Stick Your Neck Out
An accessible, comprehensive handbook to achieving change in any environment, featuring time-tested methods and practical tips from real activists.
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.
John Graham
John Graham shipped out on a freighter when he was 16, took part in the first ascent of Mt. McKinley’s North Wall at 20, and hitch- hiked around the world at 22. A Foreign Service Officer for 15 years, he was in the middle of the revolution in Libya and the war in Vietnam. For three years in the mid-1970s he was a member of NATO’s top-secret Nuclear Planning Group, then served as a foreign-policy adviser 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 how he could put his ideals for a better world into action. He found the perfect vehicle in the Giraffe Heroes Project, an international organization that inspires people to stick their necks out for the common good and gives them tools to succeed. He’s been a leader of the Project since 1983. Learning from the courageous men and women honored by the Project, and from his own life experiences, Graham has for the last 20 years been teaching people how to stick their necks out to help solve public problems in their communities and beyond. Now he’s put what he knows into this book. A familiar keynote speaker, Graham talks on themes of risk taking, meaning, and service at national and regional conferences of all kinds, and to companies, service organizations, advocacy groups, universities, schools, churches, government agencies, trade unions, leadership groups, and outdoor clubs. His interactive workshops help people to deal with conflicts, and to create and communicate visions for success that inspire others and attract resources. Graham walks his talk: in the 1990s he was a leader of an environmental coalition in the Pacific Northwest, where he lives, and now he is an international peacemaker, active in the Middle East and Africa. Graham has done TV and radio all over the world. Articles about him have appeared in major magazines and newspapers. Previous books include Outdoor Leadership: Technique, Common Sense & Self-Confidence (Seattle: Mountaineers Books, 1997) and It’s Up to Us (Langley, WA: Giraffe Heroes Project, 1999). He has a bachelor’s degree in geology from Harvard University and a master’s degree in engineering from Stanford University, neither of which he ever expects to use.
