"Dare to Thrive," the Montague Reporter, 1/13/11

DARE TO THRIVE

by Liz Carter

The Montague Reporter, January 13, 2011

If you had to measure it, what parts of your life would you weigh to determine your quality of life? What makes you happy?

The measures of quality of life used in international development rely heavily on GDP—the idea being that money creates health, education, and opportunity. But recent research suggests that after reaching a certain income (around $75,000 annually), additional wealth does nothing to increase peoples’ day-to-day feelings of emotional well-being. Sometimes, due to a phenomena described as the “hedonic treadmill” (where, essentially, the more money you have the more you want, leading to increased dissatisfaction), wealth can detract from a person’s quality of life by robbing them of the ability to live in the moment.

This is good news to those of us living in Turners Falls. With 42% of our households earning less than $30,000 per year, most of us won’t be blinded by money as we look out for that good life. We don’t have to fear being battered in the struggle to chase down that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, most of us are too busy struggling to get by.   

But maybe you’ve got a good job that wears you out, so your talents are left sit simmering on the back burner and your social networks in the freezer. Maybe you’re out of work and losing your values as you pass your time underutilized and worrying about the numbers adding up. Maybe things just feel out of control, and it’s safer to float downstream then risk it all fighting currents when you’ve got no clue what lies ahead. You don’t need to be rich to be happy, but you do need something.

“For some, it’s a career, or owning a business,” said Jamie Berger, executive director of The Thrive Project, a new non-profit designed to help area young adults tackle this question. “For others it’s a happy family life, for others it’s a pastime (music, art, knitting, writing, building ships in a bottle, gardening, travelling, playing a game or sport, practicing yoga, even, well as much as I don’t like to admit it, practicing religion, cooking, community activity, political activism…) that offers satisfaction. I’d say that while none of us thrives completely, too many people—if they haven’t gotten a jump on it by age 18—aren’t given much of a chance to Thrive in any aspect of life that they feel is important, and that’s all I’d like to help change—to give people more chances to thrive in one way or another. I feel as if I’ve been given so many of those chances it’s ridiculous”

The Thrive Project is ostensibly a community center. It’s on 3^rd Street, in the neighborhood of Catholic Social Ministries, the Women’s Center and the Brick House. In its mission statement, it offers “tutoring, coaching, apprenticeship, artistic engagement, and community participation,” with the goal of helping “young adults go beyond merely surviving to build lives that they find meaningful.” Don’t be fooled into thinking it’s some innocent leg-up center, because what Thrive’s dishing out is more like a revolution. The open-endedness of its mission was built to be ambiguous. Its Thrive’s secret weapon—structural adaptability—and it’s like a machete. It’s simple, it’s effective, and it allows Thrive to tackle all the overgrowth obstructing the ambitions of young adults.

What Thrive seeks to do is cultivate the individual, creating—if nothing else—social support and validation for who they are and what they’re about.

Josh Warren found out about Thrive through his co-worker at the Lady Killigrew Cafe, Thrive’s Media Director Anja Schultz. A recent UMass graduate, Josh was struggling to translate his theoretical background to something meaningful to his community (Wendell). “I discovered that in order for things to happen for me, I have to do things with other people,” said Josh. “That’s why I pursued Thrive.”

As a student, Josh wanted to be a singer, but in the big world his dream changed. ” I didn’t have the ego for it. I didn’t have that diva personality. I just want to be happy and live simply and let other people do the same. I don’t want to have to push people away to get to the top.”

 “I thought about teaching, but I don’t have any training or certification,” said Josh. “Talking to Liz (Elizabeth Gardner, Program Director at Thrive) I started really thinking about how—cause she kept asking me ‘what do you want to do, how would you go about that’ and I kept throwing ideas and she said ‘that’s a really good idea—I know this person and this person.’ I had the opportunity to give a singing workshop at the Wendell library. That was the first singing thing I really did. At first it was really difficult, it was terrible. But as it progressed, it got better. I realized that this is what I really wanted to do.“

Teaching felt like a good fit, but he wasn’t sure if he wanted to be teaching music. “As soon as I came to that conclusion, that was when Liz said ‘I have this girl coming in from Nepal, her name is Sonam, she just needs some English tutoring,’” said Josh. “For the past few months, we’ve had five or six sessions when we’ve just sat down and she’s showed me her writing. Even though I don’t have the training in it, it just sort of came natural to me. I have a talent for explaining the language I use. It’s a confidence boost for me, it’s just another step in realizing that that’s what I want to do. I want to teach.”

Josh is also leading a book club at Thrive in collaboration with a few other people, which started this Wednesday.

”There’s so much going on there, even if its hypothetical, even if it’s in its beginning stages, there’s so much opportunity that I’m really getting excited about. It’s keeping me excited about what I’m going to do with my life,” said Josh.

Three months since its grand opening (a four day, three venue food, music, and comedy extravaganza, complete with the talents of Rusty Belle, Winterpills, Michael Showalter, and Eugene Mirman), Thrive has offered everything from workshops on financial strategies and resume writing to film screenings, knitting nights, and inspirational speakers on stand-up comedy. This upcoming month there’s going to be open invite jam sessions, and workshops on “Becoming a Mobile Worker,” among other things.

There are computers and free internet in the space, and a creative, motivated group of fellow “Thrivers” to greet you at the door, take you seriously, and talk to you about reaching out and grabbing what you want in life. Dozens of people have already gotten a break from Thrive.

“We can help them overcome a barrier or two in terms of finding something—some aspect of their life that could be slightly more fulfilling,” said Janel Nockleby, of Thrive’s start-up team. “Maybe you want guitar lessons...Maybe it’s realizing that if you utilize resources available the bureaucracy of getting through GCC might actually be navigable...Whatever obstacles they perceive. We’re not going to solve everything, but we can chip away a thing or two.”

“People make it in this world because they get breaks,” writes board member Michael Phillips, “True, you’ve got to work hard and do whatever it is you want to do—whatever makes you happy. But without a break here or there it’s easy to get stuck and stop exploring your options.”

It makes sense. People are happy when they do what makes them happy. But we’re social creatures, and if everybody always did what they wanted, we’d probably have pretty major shortages of food, sanitation, and healthcare. We’re wired to need validation before we can give ourselves permission to indulge our dreams. For most people, validation comes from financial compensation. Thrive offers an alternative—validation coming from other validated people. But it has to be financially sustainable for people to pursue their goals. This is an issue that the Thrive Project is struggling to address as an organization, with characteristic creativity.

“We started with just enough for three month’s rent, and to pay the three of us (Me, Janel, and Liz) for five hours per week,” said Jamie. “The goal is to get a year’s worth of utilities and rent in the bank and pay us half time for a year.” They’re pursuing grant funding, but “one of the pitfalls people talk about is that you spend a lot of time writing grants and you spend a lot of time documenting. Your focus starts to be on fulfilling what the grants are instead of what your mission is.” They’re also soliciting private donations, even from people outside the Valley:  “As far as I know, there’s nothing like this around,” said Berger. On www.thethriveproject.org , the donations page gives a list of three reasons why you should donate to Thrive, “even if you’ve never been anywhere near Turners Falls.”

But they’re also trying to find ways for Thrive to generate income. “We’re hoping to find ways to make it self-sustaining, instead of having it be kind of top-down ‘hi, this is what we can do for you,’ more grassroots ‘here’s what we can do together,’ “ said Janel. In the works are several Thrive-based entrepreneurial ventures (among the ideas thrown around where a “geek squad” that refurbishes old computers to sell to the community for cheap, a copy center, a tee-shirt business), which would provide service to the community, provide income to Thrivers, and provide funds to keep Thrive going.

Nothing concrete has been installed yet, they want these ventures to be shaped by the wants, needs, and skills of people coming in to use the service. “I think it needs to be community driven, it needs to be a reflection of what the people here are interested in, about what they care about and they’re hopes and dreams. It needn’t be about what Jamie and Liz and I think is cool, we need to start to get community input also,” said Janel.

“And we’re going to continue doing great events—putting on concerts,” said Jamie. “That’s just an ongoing way that we’ll raise funds and attention.”

Helping people in the pursuit of happiness is a pretty daunting undertaking, because people are different and want different things. No one person staffing the desk at Thrive could possibly have all the resources to help everybody achieve their wildest (or most domesticated) dreams. No ten people could.

But what if Thrive builds a network, where people come in and get a leg up, and then, on their way to satisfaction, offer a hand to lift the next in line? This is a small area, people know and depend on each other. If getting ahead comes from breaks from people who are ahead, and a few of us get a leg up, the rest will inevitably follow. It’s trickle-down satisfaction: “In lieu of paying tuition and fees, Thrive clients will be required to volunteer for community organizations, both to aid the organizations in question and to involve clients in said community and community service in general.” Those friendly, motivated staff at the door are people who, by creating the project or tapping its services, have also used Thrive to thrive.

“I know I’m enriching Liz and Jamie’s lives, as well as my own, as well as the lives of the community that comes in. That’s what I want to do. That’s what I’m learning about life at Thrive. You don’t have to have this overarching career thing, instead it’s in these various steps that you’re taking. That’s the quality and richness that you’ve been waiting for. It’s right in that moment, in the conversations and the quality of your interactions, that make life really important,” said Thriver/volunteer Josh Warren.

“I think (a thriving community) is one where people are looking out for each other. It’s finding ways to thrive in everything, from the industries in town, the manufacturers, various crafts and arts...While people may have given up on Turners in the past, I don’t think people are anymore, and I want to be part of that—helping people make connections. It’s all about us, it’s our little mill town and it’s all up to us,” said Janel Knockleby.

The Thrive Team’s dream is big--really big. They want to build a climate around Turners Falls that incubates luck. But there is very compelling research showing that it can work. It turns out that the change they seek to create is contagious. It would seem that the group of artists who dreamt up Thrive have found themselves building with the cutting edge of science as collateral.

 A new landmark study out of UC San Diego and Harvard has discovered that happiness spreads like the flu among people who are close to each other. And you don’t even have to know happy people to catch it, just being close is enough. According to the study, “A friend who lives within a mile (about 1.6 km) and who becomes happy increases the probability that a person is happy by 25%.” A happy next door neighbor increases your chance of happiness by 34%. The study suggests that this relationship is not caused by happy people hanging around with happy people, but that “clusters of happiness result from the spread of happiness” itself, and that the relationship they found decays with time and distance.  If people in your town are happy, you will be happy, too. Especially if that town is little, and everybody lives close.

These researchers have documented evidence that happiness is contagious, and maybe Thrive has identified why: Happy people do what makes them happy. They can do this because they’ve gotten breaks from other happy, satisfied people. Getting breaks begets the giving of breaks. So by offering a few individuals the opportunity to have a high quality of life, the Thrive project could very well be creating a place where the quality of living is high.

The Thrive Project could pack a big punch in our 2.3 square mile community. This is the big question here, the big why-is-life-worth-living that they’re grappling with, and they’re turning lives around by challenging young adults in the community to grapple with it, too.

Stop by Thrive, volunteer, and tell them what you really want to be doing. What looks like a mountain to you could very well look like a wrinkle from where somebody else is standing. And for heaven’s sake, call your rich uncle and tell him to give them money. If you don’t do it for yourself, do it for that bitter guy who lives in the apartment upstairs. As much as he’s making you miserable, there’s a chance you could make him happy.

dowser.org interview with Jamie Berger

http://dowser.org/interview-jamie-berger-of-the-thrive-project-on-helping-overlooked-young-adults-build-meaningful-careers/

Greenfield Recorder, pA1, 9/29/10

New nonprofit aims at helping find path ARN ALBERTINI Recorder Staff *9/29/2010 TURNERS FALLS -- When Michael Phillips dropped out of high school in his small western Pennsylvania town, he spent most of his time partying with friends.

Date: September 29, 2010 Section:

"I was just going nowhere and all the people around me were doing the same thing," he said recently. "I didn't see anything I felt I could be a part of." Then Phillips caught a break. He ran into an old friend who was at the University of Pittsburgh.

"He encouraged me to just look at doing something different." The friend helped Phillips get his GED and then get into the University of Pittsburgh.

Now Phillips, who lives in Greenfield and works as an Internet strategist for Yankee Candle Co., is serving on the board of a new nonprofit called theThrive Project, with the goal of helping others catch a break.

"That one break led to another and another and another," said Phillips. "None of it would have ever happened if that one friend hadn't said hey, why don't you do something different.'"

If that friend hadn't stepped in, Phillips suspects he'd be dead or in jail, which was happening to most of the people around him at that time.

"The main point with Thrive is that everybody deserves a break and everybody deserves some hope," he said.

The Thrive Project focuses on young adults, aged 18 to 30, who find themselves stuck in low-paying, low-skill jobs that don't seem to be going anywhere and who want to do something more with their lives, said executive director Jamie Berger.

"All these young people I know have incredible ambition and dreams and some of them are giving up on it at way too young an age."

Thrive's mission is to help these young adults find a new path and take the steps along that path, Berger said.

Thrive offers tutoring, preparation for test taking, a computer lab with free Internet, career counseling, mentoring relationships, help setting up apprenticeships; all things aimed at helping these young people go back to school, get more school, get some other sort of training or whatever else they feel they need to enrich their lives, said Berger.

Every Friday will be make-your-own-music-and-art night and there will be a monthly movie night, he said.

"It will be a combination of education, counseling, community and cultural activities.

"We want young people to come in and help shape (Thrive). It has to be interesting and dare I say, cool enough, for young people."

Program Director Elizabeth Gardner added, "We're still getting to know theThrive population. We're going to do a lot of listening and learning in the first few months."

Thrive will be celebrating its grand opening this weekend with events around town to raise money. On Sunday, there will be an open house at its 37 Third St. offices. see sidebar

Need?

"The question we've gotten from a few people is, doesn't this already exist?'" said Berger.

"Most agencies that I know of focus on helping people get the necessities. Any job. A roof over their head. Housing. Drug rehabilitation."

But, there isn't a group specifically focused on helping young adults live better, he said.

"Which means get a better job or going back to school or getting a more engaging hobby or getting more training to do something different."

That's where Thrive comes in, he said. "Thrive offers a way to help people improve their lives not just meet the bare necessities. What's needed is a hub that's a comfortable place to go to get started in the right direction. To go from surviving to thriving."

Thrive plans to have a close relationship with area social service agencies, like the Brick House Community Resource Center, Montague Catholic Social Ministries and DIAL/SELF.

Thrive also hopes to work with Greenfield Community College, although how that collaboration will work hasn't been decided.

There's a definite need for Thrive, especially for young adults, Gardner said. "But really for all adults. To have a place to go with other people and also gain a deeper understanding of what they want out of life.

"As a breast cancer survivor, it really resonated with me.

"I think what life is all about is constantly going through transitions. Constantly going through the process of assembling, disassembling or reassembling your life. It's a work in progress always."

Those who volunteer for Thrive will also find their lives enriched, she said.

"To me, making a difference in someone's life is incredibly rewarding.

"I was lucky. I had a lot of opportunities and I really do think it's part of my responsibility to take that and share it with others."

Both Berger and Gardner were at a point of transition in their own lives and are looking for next steps. Berger recently got a master of fine arts degree in creative writing from University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where he is now teaching English part time. Gardner recently finished homeschooling her children.

Both got to talking and the idea of Thrive was born. They connected with Janel Nockleby, a former project manager for Microsoft, who also recently got a master's in fine arts in poetry from University of Massachusetts at Amherst and works for the Great Falls Discovery Center and as circulation manager for a weekly newspaper.

Money

For now, private donations are the only source of Thrive's income, said Berger.

"We're operating on a shoestring of a shoestring budget right now. We can't get grants until we get data on who we are helping and how."

Thrive also hopes to create a business that would help fund its operations, similar to DC Central Kitchen. Located in Washington, D.C., Central Kitchen provides job training in culinary arts for ex-convicts, homeless and recovering drug addicts, runs a catering business and helps feed the city's homeless.

The hope is to eventually provide a salary for Berger, Gardner and Nockleby, but for now they have other jobs and responsibilities.

Graphic designer Anja Schutz serves as media director and Thrive also has a board of directors and an advisory board.

Besides donations, Thrive is looking for volunteers to work as mentors and tutors.

The organization is also looking for people who want to teach do-it-yourself workshops, which could range from practical things like how to alter your own clothes to something fun like how to play chords on a banjo, Berger said. "Something you can learn in two hours."

Several of these workshops have already been scheduled.

Another project Thrive envisions is helping Phillips on his project to rehabilitate the used computers that he collects and donates to area youth. It would be a way for young adults to learn a new skill and help Phillips get more computers out into the community, Berger said.

Beginning Oct. 4, open hours for Thrive will be Mondays and Wednesdays from 3 to 9 p.m. and Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

For more information http://thethriveproject.org or call (413) 863-6340.

You can reach Arn Albertini: aalberti@recorder.com or (413) 772-0261 Ext. 264

Greenfield Recorder, Arts and Entertainment, p.1, 9/30/10

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT *9/30/2010 When Jamie Berger began planning four days of events -- including local musicians and nationally known comedians -- to raise money and awareness for The Thrive Project, he came up with an "assignment" for participating musicians.

Date: September 30, 2010 Section: a&e

"My idea," he says, "was to have a lot of people perform, and each do two cover songs that have helped them thrive or inspired them to be a musician. I was thinking that people would go back to the first song or artist that got them going." "I told everyone I invited to be in it that they could break the rules all they want. But so far, people seem to really like the rules."

The Thrive Project, which has its grand opening Sunday, will offer experiences, inspiration, support and role models for area young adults, 18-30.

While better known as co-owner of The Rendezvous in Turners Falls, Berger also teaches freshman English at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. So, doling out homework-like tasks can be second nature to him.

Local legend Ray Mason says he's been slinging his sacred Sears Silvertone guitar to Pioneer Valley gigs since starting his first band in Holyoke in 1966. He says he was at first stumped by the assignment: "I don't really do covers I mainly write my own songs."

He's leaning toward playing the Terry Adams' NRBQ song "Magnet." "I love the way he words things," Mason explains. "I'm like a magnet/You're like a piece of wood/We can't get together/It doesn't make me feel too good.' That's inspiring to me as a songwriter. And, NRBQ was inspiring to me as a band."

Mason goes on to say that he, in various rock incarnations, has opened over 30 shows for "the Q" starting in 1972. "To me, there's, like, The Beatles, and The Band and NRBQ. They're that good."

For his other cover song, Mason's choosing something slightly unexpected for such a grizzled road warrior: the sweet and sexy "Yes I'm Ready" by Barbara Mason (no relation). He calls it a "classic soul ballad" from the mid-'60s. "It's such a romantic love song. I love it."

In contrast with Mason's pioneering position in Pioneer Valley musical lore, Heather Maloney, a singer-songwriter from Turners Falls, is a relative beginner who has been playing out for about two years. For one of her covers, she will do a Joni Mitchell song. In a recent e-mail, Maloney says, "She has been an inspiration to me as a solo female artist who was able to maintain fierce independence as a songwriter in an era of music that was even more male-dominated than it is today."

For her second cover, Maloney chooses one she admits is "dorky": Mariah Carey's "Can't Take That Away." While she describes the lyrics as "cheesy," she adds the song was "so inspiring to me at the time, when I was, like, 13. I think she's reminding herself of her own strength and love in situations where others might be trying to break her down."Michael Metivier, another Turners Falls resident, says the music he performs is rooted in folk and country traditions, "but the songs themselves are not necessarily linear or traditional singer-songwriter stuff. It's more dreamlike and open-ended."

Metivier, who is a member of Oweihops, thought long and hard about which covers to play because he wanted to choose something that would convey "the right message for this event." Finally, he decided on a tune from a group named Songs: Ohia. He says "Didn't It Rain," "is a melancholy song but the lyrics are about asking for help, that it's OK to ask other people for help and also offering help to other people who need it. I like that message and I think it might resonate with people who are afraid to ask for help."

His other choice is "Somewhere Else to Be" by The Handsome Family, which, he says, "is about finding inspiration in mundane moments and being open to small details that otherwise seem unworthy or unpoetic."

And all that is just for the Thursday Opening Night of what Berger is labeling "The First Annual Thrive Fest." Besides the above, other solo acoustic acts will be on hand, such as Jazer Giles, Levin Schwartz, Jason Mazzotta, Peter Seigel and Nathan Hobbs. The show starts at 9 p.m. at The Rendezvous.

Friday night, also at The 'Voo, features local indie rockers Winterpills; Rusty Belle, the Amherst-based group that plays an eclectic blues-folk mix and lists among its influences Etta James, Tom Waits, Leadbelly, Lightning Hopkins, Nina Simone, and "going to the dump"; Zack Holmes, who describes his music as "experimental, fusion and progressive"; and Hilary Graves, who is part of Ghost Quartet, a jazz/funk/blues aggregation Berger says is "almost our house band at Thrive" because their young members are among the target demographic for young adults he hopes will become part of the new program.

Saturday night will switch venues to the Montague Elks Lodge and also switch into comedy mode as four funny men with national reputations will take over. Eugene Mirman, so brilliant on HBO's "Flight of the Conchords" among many other credits, returns to western Massachusetts, an area to which he has many ties. Speaking from his home in Brooklyn, Mirman says that, as a graduate of Hampshire College and as someone whose girlfriend is an Amherst native, he returns to these parts as often as once a month.

Mirman is also on the advisory board of Thrive and thinks its target age-group, from 18 to 30, is largely ignored by agencies and others offering assistance and mentoring. "Lots of people want to help kids," says Mirman. "People don't often try to help those a bit older."

As a comic, Mirman was not asked to do any covers that inspired him. But, if he was asked, he would choose music by Velvet Underground and Robyn Hitchcock and comedy by Emo Phillips.

His connection to this area runs so deep that he and some others are in the process of putting together a proposed TV pilot for the FX network. He calls it "a cartoon series set in western Mass. I like western Mass. a lot and I'm so familiar with it and it really fit into what we were doing with the cartoon."

Joining Mirman will be Michael Showalter, co-writer of the cult film hit "Wet Hot American Summer." He is also part of MTV's comedy troupe The State, was briefly a correspondent on "The Daily Show," and is one-half of the Michael and Michael duo, with Michael Ian Black, on the eponymous Comedy Central series.

Rounding out the bill will be A.D. Miles, head writer and frequent performer on "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon," and Leo Allen, who has appeared on "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" and whose writing credits range widely from "Saturday Night Live" to "The New York Times Magazine."

On Sunday, from 1 to 6 p.m., the events conclude with an open house at the new Thrive Project headquarters at 37 Third St. in Turners Falls.

All in all, it's an ambitious extended program of entertainment for an ambitious social undertaking. In its mission statement, Berger describesThrive as a place where young adults can receive free services "that include tutoring, training, and standardized-test preparation: apprenticeships with local artisans, trades people, businesses, and grants and scholarshipsThrive also provides a place to use computers, get and give advice, research careers, and engage with others in their community in a variety of productive ways." It will serve "all of Franklin County and beyond."

Through this series of events, Berger hopes, of course, to raise some money for Thrive -- all performers are donating their time. However, that's not the only goal. "We want to raise awareness. That's why I made it as big as I could. We want the word to get out about Thrive. We need donors, we need volunteers, we need mentors, we need grant writers, fundraisers, and we need Thrivers -- the young people themselves that we'll serve," he said.

Berger feels that it's all about giving people "breaks." "I was born with the break of having two middle-class parents who, from a very early age, were incredibly supportive in every way. And from that break came a million other breaks. The reason these people who I really like aren't doing what they'd like to do with their lives is that they haven't had that break -- usually in the form of another person -- to help them change."

He wants Thrive to help those young folks get those breaks. "This feels good," he says. "It's what I should be doing."

www.thethriveproject.org.

Fred DeVecca is a writer and filmmaker who lives in Conway.

Staff photographer Paul Franz has worked for The Recorder since 1988. He can be reached at pfranz@recorder.com or (413) 772-0261 Ext. 266. His website is www.franzphoto.com.