Conscious Choice Seattle: A Giraffe in Us All

October 2004 | Evergreen Citizen

A Giraffe in Us All

by Keith Mack

If you think of elders as inactive or uninvolved, you’d better not tell Ann Medlock. At an age when most people would rather retire, October’s Evergreen Citizen is driven to inspire. Medlock, 71, is the founder of the Giraffe Heroes Project, a nonprofit based on Whidbey Island that honors the courage and compassion of citizens who “stick their necks out for the common good.”

“Giraffes” are everyday heroes who stand tall and take responsibility for tackling tough problems. Since 1984, the Project has honored over a thousand ordinary people who have taken extraordinary risks to fight AIDS, preserve the environment, reform schools, protect neighborhoods, defend civil liberties and combat homelessness, among other causes.

Giraffes have been as young as seven, as old as 108, and from all over the globe.

Twenty years ago, Medlock worried that many citizens had become passive and apathetic, with few heroic role models.

“I started the Giraffe Project to show what people with courage and caring can do,” she says. Medlock says she believes courage is contagious and that stories are a powerful way to start an epidemic.

The Project has reached millions of people by placing Giraffe stories in every conceivable medium, from TV to movies to the Web (for more information, visit www.giraffe.org). Medlock can give many examples of Giraffes’ stories inspiring someone to get involved and take up their own cause.

“I believe there’s a Giraffe inside everyone,” she says.

But Medlock wasn’t content to work with media alone. In 1992 Giraffe staffers launched the Giraffe Heroes Program, a school curriculum that has reached 200,000 students in all 50 states with the message that young people can-and should-make a difference.

“Typically [in mainstream America], kids are taught to be consumers,” Medlock points out. “We [the Giraffe Project] teach them to stand up for their beliefs.”

In 2004 the Project published Voices of Hope, a literacy program built around Giraffe stories.

“We help kids read while demonstrating courageous ways to live,” she says.

EM visited Ann Medlock while she worked on the Giraffe Project’s upcoming 20th anniversary dinner Oct. 4 at the Bell Harbor International Conference Center.

EM: You have a “No Whining” sign in your office. Why?

Medlock: Because whining is noisy passivity. If you’ve got a problem with a situation, figure out something constructive you can do and go do it. Don’t sit there and moan.

EM: What’s the most disturbing trend today?

Medlock: Since 9/11, we’ve descended into a culture of fear. We already had passivity, but the constant drumbeat of fear is absolutely immobilizing us. Our democracy is still an experiment. It won’t work if you just sit there.

EM: Are you hopeful for the future?

Medlock: I believe in the inherent goodness of humans. I believe that the rotten things people do come from learned fear and anger and don’t emanate from the true core self. Hope lies in seeing that core as reachable. That makes me ever hopeful, no matter what people may do.

EM: Do you have a favorite Giraffe?

Medlock: Whoever’s most recent, although I do have a special feeling for the women who are even older than I am.

This is Keith Mack’s first piece for Evergreen Monthly.

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