Homeboy industries? Why the connection to the dreamprocess.

I wanted to briefly share what has so far been the highlight of the month of October for me (aside from having my daughter Nicole visit for the week on break from her freshman year in college).

We had our first dreamprocess workshop last week that was open to the public. Till now I've done workshops at my church (having been asked to do this, then agreeing to do so while dragged kicking and screaming!), but this was the first time I was out there on my own. It turns out it went great, as most of us there left that evening with a small sense of looking at the world differently than when we had arrived.

While I had a blast leading this, and seeing all the creative ways the participants were able able to "connect the dots" in new and exciting ways, the real highlight for me came two days later when I fulfilled the promise I make on my website to donate 10% of all proceeds to charity. In this case, we're talking about an organization in one of the rougher parts of east Los Angeles, which is called Homeboy Industries. Why on earth would I pick this, when there are so many organizations here in the Boston area?

Well, we need to go back about 38-40 years or so when I was a kid walking home from school in L.A. Though I was born here in the U.S., my parents were immigrants who believed totally that education was the ticket out of the 'hood, so to speak. It turns out the neighborhood I lived in till about age 13 was also one of the areas where one of the larger gangs in the city had set up a base. So at times I would walk home from the bus stop and be followed by a group of older kids who would start harassing me. In these settings I learned it was best to usually focus on the leader, and make it a one-on-one conversation. Most of the time they seemed to actually respect me for having the courage to look at them as equals rather than run away, and I usually walked away without incident. Usually this approach worked well, and only once did I have a close call (about age 9) where I had a knife pulled on me and rode my bike like hell to get away (which I did, thanks to the timely appearance of a grown-up who gave them an earful - at which point they moved on).

The point of all this is that often in these situations (though not always), I noticed the guy I was doing a stare-down with was not much different from me except for his skin color. He struck me even then as someone who was very bright and yet was trapped in the world of his gang. I now feel so fortunate that growing up I always was told that education mattered more than anything. Go see the world and you'll understand. And so I did. Since then I've lived in 5 countries, and this summer visited country number 45.

So Homeboy Industries to me is incredibly cool and powerful, because it provides a mechanism for those kids who don't want to spend their lives in gangs a way out through becoming productive, contributing members of the broader society. Homeboy Industries is a nonprofit that basically helps former gang members form and manage businesses that bring real value -- and ultimately provides an alternative, positive vision of the future.

By the way, my own long-term vision is to establish a dreamprocess foundation (or whatever name this experiment will be called by then), which will enable inner-city youth to do study-abroad programs. My timeframe is 10 years. And yes, I've got this listed on my own dreamboard!