Stick Your Neck Out: A Street-Smart Guide to Creating Change in Your Community and Beyond

by John Graham

As President of the Giraffe Heroes Project, which since 1982 has been recognizing people who "stick their necks out for the common good," John Graham has seen what hundreds of average citizens around the world have done to bring about constructive change. He's drawn on their experiences, his own as a veteran environmental activist, and that of a hand-picked group of seasoned activists to produce an accessible, eminently practical, inspiring guide on how to work effectively for change in any environment.
Stick Your Neck Out covers every aspect of working for change, from choosing an issue to mapping out a strategy, getting a team together, building alliances, working with the media, and more. Each chapter contains a series of practical tips as well as inspiring examples of real people--artists, truck drivers, doctors, waitresses, and others--who have made a difference on issues like poverty, racism, gang violence, environmental pollution, and many more. Everything in this book has been honed and practiced; nothing is untested theory.
This is a comprehensive guide to the skills, qualities, and strategies you need to make a difference on any issue. But it's also about becoming fully alive--about the meaning and passion you can add to your own life by getting involved. Active citizenship and personal growth are linked. The information in this book can change your world--and it can change your life.

Genres: Activism, Nonfiction

220 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

John Graham shipped out on a freighter when he was sixteen, took part in the first ascent of Mt. McKinley’s North Wall at twenty, and hitchhiked around the world at twenty-two.

A Foreign Service Officer for fifteen years, he was in the middle of the revolution in Libya and the war in Vietnam. For three years in the mid-seventies, he was a member of NATO’s top-secret Nuclear Planning Group, then served as a foreign policy advisor to Senator John Glenn. As an assistant to Ambassador Andrew Young at the United Nations, he was deeply involved in U.S. initiatives in Southern Africa, South Asia and Cuba.

By most measures, he was very successful. But something was missing.

In 1980, a close brush with death aboard a burning cruise ship in the North Pacific forced him to a deeper search for meaning in his life. Now out of the Foreign Service, he began teaching better ways of handling challenge and conflict. Since 1983 he’s been a leader of the Giraffe Heroes Project, an international organization moving people to stick their necks out for the common good. The Project finds ordinary people acting with extraordinary courage on a broad range of important issues—then tells their stories to millions of others through the media, and in schools.

Graham is a familiar keynote speaker on themes of leadership, courage, meaning and service. He also leads Giraffe Heroes Project workshops, helping organizations, businesses and individuals handle their challenges more effectively.

Graham has done TV and radio all over the world and articles about him have appeared in major magazines and newspapers. He is the author of Outdoor Leadership, It’s Up to Us (a mentoring book for teens), and Stick Your Neck Out—A Street-smart Guide to Creating Change in Your Community and Beyond. He walks his talk, including today as an international peacemaker, active in the Middle East and Africa.

He has a degree in geology from Harvard and one in engineering from Stanford, neither of which he ever expects to use.

Reviews

[Frances · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you ever thought you wanted or needed to change something to make the world a better place John Graham tells you how to handle everything from how to build a vision that people will follow to how to handle lawyers when you take the issue before the courts.

[Mark Staneart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very practical and encouraging: discover how you can make the world a better place by getting involved in your local community

[H. Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the inspiration's for me joining the Peace Corps.

[George · Rating 5 out of 5]

I highlighted so many pages. Advice about effective activism from a true expert.