Episode 54 - Ellenore Angelidis, Open Hearts Big Dreams Fund
Christine is so excited for today’s episode because she is joined by Ellenore Angelidis. Ellenore is a Creator, Collaborator, and Innovator. They first crossed paths five or so years ago, just as Ellenore was beginning to create her foundation. In the conversation they were having way back then, Ellenore was looking for some assistance with growing her foundation and Open Hearts Big Dreams Fund.
Christine was immediately connected to Ellenore’s story, her vision and her inspiration because Ellenore is helping communities find their voice in their story. Christine is so grateful to have Ellenore on today’s episode.
Christine and Ellenore aren’t holding anything back as they discuss the foundation literacy provides, culturally representative literature, and how Open Hearts Big Dreams is making a huge impact by instilling a love of stories in the lives of young people.
Ellenore Angelidis is the Founder and the Board President of OHBD Fund. She is also the founder and CEO of LEAD, LLC which provides public speaking and consulting services. As a 13+ year employee of Amazon from 2005-2018, she was part of a period of growth. Ellenore's last role at Amazon was Director of Kindle Content Risk management. Previously, she worked for Amazon in legal and business roles in Seattle, Luxembourg, and Paris – and is passionate about bringing change and forward momentum.
As a volunteer, Ellenore has held board and fund-raising positions with the not for profits WACAP and Ethiopia Reads. Ellenore is also a published writer of children’s books and articles on Linked In, blogs (Ethiopian Ties and Balancing Career Family), and on-line magazines (Working Mother, Adoptive Families, InCulture Parent, and Women’s Essence).
In this episode, Christine and Ellenore dive into:
The importance and impact of literacy
The accessibility of books outside of the U.S.
Literacy statistics in the U.S. vs other countries
How our sense of identity is determined by the books we read
Why representation in books provides a sense of self and community
How literacy and travel create awareness of other cultures
How to keep young people hopeful so they will want to contribute to something with a huge impact
How literacy intersects with gender empowerment
Resources & Links Mentioned in the Episode
To learn more about Open Hearts Big Dreams and all the ways to support them, head over to Open Hearts Big Dreams
Connect and follow Ellenore and Open Hearts Big Dreams on Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter
Ways To Support Ellenore Angelidis & Open Hearts Big Dreams
Buy our #ReadySetGo books. All proceeds support our book literacy project. Shop Ready Set Go Books On Amazon
If English is your first language, consider reading the book on video. A kid somewhere in the world can watch your YouTube and learn about that particular story. Open Hearts Big Dreams is happy to send you a book and would love to share what they do.
If you are a creative person, Open Hearts Big Dreams is always looking for new illustrators, all of our illustrators, and writers are volunteers. It is a gift that gives back. So if you are interested, they would welcome you to either think through an illustration or illustrate a book. We are also open to your ideas, too! Contact us at Open Hearts Big Dreams
Each season we celebrate one of our community members and donate $10 from each shirt sale to their organization. Our limited edition Winter CommuniTee is supporting Open Hearts Dream Big Fund and Ready. Set. Go. Books. Literacy is all about stories: the ones we share, the ones we live, and the ones that shape us. To purchase your limited edition Winter CommuniTee and support Open Hearts Dream Big Fund and Ready. Set. Go. Books here.
To watch this interview on YouTube, click here.
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Soul of Travel honors the passion and dedication of the people making a positive impact in tourism. In each episode, you’ll hear the story of women who are industry professionals and seasoned travelers and community leaders who know travel is more than a vacation. It is an opportunity for personal awareness and it is a vehicle for change. We are thought leaders, action takers, and heart-centered change makers.
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Credits. Christine Winebrenner Irick (Host, creator, editor.) Ellenore Angelidis (Guest). Original music by Clark Adams. Editing and production by Rayna Booth.
Transcript
KEYWORDS
books, literacy, read, people, Ethiopia, community, opportunity, children, travel, represented, representation, world, language
00:08
Thank you for joining me for soulful conversations with my community of fellow travelers, exploring the heart, the mind and the globe. These conversations highlight what travel really means for the world. Soul of Travel honors the passion and dedication of the people making a positive impact in tourism. Each week, I'll be speaking to women who are tourism professionals, world travelers and leaders in their communities will explore how travel has changed them and how that has rippled out and inspired them to change the world. These conversations are as much about travel as they are about passion, and living life with purpose, chasing dreams, building businesses, and having the desire to make the world a better place. This is a community of people who know travel is more than a vacation. It is an opportunity for personal awareness, and it is a vehicle for change. We are thought leaders, action takers, and heart-centered changemakers. I'm Christine Winebrenner Irick. And this is the Soul of Travel.
Ellenore Angelidis is the founder and the board president of the Open Hearts Big Dreams Fund. She is also the founder and CEO of Lead LLC, which provides public speaking and consulting services. She was a 13 plus year employee of Amazon and her last role there was director of Kindle content risk management, open hearts big dreams Fund is a 501 C three not for profit organization that believes the chance to dream big dreams should not depend on where in the world you are born. Their mission is inspiring and empowering youth, their communities and organizations who serve them to reimagine their futures by providing literacy, steam innovation, inclusion, and leadership education and opportunities. In this conversation, she and I talk about the foundation that literacy provides culturally representative literature and how open hearts is making a profound impact by instilling a love of stories.
Join me now for my soulful conversation with Ellenore Angelidis.
02:52
We crossed paths probably five or so years ago, just as you were beginning to create your foundation. And we were actually just talking about scaling and delegating work. And I think that was the conversation we were having way back then, Ellenore was looking for some assistance with growing her foundation and Open Hearts Big Dreams and I was immediately really connected to your story and your vision and your inspiration to me as someone who is leading women and just helping women to step into their own voice and now helping communities kind of find their voice in their story.
So I'm so grateful to have you here today. Welcome.
03:50
Thank you. It's wonderful to be here.
03:52
Thank you. Ellenore and I are collaborating this month for Lotus communities. And so we have designed a t-shirt that says she will move mountains. And we will be donating $10 from every one of our shirts, which then also will provide five books for their program. And we're going to go a lot more into that as our conversation goes along. But I just wanted our listeners to have that context as we begin this conversation.
We're going to talk a lot about literacy and voice and representation. And I'm so excited to bring all of these things into this conversation today. Ellenore before we get started, would you just take a moment to introduce yourself and give us a little bit of background about Ready Set Go Books and how this program came to be?
04:50
Sure. I have a hard time giving a brief background because I've had such a nonlinear career and path but I am a lawyer by training and I think the best way to describe my, my path is I followed my curiosity and really look to maximize impact and learning. So my last corporate career was 13 years as a Director at Amazon in both Seattle, as well as Luxembourg and France. The journey to Open Hearts Big Dreams started even before it became an organization five years ago, but the biggest literacy project we had started with a friend of mine named Jane Kurtz, and it was titled Ready Set Go books. And it actually has the bold goal of trying to increase the literacy rate of a country of 115 million where currently around half the population has not had the opportunity to learn to read.
05:51
That is a big, bold goal. I have loved seeing how much impact you have already been able to create in the last I think it's been about five years. Is that right? Since you launched
06:02
five years, yes, we had our five-year anniversary paper anniversary, because if you know anything about founding not for profits of the first year or so are his paperwork, lots of paperwork.
06:15
Yeah, well, congratulations on that. And I really wanted to talk about the importance and the impact of literacy. I think it's one of those things that is a small thing that really has a profound impact. And something that comes from the US isn't something that is really, it's not really easily understood what that access to reading or in access to reading even looks like.
Because it's obviously so much more available, and then what not being able to read or write or communicate with that form, how that creates inabilities. And really, that if you don't learn to read, and this is something you said to me, if you don't learn to read, every door is shut. So what does opening that door mean to the communities that you're working with?
07:06
And I want to be quick to clarify, you have lots of opportunities to contribute and have an impact, but you don't have educational opportunities, every educational opportunity is closed if you don't know how to read.
And I think the best way to answer that question, Christina is to give an example of one of our team members, his name is Dr. Workman we're lot he has a Ph.D. in ecology. And he comes from a family that had never had the opportunity to read before he and his siblings, and his mother, who is illiterate, but a community leader.
And that's why I want to be very careful to say you can have a huge positive impact. It's just there's a lot of opportunities that are not going to be available to you. And she decided for all of her children that she wanted them to just learn to read and write, just learn to read and write and opportunities she didn't have. And what Dr. workqueue shared with me is once I learned to read, I couldn't stop, right? It just propelled me forward, I saw possibilities. I learned things, it opened all these doors.
He's the oldest and all of his siblings have advanced degrees, a number of them work for Microsoft as engineers. So that one door opening just created so many opportunities. And then that family is now impacting so many others through the work that they're doing. So literacy has these ripples that happen both for the individual, the family, and the community.
And if you think about it, literacy allows people to participate in their communities, the right to know what's happening around them, the news, what they hear, being able to think critically. And those opportunities are just not available to way too many in Ethiopia. So that was something where we felt we had something we could contribute.
08:52
Yeah, thank you. And thank you so much for the clarification, because certainly not what I meant. But the kind of more traditional, I guess, roles that do hinge on certain levels of education is where it's harder to create those pathways if you don't have the opportunity to have learned to read. And as you were talking about that story, I was just being reminded of my daughter's learning to read and how magical it is watching that journey and how much access to knowledge that books do give you. And especially in some areas where maybe you don't have access to universities or certain types of education.
I'm even thinking about where I grew up in rural Montana where you know, you might have I was kind of a book nerd and I was really frustrated that we didn't have all of these science classes. But because we had a good library I just didn't independent study and taught myself the science I wanted to learn or, you know, my kids now can quote all these things about whatever is really interesting to them, because they grabbed a book and they chose you know, to spend their time reading about that and learn about that.
So for me, books have always just been these magical portals to wherever you want to be, and whatever you want to do. And so I love that it's something as simple as giving someone that tool to understand what is in all of these books really allows them to blossom into that next version of themselves.
10:23
Exactly. I mean, my trips to the library, we grew up, we didn't have a lot, but going to the library, it felt like you could travel anywhere you wanted to you could be anyone you wanted to be. And when we first brought home Lola, and we sort of learned the disparity and opportunity for the average kid who would grow up in the US or the average kid who would grow up, you know, in Ethiopia, it was sort of hard to even wrap your mind around.
One thing I do with some of our, you know, young volunteers is I get them together in a group, and I ask them to raise their hand if they know how to read. And everybody raises their hand. And I said, half of you put your hand down, right, like so now, that's half the population, what if half of you couldn't read?
And then the second question, which is also like, hard to imagine, given what we see every day, how many of you learn to read with books because actually, the kids that learn to read in Ethiopia often do not have children's books, they're learning to memorize an alphabet.
And then they're learning to read maybe a street sign or a store sign, or if someone has a Bible at home, or you mentioned that a textbook, so it's not creating that love of reading and that introduction to imagination and play, and that we expect from learning to read because random to read in our minds is coupled with an abundance of colorful, engaging representative books, right?
So if you take those two things away, and I, I've had young people come back and say, I didn't know, right, like, I can't even get my head around that right. And I think that's what really drove us is, is we take this literally for granted that you learned to read and that there are just as many books and even more as you could possibly want. And that's not true for everybody.
12:17
Yeah, and I know, when I was researching the work you do and reading that 50% of people that learn to read aren't using books, I couldn't even imagine how you would learn to read without a book, as I mean, this is our context for learning to read, right? I just had no ability to even understand like, I mean, yes, you could learn the alphabet, you can write it.
But then where do you go? How do you put that into practice? So that awareness of street signs and store signs and kind of whatever you can get your hands on to practice that tool, but then also thinking about how much time I have spent again, I have young kids, with them, learning to read.
So if you don't have that, like kind of constant exposure, and that continued development, even if you have this basic understanding, as you said, it doesn't become like this leisurely process. It's kind of more this tedious, frustrating.
Maybe it's hard to understand that you don't just kind of don't do it in your free time. You don't do it. Like my one daughter walks around like this. She's that kid, right? Like she's, you're like, please put the book down and just pay attention for a second. And no, you don't get the space for that to become a part of your daily life.
13:37
Exactly. So what we actually have said is we're interested in teaching a love of reading, right, that reading isn't a chore. And some of the recent studies have shown that even where literacy rates have increased, reading comprehension has not. And it makes sense to me, if you haven't learned to love to read, you're not embracing it. And it's not taking you on the journey that we described and seen our books with kids in Ethiopia.
You see kids literally like that your description of your daughter, we have a picture and we have more than one of literal children almost disappearing in the books because they're literally trying to get so close to the pictures and so close to the language and following it a lot because they want that story to come.
And we find parents now are empowered because even if you don't know how to read, our stories are simple and illustrations are doing a lot of the heavy lifting and telling the story. So we actually have a program in the very, very south of mozzie that we're working with another organization where it's read to mom, so what if the mom doesn't know how to read you describe helping your child? How do you help your child if you don't know?
But if your child is learning, maybe they can help you and you take care together, learn how to read, or at least have this shared educational experience because we know parental involvement of any kind is going to help that child be more secure. Cecil and also increase the confidence of the mom or the dad that feels like they can't help their child in school because they didn't get that opportunity.
So the amazing multigenerational, and community ripples and the pride, like, I remember one little boy coming in with a book, and he's pointing, pointing, that's me. That's me right in the book because he saw himself right. And whether it was exactly him, I don't know that the author knew him.
But that sense that I see myself I see my community, I see things that are familiar to me, that was another part that these are culturally appropriate designed for the kids who will ultimately read them.
15:37
Yeah, I love that. And for me, again, this was not a new awareness, but just kind of like taking me back to a moment when I realized when you look at stories in the US, that even our literature is not really culturally representative of a vast majority of our population. And you know, you look at this across the board in the media, so when you are traveling, I often love to sit and read with children when I'm traveling as well.
I remember being in Guatemala and reading stories, and again, kind of having that aha moment of like, you know, the stories are great, and the kids are enjoying them. But what would it mean to them, if they saw themselves in these books if they really didn't feel like reading in a way that is almost even more foreign?
When you are reading these books about people that they maybe are never exposed to the outside of a few travelers, and I just, I just was kind of trying to understand what that would feel like, in my mind to try to, you know, if every book that I had ever seen growing up, depicted Asian families, and I was trying to find myself in that situation, like, I just was trying to flip the roles, you know, what I mean?
And see, like, what, how does your sense of identity become established when you are even learning to read in a setting that looks and feels like that? And it just created some interesting dialogue in my family about what representation is and how important that might be in books.
But you kind of mentioned it, but But how does that help and I know you have books that are also focusing on kids with disabilities, and as well to kind of fold in that, or expand on that seeing yourselves and books.
17:29
Representation is a concept that is so big, and so simple, all at the same time. When you see yourself represented, you feel valued, you feel seen, and you feel like you matter. And I think even my daughter who is growing up in the US, there are not as many kids that look like her as might look like me, there are not as many books with characters who look like her versus look like me.
We're finding that our books are doing a whole lot of representation globally, which is really amazing because we have this target audience and this target goal. But I think when you do something that involves stories, and involves honoring, you know, cultures and history and trying to actually capture something, the ripples go out in so many places, like we know we have digital and physical books that are used to support Somali and Eritrean refugees in the Scandinavian countries of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, we have all of our books in all of our language is in the Seattle Public Library, a large selection in the Denver Public Library and a number of the California Public Libraries.
And what we were told is this is language and culture preservation for some of those library patrons. It's black history that predates you know, the US history where black history has focused. And it's also for others, in the opportunity to learn about a culture that is not theirs, right, that they don't get the same opportunity to learn about as maybe a European culture. And because they're bilingual, the access is opened up to so many more. So we're finding that representation actually, is represented by many different people but in the country, we know that the research shows you have to learn to speak in your mother tongue.
So in whatever language is being spoken in your home, for literacy to be effective, you need to learn that language first. And then you can learn others you need to learn with simple, colorful, engaging books that represent your community. That is what is going to draw a child in and that's what's going to make them feel like this book is about me. This book is about my family or my country or my culture or my continent, but I'm not confused by seeing people in a book that don't look like any people I see on a regular basis. And again, your description of what would that look like?
I don't think any of us can even come close to imagining that because our normal is that we get represented all the time we get all those messages that we matter we've seen. Now there are places where a woman, you don't get that message, right. And then I find that as a woman, I can see where I am represented.
And I can see very clearly where I'm not. And that's the best analogy that allowed me to see what does it feel like when I don't see myself represented when I see the top general counsel's right as a lawyer, or when I see the CEOs or when I see, you know, the heads of government, and I don't see a lot of representation of people who look like me, how does that make me feel? And I can then take that to say, I can only imagine what it's like, at an exponential level, if you don't see representation at all at really basic levels.
20:48
Yeah, thank you so much for walking us through that. Because I think that's something that will be really important for our listeners, because it also really plays both into this situation with literacy, but also with why travel is so important, engaging in other cultures, and like that, that space it creates for you to engage with another culture and then reflect on your own and seeing these different things side by side are what helped to open and grow our vision.
So I love thinking about it. And just, I guess, kind of trying to put myself into that place that feels a little uncomfortable, so that I can try to relate and then see what action comes out of that awareness. You have mentioned a couple of times your daughter and I really meant to start here with a broader introduction to this program. And I just got so excited to start diving into these topics that we really just went headlong in.
But you mentioned your daughter Lola. She was born in Ethiopia, and that some of this project was prompted by her experience. And then much of how it's developed has also been really led by her personal drive to and her personal curiosities and questions she's posed in your life. But I just wanted to give you time to maybe share a little bit more about the background.
Then how the idea for dual language books which we also kind of just skipped over, but is really important, a little bit more the foundation of this, of your business, or this organization and the people that you're serving.
22:23
Now, that's perfect. So I joke sometimes, but most joking, has a pretty big kernel of truth in it that this is a mom project and sort of like an equity project for me, and that the mom project is my youngest child who is adopted from Ethiopia, she came home as a six-month-old. And one of the questions we got, which we talked about was what, what would her life have been like, which, frankly, there's no way of knowing. But we started to dig into the differences as we wanted to connect our daughter to her first culture in her first country.
And it became very clear that the opportunities for a kid born in her country versus born in the US on average were very, very different. And that's why one of the things you'll see on our website is we don't think a kid's dream should be impacted by where in the world they were born, that everyone should have big dreams. And literacy obviously is a big part of it. So we started by building a library in her birth town and traveling back. So traveling is really, really important to me, I am the child of immigrants.
So my mother is from the Netherlands, my dad actually grew up in Indonesia and Australia, although he's also Dutch, so he, he is a wanderer, or he was a wanderer, he is now in another world. But that love of travel was a big part of what started us on this. And when we traveled to Africa, it opened a whole nother world that we only understood from the books right and only a little to be really honest. And I'm actually a little embarrassed that I didn't know more at the very beginning. But it started us on this journey. And Leila was always part of it, right? Because Leila has a very strong sense of equity. And when she was really little, and I told her, some kids in your country, you know, birth country don't get to go to school, and some kids don't get to learn to read her response was immediate and very pointed to me, mama, that's not fair. You need to fix it.
Because kids believe everything is fixable by adults and adults sometimes forget that. There's a lot you can do. Maybe you can't fix it. But if you do nothing, you certainly won't fix it. So that got us started. And then about five years ago, I sort of took a pause because we'd been doing a lot of fundraising and working with other organizations and the literacy rate hadn't moved.
I really felt like I needed to be doing something different, right that my goals were to have an impact and different people have different goals, the organization we worked with, we still collaborate with we love what they do, but I wanted to see some of this tangible impact and I saw these opportunities, bigger options. communities that weren't structured in a way that they would fit with any traditional NGO that I could find out there, because I had a friend who advised me if you can find a way not to start an NGO, don't, right. And so I could not find a way not to start an NGO.
So the goal was really to look for these big projects, so we could support other NGOs. Because one another piece of advice I got that was really impactful was don't be another NGO, small, little NGO working in Ethiopia, there's so many do something that has a big impact, which again, resonated with me, and I thought, okay, how do we help everybody else, right, so everybody's got all these challenges. I'd seen them by collaborating with some of them.
We really said we're going to focus on literacy technology, innovation, inclusion is a new focus and leadership. And then I looked for the projects. So I just knew I was going to do something in literacy. I didn't really know what it was. And I met up with my friend who had actually found it that was one of the co-founders of the first organization I worked with. And she had this what was then a little project of these bilingual books because she's an award-winning children's author. She's from Portland, but she had grown up in the south of Ethiopia.
Her name is Jane Kurtz. She's written all kinds of books for Simon Schuster, Penguin, others. And she had basically this pilot that she and her sister were working on. And I said, that's the literacy project, like we need to make that so much bigger. And I had actually been in a role at Kindle Direct Publishing. So the timing was absolutely perfect. And we said, and I said, What would it take to impact literacy, and she said, probably, we have to create enough books for a small library, like the size of a small children's library, we estimated 200 unique titles, and then Ethiopia has 90 languages.
But we figured if we got the top three, we would hit roughly 70 to 80% of the population. So that was our initial goal. And we've actually gotten we're at 115, we might hit 130, by the end of the year, and we actually have between four and seven languages. Not all of the books, but that's kind of where it started. And it kind of took us on a crazy journey and for Lola. She's fundraised for us. She's a children's book author for us, she's been a spokesperson for us. And a big part for me was that this was something we do together.
Like this was something I wanted her to lead, her voice is very important. And we collaborate with the community and everything we do. But Lola in our family represents the community. And we wanted to make sure that as we were doing things, it was creating that additional connection and understanding and ability to contribute to where she came from.
27:44
Thank you so much for offering that more clear understanding, because I think there were so many things in there that really are really important to think about. And I love that your daughter has that drive I've talked about before my oldest daughter, that's the lens she sees the world through as well. Like her, I remember sitting in the car with her like 40 or so years ago. And somehow we talked about, you know, people not all people having jobs or people being homeless. And then she was like, you know, her mind started, like trying to solve homelessness, right?
Like, immediately. She's like, of course, this, this is not okay, this is not acceptable. What can we do? And she says, and she didn't really know, this is something we hadn't talked about prior. But she said, well, there should be places where people who don't have enough money to buy food can go and just get the food they need for themselves and their families. And it should just be free. And there should be lots of things there. And I said, Well, they do have those, those are called food banks. She's like, okay, great. I want to work at one. She's like, Oh, wait, is that at the grocery store? Sometimes we buy stuff and we put it in the big boxes. I was like, yeah, that's that. And then she's like, well, now what about if they don't have homes?
How are they going to cook this food, they need a place where they can go and they can sleep and they can prepare a meal and their families can have, you know, security. And so she's, you know, she's just got going right down the path of how do we solve, you know, homelessness in our country in, like, it's so amazing to see how their minds work, and actually how like broad thinking they can be. And I think for me, there's so much magic in being in that space where you kind of haven't become jaded as an adult, where you just assume that this is completely tangible, right? And then, and we also talked about this, and maybe we can spend a little time here is like for others who are listening who have children that have this similar drive and passion and determination who I know will do great things.
How do we create a space for them and give them support so that they can continue on this path, and that they don't kind of continually come up against roadblocks because of their age or their gender or inadequate funds that then does make them be disillusioned that they are no longer wish to be these like global powerhouses?
30:11
Well, I'm going to actually borrow from one of my heroes to answer that question. I had the amazing good fortune to meet Jane Goodall. When we were living in Paris, with one of my children, and one, I felt like she much more enjoyed talking to the children than the adults, which I cannot blame anyone for.
But one of the things she said of all the things that worried her in the world, and there's obviously so many things, she's she was doing a world tour at 80. I would like to be doing half of what she was doing at that age. So she was role modeling, and in so many ways, so many important lessons. But she said the only thing that she really worried about was young people losing hope. And I thought that was so profound.
And it's sort of hidden in the question you just asked, How do you keep young people hopeful, so they keep looking for solutions. And then I just saw a quote from Jane Goodall, I think it was yesterday that someone shared on social media if you want to find a solution to a hard problem, and you're committed to finding it, you will make progress. And I feel like that model of starting with hope, and then really helping your child see how they can contribute even as there are obstacles like Leila and I talk about like, some of the things we did work, some of them didn't in the early days, we had one translation that got not very positive feedback, we had to pull all those books back, start over find a different process, we thought we would make this trip in 2019. And then get all this, you know, big funding from large organizations, that didn't happen.
And we ended up getting funding through very different sources. So sharing the journey and giving them tools that things that you do in other environments, like an experiment, try and experiment, collaborate, who else wants to do what you're doing, right? And what we found is our collaboration base has just been absolutely amazing of people who literally up here, I still want to believe in magic, but like, drop out of wherever, when you need them for a part of the project. And I think letting them see that as you put things out there. And as you follow your own values and your energy, and you're open to feedback on what's working and what's not, you will learn, which is always a win. And making progress is something that you have to define what it looks like before you can know what it is. And I think starting with that as a child, like, make sure they're hopeful, give them projects, and then help them work through the disappointments or failures.
Because frankly, I don't know anyone whose life has been a straight line and only success. If there's someone out there, maybe we can meet them. But for me, it's all about managing the bumps. Right, and managing the detours.
33:05
Yeah, that's so good. I'm all about magic. That was just the random thought that I had, and I found out was really, really valuable. So thank you so much. Yeah, I mean, I think just across the board, that's something that I feel like my daughter's generation has the hurdles of not knowing how to overcome roadblocks because it seems that we tried to remove them for them as much as possible. And I actually, you know, decided, we need to just leave those in there and maybe even create some so that they can develop those skills for overcoming that disappointment and the frustration.
And it's really hard in the moment, but knowing that the next time, then they have something to call on. And they have this tool that they can use to navigate that, that disappointment or that frustration or to know that they can get through and get to the other side of it and try again, without it being this dislike full stop. So I think that's also really important and a really valuable lesson. And it's harder sometimes to do it with something you're so engaged in from the heart.
Because it means something different where if you know it's a paper, you've got a bad grade on it, but you didn't really care too much about the paper. It's not as poignant or as painful as something that really means something as much as this just for you and your daughter, for sure.
34:29
I mean, I actually one of the things I do in my you know, professional life is I do some public speaking and I put together a talk that was called failing my way to success, which is probably one of the most uncomfortable talks I ever prepared and delivered and I rethought my decision to even offer that many, many times to the process.
But one thing that came out, which was something I knew and I think most people know intuitively we're just getting so much messaging that tells us the opposite failure is not the opposite of success.
Failure is a key input to success. So in order to succeed, you have to fail. So that is one of the most valuable things I think you can teach your children is that failure is input, I think the other thing you mentioned is when you are so emotionally attached to things, it's easy to get too close to something where you can't see other possibilities.
I think one of the things that I've learned more recently and with COVID, and you know, things that just aren't possible now in the world as it is, is sometimes when you let go of holding something so closely, a new opportunity opens, something else reveals itself because you created a little bit of space and a little opening and a little light. And all of a sudden, you realize I was trying to get through this door, which is closed.
But because I was so close to the door, I didn't see there actually is a side door over here that I could go through. And I had a funny negotiation one shows like pictures of a sheep, right. And sheep are, they're literally at a gate and they're trying to get through the gate.
There's no fence, there's just one gate. And they're stuck because they just can't back up and go around. They're just stuck. And I think we often are, though shape, we just think there's this one way through, and we can't get there. And then we're frustrated, as opposed to saying, Whoa, maybe an over around and through strategy might work.
I think both looking for that distance and that space to allow things to reveal themselves. And also just remembering failure is input to success, not the opposite, I think it is a valuable thing that I've sort of hung on to when you hit those speed bumps, or disappointments or detours. Yeah,
36:48
I was listening to a podcast yesterday. And that just reminds me of that, as well as that we also get really comfortable with just being stuck at that gate. And regardless, if we then like to look, and we're like, Oh, I could just go that way. Like, here, we know where we are right. And if we start to go that way, we're stepping into the unknown. And so even though it gets us maybe unstuck, we're more fearful of what could happen. And whether it's success or failure, or just like five other options. We sometimes just stay in this stagnant space because it's known and comfortable.
I think that's probably something that might resonate with people that are listening as well. Well, thank you for that pivot or pitstop in this conversation. Because I think that that's so valuable. I did want to talk a little bit about how literacy intersects with gender empowerment.
That's something that is a really important topic to me. And part of why the slogan on our community is she will move mountains, what is what does it look like for young girls that are learning to read? And what's the impact specifically for that, that you have seen or in general that you're aware of?
38:14
So there's a lot to unpack in that question, Christine, because I think gender is one of the things where it's a global phenomenon where women and girls do not have the same opportunities. And it doesn't matter where in the world you go. And this I learned as I did my research as Amazon's first executive who led diversity functions, and really spent a lot of time in the research.
So the other piece that I think is really important when you connect it to literacy, as I gave you the literacy numbers for the country, you know, it's around half. It's significantly worse for girls and, and, and young women, and women generally. And when you look at stats globally, when there's a challenge in the country, many times it's worse, if not everyone's getting educated, like who's getting educated. And if you look at a level deeper, and that really struck me so what we wanted to do is to kind of tip the scales to be more equal. So we really focused on making sure girls are represented in our books, but girls are also represented in many powerful ways in roles as the smart girl or roles where they can dream anything.
They want to be the same message you might tell a little boy and really work to help that little girl not only get the power of being able to read in her toolkit for the future but getting the power of seeing herself and imagining herself as the heroine as that as the person who becomes you know, whatever it is that she sees as her big dream because I think the challenge is if you don't have enough representation, you don't have the tools and you don't see people that look like you doing the things you think you could do with the right opportunity, you don't even imagine it. So part of what literacy does is it allows young girls to imagine something different, and then have the tools that can start them on their journey.
So we both do that with literacy, we also right now are running virtual computer science and leadership camps. And our focus is to make sure those we have as close to equal representation of young men and young women, again, to try and create the leadership of the future to be more representative of the population.
But it's a challenge. And it's a challenge that we haven't fully addressed in the US. I think, as a woman here, most of us can say, No, it hasn't been fully addressed. But I think there are some levels of challenges when you go into places where literacy is still a significant issue, that the impact on women and girls is even more stark. And so that importance of it to them is even greater.
41:10
Yeah, I actually like to keep coming back home. But because I have three daughters, a lot of this is so relevant. But one of my daughters was really concerned, like last week and I said, Can you name what this feeling is? And she was like, I'm just really sad because I feel like I'm more like a boy than a girl. And I said, Well, why is that just like, all of my interests are boy interests. And I just don't know that I can do any of them. I like, and she is like, she loves coding.
She loves science. She loves math, she wants to be an astronaut, she's like, and she said, she's like, I don't think I can do any of those things. I don't think any women do those things. And it made me think like, Who is she seeing doing those things. And so it does hit hard that there's still a lot of work to do.
Universally, it's a global issue, like you said, and, you know, really trying to paint this picture that young girls can see themselves stepping into any of these roles that they aspire to, and especially when someone has a natural inclination towards something, right, like, that's a gift that was given. And so you don't want to discourage that or make them feel that it's not a possibility because of their gender. And yeah, it just really, really hits home for me as well to put myself in her shoes. And think about that for a moment.
42:39
For sure. And I think you mentioned inclusion earlier. I mean, we, the gentleman who inspired our inclusion project, ended up in a wheelchair after an accident as a young person and looked for role models for his new life. And he found it very hard. And he wrote about it to find any other than some unbelievably extraordinary humans that were like mountain climbing and realtors. And he joked in the piece that he wrote that he really loved seeing that, but he sort of wanted a few more normal people, right doing, you know, everyday life. And then he actually concluded the piece. And unfortunately, he left this world too soon.
But he concluded that at the end of the day, he realized he became the role model for others that he never got for himself. And what we also realized, as we looked at our books is we neglected to represent those children. And again, partly because no one on the team had that lived experience, we had been very careful on gender, socio-economic and religious region, like all kinds of elements of inclusion. But if you don't have a lived experience or someone that reminds you, we realize we'd created a whole lot of books without one kid that had different abilities.
So sometimes it takes that light. And I talked to a couple of the literacy folks on our team. And I said, I was embarrassed, truly embarrassed, because here I'm trying to be fully inclusive, and I literally have not been inclusive for a very, you know, a very significant population. And she had exactly the same reaction. So I think part of it is that awakening, and also making sure that we have representation all over so that we don't have to remember for everyone or remind people and I think those going together, making sure that you act on your aha moments like that moment with your daughter and where do you go from there and then realize the more we have representation everywhere, the less those aha moments will be needed.
44:43
Yeah, and I think this kind of goes into a conversation I've had with some people about those awarenesses and, and that moment of discomfort when like you said when you realize that you've been doing it wrong. Wrong. It's not the right word. But that version of you that didn't have that awareness, that was the way you knew how to do it, right. But a lot of people, kind of can't get past that moment and move forward, because it's almost acknowledging that you didn't do it right in the first place. Right?
It's easier to stay without acknowledging that so that you don't have to say I did it wrong. Now I'm doing it right, just like, oh, I'm just saying, I'm kind of behind the gate again, right. And so I think that maybe that's where, especially on these conversations that are so culturally entrenched, it's just really difficult to take that first step and admit that you didn't know everything that you didn't know, which is really beautiful, right? That's where you get to move forward. But it's also really hard and difficult for some people to be able to take that step.
45:50
Yeah, I like Mya Angelo's quote, do the best you can, and when you know better, do better. And that really released me from the guilt if I didn't know, and maybe I should have known and I can have guilt about that. But once you know, then you're now accountable for the choices you make after that. And I think that quote, has helped me very much in this work when you come to that uncomfortable realization, and then have a choice. What do I do with it? Do I just sit with it? Do I reject it? Or do I take it on board and do better? Yeah,
46:25
Yeah, thank you. Well, I have just loved so much going deeper, and learning more about you and learning more about why this mission is so important. Before we wrap up our conversation, if there's anything else that we missed that you wanted to share, I want to create the space for that. But I also want to make sure we let people know how they can get involved. And one of the really fun ways you had mentioned to me was your YouTube channel where people can read books to help increase awareness and literacy. So I'd love for you to share about that. But then any other ways that they can be engaged and support you.
47:08
Now, that's awesome. One, just buying our books or letting your community library school, let them know these books are available, because every book that gets purchased outside of Africa, purchased at funds books within Africa, and we're currently actually working on some projects to get books to displace children, kids that are displaced because of conflict or COVID, and can't even get to a school.
So how do we get books to them? So this project will help us do more of that. And then as Christine mentioned, when COVID hit, we had to sort of reinventing like everyone else. And we knew the kids were at home. And we have volunteers and it can be kids, kids are actually kids who love watching other kids read.
But essentially, it's just creating a video on your phone of you reading a book, hopefully holding the book up in whatever language you have, if English is your first language that is perfect. And just reading the book and a kid somewhere in the world can watch YouTube and learn about that particular story. And we're happy to send you a book and we love to share what we do. And we're always open to new ideas and new projects.
So we also love hearing if you have something you want to do one area of expansion for us that I don't know, that even Christina and I have talked too much about is we're adding more languages because we've gotten feedback that you know, what about Kiswahili? What about French, there's all these other African languages that if you have them, we could serve more countries and more children. So we're actually in that process. So there are lots of different opportunities. And we're just excited to have some of you reach out and join the team.
48:40
Yeah, and I would really encourage anybody who likes if this was your aha moment or something within you just ignited to reach out because sometimes we don't even know what door is open. But I think that connection is really important. And so I just invite anybody listening to do that. And I love that the opportunity to bring this to even more languages is around the corner because that was one of my favorite and most kind of aha moments traveling in Africa is how many languages you pass through within, you know, days, hours, minutes, like there's an amazing amount of languages. And so the ability to be able to create these books to serve as many people as possible, I think is really great. And then you also mentioned people being able to purchase the books.
I don't know if we said that they can purchase them on Amazon. And I think even for local libraries. I know when I was in Africa, I bought a bunch of books for my kids because I loved hearing the local traditional kind of tales. It's a chance for them to get to experience a culture that they haven't interacted with and engaged with. So beyond serving a need for literacy in Ethiopia like allowing for children in the United States or the UK or wherever you're listening to be able to read these books and share that knowledge and awareness and expand it that way I think is really a really neat tool to be able to use them that way as well.
50:15
Now, I think Leila would put a plugin for Leila and I will collaborate on some of the books. Some of them are true stories. But our latest is the story of Andromeda, an Ethiopian princess. So if you didn't know that Andromeda was Ethiopian there, you know, and my husband is Greek. So it was a beautiful connection between the Greeks and the Ethiopians, and it has a science element in the end because if you study astronomy, Andromeda is a constellation.
So we actually had a fun interaction where some families in Greece who have children from Ethiopia, actually are translating English into Greek so that their children can have the Greek Amharic version. And that has been a really fun popular one and also a reclaiming story. Because for better or for worse most people represent Andromeda as someone who looks more like us than her true Ethiopian heritage.
So a fun book, if you want to try us out. One other thing I'd love to mention, if you have any creative people listening, we're always looking for new illustrators, all of our illustrators, and writers are volunteers. But we know that it is a calling for you, it is a gift that gives back. I have an illustrator friend who's going through a health crisis.
And I sent her a picture of one of her books being enjoyed somewhere in rural Ethiopia. And she said, it just lifted me up, that my art could have a purpose that my art could be used in this way. So if you have that in your skillset, we would welcome you to either think through an illustration or illustrate a book or whatever works for you.
51:51
Thank you, and I love and again, I think I'm probably quoting yourself back to you. But those stories are what connect us and really help us to feel something and create global understanding. So that example of a drop on Andromeda really exemplifies that, right? Like, there's just this way to connect all these pieces and stories and parts together. And to really begin to see that every story is universal.
And so I just I this project is something that really resonates for me from that space of reading and magic and connection and global understanding. So I really appreciate the work you're doing. I am really grateful that you spent this time with me today for this conversation.
52:41
No, I love it. And I learned a little bit about pan-Africanism, which is the notion that Africa has a shared history and a shared destiny. And I've chosen it because I can't quite own that one that as a human race, we have a shared history and a shared destiny. And that if our science is correct, we actually are all from Ethiopia originally. And so these books are actually everyone's history and are there for everyone.
And that is part of what brings a huge amount of joy to me that we can be a part of connecting the human race in ways that they might not have thought about or seen possible before.
53:25
Thank you. Well, Ellenore, I really appreciate this. And for anyone listening, I just really encourage you to take a look at Open Hearts Dream Big and the Ready, Set Go Books because they're, they're really, really inspiring, and I think really far-reaching and really for everybody. So I am so excited to see who this resonates with and what doors open from this conversation.
53:53
Thank you, Christine.
54:09
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