we just are going to have our students come once and help, you know, help paint, paint the new, the room. Then the students came back to help the children with their reading. Then they came back. Then they came back. This is now going on eight years of students coming. And why that's so important is that this community, you know, youth center, right? They now know they can depend on those students because they've built that long-term relationship. So every semester they know that they're going to have really committed students come. And they've just got that long-term relationship. And it's rewarding not only for the group in the community that you're working with but for you as a volunteer because you build, you get to know people and you build a relationship and that's ultimately what all this work is about, right? It's about the human relationships we build with each other. And I can imagine it might feel daunting to step into something new and think, am I going to be doing this for eight years? What's going to happen in my life? What's going on here? But it is just one opportunity at a time, right? You're also taking it one step at a time and those steps build to something much bigger. But it's something that we can all take on together, I imagine. And I think that's, you know, you need to be realistic, right? And you need to, that's part of the question you have to ask yourself. What's the commitment I'm making? Can I commit to something for a year? Or can I, you know, eight years is a long time. But I think to say, you know, I can commit for, I can work with, you know, I can commit for six months. I can commit for a year. It's just important that you define that for yourself and that you, again, you know, that you follow through on that commitment. I know that a lot of our Y-Line network members listening today and in the network are entrepreneurs. So they run their own business. That's great. They have their own work. How can they incorporate social responsibility into what they're already doing today? Great. Yeah. So that's wonderful. And I love to hear about, you know, people who are entrepreneurs and in that world and yet thinking about social responsibility and thinking about, you know, how can I also make a difference in the community while I'm also making a living for myself, right? Yeah. Because, you know, not everybody can work in an NGO. And there are other ways that we can make a difference. And partnerships with with social entrepreneurs and with the business community, the private sector are so critical to this work, this collaborative work of improving communities and ensuring that all members of a community have access to, again, to health and education, all the things that we need as human beings to thrive, right? And your role as an entrepreneur, I really think there's, it's sort of in two ways. One is just thinking about in your own practice, right? How are you, how are you as an entrepreneur treating the people that work for you the right way, right? So part of this is you having good practices and making sure, you know, in your human resources that you are treating your own employees and making sure that they have, you know, adequate pay and adequate benefits and that you are not hurting the environment and that you're, you know, you are practicing things that ensure that your business is socially responsible. And then there's thinking about how can we give back, right? How can we partner, again, with NGOs, with other, you know, community groups to say we can give, I like to think about three things that we, that you have as a, as a business. You have, you have, as an entrepreneur, you have time, you have treasure and you have talent. Let me talk about time. Well, time is, you know, the time that you can spend tutoring or mentoring someone, the time you can spend helping an NGO fix its computer that is breaking down all the time or it's, you know, develop a marketing plan or, you know, it's the time that you have to spend to give as a volunteer. That is very special. You also have treasure, which essentially is financial support. You have resources and you can also give in kind support to an organization. For example, I know some social entrepreneurs that do things related to like printing, you know, or maybe they do graphic, graphic design or printing or, and they could donate instead of money, if they say, okay, we'll print your annual report for you and we'll make that a contribution. Or we have a wonderful meeting space. Groups are always looking for spaces to have events and meet, have a graduation for their, you know, young moms who just finished a financial literacy class and if you have a space for that offer it for free. That's a wonderful way to give back. And lastly, your talent. Again, what it is that you know how to do. Maybe you're an engineer. Maybe you're a marketing communications person. Maybe you're a graphic designer. Maybe, you know, and the people working at NGOs and working on community improvement sort of things, they need those skills. And so, you know, being able to provide and offer that is such a gift that you can give to make a difference. So the three T's. Time, treasure and talent. Yes. Are three things that we all have, especially for entrepreneurs and can give in varying degrees, right? Maybe you have a lot of time but you're low on treasure. Or you have lots of talent but not a whole lot of time. So it's an interesting way to think about them and how you can spread it out. Wonderful. So the last thing I would like to ask though, and I would be remiss if I didn't talk about my favorite Y-Line Network online course, Community Organizing for Action. You are one of the instructors in this course. I was wondering if you could talk with us a little bit about your lesson, about the course and share some of your insight. Yeah. And so, yeah, that course is really about how to really engage with community. And whether you're an NGO or a social entrepreneur, how you really go about addressing a community issue in partnership with the people who are directly impacted. And so, again, it's really about saying, you know, how do I do with, rather than do for, right? Oh, interesting. And really, you know, build relationships and partnerships with, you know, again, the people whose lives you're hoping to help improve, right? Whether that's, you know, and again, I'll give you another example. Thinking about an organization here in Washington, D.C. that has worked. It's a clinic, right? Providing health, you know, health care to people that can't really afford it, that don't have, might not have health insurance. And so, very, you know, and also working with the community and being very culturally competent, working with an immigrant community. And so, one of the ways in which thinking about what does it really look like to be, to really work with the community and engage with the community is, you know, you could come in and say, we have all the answers. We're setting, this is what you need. I know what you need. I'm gonna set this clinic up and give you what you need and just provide you with what you need. Or you can say, help us design this. Help us, you know what your needs are. You know, you know what messages are gonna work if we're trying to have, you know, moms with new babies to make sure that they're getting, you know, health care, regular health care. How can we reach them? If you're a mom with a new baby and you're a recently, you know, immigrant, you're gonna know what messages. And I don't know that because I've never walked in your shoes. So I need to listen to you. So what that organization did is create an advisory committee of people who, you know, who need the services to really help advise and say, how do we do this? How do we design this? What's gonna work in this community? And so what this course is really about is saying, how do we really approach our work as people who want to be, to help bring about positive social change in our communities, in partnership with the people whose lives we're trying to improve, whether that's, again, you know, children, youth, young moms, people with disabilities. You know, we want to listen and work together. And also, I think another important piece of that is that thinking about this work as leadership development. So in whatever you're doing, and again, go back to the youth example, when I was involved here, a big part of our work was not just, you know, helping mentor and tutor to make sure that young people could succeed and finish school and go to college, but then that they developed the leadership skills to then take that on and to run their own programs. And so whatever you're doing, it's about building capacity for communities to take charge of their own future and to find their own solutions. So that's what the course of community organizing and action is really about, is how do we be social entrepreneurs and socially responsible, but in a way that's really building that long-term leadership and self-determination for communities. That's wonderful to hear. Thank you so much. And perfectly ties into my next point, which I want to say is I hope everyone watching today will take a look at the course, Community Organizing for Action. It's on the YLI website right now. And in fact, if you would like to take it one step further and sort of incorporate what Hillary just told us about, you know, planting those seeds, seeding long-term success, I invite you to consider teaching the course to people in your local network. Once you take it yourself, you can share it to others. And to learn more about how to teach an online course and to receive a free toolkit with step-by-step instructions on how to organize it, how to recruit participants and lead the class, please email me at YLI at state.gov and I will happily send it to you. That email address is Y-L-A-I at S-T-A-T-E dot G-O-V Thank you again, Hillary. Let's turn to our friends on Facebook and Twitter for a few questions. The first question we have is what are your ideas for creatively publicizing community events that you organize? So a marketing and publicity question. Wonderful, wonderful. So a couple things. One is that I think of course today social media is very important and I think we have to remember that not everybody is going to be on social media. There might be people we're trying to reach in a community that are not they're not. So I think we have to try other things and so I think actually getting out and talking to people depending on what you're doing and where you're doing it, in a geographic community where you can physically walk around and talk to people I think that word of mouth as we say is one of the best ways. Again, an example some of the work we do here in Washington, D.C. in a particular neighborhood when we have events we create really we still do flyers we make a nice poster and there's nothing like good artwork interesting photo that attracts the eye and we put them up around the neighborhood we go to the local businesses so there again the social entrepreneurs and we say hey can we put these flyers or these postcards in a very visible place in your window that's a wonderful thing to then contribute and allow us to do we also sometimes for events we do a little pre-event and by that I mean sometimes we'll get some musicians and some you know maybe we'll make some some sort of something that we can sometimes maybe like a puppet or have something that again visually attracts people and we'll go around the neighborhood and we'll make some noise, literally make some noise to attract people and then say hey what are you doing at three o'clock we're having a community event we're having a community celebration and so I think you know I would caution us to not rely so much on social media it's still wonderful it's still important we're on it right now but there's nothing that substitutes for again the human contact and and I think it's just a different way it's a more active way of engaging engaging people so those are some of the creative things we're doing here thank you and once you have those volunteers so thinking to again a future event someone may have once you have those volunteers that have participated how do you keep them engaged in your cause yeah that's such an important question so now if I'm kind of speaking from the perspective of somebody working in an NGO and we've got many of you now who have said we want to get involved and work with you then you know it's really important and I do have training with NGOs on just that volunteer retention and recruitment and I think just as I'm saying to all of you you need to think about what do we want to learn and gain and give through being engaged I tell NGOs you need to ask the people who come volunteer for you what it is that they want to learn what do they want to get out of this because you know often people do volunteer there's nothing wrong with saying I want to get something out of this maybe you want to meet new people you want to expand your social circles you want to network you want to learn a new skill that's wonderful and so for the NGOs I always say you need to make sure you're continuously asking your volunteers you know what more would you like to learn how what are you interested in we want to make this work it's a two-way street as I like to say right it needs to be mutually beneficial and I also think you know volunteers need to be appreciated and it's really important for the NGOs to have you know some recognition and to have a volunteer you know appreciation you know you could make it fun you could make it a lunch you could do it with food you could do it in some other way but something that really appreciates and I think that really helps again build that long-term relationship we talk so much about the needs of the community are the goals of the work that we're doing here but the needs of those providing the work like you said the volunteer it's easy for that to go unnoticed so I thank you for bringing that to the attention and answering this question we've got another question this one is coming from David and Guatemala he says many of us watching are interested in business and our business owners what advantages could these companies have by partnering with local non-profit organization yes thank you for asking that and you know again there are advantages right there are being socially responsible has benefits not just for the community but benefits for your business and what are those benefits so there is a benefit of the community perception in your reputation you know you know if you are recognized and seen as a business that is open to supporting the work of community groups if people know you as they're wonderful they always support us they provide us with some space they put an advertisement in our annual report for our annual event we can go to them for some it really does it gives you a positive reputation and a positive reputation means people want to come to your business I know as a consumer when I think about some of our local businesses I am much more likely to go to a local business whether it's a restaurant or a coffee shop or a store that sells something for my home or clothes if I know that they support the local NGO community I go there the ones that don't I stay away from and I think I'm not alone as a consumer I think that there's an important benefit for your own employees professional development and I know many businesses here that actually encourage their employees to get involved in the local NGO community as a way to develop their own skills and leadership and so it's a it's like free professional development and again and it also again it's wonderful for your business's reputation and it can really be a wonderful tool for your employees to feel a sense of satisfaction and develop their own skills and networks is really critical so I think those are some concrete benefits definitely concrete right increasing your company's reputation having it so between two equal store fronts someone's going to pick yours over the other is enormous professional development I'd never heard that angle before that was really excellent to hear hope somebody took some notes on that I know I did we have one more question this is from Aldo in Peru he asks what are some tools to engage parents when you are working with kids oh wow that is a question that many of the groups I work with right now are trying to figure out and again you know so again my answer to so many things is you have to listen you have to ask people what it is you know how do they want to be engaged and so I would extend that to parents and I would say you know if you're struggling or maybe you're just getting started and you're trying to figure it out get a couple of parents together and do what we call here a focus group you know it's really just a conversation and ask some questions you know what would be how would you be interested in being involved you know what are your what are your hopes and fears for your children you know get them started talking about their children what is important to you as a parent what do you hope our program can offer your children how would you like to be involved what what obstacles maybe they want to volunteer maybe they'd want to come in you know once or twice a week and do something maybe it would be hard for them to get there maybe their work hours don't match the hours of your program but you're not going to know that until you have a conversation and then you ask them and again you know so I think listening I think I think don't get to start small and don't be discouraged right if you start out and you have one or two parents who kind of get active that's huge and you know don't and you can build on that so I think it's okay to start small to not get discouraged you know and again just you have to keep learning and listening and finding out what works maybe that focus group in itself is an opportunity to demonstrate some volunteer capacity you know maybe if you have a team it's more than just one person some members of the team could do some babysitting while they take the parents out to a location to have the group because I know as a parent myself that's always in the back of my mind while I would love to go out and do something but what about the children at home so I think again you're thinking about things holistically and that could be another way to handle that moment we have a question from a viewer in Haiti Samuel is asking what are the best ways to motivate staff and the experience there another wonderful question wow yeah and yeah and it's and it is it is hard because you know in the NGO if you're talking about staff specifically who work in NGOs NGOs are very under resourced and often can't provide the level of the level of pay that is equal to the private sector to businesses and so you have to find kind of other ways to again make staff feel you know appreciated and you know and I think I go back to professional development I think sometimes we don't pay enough you know we could pay a little more attention to how we're providing staff not just volunteers but also then our staff with opportunities to learn and develop their skills and also to you know I think there's other like just creative ways ah here's one thinking about the partnerships with businesses one of the things I've seen some NGOs do here in order to kind of recognizing that they can't really provide you know high salaries to their staff but to kind of motivate them is they've gotten businesses to donate items you know whether that's you know a gift certificate for coffee for lunch you know something or something you know something that has value as kind of an incentive and again that's a partnership with business to get those but I think so I think finding things like that I think opportunities to go take a class somewhere to learn a new skill and and then just you know some of you are taking a little bit of time for your team to do some team building can also be very rewarding sometimes I see people you know really get leave the NGO sector when they just kind of feel alone and they just feel like it's just work work work and they don't really have the time to even get to know and feel that they're part of a family and so I think it's important to take that time and build your build your team as you know a support system for each other your team is your family that's nice and how do you treat your family and support each other I like that we have another question now this one is coming from Francisco in Venezuela who asks sometimes the political climate affects how different groups can provide services to their community do you have any advice for businesses who are looking to get involved and help the community in those situations really yeah these are such good questions well yeah that can be really hard depending on what the climate is and you know again I think you know I think that again you're going to know best what your local environment is where again I think if you kind of have your team and you can really sit together and say what can we do and maybe what are some of the limits of what we want to do or maybe given what the environment is maybe we don't want a lot of visibility right so one of the things I said earlier is a lot of businesses that get involved in supporting NGOs they actually want a lot of publicity for it helps build their reputation and get more you might be in a situation where you actually are saying we want to do this because it's the right thing to do but we actually don't want a lot of visibility for it because we don't want to bring attention to the work the groups that we're supporting because they might be working I mean the reality is the NGOs that are working on what can be seen as controversial issues that are related to different rights in the community and human rights and so you do have to then you need I think to maybe be a little bit careful but I think you also say we want to do the right thing and so maybe we just need to do the right thing in a smart way I like that do the right thing in a smart way we have a question coming from Oscar Sainz in the Binational Center in Costa Rica who asks what are the key strategies to encourage the private sector to invest in corporate social responsibility or CSR wonderful so I think I believe a lot in just education educating I think again do your homework so maybe a good step would be to identify some businesses you want to build a relationship with ask for a meeting with them educate them about the needs of the community the difference they can make and why that's important and how it can benefit their business I think when you can go in and make that argument that this is a win-win that your company can both make a contribution that makes a difference in the community by being social responsible and you can benefit from that in these three or four different ways and be very concrete so I think part of it is just education and then I also think introducing a little bit of competition and if you can point to others in the community, other businesses and social entrepreneurs that are practicing corporate social responsibility and say hey maybe it's your competitor who's doing it we can introduce a friendly competition but I worked for many years actually with the business community in the Washington, D.C. area trying to get some of the big corporations to make contributions to our local what we call the United Way which is kind of a community chest that we get businesses to contribute to and then give back to the local community and my it was my boss at the time who used to tell me fundraising is all about education and when you sit with someone and help them understand what the needs of the community are and how their little bit of resources can go a very long way people will want to give and we really found that I would say most of the time 99% of the time and so I think it's a lot about just education and relationship building maybe there's a way to combine that education and the competitive angle by talking to other businesses who you've seen engage in corporate social responsibility to find out how it did affect their bottom line or really contribute to their business and take that as the example as to yes it works and hi look this business we're in competition with is already doing it let's catch up and I just one more comment on that because I have worked in a couple of countries most of my work here is based here but I have done some work in other countries where there really isn't sort of a culture of social responsibility within the corporate sector it's grown here and I think it's taken time so I think you can also work together as an NGO sector to say what can we do together to kind of start to change the culture maybe there's even like a public awareness campaign that you could collaborate on to sort of try to reach the whole business sector as a sector it's also long term work I think of things you know it's not and you know that doesn't mean you shouldn't try right it just means it's all the more important to start now shift that culture so 10 or 15 years from now it's common practice you know and every business in your community just they have corporate social responsibility so I think it's just yeah it's a long term commitment to do that to change that it's good to know that you were the one that tipped that start that momentum into something like that in the long term we have a final question so this will be a last question from the audience from Catherine Martinez from Honduras and she asks Hilary can you provide any advice to establish contact with international NGOs to request support and work on joint projects I work for an NGO in Honduras and families in extreme poverty yeah thank you for that that's again so much potential but it can be really hard to know kind of where to start and you know I think so again and this could be something I could follow up with in terms of some websites potentially to look you know so I think it's again doing your homework finding out you know who are who are the networks where are the networks and NGOs that are doing similar work it can be really hard to kind of get that door open I think also when you're kind of when you're sort of the smaller community organization that has you know and you're trying to kind of establish a relationship with sort of the bigger international group it can be a little hard to know where to start but I think again just there are a lot of groups that are you know you're asking this question and there are also people on the other side you know international groups that are saying you know you have to figure with folks who are kind of in communities and really have those deep community relationships that we don't have and so I know it's like how do you find each other and so I think you know doing your homework, reaching out asking for meetings, asking for you know you've got to start with conversations and build relationships and being very clear about kind of what again you know what is it that you have to offer to an international NGO right what can you bring to that relationship that they don't have because I think a lot of building those relationships is about leveraging your strengths that you have as an NGO and being very clear about that because you know I think it's kind of really making that argument that you know we need each other and we can get more resources for this work if we work together on it so that would be some around I think some strategy and again and I think that a lot of this is you know you have to not be discouraged by your first no right and you always have to keep you know persistence in this work to forge on even when you get a response that's well because sometimes no is not right now and so you try again that business that says no we're not going to try again that you know that big international NGO that doesn't want to partner with you now try again so it's hard this is all very hard work but I think I mean your questions just tell me how much you all have so much insight and experience already and are doing great work and just keep that going. Thank you that last point on the reaching out with the organizations reminds me of what you said earlier which was how do I do with rather than for you know sharing that partnership it's not just a request for resources but also use that opportunity when you're reaching out to show what you can contribute and like you said that take the growth together is so much more than a one way street yeah but thank you so much I have to wrap it up. Thank you Hillary for taking time to join us today and gracias a Nuestros amigos for coming out to participate in our chat thank you to everyone online for watching and sending your questions we would especially like to send a big thank you to the viewing groups who are watching today we have groups at the binational center in San Jose Cusarica hello the Centro Cultural San Pedrano in San Pedro Sula Honduras hi the Centro Binacional Arricana in Rosario Argentina hello to everybody there and last but not least the US Embassy in Quito, Ecuador hi so remember to wrap it up I would like to remind everyone that if you'd like to take the online course community organizing for action please visit Wiley.state.gov we would love to hear and see all of the great work you're doing in your communities and to share that work with everyone else in the Wiley network so please do share your stories and your photos online using the hashtag Y-L-A-I Empowers that's hashtag thank you so very much for joining us and we'll see you online next time