016: Whitley and Ranya O’Connor—The Curbside Chronicle INPowering the homeless
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What can you do in your community to INLarge the expectations of living for everyone? Ranya and Whitley O’Connor are helping the homeless of Oklahoma City become self-employed and self-sufficient.
In this episode of the Spirit of Leading podcast Ranya and Whitley tell their story of how they started the Curbside Chronicle and put the homeless to work distributing and writing every issue. The magazine is going into is third year of publlication.
Whitley and Ranya reveal several enlightening aspects of their project that would be helpful to anyone planning to launch an ambitions project.
- Crazy ideas get traction.
- Create partnerships with those who bring skills and expertise you do not have.
- Learn from those who have done similar projects.
- Prior experience is not a prerequisite. When you believe in your project, you can learn how to make it happen.
- The best advocate of your service or product is someone who has directly benefitted from it.
- Age is not a factor. Passion creates believers and advocates.
- Passion never makes anything any easier. It makes the hard work worth it.
For his leadership in this project, Whitley was recognized in the 2014 class of NextGen Under 30 Oklahoma. Ranya was selected to the 2016 class.