When I was ten years old I sat at the front of Mrs. Vetoso’s English class and listened as a girl named Dana read aloud an essay about a boy in the room who had big ears and dandruff.

The class thought the essay was hilarious. Twenty years later, I remember exactly where I sat and how their laughter felt as is shattered through my back and down my spine. Maybe it was the big ears.

Dana read the entire essay. The class laughed at every line.

Mrs. Vetoso just sat there.

Mrs. Vetoso is who I think of when I hear the word “evil”.

She once called my dog fat.

But calling a dog fat doesn’t make you evil, it makes you a bitch.

Evil is knowing something is wrong and not doing anything about it.

Mrs. Vetoso’s watching a girl bully someone and not stopping it is what makes her evil.

This “It Get’s Better” campaign is great, BUT…

If you’re a teacher and you let a kid bully another kid, you’re evil.

Don’t tell a victim, “It get’s better.”

Make it better.

It’s the final hours of Holocaust Remembrance day and like most folks I didn’t do much for it. For me, it was a normal Sunday, volunteering with kids, brunch with friends, sushi dinner, intimate late night conversation. It feels a little wrong to have such a great time on such a day, which got me thinking about a old man I met at a senior center while volunteering with JCorps. He was a Polish man.

For those who don’t know, the Polish were horrible to the Jews during the war. While some countries begrudgingly went along with the Nazi takeover, the Polish willingly and eagerly assisted in the extermination of the Jews. Today, when young Jews walk in the streets of Poland, the natives are still known to spit at them. And so I felt torn, sitting next to this lonely Polish man. He was weak and old and his memory was spotty, but he was Polish and would have been in the army then, and that made me uncomfortable.  And then he began to talk about The War. I readied myself to walk away in disgust, but curiosity got the best of me.

I asked him where he was during the war, and he said, “All over Europe.” It felt evasive, and feeling no respect for this man, I pressed impatiently, “Were you in the camps?” “Oh yes.” And then, after a silence, he said, “We helped liberate them.” “Wait, what army were you in?” “The US Army,” he said, becoming taller and prouder in his wheelchair. Needless to say, my tone changed.

He discussed what it was like to see the camps and their prisoners — “unbelievable”, was a common word. He discussed living skeletons of human beings, starving children, broken men. Sixty years later, I could see his eyes still could not process what they saw.

Today, I had a great day because of what that man did 60 years ago. And chances are, so did you.

I was fortunate to sit with one of the last living American heroes who freed my people from the worst tragedy to ever befall us. Let us remember their contributions, a gift we can never repay, and let us us pray their incredible light continues to outshine the formidable darkness of evil. It is because of men like that Polish-American man that we can say…

Never Again.

Ari at MSNBC’s Your Business (1) from Ari Teman on Vimeo.

When I was a kid, I complained of being busy. “Good,” someone said, “busy people get more done.”

Now I run a “social volunteering” network that’s entirely volunteer-run — by busy people. My greatest challenge is in finding them, so I thought I’d share some things I’ve learned and ask for your ideas.

We have a lot of A Players. The girl who runs our New York senior center volunteering is a marketing exec who also runs her synagouge’s young adult division. The person who oversees our Jerusalem branch is a full-time student who travels and dances and organizes events for other programs. They don’t “have” time, they “make” it.

Then we have the deadbeats. These are people who take more time to write letters about why they can’t do something than it’d take to do it. They immediately run to schedule meetings, and talk about why things aren’t feasable rather than jumping in and trying them. They don’t seem to notice their total lack of progress. Worse, they involve friends who are even flakier than them. Steve Job’s rule that “A Players hire A Players, but B Players hire C players…” is true.

So the question is: How do you find the A Players? (And, how do you avoid the deadbeats?)

Here are a few things I’ve tried that seem to work.
PLEASE comment with your ideas, and give brief examples of how they worked.

• Look for people already active in their community.
  • These are busy people getting things done.
• Make it easy to express interest and then a bit tricky to join.
  • Capture their names immediately and then give them a task requiring some persistence. Leaders follow through.
• Look for people who challenge your rules (not who just ignore them!)
  • These are people looking to improve your organization. Fear them, then follow them. They’re your best source of new ideas.
• Be open about your needs, your failures and mistakes.
  • A simple status update on Facebook (”I’m looking for reliable people in … “) has netted me more quality referrals and offers than contacting a dozen leaders of major organizations.
• Welcome criticism.
  • When I published a newspaper (remember those?) a guest writer wrote a harsh and detailed email lambasting us for how we’d edited his article. We made him the News Editor. He was the best we ever had.
• Reward Selfishness
  • The girl who runs one of our children’s hospital programs is obsessed with babies (her words). So we don’t try to get her to run a Soup Kitchen event. She likes kids.
• Appreciation
  • When someone does something, no matter how small, give them huge thanks! We all want to feel needed.

===
What doesn’t work:

• Cold Emails
  • I’ve seen people post on our Facebook Walls and contacted them for help. Maybe people who are willing to post on a wall but not hunt-down a leader aren’t leaders.
• Asking unreliable people to recommend reliable people.
  • They don’t understand the definition of reliable.
• Paying people.
  • If someone can’t keep their word, they can’t do it with your money in their pocket either.

Reposted from http://global.jcorps.org

Ari’s Thoughts : From our Founder

Today brings a big change for JCorps.

JCorps's 50th Event

Ari at one of JCorps' first events

I started JCorps with big goals, it’s legal name from Day One was “JCorps International, Inc.” . We started in New York City in December of 2006 and quickly expanded to Jerusalem, Montreal, and are now open in cities as far as Russia and the Ukraine. We’ve had thousands of volunteers from over 180 schools, 450 companies, and 20 countries. Every year, we feed over 21,000 meals to the hungry, beautify acres of parks, and visit hundreds of sick children and elderly around the world.

One of my goals from the outset was to prove we could build a great organization with just volunteers. By designing a simple franchise system with clear rules and guidelines, the JCorps model could be replicated and grown with little reinvention. Our model was Wikipedia, which was built by a team of uber-dedicated volunteers. However, like Wikipedia the scale and scope of JCorps has grown to demand full time staff. When JCorps hit three cities I started to feel my time limited. Now we’re opening in eight.

The potential for JCorps demands full time staff. And in the spirit that “A Players Hire A Players”, I’m excited to announce our first full-time staff person, a Chief Operating Officer who will support our volunteer Division Leaders and Team Leaders as well as built our presence around the world.

We’re happy to welcome Giselle Mazur to JCorps as COO.

Giselle volunteering

Giselle was a star player working at the UF Hillel, and recently worked with a rising startup company. In JCorps, she says, she has found her dream job, engaging and connecting the Jewish community through service.

Our goals are only getting larger and our reach is growing broader every day. Stay tuned for announcements of JCorps in new cities in the USA and around the world, as well as internship programs, training programs, and nighttime First Responder and CPR classes that will enable thousands of JCorps volunteers to respond to crises and save lives.

People have asked, “What’s Jewish about JCorps?” I believe one of the greatest contributions Judaism gave the world is the idea that people can repair and grow themselves and that perfection is not an ideal; struggle is. Included in that is the idea that the path to true happiness and meaning in life is in helping others, which is one way to improve yourself. None of our heroes are perfect. Their heroism is that they persist in improving themselves. JCorps has always been a selfish endeavor, for it is about helping others with the aim of improving yourself.

Ari Teman

I’ll be alongside to see JCorps into its next phase, and then I’ll leave it in Giselle’s trusted hands. JCorps has been an amazing ride, and I feel like I’m putting my child up for adoption. (That’s probably a good analogy, since sometimes I feel like a bad parent.) I’ve learned a lot, met thousands of amazing people, and even gotten invites to the Mayor’s house and the White House. I’ll be forever indebted to the kindness you have all shown, and so I’ll be forever available to help JCorps.

It’s amazing what we can build with $300 and a big idea.

Thank you, and let’s welcome Giselle.

Ari Teman,
founder, JCorps

I’m this week’s featured comedian for Time Out New York’s “Joke of the Week“.

Thanks to the folks at New York’s Mann About Town for featuring me in their January 2009 issue. It’s really a very nice article and you should subscribe to their magazine. Subscribe twice because some articles are worth re-reading.

Here’s the text of the article. Photos and more here.

Helping from the Heart

It’s fifteen minutes past midnight and a steady flow of fans exits Manhattan’s A-list Broadway Comedy Club. “Thanks for coming,” says a dapper 26 year-old with a dimpled smile and a bright glint in his eye. “Oh, man, you were great, do you ever travel?” says a fan, the fiftieth-or-so to repeat this in a row, this one with a British accent. “Thanks, if you’d like, join my fan list and I’ll let you know when I’m coming to your town.” And so Ari Teman’s fan list is filled with the names of fans who have gotten to know him through his refreshingly clever, personable and insightful act.

However, they only know a fraction about Ari Teman. In a typical day Teman acts as CEO of a hot startup company, the head of an international volunteer organization, a writer, blogger, inventor, and artist. He has seven email addresses, three phone numbers, and every social networking tool out there. Pick a career that would overwhelm anyone, and Teman does five of them. And he’s just getting started.

Two years ago, Teman founded JCorps, considered the world’s first “social volunteering” network. JCorps (http://JCorps.org) is a non-denominational network that groups Jewish adults ages 18-28 to volunteer. Starting with $300, Teman built it into an organization with thousands of members, operating in New York, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Montreal, and Toronto. In a typical year it feeds 21,000 meals to the hungry, comforts hundreds of seniors, and visits many children in hospitals. If you’re enjoying the park, there’s a good chance a JCorps volunteer helped clean it up. The amazing thing is, Teman runs JCorps as a volunteer.

While charities around the world are complaining about decreasing donations, JCorps is entirely volunteer-run and continues to grow rapidly. Using the latest technology and empowering Team Leaders to make decisions within set guidelines, JCorps grows as fast as volunteers want it to grow — which it turns out is very fast. JCorps is about to open in two more US cities.

JCorps has also been studied by Hebrew University and the Cohen Center at Brandeis University. It has received grants from Google, and counts companies like Verizon and McGraw Hill as donors.

For all this, Teman was named to The Jewish Week’s “36 Under 36″, recognizing the top innovators in the New York community. Teman is also deeply involved with other New York charities and events, and is often asked onto committees. Last year Teman was lauded in area papers for his use of psychology and high-technology to help the Sensi charity dinner raise almost half a million dollars online.

Teman is also the CEO of 12gurus, an award-winning innovation startup with a series of recognized services. One, GatherGrid (http://gathergrid.com ), was just called “the most useful interface I’ve seen to-date” by CenterNetworks, one of the worlds top technology magazines. It helps find you the ideal meeting or call time for a group of people, and it’s 100% free with no registration required. In keeping with his charity theme, GatherGrid even donates 10% of revenues to a charity you choose. Teman’s second startup, Contempe (http://contempe.com ), is poised to revolutionize the way you email, it will save firms millions of dollars a year in wasted time, and can increase email marketing response rates by double. But other than that, it’s a stealth company, so you’ll have to wait a few months to see its magic — or get in as an investor.

If you want to make things happen, you go to Teman. Last year Teman, who jokes with audiences, “I’m a Republican — It’s not a political thing. I just don’t like helping people.” invented a web-based system to connect and track political lobbying calls over the Internet. It was used to help rally on behalf of Jerusalem. The campaign, and the system it used, PhoneLobby (http://phonelobby.com ), also a 12gurus product, was covered by the Washington Post and Salon Magazine. For three days, the White House, State Department, and Israel Embassy call centers were overwhelmed and unable to handle the volume of callers Teman’s system drove their way. Both governments abandoned talks about dividing Jerusalem.

When Teman isn’t on stage or at some charity function, you can catch him speeding around Manhattan on his bike, hitting the latest restaurants with friends, or touring museums. Not one just to observe, Teman is an artist who sold a print last year at an auction by the renowned Simon dePury. Teman holds honors degrees in Studio Arts and Psychology from Brandeis University and will be honored at a Brandeis student dinner this year for his contributions as a student and alumni.

If there’s something magical about Ari it’s that you’d never suspect he had ten million plates spinning at once. Laid back and jovial, Ari will connect with you at an intense level and you’ll rapidly find yourself smiling and laughing. The fact that he’s got Edison’s brain cranking our solutions to your problems doesn’t hurt, but what’s reassuring is that no matter how difficult the problem is, Ari’s got a joke to help you smile about it.

And jokes he’s got! Ari is a regular at some of the country’s top comedy clubs. In New York, he’s a favorite at the Broadway Comedy Club (53rd and 8th Ave) and Stand~Up NY (78th and Broadway) and you can see him on the line-ups among comics from the Tonight Show, Letterman, Conan, SNL, and Comedy Central. He’s also a favorite at private events. After a recent performance at NYU, the vice president of the student organization that booked him called Teman, “comic genius”, and promised to have him back. Teman is a Jewlarious Magazine featured comic – putting him among Jerry Seinfeld, Larry David, Richard Lewis, Modi, Avi Liberman, and Robert Klein.

Teman’s style is endearing and mischievous at the same time. He can talk about racial and political topics and dance on the edge of the line and you’ll love him like a kid with his hand caught in the cookie jar. He’s clean and innocent, and yet he’s got this inherent naughtiness to him that you notice as he walks the audience into realizing and laughing at their own biases. He’s Richard Lewis-meets-Lewis Black-meets-Larry David and he’s something entirely new. He has you laughing at the setups to his jokes and dying at the punch line. He’s strikingly intellectual and always five steps ahead of the audience. If you think you see it coming – you’ll always be pleasantly surprised. Amazingly, you leave the club after watching Ari, full of hope and wonder. Like the comic himself, you begin to see the world differently, and you smile.

Teman brings all of his passions together hosting charity comedy shows for organizations like BigBrothersBigSisters, the One Family Fund, and even JCorps, raising thousands for charities through laughter.

See when Ari is performing near you and connect with him at http://ariteman.com/schedule.

To learn more about JCorps, visit: http://jcorps.org

At the end of every JCorps event we take at least two group photos. We take one “normal” photo and one “silly” photo. “OK, everyone go crazy and pretend you’re having a good time!”, we tell the group. They laugh, and arms and tongues and legs go out and up and over. And everyone looks like they’re having a great time — because they are. Personalities and energies shine through. Except for one or two people, almost every week, who think, “no, that’ll make me look silly”, stand still, and hold their long-practiced pose. When the photo comes out, they look uptight, un-fun, and out-of-touch.

People who worry about looking silly look silly!

I’ve found that success only comes from running into the immense possibility of failure. Everything great in life takes risk. My greatest regrets are not the failures — those are easily forgotten or corrected, and often admired — they are the times I didn’t go for it. They are the times I didn’t ask for something, the times I didn’t speak my mind, the times I didn’t kiss the girl. I am kept up at night by the times I held back, in action, or words, for fear of looking silly.

JCorps works because we don’t have committees. We have Team Leaders, and each Team Leader has their own responsibilities. If they don’t do them, they don’t get done.

Committees are cesspools for breeding the lowest common denominator. The second you put a group into a circle and require a vote you get everyone held up by the dumbest person in the room, some tool that joined the committee because he or she “wanted to make a difference”, when anybody who’s ever made a difference knows you don’t do it by committee.

With JCorps, and all ventures, you give individuals responsibility, you and they know they’re accountable, and you and they know what happens if they drop the ball. There is no possibility for blaming a partner or co-worker: it’s all your fault.

It’s also incredibly freeing and inspiring: You can do whatever you need to do, within certain broad guidelines, to get the job done. You are in-control. You are the leader of this initiative.

On the contrary, nobody has ever walked into a committee meeting and thought, “Wow, this is going to be productive!” I go to committee meetings rarely, and only for free food (I count a meeting with sushi as “highly productive”), comedy material, and networking. Nobody’s really there to get anything done. That’s the job of individuals.

—
Although, if you still insist on meetings, spare everyone the back-and-forth of finding a meeting time, and coordinate with GatherGrid.

For a country big on privacy, we spend a lot of time minding other people’s business.

I include in this all the time spent debating gay marriage. Why do we care who marries whom?

Have we solved all the more-pressing issues? Did we solve the education crisis only to realize kids aren’t learning to read because Bert and Ernie sleep together?

This is religion sticking its head where it doesn’t belong.  (Which is ironic, given that sticking things where they don’t belong is their main complaint.)

People are afraid of creating loveless marriages of convenience. Too late. People complain about children being raised without a mother or father. Too late. People worry about a skyrocketing divorce rate (Ha. You don’t want them to marry because you’re afraid they’ll get unmarried?). Too late.

We have an abundance of opportunity in this country to make a profound difference, and spending our time budding into personal lives is no way to get that done.