Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation

By Richard Simon
Program Associate

Today we focus on two new Dodge grantees, both doing admirable work in Camden, New Jersey.

The first grantee is UrbanPromise, which has fostered a community of support for the youth of Camden since 1988 through a leading edge development program to equip more than 500 young people and their families with the skills necessary for academic achievement, life management and leadership. In 2009, UrbanPromise created Urban BoatWorks, a wooden boat-building program where students learn problem-solving, critical thinking and vocational skills.

The boats are both real and symbolic in terms of the transformations that are occurring through the building process, and they are astonishingly beautiful. The program is anchored in Camden’s Waterfront South, and the Shipyard & Maritime Museum serves as an oasis in terms of place and space. The program is also more than experiential learning in terms of design, craft, and construction: there is a deeper vision to connect Camden youth to their waterfront, and there is a developing vision of a water trail and active environmental program.

Previously a 6-week boat building program, Urban BoatWorks is now a year-long comprehensive program that incorporates maritime history, swimming lessons, sailing lessons at the Cooper River Yacht Club, and a community launching ceremony. There is also a strong intergenerational mentoring component, as seasoned boat building and sailing enthusiasts from the region lend volunteer support to the program. Urban BoatWorks also hopes to add a new boat building initiative – the Traditional Build – to their two other programs, the Stitch and Glue Program, and the Advanced Stitch and Glue Build.

In addition to creating beautiful boats, Urban Boatworks is generating excitement and motivation for a program that nurtures learning, leading, creative thinking, problem solving, and character development in Camden youth.

Dodge also welcomes the Arden Theatre Company as a new grantee. Founded in 1988, the Arden is an award-winning professional regional theatre that offers the highest quality theatrical productions and educational programs to the artists, audiences and students of Greater Philadelphia.

Arden for All is an educational outreach program providing free tickets, show-related books and classroom visits from Arden Teaching Artists to economically disadvantaged students in Camden. Through this program, Arden has developed a model that combines in-classroom workshops, professional development for teachers and exposure to high quality performances. This allows children to get more from their classroom experience by embracing alternative learning styles, and offers the chance to travel outside their immediate neighborhood for a special experience that is both hopeful and inspiring. There are no other professional theatres in the area that offer this type of opportunity for Camden children and teachers.

Recently, a delightful production of The Borrowers mesmerized an audience of Camden kids and equally enthralled their teachers. And in a special education classroom, two teaching artists/actors led a class, about which its teacher reported positive growth in her students’ behavior and ability to read, write, and perform in front of an audience of their peers. She also spoke highly of the training she received from the Arden staff which empowered her to incorporate these creative techniques into other coursework.

Dodge is proud to support the work of these two imaginative and creative programs for the children and young adults of Camden.

For more information:

UrbanPromise Website | Blog | Facebook | Twitter

Arden Theatre Company Website | Blog | Facebook | Twitter

Images courtesy UrbanPromise and Arden Theatre Company

David Grant, President and CEO

I had one of those trains of thought last week that come, at least to me, in repose.  It began with pride in a colleague and ended with pride as a father, and along the way, I was reminded about something I have treasured in my time at Dodge.

I was on vacation on the island of Vieques, which is as quiet and laid back as northern New Jersey is energized and in your face.  I took a break from reading and checked the Dodge website – not to work, mind you, just to see what was going on.

It was the day of my colleague Wendy Liscow’s blog entry, “When I Put On These Shoes,” which I read admiringly.  As part of Leadership New Jersey’s Class of 2010, Wendy had spent a day in the shoes of “Miriam,” a harried mother and victim of domestic abuse, and through this simulation, she glimpsed what it is like to negotiate the health care and social service systems as a poor, battered, and frightened woman.

As Wendy pointed out, no day-long exercise can approximate the full realities of Miriam’s life, but it was an admirable exercise in empathy.  I got to thinking about empathy, and where it comes from, and how we can create more of it.

Ironically, I had put down my book for a few minutes to take a break from it.  I was deep into Colum McCann’s novel, Let the Great World Spin.  (If you stop here and order the book, I will have done you a favor today.) I don’t usually take book jacket blurbs too seriously, but I think Dave Eggers got it right on this one when he wrote, “There is so much passion and humor and pure life force on every page that you’ll find yourself giddy, dizzy, overwhelmed.”

I had in fact been feeling overwhelmed: fighting back tears over a mother who had lost her son in Vietnam; feeling confused and unsettled as an Irish monk in the Bronx struggled with his vow of chastity; holding my breath as a man walked out onto a tight rope suspended between the two towers of the World Trade Center.  (Yes, the actual walk of Philippe Petit in August, 1974 provides the back drop for all the action.)  I thought to myself if you don’t have a Leadership New Jersey to create an experience of empathy for you, reading literature ain’t bad.

But what comes of all this?  Experiential education works, and great art works, to expand our sympathies and understanding.  But what changes as a result?

Here my train of thought took me to the other part of my bookshelf I love – the much nerdier section of books on organizational development and change.  The latest page-turner there is called Switch, by Chip and Dan Heath, and the subtitle is How to Change Things When Change is Hard. It doesn’t have the prostitutes and judges and cops and man on a wire a hundred and ten floors off the ground of Let the Great World Spin, but it has its own excitement if you’re in the change business.

And it has its own metaphor for how change happens: a human rider on an elephant going down a path.  The Rider is the analytical part of our brain – the part of us that plans for the future and thinks through all the alternatives.  The Elephant is the emotional part of our brain – the part that loves routines and familiarity and comfort.

It’s an effective metaphor right off the bat because it reminds us who is in charge.  We can know intellectually what we should be doing and pull on the reins, but if the Elephant decides to go in another direction, that’s the way we are going.  It’s what happens when we decide we should lose a few pounds but there are Oreos in the house.

You can see both the dangers and the possibilities inherent in this metaphor.  The Rider can think long-term, but can also get overwhelmed by choices and spin his or her wheels through endless analysis.  The Elephant is not thinking long-term – in fact is not thinking at all.  It tends to go for instant gratification if it is there for the taking, or it hangs out in the comfort of the status quo.

But the Elephant is what moves us – literally and figuratively.  It is motivated by love and compassion and sympathy and loyalty.  It is motivated by empathy.  It can provide the energy if the Rider can provide the direction.

So the Heaths simplify the complicated terrain of change – social change or personal change – down to three simple suggestions: 1) Direct the Rider; provide crystal clear directions to a destination we can understand; 2) Motivate the Elephant; engage people’s emotional sides; and 3) Shape the Path; do what you can to create the conditions for change, given the situation you are operating in.

Not a bad way to think about what empathy does – it motivates the elephant.  No wonder Leadership New Jersey engages the emotions of Wendy and the rest of her LNJ cohort: because changing the lives of the Miriams of the world is hard indeed.

I think this is what the “phil” in philanthropy is about, too – the emotional commitment that leads us to tackle things that are hard. What a daily privilege that has been for me here at Dodge since the fall of 1998.  It is why we have been such a steadfast supporter of the arts, and of experiential education.  It is why we tell stories, here on the blog and elsewhere. It is why, when we talk about a more Creative and Sustainable New Jersey, we don’t just analyze the problems as the Rider; we try to motivate the elephant by envisioning, and feeling, what is possible.

One final thought finished my musings on empathy.  Dodge co-sponsored a conference in 2000 called Learning and the Arts, where one researcher reported she had found only one significant correlation between life experiences and observed empathetic behavior – many of the “high empathy” people had had experience in drama.

I won’t have my first-hand daily experience with empathy at Dodge after June, but I look forward to a vicarious one over the next three years. My younger son Rob was just accepted into the MFA program at Yale School of Drama, as an actor.

Welcome back to our January Earthwatch Mondays series.

Dodge has been working with the Earthwatch Institute to offer Educator Fellowships to New Jersey’s K-12 public school teachers “so they can return to the classroom and community to advance an ethic of environmental stewardship and empower the students’ voices.”

You can see the first installment of the Teacher Chronicles here and the second installment here.

Today’s Earthwatch Fellow is Philip Germakian. Phil was a participant on “Seabirds of Prince William Sound” in May of 2008 with Earthwatch Scientist Alyson McKnight. When Phil was awarded in 2008, he was a Environmental Educator at the Tenafly Nature Center, a New Jersey non-profit dedicated to protecting nearly 400 acres in Bergen County. Currently, Phil is a 3rd grade assistant teacher at the Ethical Fieldston School in Bronx, NY and finishing up a Master’s Degree in Museum Education at Bank Street College.

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In the spring of 2008, The Earthwatch Institute sent me to Alaska, or what I like to call the last frontier. Assisting the US Fish and Wildlife Service on a conservation project on the seabirds of Prince William Sound was truly amazing.

In college, I studied wildlife management, but never walked the path to become a wildlife biologist. It was a pleasure to have the opportunity to get a sense of what my life could have been like had I chosen the path of a scientist rather than an educator. Not often in life do you get that opportunity, and I am thankful for this experience in its entirety.

Though I was only there for a short two weeks, I was able to participate in a variety of scientific research. I learned how to re-sight banded birds, mark nests and productivity plots, re-capture birds, record predator watches, and enter data. The colony of birds we were monitoring for this study represent a key indicator species of the region and are part of an ongoing study of the impacts that the Exxon-Valdez oil spill has had on the greater ecosystem.

Releasing a black-legged kittiwake after fitting it with a geolocator to tract its migration patterns.

I found myself most captivated by the predator and prey relationships that I was fortunate enough to observe first hand. I witnessed bald eagles, ravens, crows, and magpies gorging on the kittiwakes and their eggs. The scientists told great stories of wolverine and peregrine falcon attacks on the colony, and although I never saw those animals, I sure felt their presence.

When I returned to the Tenafly Nature Center in Tenafly, NJ I was overflowing with passion and enthusiasm about our natural world. I was excited to share my experience with my fellow educators and the many school groups that visit us. I had a renewed respect for birds in general and began integrating what I had learned on my expedition into our many bird programs.

In the summers of 2008 and 2009, I continued to infuse my new knowledge of predator prey relationships and wildlife in general into our nature day camp curriculum by creating games that taught some of the scientific concepts I had learned from my field experience. Even today, in my current role as a classroom teacher, I find myself sharing what I learned from my Earthwatch experience with my students and colleagues. Conducting lessons on the scientific method are now richer because I have a tangible experience to draw from, which allows me to engage students on a different level.

Most importantly, this experience rekindled my passion for wildlife and science. I consider a real world and hands-on type experience like this to be priceless. In fact, I speak so highly of my Earthwatch experience that a colleague of mine recently applied and was awarded an educator fellowship. Now, my students will be able to experience a real world scientific research project through the ‘live from the field’ program.

I will always be thankful for this opportunity, to The Geraldine Dodge Foundation for providing it to me, and the lasting friendships I have made.

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Earthwatch is the nation’s leading environmental volunteer organization supporting sustainable development worldwide, recruiting volunteers from stakeholder groups (notably teachers, students, journalists, community and government leaders and multi-national corporations) to participate in innovative research programs benefiting environmental issues and capacity building. Earthwatch’s mission is to engage people in scientific field research and education to promote the understanding and action necessary for a sustainable world.

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Wendy Liscow, Program Officer

I remember distinctly the moment I knew that the moniker “leader” could apply to me.  I was a sophomore in high school, and I had signed up to help with costumes for a musical review at a local community theatre company.  I thought I would be helping a costume designer sew a few costumes.  It turned out that I was the designer for the show which featured 35 teenagers requiring over 90 costumes and had to be cranked out in two months’ time during  evenings and weekends.   I had been taken under the educational wings of a talented husband and wife team who believed that if you immersed teens in theatre-making you created future leaders.  Not just future theatre artists, but leaders in general.

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Wendy Liscow, Program Officer

One warm, crystal clear morning in August, I was lacing up my hiking boots with great anticipation. Not only was I going to get to leave my more formal foundation program officer uniform at home, but I was also going to a site visit at the South Mountain Reservation to meet the Student Conservation Association’s Newark-area service corps. I had been to visit the crews last summer at Newark’s Branch Brook Park and was blown away by the high school students’ enthusiasm and the skills and knowledge they had accumulated over seven busy weeks. This visit promised to be equally gratifying.

As I pulled into the Dog Park parking lot, I was welcomed by the Student Conservation Association’s Newark Project Director Renee Winslow who escorted me into the woods where 30 sweaty, dirt-covered teens eagerly greeted me. They immediately showed me the trail they had been restoring and regaled me with the adventures that went along with this arduous task. They had been moving huge rocks, digging ditches to divert rainwater, rerouting trails, cutting brush, and removing invasive plants. They had endured the heat, the rain, and the bugs to literally, and figuratively, arrive at the other end of the trail with a great sense of satisfaction. This experience was an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity (though in a few cases it was a thrice-in-a-lifetime opportunity, since several students were returning for the third summer) that changed their entire relationship to nature and the land. See for yourself:

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