Mother of Inspiration 2010
Posted by Julie on 04/28 | Permalink | Email This
On Wednesday, April 28th, One Family Inc hosted its 2010 Mothers of Inspiration Event. This annual event celebrates One Family Scholars and Graduates - all of whom are mothers who were homeless or at risk for homelessness and who are attending college to build a pathway out of poverty for themselves and their families.
CEO & Chief Deer Trish was honored with the Founders Award at this year’s event - read her accepting remarks here:
Thank you so much. What a fun evening! I love this event and am obviously dedicated to this organization. It does very important work and I’m proud to be part of it.
Thank you Mayor for speaking about our employees. Because it’s really always about the people. Everything we do should put people first.
The other thing which sparks a thought from your very sweet remarks Mayor, is that you said I’ve accomplished various things all on my own. I’ve never done anything really entirely on my own. I’ve had an enormously positive support structure all through my life and a huge network of friends and family. We don’t actually do things on our own. One can push an idea forward but it doesn’t happen unless we bring other resources and people together and can mobilize behind the idea. That’s what One Family has done. That’s what you’ve done as Mayor and what you’ve done as Governor, Deval, and the many accomplished people in this room have gotten here with support and that’s what the Scholars program is about.
I was thinking about awards this morning. Sometimes, when I find myself in particularly challenging tight spots, I give myself little awards for taking the high road or hanging tough or resisting an urge to be petty. And I really deserve those awards!! I am also very practiced at giving them because I get myself in tight spots all the time. And when I was thinking about that, I was realizing that when I face those challenges, in addition to my own little awards for hanging in, I’ve always had that support system. And I think that’s why I’m so powerfully connected to One Family because I realize how lucky I’ve been. There’s always been someone there for me in a crisis. And I’ve had a few. . . . I really am honored to be able to help other people through their crises.
So then it comes over to this award. It has such an official sounding name – the Founders Award. Important people in the room. I didn’t feel like this one was so well deserved and I’ll tell you why. It’s because I really haven’t done that much. Sweet Home is a wonderful, important and powerful project and I’m very proud of it and all of the Deers who make it happen. I don’t do it myself. It’s always been the team at Dancing Deer. But it is a small thing, as are all our other green and social initiatives. And they are easy to do. In fact, many of you have probably heard me say that Dancing Deer gets disproportionate attention for all of our progressive initiatives. And I think that’s because there really isn’t nearly enough competition in this space of double bottom line businesses. So we get more credit than we deserve. The choices we make aren’t that hard. One just has to have the mindset to make them. And there are so many more things we can and should – and want to do on the mission side. All of us in the business community, of any scale, could be greener, kinder and a more positive force in society. We all can be more progressive and create fewer harmful downstream effects from our commercial activities. It’s a point of view which is easy to adopt. It only requires the intention to do good while doing well. It’s not all about the money – or it shouldn’t be. I think we forget that. We’ve seen how destructive it can be when people’s success is only measured in financial metrics. And I have absolutely no doubt that financial returns can be maintained (or even improved) while environmental and societal returns are ratcheted up. The two can work together.
The Firemans are powerful examples of that. They’ve been amazingly generous and proactive and thoughtful about the future and how to use their terrific success in business to do good in the world. There are many people who are inspired by that.
My view is that in our collective societal value system, we have lost a sense of, and a commitment to the Common Good. We need to get it back. Material wealth, as a metric of success, is way too important, in business and in life, at the detriment of so many other values that are really what feed our souls. Money can’t buy us love. And I’d sing you the Beatles song if Paul Fireman hadn’t already said, “I hope your speech isn’t too long.” But anyway, money can buy scholarships and tools to help families achieve self sufficiency. And we appreciate everyone in this room and the financial support you’ve given. I don’t mean to say money isn’t important. So as long as families are still falling off the edge of viability, we will keep working on ending the root causes of homelessness. When we fix that – we’ll move on to something else.
So the thank you and awards here really go to all of you for your support, the scholars for you inspiration, the Deers - my terrific peers and coworkers. And by the way it isn’t just the SHP funds we have raised but this group also takes Gingerbread House decorating to all the shelters in Boston every November and engages at a personal level. Person to person philanthropy is also really, really important. It’s not enough to write a check and then go off to your nice life. The engagement is so important.
Congratulations to the scholars, One Family, and to the VERY big vision and generosity of the Firemans.