‘Hopescrolling’ — grant an antidote to news of doom
If there’s one word that captures the feeling of living during these times, perhaps it is “doomscrolling.” Health experts are dishing out advice to get you to stop endlessly consuming bad news. Put down your phone and meditate, they say. It’s good advice, but Cecilia Conrad suggests another remedy — to immerse yourself in 105 shockingly optimistic world-changing proposals that she has collected as CEO of Lever for Change and a Managing Director at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Call it “hopescrolling.” Op-Ed Editor Raj Mankad spoke with her, hoping for a bit of relief from the crushing weight of the daily news. It turns out her role as a conductor of the world’s biggest dreamers has roots in Texas, where she grew up in a house of civil rights trailblazers.
Q: This is a time of pandemic along with economic and political crises. How do we maintain hope? Why is the MacArthur 100&Change Competition particularly important at this moment?
A: Embedded in MacArthur’s 100&Change is a sense optimism. It is an expression of our belief that solutions are possible and there are problems we can solve.
People are out there with the ideas to solve them. The real need is to create an opportunity for those ideas to come forward.
The moment we are in has really shown a bright spotlight on specific problems we have in terms of racial equity and access to health care. We have a responsibility and we have an opportunity to really do something about them. And there’s an opportunity here not only through the $100 million grant that MacArthur Foundation will eventually make but also through grants that other donors could make toward these projects.
Q: Just to make sure people hear you right, it is a $100 million. That’s a shocking, big figure.
A: It is a big figure because we hope to inspire the field of philanthropy to make bigger commitments, it is a multi-year commitment, a five-year or six-year commitment, so organizations really have the opportunity to think bigger instead of every year going through a cycle of how are we going to fund the next year.
Q: This is the second time around for the competition. The first one ended in 2017. Can you tell me about the finalists this year? One of
them fascinated me because I am a journalist. The idea is to address the huge gap and lack of journalism happening in small communities.
A: That’s right, that’s the Report for America Project. This is a project that is targeting news deserts. Parts of the U.S., some may be rural and some may be specific communities inside of large cities, where there is no capacity to do the investigative reporting that is critical to the success of democracy. This project takes young journalists and places them in a fellowship in these types of communities.
We have six projects overall. Community Solutions acts as a field catalyst. Their goal is to eradicate homelessness.
For many of us, this seems, oh gosh how are we going to do this? Their approach relies on extensive data collection and tracking, making sure that the services that are available are matched up to the needs of the individual person. Many of the communities they work with have achieved basically zero homelessness in veteran populations. This group will continue to work with veterans, but also the chronic homeless population. It is an ambitious and bold goal, but this team has a plan and they have shown they can do it. All of our projects have some evidence of effectiveness, that they have already succeeded.
Project Echo, another finalist, is a platform that is focused on democratizing access to medical information and medical knowledge, so the information about how to treat a disease, say Hepatitis C, is available in communities that may not have a specialist in that disease. They may have a nurse practitioner or a general practitioner, and that is the only source of health care in that community. That practitioner is getting connected to the expertise they need.
Q: There’s this pattern of addressing an entire system.
A: It is a systems approach. These projects are also working in other cities around the globe. The Clinton Health Initiative Project, which is focused on oxygen therapy, is also a finalist.
They are particularly focused on the health care institutions in Africa. Oxygen therapy is something, until COVID-19, that we have taken for granted in the United States as something that is available.
The World Mosquito Project is focused on fighting mosquito born diseases. Dengue, Zika, chikungunya. The idea is to breed, distribute and disseminate populations of mosquitoes that have the Wolbachia bacteria. They can still sting you. You will still get a mosquito bite. But mosquitoes with that bacteria can’t transmit these diseases.
Pristine Seas, the National Geographic project, is looking at setting up marine protection areas. By creating marine reserves, you also protect fisheries that are important for local fisherman and their livelihoods, making sure there is protein in those diets. And then also by protecting the ocean areas, you create an area that helps to do carbon sequestration.
Q: From homelessness to the seas. An amazing range! You have been involved from the get-go in the 100&Change Competition, and you are a Texan. We pride ourselves on thinking big, big ideas, everything is bigger in Texas. Tell me about your childhood, does it influence your approach?
A: I think it does. I moved to Dallas in 1955 at age 9 months. My father had relocated to Dallas. He was an African American surgeon. The Catholic Hospital in Dallas, St. Paul Hospital, had decided that they wanted to desegregate their staff. He came as a pioneer. Eventually he was chief of staff. We arrived at just the moment with the civil rights era where there was activism, an effort to change the status quo. My father ran for the Dallas school board. 1967. He was the first Black elected in a citywide election in Dallas and he was the first Black on the school board. It showed me the possibilities — if you put your mind to it, if you mobilized people, if you raised attention to an issue and raised an awareness, you really could have an impact.
Q: More about your childhood. Any particular moment, a specific memory that shaped you?
A: My mother and I were shopping at a Sears, I believe.
She was talking to the clerk and I saw a water fountain and I drank. There was somebody who came up to my mother and said, look she is drinking from the white water fountain. My mother said, ‘it’s OK, she can’t read.’ (Chuckles) That sticks with me quite a bit. There is a lot of conversation right now about disruption. I was once taken aback at a panel when I was labeled as a disrupter. Sometimes the people who are disruptive and creative are the people who don’t feel bound by the rules, maybe because they don’t know them yet or they feel protected. That’s what is important right now, we need people willing to take risks and think outside our traditional rules and boxes.
Q: I’m thinking of Congressman John Lewis. His stubborn hope.
A: Somebody we should model ourselves after. Here’s someone who had experiences that could have led him to be angry or uninterested. He continued to make the world a better place.