John Graham
Langley, WA
I am director of Giraffe Heroes International (GHI), a global affiliate of the Giraffe Heroes Project, whose purpose is to help people solve the tough public problems that challenge their nations and their lives.
GHI gives global partners a tested template for finding their country’s heroes and getting their stories known, inspiring other citizens to help take on public problems. Those heroes might be combating corruption, easing poverty or disease, ending conflicts, protecting the environment or advocating for women’s rights.
I was a US Foreign Service Officer for 15 years, involved in revolutions and wars from Libya to Vietnam. This work fed an almost insatiable quest for adventure. Only after a traumatic 18 months in the war in Vietnam did I finally accept how irresponsible my life had become.
A few years later, I was sent to United States Mission to the UN where I played a significant role in the ending of apartheid in South Africa. At the UN, I’d found finally the meaning for my life and it wasn’t adventure and it wasn’t promotions or power–it was in using all my skills and resources to make life better for other people.
I joined the Giraffe Heroes Project and, in 2008, launched the international division. The first affiliate, Giraffe Heroes UK, broadcast the stories of Muslim heroes, providing powerful examples of peaceful change aimed at young Muslim men susceptible to the wooings of radical Islamists.
GHI speeches and trainings offer inspiration and practical tools for building ethical and competent leadership, resolving conflicts and solving public problems. GHI provides civic engagement programs for schools and youth organizations, helping kids build lives of courageous and compassionate service. To date, GHI has established affiliates in UK, India, Nepal, Sierra Leone, Egypt, Kenya, Zimbabwe and Singapore. Ukraine and Ghana are next.
In Sierra Leone, GHI helped set up system to find and tell the heroic stories of citizens who had pushed past their trauma from a brutal civil war, and then Ebola, to begin rebuilding the country. In 2011, I journeyed into Tibet, stuffing notes in my shoes that became a series of hard-hitting articles and blog pieces describing the cultural genocide being carried out by the Chinese in Tibet.
In May 2013 I went to Egypt to help Giraffe Heroes Egypt take shape. When a Cairo court outlawed the kind of democracy-building work GHI was doing, I escaped the country 48 hours before I would have been arrested. Last year in Zimbabwe, staying one step ahead of the dictator’s secret police, I set up a structure for Giraffe Heroes Zimbabwe to fight for honest and effective government.
What I would like the world to know about older workers is that we have the time and wisdom to make enormous contributions.