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YES! - Youth for Environmental Sanity - are organising week-long gatherings of young leaders - YES! Jams. To help them better understand the impact of Jams on their work and lives, YES! staff have asked their Alumni to send in a little story. Which have turned out to be so powerful and beautiful that YES! now features them in their newsletters on a continual basis. Here you go! www.yesworld.org
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Josh is co-founder of Direct Current Media and co-creator of the TV series 4REAL. www.4real.com
My experience with Jams is from the inside out. In 1996, I was working with YES! and helped organize the first Jam. Later, in 2000 I was invited back as a participant, in 2001 I visited the Jam community day and in 2003 I was invited to the India Jam to make a video. Every time the Jam played a pivotal role in my life.
I grew up in the remote and beautiful Kootenay mountains of British Columbia. My parents were part of the back to the land movement in the early 70's and they instilled in me a social conscience, a hard work ethic and respect for the environment.
This connection with nature activated me in my senior year of high school as I became aware of the magnitude of the destruction of the environment and the blind politics of greed that were fueling it. Some friends and I decided to start an environmental club and we began networking with other clubs in BC. We all worked together in organizing a conference in Vancouver that 600 students attended. Within a year it grew to become an Environmental Youth Alliance with over 60,000 students across the country.
This experience taught me the basic movement building formula of educational and entertaining outreach followed up with networking and organizing. It was at this point I was invited to California to join YES! and help create a national tour to educate, inspire and empower young people to make a difference. The follow up of the tour evolved from workshops in schools, to weekend workshops in communities to regional and national week-long events and finally to the international Jams.
As we organized the first Jam, I was doing media for YES! and I was frustrated with how our message was put into some lame box about how cute it was that young people cared about the Earth. Our message was a lot deeper and more urgent than that and it didn’t take me long to realize that the only way we were going to convey it properly was to create our own media. So at the first Jam I interviewed all the amazing leaders from around the world and over the course of the next year I got enough footage donated to put together my first video called CONNECT. MTV picked it up and broadcast it in 80 countries as their 1997 Earth Day special. This got me inspired to produce more media but it also got me thinking about how to leverage the emerging internet as a means to follow up this kind of mass media outreach. (Years later at a Jam community day I met Rod Beckstrom of Silicon Valley legend and with his support was able to develop a dream follow-up system called the Student Action Network.)
In 1999 I dove back into grassroots organizing as the WTO meeting in Seattle was approaching. This was an incredible and unique opportunity to address almost every environmental and social justice issue being perpetrated by multi-national corporate globalization. This was a rare chance to shine a light on the lawless exploitation and pillaging of the worlds resources and peoples. A global economic model with very little regulation or concern beyond profit.
I continued campaigning intensively until the IMF / World Bank rallies the next spring. At that point I was feeling burnt out on protesting against things and the 2000 Jam was just the medicine I needed. It renewed my inspiration, stoked my passion and set me in a new direction focused on solutions. Some of the people I met at that Jam are some of my closest friends and colleagues still today.
The Jam participants are people that demonstrate incredible courage, creativity, intelligence and grace in finding solutions to some of the most pressing issues of our time. I was compelled once again to get these vital and hopeful stories out to the world. These are the real heroes of our time and yet they don't get anywhere near the resources and attention they deserve. I started working on an idea called The Butterfly Effect that would take celebrity guests to highlight the inspiring work of Jammers. Like the chaos theory of the same name, the Butterfly Effect would show how a small action in one place could have a big impact globally.
The Butterfly Effect evolved into 4REAL a couple years later when I started working with my childhood friend, Sol Guy. While developing 4REAL we filmed a music video in Kenya for the artist K'naan, and along the way we met Salim Mohamed. Salim was the link that made us welcomed in the rough and tough neighborhoods of Nairobi where we filmed. Beyond being our local fixer he was a really great guy to hang out with and he quickly became a good friend. After a couple days of working together Salim showed us where he lived and worked in Kibera, the largest slum in East Africa. Here Salim ran a community development sports program for over four thousand young people and, as if that wasn’t enough, he also helped run a medical clinic. From our time in Kenya with Salim we ended up with a pilot episode of 4REAL. I also told Salim about the Jams and later implored YES! to invite him to a Jam. As predicted, he's been a vibrant part of the Jam community since.
From Kenya, we went straight to the 2003 India Jam. Interviewing the participants was an inspiring opportunity to further develop 4REAL.
Three years later, we finally landed a broadcast deal for eight episodes of 4REAL and over the next year of production the dream to highlight the amazing work of Jammers came true. We started by taking actor Joaquin Phoenix into the Amazon to feature Chief Tashka and Laura Yawanawa, who have brought the Yawanawa community back from the brink of ethnocide. I met them at the 2000 Jam and they have been some of my closest friends since. We also took actress Cameron Diaz to meet Puma Singona in the Andean Mountains of Peru who is bridging a generation gap in ancient Quetchua culture. Again, Puma and I met at the 2000 Jam and have been friends ever since. In 2001 I met Kimmie Weeks at the Jam community day and 4REAL was able to bring music sensation M.I.A. to Liberia to check out his inspiring work in helping the children of Liberia heal and move on from a life of war.
4REAL has now been broadcast around the world on CTV, MTV, National Geographic Channels and The CW. It's been followed up on many levels at 4REAL.com and half of the profits from the shows go the leaders. It's been an amazing journey and one that’s been intimately connected with the Jams. With the recent global economic meltdown, our broadcast partner had to pull the funding for season two of 4REAL just as we were getting started. Once again I am in a transition but even writing about the Jams taps me into the power of these events and gets me fired-up with fresh vision and inspiration.
I’m currently working on an initiative called 4REAL Flow that’s designed to flow money to the work of Jammers at heart everywhere. Stay tuned at 4REAL.com.
1ove,
Josh Thome
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