Mapping Goodness: Making Our Neighborhoods Extraordinary with Hadiya Masieh (Episode #37)
Our thought leader of the day is Hadiya Masieh, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Groundswell Project. Listen to Hadiyah and make our neighborhoods extraordinary!
The Project is committed to counter violent extremism with peace and community building. Hadiya’s vision is to build empathy among neighborhoods, helping people to celebrate their similarities instead of pointing out their differences. The Project is playing the long game, building systems to free people from prejudice, hate, and extremism.
Resources Mentioned:
Videos to watch brought to you by the Groundswell Project: Start here
Conspiracy of Goodness previous episode
Institutionalizing Hopes and Dreams For Children with Linda Cliatt Wayman
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Email [email protected] to connect with Hadiya or follow her Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn pages. Check out the Groundswell Project and find out how they help people amplify positive voices to unite and build stronger communities.
You can also visit them on social media: Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
[00:01 – 07:34] Introduction
- Introduction of Hadiya’s story
- How she was influenced as a youth to join a non-violent extremist organization
- Hadiya explains how extremist organizations capture the idealistic views of young people
- How she removed herself from the extremist group
[07:35 – 12:35] Offering Solutions to the Passion of Youth
- Giving youth an alternative to radicalization
- Being on a quest… Asking yourself, “What do I do next?”
- Putting our passions into something positive
- Bringing others back to center and then on to a positive next stage
[12:36 – 21:03] Solutions Way Cooler Than Any Extremist Groups Can Offer
- Beating extremist groups at their own game
- Going into small communities of people… universities, neighborhoods that are places where there are low prospects for people
- Finding the people doing good in those communities and then help them flourish
- An explanation of how the Groundswell platform is structured
- How the Groundswell system promotes the cross-pollination between efforts in communities
- Connecting the dots in a given location so people know what good is going on around them
- Building a deterrents to hate and radicalization in our communities
[21:04 – 31:03] Some Antidotes to Hate
- A great example of people coming together around building a community garden
- People will protect the things they create together
- The story of Brad Galloway – former Neo-Nazi – who now helps bring people out of far-right, hate organizations.
- Life After Hate – organization in North America much like GroundSwell
[31:04 – 38:31] Where are the Peace Builders?
- The pretense of caring
- Facilitation – a puddle, makes a river, makes a sea
- The benefit of being Hyper-local
- How to interact with the maps at Groundswell
- Links to 3-minute inspiring stories in GroundSwell videos
[38:32- 46:55] Handling Adversity
- Having a sense of humor
- The law of attraction and feeling like chaos keeps finding you
- Coping skills when trying to make the world a better place
- Patience
- Routines and doing work for the greater good
- Allowing yourself to focus on the good, rather than constantly focusing on the chaos
- Hadiya’s practice way of handling a really bad situation that takes her by surprise
[46:56- 54:07] How Groundswell Grows
- Connection/contact information
- The one thing Hadiya needs to grow.
- She’s built the ship,… now she needs a crew
- What keeps Hadiya knowing it is still an amazing world
