About
Welcome to the Hero Construction Company where we help kids find the hero inside.
I’m Matt Langdon, creator of the Hero Construction Company. I’m an Australian living in America despite what the picture to the right might suggest. I left Australia to spend a summer in Michigan working at a YMCA camp. That was fourteen years ago.
I started the Hero Construction Company (originally the Hero Workshop) in 2006 with the goal of using the skills I’d developed through living the camp life of “learn everything, just in case”. At camp I worked with people aged from five to “don’t ask” in sometimes wildly different circumstances and environments. They helped me realise what a real hero is.
The aim of the program is to show young people that by doing the little things every day they can become heroes. Far from having to perform miraculous deeds, they are provided with an attainable goal.
I’m proud to be working with Dr. Philip Zimbardo, Zeno Franco, and Kathy Blau on their study of heroism in reference to the psychology world. Zimbardo has recently retired as Professor Emeritus at Stanford University and is keen to spread the word of heroism around the world. You can read a paper I contributed to if you click here for a pdf file.
Please look around the site and feel free to contact me with any questions about the program or comments on heroism.
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I have this book and did an online workshop of sorts with this as a guide. I enjoyed the concept very much – but found the workshop a bit too cumbersome.
I love your idea for the blog though. Heroes – what a great topic. Have you seen the new show? I am quickly becoming a fan of it.
WC
Exactly. It is the people who willingly accept a risk to do something good. Thanks for the feedback.
I was looking for an old friend by the same name-it isn’t you but I see you worked at a YMCA camp in Michigan- I am from Traverse City and I am guessing that camp was Hayo-Went-Ha- I worked their summer of 89.
cheers
I read the pdf file you linked in this article and found this interesting:
“whether the sacrifices are
measured as physical peril or social sacrifice.”
Are you saying that the person who risks physical peril and the person who risks being ostricised from his friends and not being invited to social events are both heroes?
I recognise that I have a bit of biased opinion but how is the person risking his life and the person risking not being invited to a cocktail party one in the same?
Is everyone who does “the right thing” a hero? It seems (to me) that the term “hero” is being spread a bit thin.
But once again, I recognise my views are very personal based on recent events in our family.
That is exactly what I’m saying. I’m not ranking them though.
The idea of social risk is not a case of “not being invited to a cocktail party” though. There are plenty of ways to feel social damage. Becoming the victim of hate crimes, ostracizing, or even hate mail/death threats.
Doing the right thing WITH risk is what makes a hero.
Great site and great idea! I like to find the hero in each of my students. Thank you Matt for stopping by our class blog and commenting. The kids will be thrilled when they see it Monday.
Hello, my name is Ben Durchslag, and I have been reading various posts and articles the past few days and I would like to comment on a connection that I made about the social heroes that the psychology of heroism is starting to speak of.
I am a camp counselor at an INCREDIBLE summer camp called Seeds of Peace International Camp. This is a typical camp with a very interesting twist. At Seeds of Peace, youth (ages 13-18) come from conflicting regions around the world including Israel, Palestine, India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Like you mentioned about your YMCA camp, Matt, these kids are my heroes too. Hands down they are absolutely some of the most amazing individuals I have ever met. In the 3 and a half weeks they are at camp they eat together, sleep together, do activities together, and engage in an hour and a half of dialogue with the “other side” of their conflict.
These youth are pegged as leaders in their respective communities because they need to be courageous to take this step. The simple act of coming to this camp is an extraordinary social risk they are taking because upon their return back to their home regions they are in danger of losing their friends, being ostracized from family member, and will face the inevitable view points of close ones that minimize and degrade the difficult transformation and growth they have just begun to make at camp. To say the least this a very difficult task to take on for someone, especially for a teenager who is experiencing a lot of changes as it is from puberty and what not.
If you could get back to me Matt, I would be very interested in connecting with you and applying your hero workshop at camp and in other avenues in life .
Keep up the good work,
Ben
Recently I was in contact with a gentleman who I knew while I was the ministry director of a local rescue mission. This gentleman, Les is his name, was a horrible alcoholic. He eventually dried out and became very functional in helping out this ministry. We got him an apartment and all seemed to be going well.
I resigned from that ministry over a year ago after 12 years to spend more time with my wife who has MS. A couple of months ago I took a part-time job with a “government agency” who works for/with the homeless.
As I mentioned before, Les recently contacted me and said he was drinking again. I went to his apartment before work and was disgusted on the condition of the place. Soiled clothing, beer bottles everywhere and so on. I called my old place of employment to see if there were some people who could help me clean the place up. I was in an emegency mode of thinking. looking at this man, with what medical background I had, he surely would be dead in a few days. He had lost count of his BP Rx and other medication he was on. He was a mess.
My old employer said under the new administration, that sending people over to help would not be allowed. I knew I could not do this by myself. Long story short, one of the ‘homeless clients’ I had been working with asked if he could help me after he heard the story. I asked him to get permission. He got it as well did his counselor give me permission for him to help out. His counselor even gave us cleaning equipment. I was operating in a rescue mode; determined that he would be cleaned up by that night.
The next day I was terminated for “using” a client for my own benefit (even though I received permission). I suppose the point of this story is that when you know the right thing has to be done, it isn’t that you are not thinking clearly; just the opposite, you see the correct path regardless of the consequences