THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE
When impoverished people live impoverished lives and never know firsthand what it feels like to be considered first, the message comes in loud and clear that they are at best second-class citizens; when all that’s offered is leftovers and throwaways, it isn’t a stretch for people to feel disposable and secondhand. The opposite is also true. When every aspect of the development of programs like the ones at MBC is steeped in generosity and goodwill, people respond in kind. Strickland’s ideas are simple, but revolutionary: “Put people in a world-class facility and they will become world-class people.” It really is that simple. The themes that Strickland repeats are strikingly intuitive and elegant in their simplicity, yet based on most of corporate culture and human behavior, they might be defined as backward:

• Look at human beings as assets, not liabilities.
• Acknowledge a person’s humanity.
• Drive the process through quality, excellence, and nurturing.
• Work on the process; make it collaborative.
• There is no epiphany; there is trial and error, followed by trial and success.
• Take away the excuses for people not to succeed.
• Make the center look like the solution, not like the problem.

The medium is the message, and MBC is the medium; it’s an assault on poverty and on the scarcity mentality that necessarily comes with it. Strickland built an educational center that says, “There is enough for everyone here.” By offering the best equipment, the best environment, and the best instruction, he addresses multiple concerns simultaneously. The students here get the topnotch training on state-of-the-art equipment, and have their spirits nourished by exposure to beautiful space and rich culture simultaneously. Strickland believes—and demonstrates— that access to beauty makes people happy and productive. He has placed fountains in front of the buildings on the MBC campus because he loves the calming effect of water, and wants other people to enjoy it, too. There are carefully tended rock gardens and 267 species of plants thriving on the MBC grounds, thanks to the hands-on training provided to Bidwell’s Horticulture Technology Program students. “This is a place where the subject of poor people is made interesting; this looks like the solution, not like the problem,” says Strickland.

He took it upon himself to design a space as well as a program that addresses in a concrete way the overwhelming problems associated with poverty. There is no tuition charged to the students who attend the training programs here. Students are held responsible for their actions and decisions, and nurtured in a way that fosters real growth and empowerment. This is a place that tackles the logistics of life, a place where people recognize that taking the time to build social and cultural capital with the members of an underserved populace is a worthwhile endeavor; building the status of individuals in their social networks means more community involvement, which in turn builds healthier neighborhoods and individuals.

ASK DIFFERENT QUESTIONS
Capture accidents. The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions. -from Bruce Mau’s Incomplete Manifesto for Growth

Strickland dared to ask, “What is a living wage? Why can’t people make a living wage? Minimum wage is not solving problems.” Bidwell Training Center finds real solutions to the very real problems encountered by underserved populations who lack the skills they need to find jobs that pay a living wage. Jim Showrank, director of Community and Government Relations at MBC, describes participants as those who’ve “crashed and burned—drug addicts, convicted felons, teenage and welfare mothers—who all need skills so they can find jobs that pay a living wage. It is the responsibility of communities, employers, teachers, and governments to pay people enough to live on. There’s nothing wrong with the people themselves; there’s something wrong with the system that creates this level of poverty and this much hopelessness. The good news is this: If the system is wrong, you can change the system, so that’s what we’re doing.”

MCG and Bidwell Training Center offer people what they actually need to be successful—not what someone somewhere else thinks they should have. They leave with marketable skills, renewed optimism, and the resources they will need to succeed in their new careers. Not leftovers. Not discards. Not the bottom of the heap, which is probably where some of the students feel like they are starting from when they arrive here.

This model brings to light the human element of sustainability and social responsibility: You can’t leave people out of the equation. Our disposable culture creates not only physical waste; it creates wasted human potential. Bidwell Training Center and new centers modeled after it in Cincinnati, Grand Rapids, and San Francisco are taking that wasted human potential and creating a healthy new social structure with it.