I’m back from Bella Coola, and reflecting on the remarkable three days of learning and Open Space we did there. Saturday, we held a small community Open Space gathering around the issue of what the community needs to do to prepare for assuming full responsibility over child and family services. This is a provocative question in the Nuxalk Nation. The Nation is a strong and independent community and putting children and families in the centre of any conversation brings heart, passion and commitment. We had a small group of people present for our Open Space. 20 people began the day …
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I learned a new word this week: teechma. It’s the Nuu-Chah-Nulth word for heart, but it conveys a deep meaning when you hear an Elder in her village talking about why she thinks something will work, why she is hopeful about changing the system solely because we spoke about it from our hearts, our words coming from teechma. I was with my mates Wally Samuel, Kris Archie and Kyra Mason this week in three isolated villages on the north west coast of Vancouver Island, Oclucje, Ehattesaht and Ka:’yu’k’t’h’. We were travelling there on behalf of VIATT to hear what these …
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Victoria, BC When I was in Columbus Ohio the other week it was my great pleasure to work with Silas Lusias from Kufunda village in Zimbabwe and a young woman from Columbus, Sam Werner. Sam spent nearly three months in Kufunda last year, and the story of her trip there was recently published in a local Columbus paper. Worth a read to see what these two people have been up to.
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I spent part of Father’s Day yesterday working with one of the youth PODs at the World Urban Forum along with some friends like sara kendall.. We spent part of the morning in a circle, using a talking piece to discuss what should be in a final statement from the youth to the World Urban Forum leaders. The blog for the Youth leadership POD should have some of the final reflections. In the room we had 50 youth from every continent, all of them investigating ways of engaging youth on the local, regional, national and global levels. What struck me was how …
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Rob Paterson posted a link to a great short documentary about a Sudbury Valley type school in Maryland called Fairhaven. Sudbury Valley schools are democratically run and non-coercive. In our Supported Homelaerning Program here on Bowen Island, we use many of the same principles and we operate under many of the same assumptions that these kids are expressing in the video. I love the last comment, that this kind of learning prepares a kid for living and learning within a worldof chaos, which is what the real world is actually like.