Three social entrepreneurs and authors are making appearances in Princeton and Lawrence to share uplifting stories and lessons learned in their journey to justice. The free events take place Friday, April 26, at the Mercer County Library Lawrence Headquarters, 2751 Brunswick Pike, Lawrence, from 2 to 4 p.m., and at Nassau Presbyterian Church, 61 Nassau Street, Princeton, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.
Author and activist Sam Daley-Harris discusses the 2024 edition of his book, “Reclaiming Our Democracy: Every Citizen’s Guide to Transformational Advocacy,” released in January. The is the fourth edition of a book originally published in 1994 and previously updated in 2004 and 2013. In the preface, he addresses the timing and intention of this new edition:
“I want this book to be a beacon of hope and possibility for people who feel brokenhearted and overwhelmed by the headlines they read. I intend this book to be a road map for individuals and organizations that want to make a difference on the issues that are precious to them. And I want this book to be a wake-up call — a clear challenge — to the very large, well funded national nonprofit organizations that I believe are guilty of anemic advocacy that disempowers the average citizen.”
Daley-Harris is the founder of Civic Courage, originally the Center for Citizen Empowerment and Transformation, with a mission to empower citizen action by “teaching strategies to organizations so that their members can create champions in Congress and the media for their cause,” according to a statement on the group’s website, civiccourage.org. He is also the founder of a RESULTS, “an international citizen’s lobby dedicated to creating the political will to end hunger and poverty” that “has a forty-year track record of successfully mobilizing public funding of proven, cost-effective, life-saving programs,” supported by the RESULTS Educational Fund’s work on research, education, and community building.
Another of the authors is Alex Counts, a past legislative director for RESULTS who later started and for 18 years ran the Grameen Foundation, an international poverty alleviation organization working to advance the approaches pioneered in Bangladesh by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dr. Muhammad Yunus. His most recent book, “Changing the World Without Losing Your Mind: Leadership Lessons from Thee Decades of Social Entrepreneurship,” was first published in 2019 and revised in 2021. Among his other books are “When in Doubt, Ask for More: And 213 Other Life and Career Lessons for Mission-Driven Leaders” (2020) and “Small Loans, Big Dreams” (2008).
In explaining the purpose behind “Changing the World Without Losing Your Mind,” Counts chronicles the personal and work-related ups and downs of his early years in the nonprofit field and the lessons he learned from those struggles. As he writes in the introduction:
“I’ve seen far too many middle-aged nonprofit leaders who were overweight smokers and whose cynicism and jaded perspectives lived right below the surface of their ossified idealism. Some took risks that seemed rooted in a sense that they had not accomplished what they had expected to by that point in their lives, gambles that sometimes endangered their organizations and all who depended on them. Their seemed to be a quiet desperation that I came to understand during my own leadership journey — and which I ultimately learned to escape.
“This book is an attempt to share my own story and the lessons it taught me with a new generation of leaders dedicated to social change and environmental justice. I hope it will benefit those who doubt they will ever become unhealthy and jaded, as well as those who have already turned that corner and wonder if they can reverse the trend before it is too late.”
The third author is Debbie Frisch, who, in 2017, opened HelloBaby, the nation’s first free-standing, free-of-charge, drop-in play space for babies, toddlers, and their caregivers located in the struggling Woodlawn neighborhood of Chicago. Her book, “Hello Baby: Building an Oasis in a Play Desert,” written with journalist Isaac Stone Simonelli, tells the story of her life journey and her roadmap to spurring community development in urban play deserts.
After the discussion the authors will sign copies of their book.
