I have read well over 500 books in the last fifteen years in the field of motivation, business and personal development but this is one very special book. The author Bill Strickland is truly a unique and amazing individual with a story you just have to read. This book may change your life if you let it. I'm going to let it change mine.
Bill grew up in a ghetto in Manchester, Pittsburgh and witnessed the riots that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968. I remember the time well. I grew up in a ghetto in the South Bronx of New York and watched the riots envelop my neighborhood as well. Through the intervention of one art teacher Bill Strickland finished high school and found his passion that would propel him forward in life. I didn't find that teacher and I dropped out of school and it would take me a while to find my passions.
Bill Strickland went from the Ghetto to Harvard Business School. He went from a poor student facing failure to become the CEO of Manchester Bidwell, a community art-education and job-training center in Pittsburgh. He never took a business course yet his center employs 150 people and services over 1,200 students a year. 90% of the kids get their high school diploma's and 85% go on to college.and 86% of the adult students find good skilled jobs after graduation. This is the definition of success in anyone's book.
What does pottery, airplanes, architecture, jazz and orchids have to do with success? Everything in the life of Mr Strickland and the programs he created to provide an alternative for residents of the ghetto. Read this book to see the most creative use of all of the above.
Bill Strickland shows us how we can change our part of the world we live it and create a life of significance.
One quote especially stands out for me. When he pitched his big ideas for a center and corporations would would say, 'Isn't that elaborate for a poverty center? and he would reply "It's not a poverty center, It's a center for success." He built one of the most impressive center's for success in the country.
Visit his websites to see the Impossible he created.
http://www.manchesterbidwell.org/
http://www.bill-strickland.org/
This book is the story of one of the most innovative visionaries to come along from of all places the ghetto of Pittsburgh,
This is a book I will read more than once. It's a book that is in my top five favorite books. It's a book I will use to inspire myself even further and I recommend you do the same. Read it.... use it.... Make the Impossible Possible in your life.....
