/ By Debra Rainey / Vera deVera has made some surprising discoveries as she’s visited various LA communities and talked with community and organization leaders and residents to identify neighborhoods for the “LA Inside & Out” immersion tour. “First, I love being a tourist in my own city! I was born, raised, and have lived…
/ By Mohammed Mohammed / Take a moment and think back over the past few years. How have you been spending your Thanksgivings? A recent paper published by Science magazine indicates that we spent significantly less time sharing the 2016 Thanksgiving dinner table than we did in 2015, using data collected from ten million devices across…
/ By Jackie Brennan / “Twenty-first century charity seems to be about the redemption of the giver instead of what it should be about: the liberation of the receiver.” That’s one of the biggest lessons Spanish-American chef José Andrés has taken away from his friend and mentor, Robert Egger. As the chef most credited for…
Upswell is about turning empathy into action — harnessing the insights and experiences of changemakers to positively impact the communities we serve. But what about the community’s insights and lived experiences? In the rush of life, do we unintentionally lean toward a “bias to action” — designing solutions without fully understanding the challenges and needs…
For changework, local context is essential. You can’t make a real difference unless you immerse yourself in a community – building relationships with the people living there, exploring the intersections of ideas and action, and experiencing firsthand the innovations, obstacles, and diversity that shape a community. And you can’t get that context from a simple…
/ By Robert Jones / Attendees of our fourth Upswell Lab, held in San Francisco, were intrigued by a hands-on demonstration showing how nonprofits can use virtual reality, or VR, as a powerful storytelling tool. VR promises to have a prominent role at Upswell LA, so we sat down with Susanna Pollack, President of Games…
/ By Christian Clansky / If you’ve ever been to San Francisco, you know that the city’s weather is unpredictable. You might carefully plan a day full of outdoor activities – maybe a stroll in Golden Gate Park, some parrot-watching on Telegraph Hill, and a boat ride out to Alcatraz – only to be foiled…
/ By Debra Rainey / When your thoughtful and thought-provoking opinion pieces and books attract praise and criticism from the left, right, and the middle – you must be doing something right! And we’re lucky that David Brooks will be front and center on the main stage to challenge our opinions and assumptions at Upswell…
/ By Christian Clansky / Thursday, June 7, 2018, was one of the best nights of my life. I also think it was one of the best nights of a lot of peoples’ lives. And, not so coincidentally, it was the night I began to truly believe everything we’ve been saying about Upswell. A little…
/ By Pickett Slater Harrington / You may recall that Detroit holds a very special place in the Upswell story. In late May, the changemakers who inspired Upswell in the beginning gathered again for an Upswell Lab. And it was great to be back together. More than 40 changemakers from community-based organizations, nonprofits, and foundations…