Posted on June 3, 2011 @ 9:26 am by ehuizenga

Immersion

By Erin Huizenga, Founder/Executive Director, EPIC

Walking along the lakefront this morning with our son Knox, I was reflecting on ideas presented last night during the three presentations at the first EPIC 20/20 event. The theme that came up most? Immersion. In order to be fully sold out and passionate about solving one of the world’s many problems, you must fully immersed inside a problem. You have to see the problem first hand and tackle it. You have to feel the conviction personally … that you can, and will, do something. You have to know how to break a massive, overwhelming problem into smaller, tangible, more realistic and grounded bits. You have to believe that you can make change happen as a gifted problem solver and storyteller.

First up were Justin Ahrens and Kerri Liu of Rule 29. They talked about immersing themselves within a culture of Ethiopian street children in order to communicate a terrible need in a remarkably beautiful and measurable way. Kerri told us about a young woman she met, a prostitute, who she talked with about the fact she does what she does to earn $5 a day to feed and take care of her son. Justin shared that when he had heard about the opportunity to work with Life in Abundance, the founder insisted they GO to Africa before they even began the work. They had to see it, feel it, smell it and talk to the people to truly understand what it meant to live with the fears the people of Ethiopia must face every single day.

Second up was Anne Marie Mitchell from Columbia College Chicago. She shared stories about change she’s seen in Columbia College students over the years. Her hope is that she’s building students for a life of service, but she admits, they have to know they “give a shit.” You can’t strong arm them. You can’t convince them to care. They have to have a first-hand experience … making them unstoppable in solving something. It reminded me of what one of my own college mentors once told me. “Think about what makes you cry. That’s a sure sign that you’ve found something to give your life to.”

Third, we heard from Mary Foyder of IDEO. She’s been working on a project called bedsider.org, which is a free support network and educational tool for birth control, targeted to young adult women ages 18 to 29. It’s a story of using design and humor effectively to address the issue of reducing the number of unplanned pregnancies to women ages 18 to 29. One of the funniest moments of the evening was watching Theresa, the 21-year-old woman who uses the ring as her birth control of choice after much trial and error. Mary shared about the beautiful opportunity it has been to get to know these women who shared their stories so openly while they clearly understood these stories would be seen by the masses to help women become more educated. Mary got immersed in this research process of knowing women and hearing how they think about sex and pregnancy in order to build a tool that can lower the staggering number of unplanned pregnancies that happen due to misunderstanding and lack of education.

What do we want 20/20 to be? A clear picture of the social work that has been done, hindsight if you will, so we can see inside a broken world with clarity … a clarity that can only be earned by immersion. 20/20 is the story of how you take your talents and invest in work that will outlast you. I hope you will join us for the next one.

Photo by Chris Ocken

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