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SHUTESBURY - Aron Goldman's world is a study in contrasts. At just 31, he heads a nonprofit consulting firm that reaches from his modest suburban home to midwives in Latin America, economic developers in eastern Europe and human services in U.S. inner cities. Yet unlike his closest neighbor, just 300 feet through the trees in Amherst, Goldman is forced to do his work with the help of a conventional dial-up computer modem. Meanwhile, the curly-haired, recently transplanted New Yorker has spent more than a year organizing a corps of Shutesbury and Leverett residents to bring high-speed Internet and telephone in the two towns. That's in his free time, when he isn't working for the United Nations Association, the World Bank or other nonprofit organizations. If his cedar-shingled cape on Weatherwood Road seems like an unlikely headquarters for his Policy Development firm, Goldman says it doesn't limit what he's able to accomplish, even with a slow Web connection. For its pilot project three years ago, Policy Development worked with a Bronx, N.Y., human-service agency, improving the effectiveness of front-line caseworkers. Working behind a battered steel door in the basement of a subsidized housing project with just a tiny, caged window, the staff worked "alone all day with no sense of why they were doing their work, no sense of their organization or the community," said Goldman, who shows a passion for his own work by his rapid-fire, non-stop descriptions. "There was so much resentment and disenchantment in the organization - and it was totally understandable." For the first time, the caseworkers were invited to talk with administrators in the main office in Manhattan about welfare reform and their experiences in the trenches. "It made them feel good about what they were doing and showed that somebody cared about them, knew they existed, was interested in what they were doing. They got to meet their colleagues who were sometimes no more than a mile away in other field offices they didn't know were there, and they started thinking about transferring their clients to each other." In Guatemala, Goldman has worked with an organization that provides grassroots training and support to midwives. Midwives for Midwives sought to reach out to communities while building leadership and influencing the direction of the tiny nation's top-down public health system. "They're not going to get anywhere in the rural villages without adapting to traditional practices, working with the midwives who are already in the communities," Goldman said of the government bureaucrats. He's also helped the United Nations Association - which works to involve the United States more fully in the U.N. - when it prepared for a world forum in Mexico on international development. What Policy Development lacks in specialized expertise, it makes up for in the ability it has to bring in expertise, says the graduate of Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public Policy. "We believe we bring with us a general knowledge of social policy," explains Goldman, who uses the term "we" a lot even though he's Policy Development's sole full-time worker. Policy Development was designed as an outgrowth of Goldman's work at Princeton, as a way to "take the fancy, analytic expertise and redistribute it to folks who don't have it, and help organizations get more involved in the policy decisions that affect them." The emphasis was more on social action than simply organizational theory, he said. "The idea is they should be able to serve their target population in a different way if they get involved in policy," said Goldman of the Bronx workers, for example. "If social workers know more about the Welfare Reform Act, they can do more to advise families and single moms about what's going to happen and how they need to prepare themselves." As a recent McAllister College graduate working for the Eastwest Institute in New York, he helped the World Bank investigate how rural economies could develop after formation of the European Union, and pointed to startup of call centers, eco-tourism and niche markets for agricultural products. For Policy Development, which also draws on the expertise of half a dozen consultants in specialized areas, Goldman spends much of his time writing one- to five-page reports as well as funding proposals for foundations so it can work for nonprofit clients that can't afford its fees. "I spend a lot of time on the phone, and I must send 50 or more e-mails a day," he said. "The research I do is not as obscure as you might imagine. It's meant to demystify issues for clients." It was four years ago that Goldman moved to Shutesbury with his wife, a freelance writer and editor. The young couple was drawn to the area, where Goldman had spent summers before college - fixing bicycles in Conway, working at the Black Sheep Deli in Amherst and Fitzwilly's and the Iron Horse in Northampton. "We were looking for a progressive community and wanted an intellectual base, and we loved the area," he said. "We wanted an area with pristine natural resources, not far from our families, where we could afford to buy something we could be proud of." Increasingly, Goldman's work takes him away from home, to New York, Philadelphia or Washington, D.C. Using his laptop on the train and focusing his time while away make the trips intensely productive, he said, and he's always glad to return to Franklin County. "I really do need a quiet space, and to not be grabbed away for staff meetings," said Goldman. Like other at-home workers, he struggles sometimes with self-discipline but often turns away from e-mail and phone calls when it's time to hunker down. "I set my own mood and atmosphere," he said. "Though it gets crazy sometimes, I can decide when it's time to be quiet and contemplative." On the Internet: http://www.policydevelopment.org Richie Davis |