Today is your first day as an advocate-in-training. Today, your “touchpoint” with The Empowerment Center is the opening class of the NYWRAC 25th training and you are a NYWRAC trainee or an advocate-in-training.
As president of The Empowerment Center I would like to invite The Empowerment Center members to my Open House and Annual Membership Meeting on October 27, 2009.
Who is a member of The Empowerment Center? What does it take to be a TEC member? Let me ask you what does it take for an advocate-in-training to become a TEC member?
It is so good to see all of you here. I am happy to be here with my friends as you are my community of advocates who are very important in my life. And I welcome the new faces as I am sure that you will quickly become part of this community.
I would like to thank Elaine Levin and Jim Rye for asking me to come today. I want to thank all of you who have helped with the details that have gone into putting this training together, which I hope we won’t take for granted as the training progresses.
Jonathan Tisch is a guru of the hospitality industry and Loews Empire and coined the word “touchpoint”. For this moment in time, this NYWRAC training is your “touchpoint”. But when you are through with the NYWRAC training, you will start another connection with The Empowerment Center at another time. Why?
Because everyday is a new day with new needs and different abilities. Each time you will be reconnecting at a different “touchpoint” and it needs to work for you. This is true not just for you who are brand new to The Empowerment Center or our advocates and trainees but it is true for seasoned advocates, the managerial staff and for me as well.
Each time you have a “touchpoint” with The Empowerment Center, I would like you to give a little thought to it and rethink the experience. Think: How might it have been easier, more efficient, and maybe more effective? How can I make better connections and help others to connect better as well?
The second level of how you connect is how you help others make connections. Because we are people who interact with others, and some of you are paid to do this, it beholds us to rethink the connection experiences to make it easier, make it more efficient, and more effective. Why? Because let’s strive to have less tolerance for mediocrity. Let’s reframe the experience and look at it fresh each time so that we can learn and make it better and easier.
Our job is to be advocates - to improve our own lives and help others as they strive to improve their own. Some of you are paid to do this but all of us at The Empowerment Center are advocates. And we are a community of advocates. This is a very powerful system.
It is the way we see things, the way we bear witness to the events we personally have experienced and share as witnesses with others in their experiences. We understand that those who cannot be a witness easily can be stripped of their rights. We understand these things because we have lived them.
This past Sunday night a show was aired on PBS. A Peruvian economist and author Hernando de Soto (with the same name as the explorer) told the story of how a small group economist helped defeat Peru’s brutal Shining Path terrorists. They model their reform after studying Switzerland’s poor economy 100 years ago and how they the people and the country became affluent.
Three things are important according to this economist; three things that we are aware of too. One: Efficient laws; Two: Rights; and Three: Private property. This translates to one needs to have rights protected, individuals must have documents, and have private property to create prosperity and social peace.
What we are finding true in our community is also being confirmed by others in other communities. They are achieving success and so can we. Let us learn by our successes and the success of others.
Today, you are an advocate-in-training and have so much to offer, share and learn. You are the link for the continuing connection that forms our community.
We at The Empowerment Center have an unusual powerful system in a similar style of Tufts University of Boston. That is why all of us are here today to greet you. We have the tradition that our advocates are now here to help you as you will be there to help those who come after you.
So, this is why today isn’t simply your first day as a NYWRAC trainee, it’s your first day as an advocate-in-training. It is your current “touchpoint” with The Empowerment Center
In the style of Tufts University of Boston I would like to welcome NYWRAC 25th class of Advocates-in-Training.
NYWRAC’s 25th Training
Eva Scholle
The Empowerment Center’s President and Co-Founder
October 13, 2009