Since Take the Initiative’s launch in June 2010, we have challenged and encouraged one another to be active, creative, and generous. Be it grand public displays or quiet moments of reflection, this project has enhanced every aspect of our lives. We started to take leaps outside of our comfort zone and try all kinds of new things. By engaging with our communities right from the start, our developing practice had a greater impact than we had ever imagined. Having created flash mobs, art exhibitions, charity gatherings, and more, we are now ready to go BIG.
Last year, the duration of each challenge was one month. We loved the sense of urgency and the immediacy of action, but every now and then we wanted to go further with an idea and didn’t have the time. So in 2011 we are going to join forces, along with some friends, and work together on one massive project – we will be creating and producing a short film featuring themes that resonate with both of us.
Throughout the process of making this movie, we’ll be documenting our adventures and keeping you updated. You will meet our fantastic creative team and be a witness to all of the ups and downs of our progress. Join us at deptofstory.posterous.com.
As for Take the Initiative, we have some great ideas planned to keep inspiring people to take action. Thanks for supporting us this past year and stay tuned!
Thank you for all the support and love for Take the Initiative in 2010. Brendan and I decided to try something new while home visiting family to recap the past 6 months. It is a bit long, could use some cutting and it is definitely evident which of us is better in front of the camera and which of us prefers to be behind it... But made with lots of love! Thank you again for taking this journey with us. More to come in 2011!! Happy New Year! Kate & Brendan
A few weekends ago we invited our friends over for our annual holiday mashup, Chrismukkah on Church St. It was the usual crowd pleasing cocktail fête with people we love plus something a little extra special. This year we added a little more holiday spirit by asking our guests to bring donations for the SF Food Bank.
Here in San Francisco 1 in 5 adults and children live with the threat of hunger every day. And as the recession has continued people who have never struggled to make ends meet are finding themselves in need of extra support. By asking our guests to bring food donations we raised over 50 items to help feed our neighbors. We also received a few notes from far off friends and relatives that they were motivated to contribute financially online.
Thank you to everyone who came over to make our third Chrismukkah the most meaningful, and fun, one yet.
It is not too late for cultivating some holiday spirit. Getting friends and family together to ring in the new year? How can you add a little giving to your get together?
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Ready to take this month's initiative?
Initiative: Holiday Spirit
Ways to Participate: - Throw a Get n' Give party in your community: Get people together and give holiday spirit. - Have a blog? Post your story about sharing the holiday spirit, linking back to taketheinitiative.posterous.com. - On Facebook? "Like" the Take the Initiative page and post your images, stories & comments. - Tweet much? Follow us on Twitter @deptofstory and tag your tweets with #holidayspirit
Tell your friends. Let's fill this holiday season with spirit and a sense of wonder.
This past Saturday's first annual Get 'n Give was quite possibly my favorite holiday gathering ever!
As any host knows, there's always a moment just before your party begins in which you worry no one's coming or it might not be exactly what you hope it will be. All I was truly hoping for was at least a few people to show up with gift cards for homeless teenagers. To my absolute delight, I had an amazing group of friends, including some great surprises, show up ready to get together and give holiday spirit.
In addition to wonderful conversations and a delicious cocktail, we received $310 in gift card donations! That means that 31 lgbt teens will have a smile on their faces and a gift for the holidays. At the end of the night I felt such immense pride and gratitude for my community of friends and their generous spirits. There's no greater gift.
Sam and I dropped the donations off at the Ali Forney Center yesterday and we were incredibly moved by the dedication of the staff/volunteers at the center as well as the enormity of this issue. While the holidays are an important season, these kids are struggling all year long having no families to turn to and in serious need of support. They need basic necessities like food and shelter along with mentors to guide them through difficult emotions. We will be getting more involved with the Ali Forney Center in the new year and encourage everyone who can to do so as well. If you are in a position to give, please visit their website and learn more.
No one can speak the truth quite like Dolly. Her style matched with her intelligence and flair for language provide her with a powerful ability to express herself, piercing through any hardened exterior and directly touching your heart.
Watch below as she shares a story with you about the holiday season and the gift of giving.
I know we all have a little extra love to spare. And that really is the magic of the holidays.
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Ready to take this month's initiative?
Initiative: Holiday Spirit
Ways to Participate:
- In NY or SF? Attend Brendan or Kate's Get n' Give gatherings.
- Throw a Get n' Give party in your community: Get people together and give holiday spirit.
This year our media has been filled with tragic stories of bullied LGBT kids taking their lives. Emerging from those voices, however, came a chorus of people sharing inspiring messages that It Gets Better. Created by Dan Savage, the effort has united a stunningly diverse group of people to take a stand against hatred. (Personal favorites have included Tim Gunn, Secretary Clinton, the gays of Philly, Suze Orman, and Pixar)
With the life experience to know that it does, in fact, get better, I wanted to be sure that I was doing my part to make it better. This month, the Take the Initiative Get 'n Gives are the perfect opportunity to do just that. For my NYC Get 'n Give Party, I will be hosting a get together to benefit the efforts of the Ali Forney Center. Since 2002, the Ali Forney Center has been working tirelessly to provide relief and aid to homeless LGBT teens. Many people are aware that more and more young people are coming out at early ages. What they may not know, however, is that up to 25% of those youth are shunned by their families and wind up on the streets, without home and without hope. During the holiday season, the organization takes on a massive program to deliver gifts to these kids in shelters throughout the city. Often, these tokens will be the only holiday gift the teens receive all year.
-If you are local to NYC and want to help, the organization is requesting gift cards in $10 denominations to stores such as iTunes, Starbucks, the Gap, etc. Please contact me if you want to stop by my Get 'n Give on Saturday night, December 18th, to enjoy some holiday cheer and drop off your donation. If you can't make it that night, you can also get them to me anytime this month before then.
-If you live outside NY, the Ali Forney Center also accepts monetary donations online. $15 covers the cost of a holiday meal and $60 is an entire gift bag for a kid in need. You can learn more and donate here.
There's absolutely nothing more magical about the holiday season than knowing that one small action you take can make the lives of many so much better.
During this season of giving and getting, we challenge ourselves, and you, to channel your inner Oprah and create some holiday magic.
While Brendan and I have some conflicted views about aligning happiness with so much consumerism, we appreciate that Oprah has the ability to inspire hope in people's lives. As Oprah preached at the introduction of her latest favorite things episode, "...giving is one of the most important things that you can do."
While you may not have an audience of millions, your ability to touch the lives of others is infinite.
This month Brendan and I will be holding Get n' Give parties in New York and San Francisco. The intention is to get people together to give holiday spirit. Be it coats, food, toys or love, we can all harness our communities to collectively give back. We'll post updates about our gatherings in the weeks to come and encourage you to think creatively about how you can get people together to give in some way.
Meanwhile, we plan on highlighting other stories about sharing the holiday spirit throughout the next few weeks. Hope you will join us.
Ready to take this month's initiative?
Initiative: Holiday Spirit
Ways to Participate:
- In NY or SF? Attend Brendan or Kate's Get n' Give gatherings.
- Throw a Get n' Give party in your community: Get people together and give holiday spirit.
Kate and I have always had a pretty tight relationship. Sure we had our sibling fights growing up, and we still bicker occasionally today, but deep down I trust her with my whole heart and soul. When we were younger and she was getting ready to head off to college, she dedicated every Tuesday afternoon of her senior year in high school to picking up her little brother from ballet class and having dinner together. Just the two of us. How many 17 year-old kids do that?
From then on we both left home and haven't lived in the same city since. Even though I wish she was down the block from me here in NYC, we have always made it a priority to stay close and to take care of each other. Cut to several years ago on one of my visit's to San Francisco. Hanging out, perhaps having a cocktail, we started dreaming about starting a production company together. Not right away, but some day. Every now and then the thought would drift to the surface, but it never felt like quite the right time. Just earlier this year though, a small window of opportunity opened. Kate and I are pretty terrific at filling our schedules, but when she completed her MBA program there emerged a bit of flexibility in her day-to-day. That tiny crack sparked her to pitch us developing a project together. Although not ready to abandon our jobs and dive into a start-up, we realized that it could be a significant and necessary step in our professional journey to discover how we work together and collaborate in a business capacity. Six months later, I could not be more thrilled. Every day I'm grateful for Kate's drive and all of the efforts we have embarked upon. The ambitious Double Dare Challenges have evolved into into Take the Initiative and the process has been thrilling. We're actively developing Dept. of Story and we have exciting ventures to keep us motivated. I couldn't ask for a better teammate, partner, sibling, and friend. Thank you Kate for your infinite aspirations, your creative intelligence, and your constant love/support. You're the best I could hope for and I know that it's no coincidence we're family. I love you!
Newton’s first law of motion states that an object in motion will stay in motion or an object at rest will stay at rest unless it is acted upon by an external force. I think the same is true of people. We’ll keep doing the same things over and over again, for better or for worse, until something changes our course. Sometimes that something is a great triumph. Sometimes it’s a tragedy. Sometimes it’s by choice and sometimes it feels like fate. And sometimes you can’t distinguish between them until something else redirects you once again.
With the new year approaching, I can’t help but look back on the physics of my life. And since this is the month of gratitude and the challenge of Take The Initiative, I thought I’d take a moment on this last day of November to say thank you to some of the greater forces of the past few years.
I am grateful for the great books I’ve read by phenomenal teachers, thinkers, and everyday people; for the courage to come out; for my father, the eternal mediator; for my mother who makes love of her children perfect; for the wonderful, crazy, silly mystery that is art without which I’d be eternally at rest; for Brendan, his vast ocean of love, his intelligence, his patience, his unexpected arrival, and all the ways he keeps me in motion; for my friends and teachers who are all a minority of saints in this crazy world; for pizza, ice cream, and cookies–my drugs of choice; for Buddhism and meditation; for my education and professional experiences; for the relative mundanity of even my greatest struggles; for music and dancing; for Buffy the Vampire Slayer; for Viktor Frankl; and for all the respites, laughs, and moments of spontaneous human epiphany.
