upstander

Have you seen the new orig­i­nal series that Star­bucks is putting out, called Upstanders? It’s real­ly cool! Accord­ing to their web­page:

Upstanders is an orig­i­nal col­lec­tion of short sto­ries, films and pod­casts shar­ing the expe­ri­ences of Upstanders – ordi­nary peo­ple doing extra­or­di­nary things to cre­ate pos­i­tive change in their com­mu­ni­ties. Pro­duced by Howard Schultz and Rajiv Chan­drasekaran, the Upstanders series helps inspire us to be bet­ter citizens.

Appar­ent­ly, they–like so many of us–were feel­ing a bit dis­heart­ened by our cur­rent polit­i­cal cli­mate. Their press release says,

In con­trast to the divi­sive­ness and cyn­i­cism cur­rent­ly fuel­ing our nation­al dis­course, Star­bucks today debuted “Upstanders,” its first orig­i­nal con­tent series, which aims to inspire Amer­i­cans to engage in acts of com­pas­sion, cit­i­zen­ship and civil­i­ty. “Upstanders” fea­tures ten sto­ries, each told in writ­ten, video and pod­cast form, about ordi­nary peo­ple doing extra­or­di­nary things to cre­ate pos­i­tive change in their communities.…
“We’ve asked our­selves what is the role and respon­si­bil­i­ty of a pub­lic com­pa­ny and, as cit­i­zens, how we can cat­alyze hope in a time when we need more opti­mism, empa­thy, com­pas­sion and lead­er­ship,” said Schultz.  “The upstanders fea­tured in this series are inspir­ing indi­vid­u­als whose actions are emblem­at­ic of the Amer­i­can spir­it and what is miss­ing from so much of today’s nation­al dia­logue. We have always been sto­ry­tellers at heart, and more of these sto­ries need to be heard. We are using our scale to share them as broad­ly as possible.”

I love see­ing these kinds of exam­ples of how every­one can choose to Be a Change­mak­er, so the Upstanders pod­cast is now added to my sub­scrip­tion list! Here’s a trail­er to give you an idea what it’s all about:

 
Cat­alyz­ing hope in a time when we need more opti­mism, empa­thy, com­pas­sion and lead­er­ship? Now that’s some­thing I can stand up for. Thanks, Starbucks!