Journey of a Lifetime

March 1, 2010, 5:45pm PST

Dafna Michaelson spent 2009 traveling around the U.S. documenting the various ways ordinary people are making a positive difference in their communities. She interviewed 500 people and has posted their stories on her 50 in 52 Journey website. (Photo courtesy www.50in52Journey.com)

(Sumaiya Malik, Good News Gazette) What would you do if you won the lottery? The answer Dafna Michaelson gave to that question almost two years ago surprised even her at the time, and led her on a transformative odyssey that spanned 50 states over the course of a year and launched her on a new mission.

In May, 2008, when Dafna’s then boyfriend (now fiancé) Michael Jenet bought a ticket for a $400+ million lottery, he asked her "What are we going to do when we win?" The first thing she did, she admits, was design the Porsche Cayenne hybrid she was going to buy, right down to the color leather. As they continued their daydream, Michael asked if she was going to travel at all after she won; her response surprised her. "Yeah, I’m going to travel. I’m going to go to all 50 states and I’m going to meet every single governor, and I’m going to ask them how they’re engaging their citizens in solving community problems," she recalls saying at the time. "Seriously," she says, "that’s exactly how it came out of my mouth."

Intrigued by what she had just said, they continued the discussion. "We talked about it for a good 3-4 hours, I mean all night long, we talked about this idea and what it would mean, and how we would do it. And I, of course, believed that every governor would meet with me because I have these millions of dollars that I’m going to contribute to their campaigns."

"The next morning, we did not win the lottery, and I was very angry at Michael," she says with a laugh. "And I said to him ‘I think I’m going to do this anyway, I think we need to do this anyway,’" At the time, Dafna was participating in Leadership Denver, a program for up-and-coming community leaders that is run through the Chamber of Commerce. She started discussing her idea with some of her peers in that group.

She recalls that "we were at a point, especially in Denver which was so focused on the Democratic National Convention, where people all around me, my leadership, peers, friends, and colleagues at work were saying ‘I just can’t wait ‘til whoever it is that’s going to get elected gets elected, so they can start solving my problems at home.’ And to me, first of all, that was misguided. The White House doesn’t solve your problems at home. And I’m not anti-government at all. I believe that there’s a very important place for government. But I believe that solutions at home start at home," she said. "The other thing that was very prevalent to me at that time, and still, was that media was the only mirror that we were using to reflect who we are as a society."

So armed with the idea of going around the country, Dafna started brainstorming with some of her peers from Leadership Denver. "All of a sudden, we had a Board because people were very excited about this idea, and we were still talking about the governors," she says. During one of their brainstorming meetings, "one of the men in the room said, ‘what do need the governors for? What you’re talking about, Dafna, is you want to find the people who self-select.’ And it was this huge a-ha moment because all of a sudden it came together," she recalls. "We’re not looking for the people who are waiting to be asked. We are looking for the people who raise their hands and say ‘you know what, I’ve got a problem and you might have that too, and I’m going to solve it for the both of us. The governor didn’t ask me to solve it for you and I; I’m going to solve it for you and I.’ And those were the people I ultimately went around the country to meet."

And thus Dafna’s 50 in 52 Journey was born. "That moment was one of the highlights of the creation process because it was such a huge moment of recognition of ‘yes, this is what we want to do, and this is what we have to do.’"

There was one other factor motivating Dafna to begin this journey – she wanted to create a sense of what was possible by highlighting the stories of ordinary people who stepped up to make a difference in their own communities. "We were starting to slip economically," she recalls. "And when people were saying that they wanted the person to get elected already, whomever he or she was going to be, I mean seriously, people didn’t care, they just wanted it to be over already, especially here in Denver. And they were in my mind giving up control because they felt like they had no control. They had no control with what was going on with their finances. None. They had no control over what was going on in Iraq. None. They felt like they had no control over who was the next person in the White House. And when you feel like you have no control, you don’t take control. And I felt like by pointing out people who take control – that’s why that a-ha moment was so important – because the people who I was out to find were those who take control. And it’s not because they have money, it’s not because they have education, it’s not because they have age. It’s because, for whatever reason, something inside them says ‘ok, this is a problem that I have to solve. And I have no idea how I’m going to do it, but I’m going to do it.’"

50 States in 52 Weeks

So after several months of planning, in January, 2009, Dafna embarked on her tour of the U.S., with a plan to visit every state over the course of 12 months. She leveraged social media tools like Facebook and Twitter to identify and locate the individuals she would ultimately interview. During her year of travel, she compiled a snapshot she describes as "what does America look like in 2009 and who are the people solving the problems?" She interviewed 500 people and has posted over 370 videos documenting the stories of these problem-solvers on her 50 in 52 Journey website.

"I interviewed people from age 14 to age 91, an unbelievable plethora of religions, races, socio-economic backgrounds, from recently homeless – the woman in Syracuse, NY who now runs the soup kitchen line that fed her – to a multi-billionaire in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and everyone in between; from stay-at-home moms to lieutenant governors, to farmers to bankers, I mean you name it. At the end of the day, they’re all just people who said ‘this is the thing that I’m going to raise my hand and I’m going to attack.’"

The myriad narratives Dafna chronicled all share a common theme - an individual who observes something they would like to improve upon in their community, and then takes action to make it happen. Here's an example of one of those stories captured on the 50 in 52 Journey website. It's the story of Vicki and Stu LaRoche of Suwanee, Georgia, who, upon realizing that there were no social programs available for their developmentally delayed children, created The Next Stop, an innovative approach that creates opportunities for social interactions, recreational activities, and life skill learning for young adults with special needs.

The Journey Institute

Armed with countless examples of people who are making a difference in their communities, Dafna is continuing her mission with The Journey Institute, which seeks to help individuals just like the ones she met last year, those seeking to solve community problems at the local level.

The 50 in 52 Journey provided "an understanding that we can solve the problems that are around us," she says. "And what people said that they needed most while they were doing it was that one person who told them they could." Dafna found that more often than not, the individuals seeking to put solutions in place were told they were crazy, "which, of course, people told me, and they’re right" she says with an easy laugh. "But to have the strength, the fortitude to say ‘ok, people may be telling me I’m wrong, people may be telling me I’m crazy, but I really know and believe in my heart of hearts that what I’m doing is going to help another person’ you need to have that support, and more than that, you need to have the know-how."

Dafna aims to provide that support and know-how through the Journey Institute. "We want to be that support, we want to be that cheerleader to tell people ‘you can do it.’"

The Journey Institute is asking people from all over the country to identify solutions they would like to put in place within their own communities. They plan to hold four summits per year with individuals selected through the application process described on their website, with a goal of bringing together people with similar issues and ideas from around the U.S. to help them create tailored implementation plans designed specifically for their communities. "I believe that a lot of solutions that are boilerplate, that are dropped into communities, don’t work because they don’t take into account the unique cultures of the different communities. And every community has its own unique culture and way of communicating."

Dafna wants to create networks of like-minded individuals who are tackling community problems around the country and connect them with individuals who have already successfully addressed similar issues. She believes that by arming these problem solvers with the right materials and toolkits, and connecting them with helpful resources they can tap into when they run into implementation issues, that she can help accelerate and multiply the number of successful home grown solutions being put in place in communities around the country. And in doing so, she hopes to take community self-empowerment to a whole new level.