IOU Respect is more than a creative moniker.  It’s a program with compelling lessons relevant to today’s world.

The program was born in the aftermath of September 11^th, and the deep gulf of misunderstanding between Western and Islamic cultures that it revealed.  HI-USA teamed with three other national hostelling associations to be part of the solution.    It started with the United States, Germany, Egypt and Tunisia.  Today, France and Lebanon have joined.

IOU Respect is about bringing together Western and Islamic young people for a two-week personal journey together.   The hostel stay is at its core.   Organized activities and workshops focus on building dialogue and understanding.   But there’s also plenty of unstructured time for conversations, sightseeing, shopping and fun, too.

2013 marks the eighth annual IOU Respect Program.  I’ve been fortunate to have been engaged with most of them and observe first-hand the impact on the participants.   During last year’s program in Chicago, I was deeply moved by the collegiality, and the wisdom, and the optimism in the room.   Do you want to feel good about the world’s prospects?   Read this blog post about last year’s program.

IOU Respect works.  In the words of one of last year’s  American participants, Alexandra Ponton:

“I got to engage in intellectual, fun, and respectful dialogue with the participants from varying countries about topics as taboo as religion, politics, stereotypes … Despite moments of unease, everyone maintained a state of open-mindedness.   We realized that despite religious, cultural, and political backgrounds we are all very similar and have the potential to connect.  IOU Respect was a very rich experience, not only because of the fabulous people I met, but because of the intentionality behind developing active global citizens with open minds.”

IOU Respect is held this year in Germany from August 16-30.  And we now are accepting applications from young Americans between 18 and 23 years olds who want to participate.  All costs in Germany are covered.  HI-USA offers a travel stipend to help with the airfare to Germany.  Applications are due on May 15th.

Someday the world may no longer need programs like IOU Respect.  Unfortunately, the recent Boston Marathon tragedy is an example of how far humanity has yet to go.  Help us do our part.   Tell your friends and neighbors about IOU Respect.

The Boston Marathon has long required resilience and fortitude by those who run it.  And now those same qualities are being summoned by the Boston populace – and caring people everywhere – to deal with the anguish and grief of the senseless, tragic acts committed against event spectators.

Little is currently known about the two explosions near the event’s finish line on Monday.  Explosives were planted in trash containers and then detonated.  Shrapnel compounded bystander injuries.  The origin of the bombs has not been determined.  The motive is not known.

However the human toll was immediate and visible – the broken bodies, the anguished faces, the multiple deaths including an eight year old – as was the compassionate care offered by first responders.

What provokes such cruelty against random people in Boston, or for that matter, innocent victims anywhere?   It’s a question that many of us last seriously asked ourselves over a decade ago, after September 11th.

Yet organizations like HI-USA have been working determinedly to promote dialogue and understanding among peoples and cultures and help defuse the misconceptions and prejudices that can lead to inexplicable acts, both small and large.  It’s our mission, and in these times, it is especially important.

In Boston, one answer to yesterday’s nightmare can be found about one mile away from the Marathon finish line – at the new Boston hostel at 21 Stuart Street opened in 2012 by HI-USA with local volunteer leadership.  The hostel is a place that encourages conversation and friendship among those whose paths might not otherwise meet.  It is a building designed for a noble purpose with staff who bring our mission to life every day.  The kindness and empathy of our staff welcomed those who walked through the hostel’s doors after the Boston tragedy, just as our staff delivered in New York City during Superstorm Sandy and in Washington and NYC after September 11th.

Our thoughts are with the victims of the Boston tragedy.  And in embracing resilience and fortitude, and kindness and empathy, the people of Boston are showing us all an inspiring way forward.

Last week I flew to Boston to participate in the 2013 North American Managers Meeting.  The event brings together hostel and community engagement staff from four countries.   And while hostels were the focus, it was people and geography that defined the gathering.    

For this conference, North America included Canada, Mexico and the USA, plus special guests from the German national hostel association who wowed the crowd with their presentations.  (What would it take for every North American country to be represented?  Check out the answer below.)

For the first time, NAMM included staff from HI hostels large and small, as HI-Canada and HI-USA combined previously separate events into a single gathering.   Nearly 150 hostel professionals attended.   The agenda was developed by a multi-national planning committee, and focused on the key topics of engagement, marketing and environmental sustainability. 

Engagement also was the focus of my presentation at the meeting.  For HI-USA, engagement is all about offering purposeful ways for people to get involved – before, during and after the hostel stay – to increase mission impact.   Last year, NAMM participants helped to brainstorm ways to get travelers more deeply engaged; I shared the results of their collective thinking with this year’s audience.   Another HI-USA priority is organizational unification, so a special human resource management training session was organized for US hostel managers.

As the meeting adjourned on the third day, more than 9 out of 10 participants said they were glad they attended.  But it was more about the people, rather than the content.  Put simply, the multi-national audience was most enthused about the opportunity to meet and socialize with each other.  Not surprisingly, that’s also what our mission is all about, which our hostel staff delivers every day.

Answer:  Look at Wikipedia, and you’ll find various definitions for “North America”, ranging from six to 23 countries.  For the six-country North America, in addition to Canada, Mexico and the USA, we’d also need HI hostels in Bermuda, Greenland and St. Pierre and Miquelon.

Before the holidays, I took some time to attend a two-day corporate merger integration seminar in Dallas.  Although unconventional for a nonprofit, the successful meshing of any two organizations seemed more similar than not.  And with a heavy focus on “getting it right”, I had a hunch there could be some important learning for HI-USA.   

The seminar was sponsored by Pritchett, a firm with impeccable credentials both as a merger advisor and as a publisher.  Before signing up, I called the Pritchett president to talk about my participation.  He acknowledged that while more than 30,000 had participated in previous seminars, likely just a handful were nonprofits.   Yet talking together, we both came to see how the Pritchett approach could be useful to HI-USA.

So in the classic nonprofit tradition, I found a cheap airfare via Charlotte outbound and Philadelphia returning, and I was on my way to Dallas.   Rather than the preferred Westin Galleria hotel where others stayed, I checked into the nearby Springhill hotel under renovation.   But the morning walk was invigorating, a Starbucks was on the way, and I was there for the knowledge, not a vacation.

I knew I had made the right decision about an hour into the seminar.   I joined about 20 other participants, largely from pharmaceutical and technology companies and all with their own unique perspectives.   The instructor was a “hands on” expert, who had flown in the night before from working on a Silicon Valley deal, and afterwards would be off to a client merger meeting on the East Coast.

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My neighborhood is populated with 1960’s era houses.   With a half century of use, many are now ready for an upgrade.  And with it comes the ecstasy and the agony of renovation.

There seem at least two irrefutable principles to house renovation.   1.  Even small projects are surprisingly inconvenient to the families living there.  2.  The disruption increases exponentially with project scope.   I’ve experienced the first, and seen the second.

Several years ago my wife Kathy and I decided to upgrade our basement.  Thought to be a relatively contained space, we still had dust and construction workers permeating the house in unexpected ways.  Our neighbors had a more extreme makeover, doubling the size of the ranch style house with a new kitchen, expanded bedrooms and bathrooms, and improved electrical and plumbing.  They ate and slept in the basement for months, becoming perpetually under-rested, microwave connoisseurs until renovations were completed.

And both renovations turned out beautifully.

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Ever wonder how everyone else prioritizes their personal goals for the year ahead?   Based on an independent nationwide survey, here is a list of the Top 10 New Year’s Resolutions for 2012: 

1.    Lose Weight
2.    Getting Organized
3.    Spend Less, Save More
4.    Enjoy Life to the Fullest
5.    Staying Fit and Healthy
6.    Learning Something Exciting
7.    Quit Smoking
8.    Help Others in Their Dreams
9.    Fall in Love
10.    Spend More Time with Family

A glimpse of this sort is always revealing.  Yet what most strikes me is how extended travel – preferably measured in months rather than weeks – can help realize most of those goals.

Consider your own extended travels – solo or with others.  My bet is that nearly every one of the goals has been reached at one time or another through hostel travel.  Or they can be.  

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In this holiday season of peace and good will, we are advancing both every day of the year. 

We are part of an organization that promotes equality and facilitates cross-cultural understanding.  We operate hostels that bring people together.  We cause them to examine their preconceptions about others.  We encourage an informed global citizenry.

These are not hopeful assertions; they are findings of an independent research study of the impact of the HI-USA hostel stay experience on travelers.

Many send holiday cards in December; we carry a message of friendship and humanity year round.

Best wishes for the New Year,

Russ

As part of last month’s National Conference in Boston, more than 100 management and program staff from across the country gathered a day early for training and dialogue.  To kick off that day, I shared remarks on unification as an opportunity for personal growth and development.  

My pre-conference speech, Destination: Success! was well-received at the time, but limited to those staff in the room.   I am sharing the message more widely today.

HI-USA is moving forward, and unification is enabling it.   For both staff and volunteers, HI-USA’s journey is partly each of our own.   The National Conference provided another opportunity to give a wider voice to the organization’s future.   And we are committed to provide plenty of others in the future.  

Five principles can help to assure organizational success.  For staff, they will help to inform and define our actions as we unify:

1.   Build a Safe Space.  Organizational change can be unsettling.   We can bring additional certainty through wide communication, and policies and practices that reflect this time of transition.

2.   Respect Experience.  We must honor staff experience and commitment, not simply through awards, but by drawing on their insights and perspectives in building the new organization.

3.   Value Fresh Ideas.  While we want to honor experience and commitment, we must eagerly welcome new ideas, advanced by current staff members, the incoming staff we hire, and the outside experts we retain.

4.   Practice Agility.  We must be prepared to deviate from plans when opportunity or necessity requires it.  And because the old fragmented organization so discouraged agility, we must actively seek to practice it.

5.   Embrace Adversity.  Adversity is not expected, yet is part of real life.  We must more than accept it when it comes; we need to embrace it and actively learn from it.

While this particular speech was written especially for a staff gathering, unification touches many, and the principles can have meaning to staff not in attendance, and also may be of interest to volunteers as well.  

It’s in the spirit of wider sharing that we made a video of the pre-conference speech that is now available on our YouTube channel.    You can find it by searching “Destination Success” or clicking this link

Last Sunday evening in Boston, several colleagues and I took time off from our HI-USA national conference and went to a showing of “Lincoln”. The movie is a Steven Spielberg masterwork, and ended up delivering much more than idle entertainment after a 10 hour day; it provoked gratitude all around for HI-USA’s emerging “unified way” of appreciating each other and our opinions, and thinking about change as we make our own kind of history together.

Let’s start with the movie. It focuses on the successful effort to secure passage of the 13th amendment which abolished slavery. Any notion that important and virtuous decisions are necessarily backed by dignified process evaporates with the portrayal of the 1865 House of Representatives. Congress was in dark frenzy, with intrigue and squabbles defining the days leading up to the vote. Finally the 13th amendment was adopted. The Civil War ended and Lincoln was assassinated just a few months later.

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