If you’re looking for a fun party in Redmond, WA, home city of Microsoft, then Susan James is the person you want to see. James is the organizer of PartyPaloozaNW, which holds costume parties three to four times a year. Each event has an entertaining theme. When James took Landmark Education’s Self-Expression and Leadership Program earlier this year, she created a project to bring a serious side to the fun. When James’ friend Kumar Cunchala passed away unexpectedly due to heart failure last year at the age of 34, she and other of Cunchala’s friends were devasted. As a way of honoring him, she and PartyPaloozaNW decided to have their spring 2008 event also be a rundraiser for ROOTS, Rising Out of the Shadows, a homeless shelter for teens and young adults that was Cunchala’s favorite charity. The Redmond Reporter has more.

It’s Time to Dress up and Party, Mad Max Style

by Mary Steven Decker

Halloween doesn’t come often enough for Redmond resident Susan James and her pals from PartyPaloozaNW.

So they’ve started throwing themed costume parties three to four times a year and inviting “friends of friends.”

The next big bash is a “Mad Max: Beyond the Military Zone!” party inspired by Mel Gibson’s “Road Warrior/Mad Max” movie series. Guests are encouraged to dress in clothing with a “post-Apocalyptic, futuristic, cyberpunk, post-
nuclear, military, camouflage, GI Joe or survivalist” vibe, said James.

The event starts at 8 p.m. Saturday, and takes place at The Sammamish Forest Manors Cabana, 2407 175th Ave. NE in Redmond. It’s open to the public, age 21 and older and will be a fundraiser for ROOTS (“Rising Out of the Shadows”), a homeless shelter for teens and young adults in Seattle’s University District. Tickets are $12 per person when purchased in advance or $15 per person at the door.

Why the quirky costumes?

James, who is a project manager and lead trainer for EED, Inc., a legal technology company in Kirkland, explained that “wearing costumes is a great icebreaker. When people are dressed up, they’ll be more likely to talk to one another. I’ve known groups of people who’ve descended upon bars dressed as Greeks or Romans or space aliens. It’s just fun and you end up talking to people who might not otherwise have approached you.”

This is the first time they’re tying a fundraiser to one of their costume parties, and they’re doing so in memory of Kumar Cunchala, a former Microsoft employee who passed away in 2007.

“We initially chose ROOTS as our cause because it was our friend Kumar Cunchala’s favorite charity,” said James. “Kumar was an amazing person who I met a few years ago through an online social networking group. He was a wonderful friend to me and many other people in the community and when he died unexpectedly last year of heart failure — he was 34 years old — we were devastated. It is my hope that through putting on this event and honoring Kumar by donating time and money to one of his favorite charities, that we will obtain some closure and peace over his passing.”

Also, after visiting ROOTS and attending a Homelessness 101 class, James and her friends were inspired to befriend the shelter. They have organized several clothing drives on its behalf and are asking “Mad Max” party guests to bring gently used coats, hats, gloves and blankets to donate.

PartyPaloozaNW has sponsored parties with pirate themes, vampire and vixen themes and stars/starlets themes. The age range of attendees is typically 25 through 45 years old, although anyone 21 or over is welcome, said James. She notes that there is a professional security team at the parties and that they’ve not had problems with unruly guests spoiling the fun.

For more information about PartyPaloozaNW, visit http://PartyPaloozaNW.com, or e-mail suz @ partypaloozanw.com. For more information about ROOTS, visit the ROOTS website.

Award winning Seattle photographer Amanda Koster has received significant press attention for her multimedia social awareness tours she has led through India and many parts of the developing world, including articles in the Chicago Tribune and Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The last India tour has also received more after the fact attention as participants have had their photographs in consecutive exhibits over the last several months, some participant photographs appeared in a book about India’s street children, and one participant will be exhibiting photographs from the tour at the Indian Embassy in Washington D.C.

Koster is not resting on her laurels, however. Salaam Garage International Trips, the social awareness tour organization she founded, begins its next India tour on September 25, and this time there will be even greater access for participants into the lives of ordinary citizens and what they deal with in their lives. The tour will again partner with Vatsalya, a non-government organization (NGO) that takes care of Indian street orphans and provides microfinance for women.

Many of the projects and events planned for this trip will allow partipants to get a unique, first-hand look at the stories and backgrounds of some of the people Vatsalya works with. For instance, there is the story of Aakash, who came to Vatsalya at the age of 14 months, almost dead from Tuberculosis. Finally, after 180 injections, multiple blood transfusions and lots of care, he is a healthy and active five year old.

Participants will get to see the work of Sita and Gita, two rural women who worked with Vatsalya to create and grow Durga, a women’s empowerment group that saves money and makes semi-precious jewelry as a business. Profits are being saved for the creation of a free woman’s health facility.

They will also get to see the work of Vatalya’s mobile van for street children, which conducts health and hygiene drives, encourages children to go to school, and in the case of orphaned or abandoned children, looks for candidates to take in.

In addition to the extraordinary tour work, Koster has also moved forward with the development of a book which displays her social documentary photographs. The book, which is being published by Bennett and Hastings in September, is both a call to action for media makers to use independent media and partner with non-profits to bring about positive, societal change, as well as an intimate look into Koster’s life and work through the publication of her journals and photographs. Koster will do a book signing and lecture event in Seattle on September 18 at Seattle Central Community College from 6:00-8pm.

Conscious Choice Magazine has also written about Koster’s efforts. Much of the article appear below.

Have Cause, Will Travel

By Daysha Eaton

According to the images in your average luxury travel glossy, India is all brightly colored saris, ancient temples and dramatic landscapes. The India of newspaper headlines, on the other hand, paints a bleaker picture: one of begging, pollution and bombings. But what of the real faces, places and lives in between?

Enter Salaam Garage. Created by Seattle photographer, Amanda Koster, Salaam Garage, offers trips focused on photographing the work of NGOs (non-governmental organizations). It unites writers, photographers, documentarians and other media makers with a common goal: to share the untold stories of real people in the developing world.

“I want to infiltrate everything with positive stories,” says Koster, who led the first SG trip to Jaipur, in northwest India, this past fall. “Through my career I’ve just seen enough negativity. We know it’s there, we know it’s happening — but who is surviving and what does that look like?”

Danielle Williams, a researcher for National Geographic Television, accompanied Koster on SG’s maiden voyage. “I’d had a lot of people tell me, ‘prepare yourself — you’re going to see a lot of suffering and you are going to feel guilty,’” Williams recounts. “[But it] was really the exact opposite.” Williams attributes this difference to Koster. “She took us to the less seen places and got us inside the culture to see the day-to-day lives of the real people there.”

Now, Williams volunteers with a nonprofit that helps street children living with HIV in India. Her photos, along with the rest of the group’s will be on display at Seattle galleries and coffeehouses through June, with a percentage of all photo sales going to Vatsalya, the NGO which served as the first photo shoot destination. A fresh group of media makers will return there next September, with another trip to Vietnam in March 2009. Koster says that seeing people like Danielle gain a new perspective on the world is why she leads the trips. “It’s like throwing a stone into a pond and just watching the ripples.”

For more information about Koster or the work of Salaam Garage Trips International, or to take part in a social awareness tour, to to the Salaam Garage website <http://www.amandakoster.com/salaamgarage> . To see compelling video footage of Koster’s work, visit http://vimeo.com/1020201.

The Seattle based KKNW radio program Chat with Women recently featured Landmark Education. LE spokesperson Deborah Beroset was interviewed, and Landmark Education graduate Karen Dannenberg spoke about how the Landmark Forum impacted her life and her business. A complete transcript appears below.

Rochelle: Welcome back. You’re listening to Chat With Women and I’m Rochelle.

Pam: And I’m Pam.

Rochelle: And joining us now is Deborah Beroset who is the Director of Corporate Communications and Seminar Leader of Landmark Education. Good morning, Deborah.

Deborah: Good morning.

Pam: Good morning.

Rochelle: Hah-hah! She’s perky too. Everybody’s perky today. I love this. So Deborah tell us, we want to know what is Landmark Education?

Deborah: Okay. Landmark Education, it’s an international training and development company and the company is committed to the fundamental principal that people have the possibility of success, fulfillment and greatness.

So we offer our core program, the Landmark Forum and over 50 other courses around the world in 24 countries, in more than 125 cities, and they’re basically designed to have people able to challenge their conventional perspectives in their decision-making patterns and give people new tools so that they can affect significant change and actually shift the very nature of what’s possible for them.

Rochelle: Well you know for me we know it’s – we’ve heard about this for many years that it’s a three-day program. It’s a Friday, Saturday, Sunday and if you look at your materials it says that it’s designed to bring about positive and permanent shifts in the quality of life.

So I want to know how to you accomplish that just in three days? That’s a lot to accomplish.

Deborah: It is a lot to accomplish. I mean I think it’s helpful to kind of give you a picture of what people can expect when they go in there. Right?

Rochelle: Yes, that would be great.

Deborah: Okay. Great. Well it’s basically – as you said it’s three days, a Friday, Saturday, Sunday and then a Tuesday evening everybody comes back together for the conclusion of the course and it’s a guided dialog basically between the instructor and the participants. It’s conducted in a casual environment. There’s generally – I don’t know – 75 to 250 people in a course and it’s basically as I said an opportunity for people to look at their decision-making patterns. Now the thing that has this so impactful is that this is not one of the seminars where you get all these tips and hints. Those have their place. That’s just not what this is.

In this program and our other programs it’s really designed to have people have an opportunity to look at really how they think and how there habitual ways of looking at themselves and life and others, and their relationships in their businesses tend to color not only their perception of how things have gone, but also what’s possible, and when you – when you have an opportunity to really look at how you operate as a human being in life, that is an extraordinary shift.

Rochelle: Okay. Well I’m curious, so I’m still thinking I’m walking in that door Friday.

Deborah: Great.

Rochelle: Give me an example of — (Laughing.) Well not really but give me an example of what would be – what would it be like at first? Give – you know I am so having a hard time imagining how – what – how are you going to get – what’s like a first question? What’s – how do you get people to get into – a lot of times we do and behave ways that we don’t even know that we’re doing –

Deborah: Sure.

Rochelle: – and we have these patterns that we think are just fine and so obviously you’re shaking that up in that three days but give me an example of a question that you ask of the participants.

Deborah: Well the great thing is once the program leader kicks off the conversation you’ll find that other participants are asking as many questions as the program leader. So people can be sitting there in the course and get the whole course out of just listening to interactions that the program leader is having with the people in the course.

But you know what happens is people will get up to share about something going on in their lives, something they’re dealing with in the midst of an inquiry in the course and suddenly you’ll be sitting there and a little light bulb will go off for you as you hear something that applies to your own life.

So let me just give you an example of one. You know when I first did the Landmark Forum back in 1998, the summer of 1998, I’m sitting there and it’s Friday and there is a fellow up front at the microphone and he’s talking about his relationship with his daughter and I am sitting there thinking okay, well, you know he really needs to kind of get it together and I’ve got all these opinions going through my mind and I’m thinking about how this guy is an emotionally distant father just like my dad was as I saw it at that time an emotionally distant dad, and all of the sudden the course leader made some comment about how we think of ourselves as open-minded and objective but in fact our approach to ourselves and circumstances and other people, it’s often filtered and sometimes even obscured by these pre-existing notions and ideas.

And all of the sudden I got that this guy talking about his daughter was absolutely a great dad. His daughter was probably just fine. It’s just that he had some pre-existing filters that he was listening to his daughter through. Well that’s all very well and good but in the next moment I was completely – it was like a cosmic two by four and I realized that I was viewing my father through some already existing filter that there was no way the guy could make it with me.

Everything he did was more evidence for my opinion of him and I called him on the next break and let him know what I had suddenly seen after thirty-some years and our relationship has been altered ever since. That’s the kind of thing that happens in the Landmark Forum.

Rochelle: Well speaking to that Deb, we want to bring on Karen Dannenberg of Karen Dannenberg Clothier. Good morning, Karen.

Karen: Good morning, ladies.

Rochelle: Because I believe you have a beautiful story to tell us what Landmark Education has done for you.

Karen: Well I did the forum way back when, some time in the mid-seventies and I believe it was the last year that Warner Erhard was with the company before he sold it to the employees, and the first day, 24 hours I did not speak and there’s just something about the listening in the room and as she was saying you can sit there and somebody else will be sharing something about their life and you start to – just feelings start to come up and the reality for me – sorry I get moved telling this story.

Rochelle: Oh Karen, well you know let me just interject. When we met Karen, we were at an event and really this is why this all came to be. Karen started sharing her story with us and again she was moved to tears, which brought Pam and I to the evolution of why we had to bring on Deb from Landmark Education.

If your life can be so moved and you can be thrusted into another dimension then it was very important for us to get this out to our listeners to see because look, we all carry baggage, we all carry things with us, and if you can while you’re here at this short moment of time change your life, that’s what Pam and I wanted to do, so that’s why we have these ladies joining us.

Karen: Well she was talking about her dad and this is what kept coming up for me. I was so not in a relationship with my father that I wasn’t even aware of it and it was just – I swear by Saturday morning I was just so shocked that I realized I had no relationship with my father and for a long time I made him wrong for so many things and anyway I called my dad and we had a great talk, and I told him I forgave him for a lot of things and I wanted to open up the doors to get in a relationship with him, and over the next few years he started to decline in health.

And I went back to Boston one year several times as he was getting sicker and sicker, and it got to the point where I had to ask his forgiveness to forgive me for not allowing him in my life, and when my dad died we were totally complete. We knew how much we loved each other and all the stuff I made up about my dad didn’t care, my dad didn’t love me was just not the reality. I knew that my dad loved me and no matter what happens happen but the truth is that my dad loved me and he was always there for me.

So I would say that’s the biggest gift of the forum in my life and how that changed my relationship with my dad and my family.

Rochelle: That’s very, very, very, very powerful because when we carry that kind of baggage because we feel unloved we cannot be successful in our lives. So Karen, from that you’ve created this fabulous –

Pam: Company.

Rochelle: – business. So tell us a little bit about how did Landmark help you in that arena?

Karen: Well I had continued to do courses and I actually moved to Seattle out of doing a course called the Advanced Course and moved here 12, 13 years ago, and I believe it was 1997 when I did a course called the ILP and it was the introduction to the forum leader program and it was a seven-month seminar on leadership, and little did I know it would alter my life forever but in the beginning of this course I spoke that I was going to do a store someday, and my girlfriend talked to me on the phone from Portland and she said, “Karen, when are you going to do your store? You’re getting old.”

Rochelle: (Laughing.)

Karen: And I was 47, 46 years old and I said you know, you’re right about that.

Rochelle: You’re not old.

Karen: During the course I spoke in the very beginning that I was going to do a store someday and what I realized in the training and the coaching from amazing people who volunteered for seven months to work with individuals and stand for what they were committed to and what their goals were, I didn’t even know what my goal was. I didn’t even know how to put it in place and the structure for fulfillment of the training on time frames and measurable results was something that is crucial in starting a business and I had no clue that I was going to open a store by the end of that course.

And when my financing didn’t come through I was backing out of my commitment and the coaches were so amazing. They never let me quit. They stood for me and they believed more in me than I believed in myself and in September, the end of that year, I opened my first store, a little small store, 400 square feet and outgrew that in a year, and I think it was – 2003 was the first year that we had a million dollars in business and my financing didn’t come through in the beginning but I charged my first store on a credit card and I bought a Numoir which is now in my living room and a beautiful leopard Charenautem which is in my store now and I did it on a prayer and a wish and a dream, and I never gave up and here it is 12 years later and we have a wonderful store and a great clientele, and I’m eternally grateful for the training and the support that I have from Landmark Education.

Pam: What a beautiful story.

Rochelle: Wow, that’s a beautiful testimony. Listen, we have more stories and we have more things to share but we’re going to take a quick break because we want to thank our sponsors too. So you’re listening to Chat With Women and we’ll be right back.

(Pause for break.)

Rochelle: Welcome back, you’re listening to Chat With Women. I’m Rochelle.

Pam: And I’m Pam.

Rochelle: And we are being moved this morning by two wonderful women. First we have Deb Beroset who is with Landmark Education and we also have Karen Dannenberg of Karen Dannenberg Clothier who is sharing with us her beautiful, beautiful story of how Landmark Education really changed her life.

But you know at break Karen you said something very important which is you know going to Landmark Education you really didn’t have an agenda or any expectations.

Karen: I had no expectation at all and a lot of people have shared with me about the forum and I said one of these days I’ll do it and I had met a gal who was in a seminar at the time and she shared her life with me and I went home one night and I just really thought about what she had talked about, and the next morning we met again and I handed her a credit card, and I said, “Would you register me in the forum?” and she started crying, and I said, “Why are you crying?” She said, “Nobody’s ever asked me to register them,” and she was in a course also at the time and we have been friends ever since and that day really did alter my life forever.

Rochelle: Deborah, I’ll bet you’ve got a lot of stories like Karen’s, don’t you?

Deborah: Oh, I was just listening to Karen and being inspired all over again, but one of the privileges and great things about my job is I’m in touch with people who have participated in this program all around the world, and in fact just recently there was an article that came out in a magazine in the UK called “The Apprentice” which is affiliated with their version of the show that we all know about here in the States.

Pam: Right.

Rochelle: Donald Trump’s, yes.

Pam: Yes.

Deborah: Yes, and there was one of the people who was profiled in an article called “The Keys To Success” about people who have done the Landmark Forum to benefit in terms of business. She shares in this article and she has also shared with me how her – she has a company called Designer Alterations in London and also another one called Total Wardrobe Care.

She’s got all these fashion editors and celebrities among her clients and she has shared that when she did the Landmark Forum she was thinking that – you know she was doing pretty well with her business but she was one of these people – I’m sure there’s one or two of us in the audience perhaps listening who think they need to or should do it all themselves basically, right?

Karen: Right.

Deborah: And she saw in the course that when things went wrong she blamed other people and she was getting to the point where she said she just didn’t want to be doing her business anymore, and it was just really an uphill battle for her and she said when she did the Landmark Forum she found herself more focused on her team, making sure people have what they need to do a great job, and this was a really key point for her that she was enabled to make requests for people to contribute in the areas where she wasn’t as strong.

So there’s that kind of thing that happens, you know, I’ve had tons of women entrepreneurs and women with careers talking about the risk-taking break-thrus that they have had, how many people – we look at successful people and we just assume that they are not afraid like we are.

Rochelle: Right.

Deborah: And successful people are afraid all the time.

Rochelle: Oh, absolutely.

Deborah: They just act anyway when it makes sense to do so, right?

Pam: Right.

Karen: Right.

Rochelle: Absolutely.

Deborah: So you know that’s another thing that a lot of women have shared with me and I think I heard some of that in what Karen was sharing that people, they recognized that some of the trepidation or just that sense of being stopped doesn’t actually have to stop us and in the programs you look to see what is in the way of you actually taking action and make commitments, make promises, make big promises and then fulfill on them.

Rochelle: Well you know I understand that you are obviously all over the world but in Seattle, in this vicinity you put these Landmark events on. So I think it’s important to let people know how often are they on here and how do they find out about these different courses and, you know, Karen I think you should be teaching a course actually.

Pam: Yeah.

Rochelle: Too bad you’re so busy but your passion and your – what you’re saying, you could sell this like it was like –

Pam: Right.

Rochelle: – you know so you really are a great success story. But I want to – so the listeners, where can they go and sign in?

Deborah: Sure, I’d love to tell you about that. In Seattle we offer a Landmark Forum about once a month, and in fact the next one is the July 18, 19, 20 and then the evening of the 22^nd. The tuition is $495. That includes a scholarship to a follow-up 10-session seminar that takes place – you know it’s three-hour sessions one weeknight over the course of about three and a half months.

It’s designed to have you really deepen what you got in the weekend course and get great coaching in all areas of your life with the distinctions of the course. People can go to our website which is www.landmarkeducation.com and in fact on there not only can you register on-line, there is also an on-line video introduction so that people can get a really good look at what this is, and if you’d like I can give you the phone number for the center in Seattle so people can call.

Pam: Please do.

Rochelle: Absolutely.

Pam: Please do.

Rochelle: Absolutely.

Deborah: Okay, it’s area code 206-545-3730.

Pam: Great.

Rochelle: What I’d like to ask of you Karen is can you say to our listeners why should they call and beside the fact of what has happened to you in your business and your personal life, is there any last little statement you would like to make to listeners about how important this is?

Karen: Well I think if anybody is going through any transition in their life, maybe changing careers, looking to start a career, getting married, getting divorced, anything that might be coming up in their life or furthering their education, non-linear education, and expanding their mind in their fields, this would be an amazing opportunity for somebody to just go to a weekend and see what opens up for them.

And as I said you could sit there for three days and four nights and not say a word, and the way the course is taught things just come up in your life and by the time you leave that weekend, you know, my feeling is you are so committed to what you’re committed to and that light does go on and things just seem to alter.

Rochelle: I would think having the support of a lot of people that you have met at these workshops or seminars would be really important because one of the things that I think women need is we need a cavalry, you know, and to have positive people around us that are supportive that just like what happened to you Karen where they believed more in you than you believed in yourself. That’s pretty big.

Karen: Yeah, because I wasn’t going to do it. I didn’t have the money.

Rochelle: Right.

Karen: And if anybody said to me charge it on your credit card I would have said you’re crazy.

Pam: Right. (Laughing.)

Rochelle: Right.

Karen: And here we are 12 years later and it’s amazing that I’ve come this far out of creating something out of nothing.

Rochelle: We should give a little plug for Karen Dannenberg Clothier. If you haven’t seen it, it’s the greatest shop on First Avenue and the nice thing is you can always find something. It’s one of those stores that you can walk into and there’s always a piece there that you need, you just need, and the nice thing also is that Karen is there to assist you.

You might have a wedding to go to or a luncheon, or a bridal shower or something and you just don’t have the right outfit or the right accessory. Karen is there to help you and she has the right piece to make it all happen.

So ladies we want to thank you so much for joining us this morning.

Karen: Rochelle?

Rochelle: Yes.

Karen: May I just say where the store is?

Rochelle: I wish you would.

Karen: Okay. We are at 2232 First Avenue at Bell right next-door to the Flying Fish and our phone number here is 206-441-3442, and we are open Monday thru Saturday 11:00 to 6:00 and we will be open on Sundays starting in July through August. Private appointments are available and we specialize in a lot of travel wardrobes too as a lot of ladies go around the world and they need easy travel fabrics.

Pam: Wonderful.

Karen: Fabulous.

Rochelle: Well thank you again ladies and Deborah thank you from Landmark Education.

Deborah: Thank you so much for having us.

Rochelle: You’re so welcome. So we will see you ladies later.

Deborah: Thanks so much.

Karen: Thanks, bye-bye.

Rochelle: Bye. Hello now, tomorrow we have Joe Stuczynski and we’re excited. We’re going to announce a winner. We have a winner!

Pam: Winner, winner!

Rochelle: And we’ll be announcing that winner of his four-week coaching session and we have Trish Carpenter who is going to be talking to us about Overlake Service League. This is very important. And Barb Iverson of Remax Realty is coming in to talk about the real estate market. So you’ll want to stay tuned tomorrow. So listen everyone, have a great, great, great day. It’s going to be beautiful and dare to dream big.

Pam: And remember to live, love and laugh.

(Pause for music break.)

Pam: Hi, this is Chat With Women and I’m Pam.

Rochelle: And I’m Rochelle.

Pam: Now you’re probably wondering what’s Chat With Women and who is Pam and Rochelle?

Rochelle: We’re a radio show and a website. We are here to build a community for women and the men who love them who want to learn, grow, change their lives and have some fun.

Brent Jones, a Seattle native and Landmark Forum graduate who has received press coverage for his work landscaping a Mexican town, is back in the news: This time for his role in reconnecting a homeless man to his long lost family. Jones and fellow Landmark Forum graduate Danielle Olsen were written about recently in Real Change News, the news arm of Real Change, a leading advocacy group for homeless people. The story is excerpted below:

A Landmark Trip Home Homeless Man Gets Bus Ticket to Oklahoma; Dog Flies

John Bradshaw boarded a Greyhound bus last week to go home to a place he’s never known, thanks to some caring people he met in Seattle. Bradshaw, 31, is a laborer who’s done everything from detailing cars to moving houses. He’s been living on the streets of Seattle since last October, when he hitchhiked from Montana in hopes of finding work. He couldn’t go to a shelter, he says, because they don’t allow dogs, and Bradshaw is devoted to Misty, a chipper bullmastiff that is all he had left in life. Bradshaw, known as “Sleepy” to friends on the street — lost his mother when he was 12. When he was in his 20s, his father moved away from where Bradshaw grew up in California and they lost touch. Five years ago, his girlfriend left him, taking his now 9-year-old daughter with her to Denver. And, just a few weeks ago, Seattle Parks workers raided his camp in Discovery Park and threw away his tent, sleeping bag, and other belongings.

A couple of weeks before that, Bradshaw had been walking down First Avenue near the Pike Place Market when he was stopped by a man and a woman who offered him some money to buy lunch. The two conversed with him for a while, then asked if they could take his picture. It was the portrait of a man whose life was about to change as dramatically as Brent Jones and Danielle Olsen say theirs have in recent months.

rent Jones, 38, is a Burien landscaper who says he felt his life had lost meaning when he started taking self-development courses last year through Landmark Education. For his latest Landmark course, Jones has created a coaching project aimed at helping people make changes — the reason he and Olsen were downtown reaching out to the homeless. But the meeting with Bradshaw took an odd turn. When Jones showed Bradshaw’s photo to his brother Brad, Brad believed it was a long lost cousin. That led the two to come back downtown to search for Bradshaw, showing his photo to other homeless people until they located Sleepy. It turned out to be a case of mistaken identity, but Jones and his brother offered Bradshaw help anyway; not long after, Jones took Bradshaw to an outing at Normandy Beach, then brought him home for a lasagna dinner.

During that dinner, Jones asked Bradshaw if he wanted to call home. But Sleepy said he didn’t really have one: His father had moved to Vian, Oklahoma, and he didn’t know how to reach him. “When I said, ‘We could call directory information,’ he said, ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’” Jones recalls Bradshaw saying. Unsure how his father would react after so many years, Bradshaw says he was scared to make the call. Much to his surprise, “He wanted me to come home right away,” he says. “It made me feel great.” But there was a lot to do to get there: Bradshaw quit drinking and using drugs. And, with Jones and Olsen’s help, he found a volunteer to get health certificates that Misty needed to fly — an option that was out for Bradshaw because he’d lost his ID.

On March 27, after 10 days of sobriety and a queasy 54-hour bus ride, Bradshaw was greeted in Oklahoma by Misty, his stepmom Rosa, and his father Jack, who gave him a big hug — and a room in his five-bedroom home on five acres where Misty can run free. He made it home in time to celebrate his father’s birthday in a family reunion with relatives he hasn’t seen in years. “Actually, I was a little skeptical on my way here because I was going all the way across the country and thought [if something goes wrong] what will I do now?” Bradshaw says. But, “Just getting here and knowing everything is going to be all right makes me feel better.” “I’m going to be able to go to work,” he says. “My dad said there’s plenty of work here.” His dad paid for the bus ticket, and Misty flew at the dog-handler’s expense.

But Danielle Olsen credits the personal breakthrough to Jones and Landmark Education. Jones took the first of the company’s three courses, The Landmark Forum, last February after he’d lost motivation and a sense of contact. “I felt people weren’t hearing me in life and the more I tried, the worse it was getting,” he says. “I was just roaring at people.” He followed with Landmark’s Advanced Course, paid for Olsen to take the Forum, and is now in the midst of the Self-Expression and Leadership Program. While some critics call the over-the-top enthusiasm and tenacity of Landmark participants cultish, he describes the courses as a way to put the past in the past and create a new, more effective persona. At a sales seminar put on March 22 for family and friends of those in the 50-member leadership course, participants gave testimonials as to the course’s effects on their lives and relationships.

They also described projects each has started to improve the world in large and small ways: a Game Night for co-workers, an acting group to perform skits in retirement homes, a sewing circle making sock monkeys to be auctioned off for the homeless teen program YouthCare. Jones calls his coaching project Tuned In, for which he’s set a goal of helping 30 people have personal breakthroughs similar to his own. Before Landmark, Jones says, he was always trying to control everything around him. “I was a scared little boy,” he says, “and now I’m a comfortable man who makes a difference.” Olsen, one of Jones’ relatives, says she’s just one of dozens of people he has helped. In the wake of her father’s death a year and a half ago, she says, she started using drugs and drinking. But, with Jones’ coaching, she’s gotten out, gotten a job, and feels completely different. “I went from being suicidal to being happy,” she says — one reason she agreed to “pay it forward” by serving as John Bradshaw’s coach. “Helping John makes me feel better,” says Olsen, who is two weeks sober. “The smile on John’s face after he talked to his dad,” she says, “was incredible.” And all it took, the two say, was a call to directory assistance. “I’m hoping it will work out, and I’ll live with my dad and be comfortable,” Bradshaw says. If it doesn’t, Olsen says, she’ll be right here to help on the other end of the phone. 

Earlier this year, Landmark Education News wrote of the efforts of Heidi Breeze-Harris to combat obsetric fistula, a crippling childbirth injury, through the efforts of the organization she founded out of her participation in Landmark Education’s Self-Expression and Leadership Program, One by One. Video footage has now been released that accompanied Breeze-Harris receiving a Smart Cookie Award from Cookie Magazine for her work to make the world a better place. Celebrities such as Sharon Stone and Marcia Gay Harden were also honored.

For more information, go to One by One’s website. Also, look at Landmark Education News’ first story on One by One. 

Amanda Koster is both an acclaimed Seattle photographer and a graduate of the Landmark Forum. She has long used her skills to spotlight compelling issues around the world and the valuable work being to done to make a difference with them. She has gotten many requests to turn these trips into tours that bring other people into the process of experiencing, photographing and publicizing these issues.

Last year Koster created Salaam Garage International Trips, whose stated purpose is to “connect media savvy travellers and enthusiasts with NGOs (non-governmental organizations) committed to creating and sharing unique, independent social media that raises awareness and causes change.” The group spends several days with an NGO that works to empower people, and spends the rest of the trip exploring the culture they are in. The first of these tours took place recently with a visit to an orphanage in India. In addition to the trip, Koster used her participation in Landmark Education’s Self-Expression and Leadership Program to arrange exhibits of the photographs taken by many of the tour participants.

The tour received national media acclaim in the form of a long article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which was also re-run in the Chicago Tribune. Much of that article is reprinted here:

Opening Eyes: Four travelers mentored by a Seattle photographer document the life-affirming work of an Indian orphanage

By Cecilia Goodnow, Seattle Post-Intelligencer 

 Even on a trip designed to change the world, photographer Amanda Koster made room for the colorful and the sublime.

She led her idealistic tour group — a party of four — through the spice and bangle markets of Jaipur, through stalls of workers stringing marigolds for the temples. She gave them a day astride ungainly camels in rural Rajasthan and a night under glittering desert stars.

But it was at the Vatsalya orphanage, a haven for India’s street urchins, that Koster’s group found the spiritual heart of their foray into social-justice tourism.

“You drive in and the kids run up and hug you and call you ‘didi,’ which means older sister,” said Danielle Williams, who was 23 during last fall’s tour and had never visited a developing country. “It’s not a sad place like you’d expect.”

Williams, now research coordinator for the National Geographic Channel, was so moved she returned home to Washington, D.C., to help create a project to assist India’s street children and AIDS orphans. The project, a collaboration with SHAII — the Stop HIV/AIDS in India Initiative — launched last week. That’s exactly the kind of change Koster hopes to inspire by opening travelers’ eyes to poverty, hardship and hope and sending them home to spread the word about our common humanity.

“Making that human connection makes all the difference,” said Koster, a Seattle-based freelance photographer who uses her lens to document world issues through the stories of ordinary people. 

Koster has photographed AIDS orphans in Kenya and chronicled the work of Doctors Without Borders in the slums of Brazil. She has celebrated the beauty of ordinary women’s bodies and helped preserve the song-making traditions of Moroccan women — in a show to be exhibited at the International Museum of Women in San Francisco and at the U.S. Embassy in Morocco.

Here to Help

Koster, who used to teach at Photographic Center Northwest, makes her living as a commercial photographer, shooting for such publications as Newsweek and Sunset and doing ad and corporate work.

“Salaam Garage” is the name she gives her personal projects — the award-winning photographic and video installations she creates to promote social justice and world peace.

“I always knew I was here to help,” said Koster, a dark-haired, earnest woman in her 30s who recalls volunteering at soup kitchens and spending time at retirement homes when she was a child.

Last fall’s India tour came about because Koster’s globetrotting photo shoots were so compelling — and her own passionate idealism generates such a force field — that friends and acquaintances began asking, “Can I come, too?”

Recognizing the world-changing potential in their enthusiasm, Koster asked herself, “Why not harness that and turn it into something that does good? Let people realize they are global citizens.”

Koster focused the trip on everyday Indian life, taking her party of four down side streets and back alleys where local people went about their workaday lives. In the countryside, they toured villages and farms by camel and shared chai with relatives of their driver and companion, Govind Singh.

Hoping to share a sense of the friendships they formed, Koster’s tour group has created a photo exhibition that highlights the work of the Vatsalya orphanage. There, children who have suffered sexual abuse, hard labor and other brutalities reclaim a sense of joy and belonging as they further their schooling and learn a trade, such as baking, sewing or woodworking.

The Vatsalya exhibition will run through February at the Neighborhood Cafe (which is in the process of changing its name to the Treed Cafe) in Ballard and at other Seattle venues throughout the spring. A portion of the proceeds from sales of the photographs will benefit Vatsalya, which also has permission to use the participants’ photos on its brochures and fundraising material.

A shared perspective

The American travelers say the trip has indelibly altered their vision of the world, and their own sense of purpose.

“I sort of metaphorically got sat down on my butt,” said Linda Steen, 35, who hopes to trade her Seattle landscaping business for a career in a multicultural field that values social and environmental responsibility.

Steen is a dancer as well as a landscaper, so creative movement helped her connect with the children of Vatsalya. The children performed traditional dance for the Americans, then watched, bug-eyed, as Steen demonstrated ballet and modern dance.

“India knows how to savor the moment,” said Steen, who was struck throughout her trip by the culture’s devotion to spirituality. “There’s a level of respect between people that I don’t see here in the United States.”

Williams, the youngest member of the entourage, learned of the tour through the grapevine at National Geographic, where she was a part-time intern with limited job security and a very thin wallet. To pay her way, she launched a fundraising campaign, telling donors of the trip’s educational and humanitarian aspects.

“I raised $3,000,” Williams said. “I raised all the money except for the plane ticket. I took a leap of faith.”

The faith paid off. Williams said the Indian Embassy in Washington, D.C., wants to display her photos, and she’s thinking of becoming a professional documentary photographer like Koster.

“The reason I’m more serious about it,” Williams said, “is I see what it can do. Humanitarian-wise, it can really stir people to action.”

Cynthia LaRowe, 40, director of global learning at Starbucks in Seattle, met Koster through a photography class and quickly recognized a kindred spirit.

LaRowe, who used to work overseas in the nonprofit sector, caught the photography bug when she was in her 20s. She remembers racing down a street in Indonesia, her 35 mm camera swinging from her neck, to capture images of an elaborate funeral procession winding through the streets.

India had long been in LaRowe’s sights and she was eager to experience its friendly and intense street atmosphere.

“India is like this full-body, full-impact experience from the moment you hit the ground,” LaRowe said. “There are so many people, so much sensory input.”

The impact of one

LaRowe was especially inspired by Vatsalya founder Jaimala Gupta, whose nongovernmental organization offers microloans for women’s startup businesses and manages to raise and educate 54 orphans on a yearly budget of $700 per child.

LaRowe said Gupta’s persistence showed her the impact a single person can have, even in a populous nation like India, and she hopes to incorporate that sense of mission in her own life.

“I am a person who’s all about changing the world,” she said. “I’m kind of reminded of that through Jaimala’s story.”

The fourth participant, Conrad Chavez, 41, is a self-employed tech writer for the software industry. If you’ve ever used Adobe Photoshop, you may have come across his words in the manual.

On the side, Chavez does fine-art photography. Some of his photos will be included in a book Vatsalya plans to publish about children in India.

Chavez, a friend of Koster, said he joined the tour to learn about the cultural context within which India’s high-tech revolution is taking place. He also worries about the environmental impact as India and China industrialize. Will they follow in the footsteps of the West, or can they become models of sustainable development?

“When I was there, I got a sense of how big India is and how big an impact it’s going to have as it grows,” Chavez said. “If you’re thinking about how to save the world, you really do have to account for these other countries.”

Koster, who likes to think of any act of change as a pebble that starts ripples, hopes the Vatsalya photo exhibit inspires viewers to launch their own global explorations.

“If even half of Americans would travel internationally,” she said, “I feel like it would be a different world.”

Buoyed by the success of the first photo tour, Amanda Koster plans to lead another Salaam Garage tour to India in the fall, with future outings planned for Vietnam, Central America, Morocco and, if stability returns, Kenya.

Upon their return, participants are expected to document their experiences through photos, stories, dance or other media.

“The people who are going to gravitate to this,” Koster said, “are people who are going to understand the power of storytelling.”

For details on Koster’s upcoming tours, see salaamgarage.com. For more about Koster, see amandakoster.com.

Photo credits: All photos in this story were taken by tour participants. In order of appearance, they were taken by Linda Steen, Conrad Chavez, Danielle Williams and Cynthia LaRowe.

Seattle Landmark Forum graduate Brent Jones found a unique way to give back to the employees of his landscaping business: He caused the construction of a huge new park and playground in their home town of Las Animas, Mexico. Many of Jones’ employees were guest workers from Las Animas, and as he got to know them, he would pay occasional visits to their home town. In the Self-Expression and Leadership program, Jones got the idea to bring what he did for a living to make a huge contribution to Las Animas.

He raised $20,000 for the project, which included $5,000 from Jones’ customers, $2,000 from the employees, and the otehr $13,000 from the profits of the business. In addition to the paid workers, many local people pitched in with the building. Beto Gallegos, the president of Calvio, a larger town of which Las Animas is a suburb, helped make the project happen by having the Mexican government give the land to the town, gave permission and permits for the project as well as contributing supplies. The entire park and playground were built in less than two weeks. In the process, the ugliest piece of land in Las Animas became the beautiful heart of the town.

People marvelled at the change: Most townspeople had never seen an American in Las Animas, let alone one who contributed to the town on a huge scale. There had also never been TV coverage of Las Animas before–Two television stations ran features on the unusual philanthropy taking place in their town.

“We’re not used to the sounds of laughter and joy coming from children and families in the center of town,” said one local resident. “It’s amazing.”

Seattle native Heidi Breeze-Harris was two months pregnant when she began Landmark Education’s Self-Expression and Leadership Program. She had recently heard about fistula for the first time, and was thinking about starting a non-profit organization to combat the problem. It seemed to be a perfect fit for a project in the program. Little did she know what her project would develop into.

Fistula is a deblitating childbirth injury that affects over 2 million women, mostly in the developing world.  Specifically, a fistula is a hole in the body caused by an obstructed labor, one that can last up to five days. This labor usually results in the death of the infant, and the mother is left with a hole between her bladder and the outside world through which she will leak urine and sometimes feces uncontrollably for the rest of her life unless she receives treatment.

Women who suffer from this often live in shame, and are cast out by their husbands and families–They can no longer bear children, they often smell, and they often suffer other injuries from the fistula, such as nerve damage and difficulty walking. It can be life destroying.

As bad as all of this is, fistula is completely treatable and preventable. To treat one woman with fistula costs about $300, which completely restores her to full health.

Breeze-Harris says: “I felt I really had something to contribute to help fistula become a memory.” Together with Katya Matanovic she founded One by One, founded from the knowledge that we as individuals can alter this global health issue–That each of us, one by one, can transform a woman’s life and in turn the life of her community.

Fo make this happen she wanted to harness the power of many people, so she hatched the idea of a Giving Circle: A person would contribute $30, and would take on having 9 of their friends or family give $30 each as well. This would raise $300 and pay for one person’s treatment. Giving circles started out small but are now carried out by people all over the world.

This past November, Leslie Garland, a current participant in another Self-Expression and Leadership Program, heard about One by One’s giving circles from a friend and decided to make them HER project for the program. She has already hosted two circles and is in the process of mentoring new giving circle leaders.

Later that year, the problem of obstructed labor became acutely personal for her, as the delivery of her own son was obstructed and she nearly died in childbirth. Only an emergency caesarian section and a second surgery to stop massive internal bleeding saved her life. It took her over a month to recover, but afterwards she turned her attention back to One by One with renewed energy, more committed than ever that the organization make a huge difference in ending obstetric fistula forever.

One by One has grown exponentially, continuing to make any ever-growing difference. One by One awards grants to many community  programs and medical facilities that directly heal women from the damage of fistula. For instance, One by One’s 2007 grant to the Bugando Medical Center Fistula Center in Tanzania is ensuring that the 250 women treated there this year receive superior care, and that the Center is able to train doctors and nurses from all across Tanzania in fistula care. One by One also does a good deal of public advocacy work.

As One by One has skyrocketed this year, Breeze-Harris was recognized by Cookie Magazine with a Smart Cookie Award. As the Reader’s Choice Honoree, she received her award alongside celebrities such as Cynthia Nixon, Sharon Stone and Marcia Gay Harden, all of whom were recognized with Breeze-Harris as mothers “working to make the world a better place.”

In all, One by One has directed more than $300,000 to the fight to end fistula–Raised from thousands of people, $30 at a time. Breeze-Harris credits the Self-Expression and Leadership program for pushing her to set big goals and work to end fistula in a more ambitious way than she ever imagined.

“For me, the process has been magical, challenging and life-changing,” she relates. “It has been a tremendous achievement to help so many women and I take great pride in that. The work has also been about quality interactions on every level, person by person, one by one. I am grateful, for it brings me great joy.”

To learn more about One by One, get involved  or start a giving circle of your own, visit One by One’s website!