Last year I did a series of Open Space meetings for the Vancouver Island Aboriginal Transition Team, an Aboriginal child welfare authority on Vancouver Island. We were discussing the future of child welfare service delivery on the Island. There were three Open Space events that followed presentations by Dr. Martin Brokenleg. In Fort Rupert, near Port Hardy, we met in the big house, which is one of the biggest on the coast. This page of photos documents some of that gathering, including the above wonderful shot of a small group meeting at the base of one of the four huge …
Utah Phillips, from thetyee.ca Utah Phillips is back in our neck of the woods: ?If you and I can agree to do our share of the work in this world, if you and I can agree to take only what we need and put back what we can, if you and I can agree to care for the afflicted, if you and I can agree not to hurt anybody, if you and I can agree to in some small way to get the work of the world done without the boss and the state, that’s anarchism.? I’ve resisted political labels …
I’ve written before about the Aboriginal youth I’m lucky to be working with. One of them, Ginger Gosnell, is involved with the Assembly of First Nations and she shares some thoughts on the recent annual general assembly: That is one of the differences between the current generation and the future generation of leaders. Young people don’t have the mind set that certain personalities will make in the end all the difference to an initiative’s successs…..As Nelson Mandela says, ‘it is what you make out of what you have, not what you are given that seperates one person from the next’….Overall, …
Gerry made a comment a couple of days ago about sharing books: If we put our personal libraries into a database that we could share with our network of friends, they could sign up to get the physical book sent. Maybe I should write a blog entry with more detail, but the database would be more like a blogging network where we could annotate and post reviews or which books most profoundly affected us. It would also track where the books travel and get them back to their origin at the end of a sojourn. I like the idea, especially …
At the Giving Conference Ruthann Prange convened a session which looked at creating a gather of facilitators for the common good. Her inspiratino for this was the tremendous offers of help from professional facilitators who showed up to facilitate the Listening to the City project in New York after 9/11. Now a nice synopsis of this has been published at the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation newsblog. I’ve had it in the back of my mind to perhaps undertake a conference in the Vancouver area of facilitators for the common good. Anyone out there intersted in getting something going? …