Jofacilitator

I want to highlight the work of two women here in Costa Rica. 

Leticia began a small NGO in a town in the resort area of Guanacaste (not far from the Nicaraguan border). She’s been doing excellent work the past few years with delinquent teenagers and local women, focused on vocational training and opening future options that were unavailable to them before. She has a small thrift store with donated goods, after-school care and other programs that she runs on a shoestring budget.

Leonor is working in an area near Turrialba, an agricultural region that also caters to tourists from cruise ships that stop in Limon. She recently left a well-paying job here in San Jose, prompted in part by the plight of refugees from Nicaragua.

In case you’re unaware, Nicaragua is in melt-down with demonstrations, strikes and Ortega’s refusal to abdicate. He is encouraging the ongoing murder of peaceful demonstrators. Many shops are empty, so food is scarce; large resorts have closed, usually in areas where they employ 200-1000+ local people. Thus, unemployment, especially in already poor areas, is increasing rapidly. It’s a desperate situation with no sign of relief in the future. This has led to a large influx of Nicaraguan immigrants into Costa Rica.

Both of these women have begun efforts to provide housing, health care, work and education to these refugees. They’re creating networks of care from their personal contacts. It’s like a phone tree—-they know someone who knows another someone and another until there’s a web of doctors, teachers, people with space in their houses or money or food or whatever is needed. One refugee fled without adequate medication for a chronic illness, and a doctor was found who could provide it. Children are getting instruction that will keep their education on track. Families are finding a safe space to recuperate before returning – and it appears that many have a vision they’ll be able to go home. 

We celebrate ordinary people making extraordinary interventions!

From Patricia Pain, one of the most wonderful teachers I’ve ever known:

I’d like to share this beautifully serendipitous experience between myself, a friend, and a perfect stranger….

One of my closest friends works for a company called Beauty Counter and she posted an intriguing article about how snake plants help to remove impurities from the air. Every year I buy plants for my students and I place one on every table group as one of the ways I create opportunities for my students to be responsible for and care for something other than themselves. It becomes a common ground, a bind that ties them. Something they can take pride in. It’s also something they can solve when one of their peers has a bad day, or a bad morning, or a bad evening the night before and snips off a leaf out of anger and silent words. It’s an opportunity to strategize and/or to forgive.

Shortly after I saw that article, I was scrolling through Facebook Marketplace and I came across someone who was selling snake plants. I messaged him and he eventually asked me what I was buying them for. I explained it all to him. I also explained how this year our class composition is especially in need of this opportunity, so finding these had come at the perfect time.

He responded by saying that he would look to see what else he had at the nursery that he could donate. After much back and forth, this kind man–this perfect stranger– had 12 plants for myself, my teaching partner, and Heather, who posted that intriguing article. Not only did he gift us these additional plants, but he gifted us with these words:

“I am very thankful to educators like yourself who give 100 percent, it is a very tough job, no doubt in my mind. On the tough days just remember, there are many out there who see and appreciate the effort and sacrifices you make on a daily basis. I know it is sometimes a thankless job, so THANK YOU and I hope these plants do well for you and your students. 😁 I sent 12 plants: there are sansevieria, pothos, aglaonema, and one schefflera trinette. If you have any questions please feel free to contact me 😁👍”

Thank you, Adam. Your kindness is not just in these plants, but your sincere words and appreciation. You are part of the village that helps our students see beyond themselves. You selflessly contributed to this “heartwork” we call teaching.

It is in moments like these, where it’s almost as though perfect strangers seem to have been waiting for years to meet…and this was our time.

I can’t wait to show the kids tomorrow ♥️

This is one of many stories from a wide variety of sources and a multitude of forms contributed by people upon request for my 70^th birthday.   They are posted without editing, with the attribution that was with them.  I will be posting these regularly until they run soon: if you have others to add, please send them to me.

I have been collecting stories of people changing the world for (can it be) almost two decades now. It really grew out of my Human Security and Peacebuilding thesis, when I explored how people built peace for themselves in Brcko (northern Bosnia) and Somaliland. When I was thinking about how to share my research, the university said I could use Moodle (which we use for teaching) or a wiki.

I wasn’t familiar with a wiki, but figured if I was going to learn how to use it, I might as well use it for something practical. So all those stories I had been coming across – stories of how people were doing something extraordinary in their community, or their country – came to mind. Here was the way to share peoples’ achievements – and by sharing that knowledge, encouraging others elsewhere to do the same thing, or something similar.

The very first story I ever put on Hopebuilding wiki was this one:

Molly Letela was principal of a school in the tiny state of Lesotho, nestled inside South Africa’s borders. She was getting repeated complaints from some of her teachers about how their students couldn’t concentrate, and so weren’t learning. But she knew that most of the problem was that her students were hungry – not unruly or deliberately disruptive – and she had, for a while, dreamed a dream about how to address that.

On the empty land around her school, she imagined crops that would feed her hungry students. But she was a wise woman, and knew that if she told the parents what to do, it wouldn’t work nearly as well as if they thought of the idea themselves. So gradually, in conversations, she subtly helped the parents realize the possibilities that came from all the land around the school, and their agricultural knowledge. And one day, they came and proposed to her that they create a garden in the empty land around the school.

Once the parents shared her vision, she found a small South African NGO that specialized in how to multi-crop on land, so that the school could grow more than one crop in a season, and that knew how to work respectfully with the local farmers and parents to build on what they already knew.

The parents planted the new crops, the home economics class made breakfasts and lunches, and the students were well-fed and able to work. The community’s health and food security improved, too, as people used the new ideas in their own farming at home.

Soon, a nearby community came to see what their neighbours had accomplished. And the knowledge spread, in what the Community Development Resource Association in Cape Town, South Africa, describes as “horizontal learning” – neighbours learning from neighbours. Soon, there were hundreds of similar school meal programs in the district – without any donor funding or aid agencies being involved, apart from the small amount of funding Mrs. Letela used to bring in the small South African NGO at the very beginning.

I love this idea of ‘horizontal learning’. It is so different from how people have often conceptualized ‘learning’ as being a process where neophytes learn from ‘experts’ – ‘vertical learning.’

The second story begins with a South African couple who used to collect tiny glass ornaments that depicted African animals. But then one day, they realized that they hadn’t seen any of the ornaments for a while. So they decided to find out what had happened to their favourite collectibles.

Their journey took them to Swaziland, where they discovered that the glass factory (started eight years earlier with funding from a Scandinavian aid agency) had shut down. So they decided – even though they knew nothing about glassblowing or factory operation – to find a way to restart the factory, and thus continue to create work for local people.

The factory, which had been started in 1979, had been quite successful. From 1981 til 1985, when it closed down, the factory was run entirely by local people. Two local people had learned glassblowing from some of the world’s experts.

The Prettejohn family re-opened the Ngwenya factory in June 1987. They use only recycled glass, and they pay local school teams and citizens for used glass bottles. So people from all over Swaziland collect old bottles and are paid per kilo for clean glass. As well as providing raw materials for the factory, this also (of course) makes the area much tidier.

The factory now employs 70 people, which includes two of the original blowers (who teach new apprentices) and four of the other original staff. Every piece of glasswork is handmade and mouth blown.

Not only is the factory concerned about the small animal figurines it sells – it also cares for the real animals and their environment. The company organizes regular cleanup days along main roads in their area, and it launched the Kingdom’s most successful wildlife conservation fund – the Ngwenya Glass Rhino and Elephant Fund – which is dedicated to saving endangered rhinos and elephants. A percentage of Ngwenya Glass’s worldwide sales are donated to the Fund.

I love this story because, for me, it shows that if the developmental focus is local, people can see all kinds of linkages between things that outsiders would never see. And it also suggests the power of curiosity and serendipity – this couple loved the small glass figurines they collected and then became curious enough, when the figures stopped coming, to find out what had happened. And their curiosity, and determination, led to all kinds of things they never could have imagined.

Using recycled glass means that, as well as making figurines for sale and creating jobs in the community and attracting tourists to the factory and its local shop, the factory inspires people to keep the area clean by collecting and delivering all local bottles and glasses. A project that was created using the kind of ‘silos’ that so many projects fall within, would have been so much less likely to do three or four things simultaneously. People locally see these kind of connections, and act on them. This is ‘win-win-win-win-win’….. 🙂

SHARED:

And finally, because I am at the ‘granny’ age these days, a third story that I have always loved…….the story of the Wakefield Grannies and the joy of serendipity.

The Wakefield Grannies have been supporting grandmothers in one South African township since 2002. Wakefield is a small, historic village of about 4,000 people located in western Quebec just half an hour’s drive from the Canadian capital city, Ottawa. It began in 1830 as a village of immigrants – from Ireland, Scotland and England – and while its focus is now tourism and art, rather than timber, its well-traveled residents know they live in an interdependent world. Canadian prime minister Lester B. Pearson, whose invention of international peacekeeping in 1956 found a creative way to resolve world conflicts, is buried in the village. Like him, Wakefield’s grandmothers know that changing the world begins with small steps.

The story of how they developed a strong friendship with 40 South African grandmothers living in a crowded township near the South African capital of Johannesburg began with film-makers Brenda and Robert Rooney, who had worked with the Canadian International Development Agency and Vision TV in 2002 to make a documentary film entitled Condoms Fish and Circus Tricks. Shot in Malawi, South Africa, and Zambia, the film offered an intimate look at the people who are dying, those who are caring for them and why AIDS has had such a devastating impact on African society. They screened the film at Wakefield’s United Church and raised $1,000 for the church’s AIDS campaign.

In the audience was Thomas Minde, a doctor at Wakefield’s hospital, whose parents had just returned from a year in South Africa. His mother, Nina, a child psychologist, had volunteered at a children’s mental health clinic in Alexandra township, a tightly packed ghetto that is home to nearly 340,000 people. Shocked to see more and more children being brought to the clinic by their grandmothers because their parents were dead or dying from AIDS, and herself a grandmother, Nina offered to run a support group with clinic head nurse Rose Letwaba.

While not much attention was being paid to grandparents in 2002, Rose saw them as the silent victims of AIDS. She invited three grannies to a meeting and they told their stories and everyone cried a lot. The next week, there were five, and then there were 10 and there was no more room in Rose’s office. The grannies said they needed help in getting over the loss of their daughters and raising their grandchildren, who were often sad and angry; many of them had been plunged back into poverty. But as they met, and became more confident in their own abilities and shared their knowledge, they started to blossom and become more joyful.

Thomas told the story to minister Gisele Gilfillen, who invited Nina to speak at a morning service. She showed pictures of the East Bank Clinic and told the congregation about Rose, who soon would be attending a conference in Canada. Nina promised to bring Rose to Wakefield. And so, one Saturday night in October 2004, Rose painted a picture of a whole generation of South Africans lost to AIDS and grieving mothers left to carry the burden of raising their grandchildren to be healthy, educated, socially responsible adults. Rose described the 40 Grannies who were meeting at her clinic for sewing classes, gardening and moral support. An impromptu collection raised about $900, but that didn’t seem enough to 81-year-old Norma Geggie. She wanted to do more.

When Norma happened to meet Nina and Rose the next day, she asked “what if a group of women in Wakefield were to partner with these women?” They exchanged e-mail addresses, and Norma began making phone calls. When the Wakefield Grannies met for the first time in November 2004, each drew the name of an Alex Gogo – the Zulu word for grandmother – from a jar. It was the start of a relationship that was both personal, and collective.

The whole community was behind the grannies. They supported fundraising events, sent cheques, and businesses donated money, which was sent to Rose, who decided how it should be spent – for food, sewing equipment, winter blankets and track suits for HIV positive children who are highly susceptible to cold, and occasionally, overnight and weekend breaks for gogos and Alex teens who were heads of their households.

Knowing that grannies on the other side of the world cared so much about them gave the Alex Gogos tremendous hope, and helped dissolve the stigma that often affects such families. Within a year, as people heard about the Wakefield Grannies, other granny groups began in Canada and the United States. In the spring of 2006, the Stephen Lewis Foundation launched a Grandmother to Grandmother campaign that inspired the creation of hundreds of granny groups across Canada, and Lewis came to meet the Wakefield Grannies.

Robert Rooney had been filming the story from the start and soon realized it was a story about women, not about AIDS. In 2006, the Rooneys travelled to South Africa to film the Alex Gogos and then filmed several Wakefield Grannies at the Grandmother to Grandmother gathering. The story came full circle when Rose and three of the Alex gogos visited Wakefield on August 15, 2006. The resulting 80-minute documentary, The Great Granny Revolution, fittingly, had its world premiere in Wakefield on May 5, 2007.

This work is inspiring many younger people. Says one: “If grey-haired old women believe they can impact a change in the world, then why can’t our generation?” Near the end of the film, Rose Letwaba is speaking at the Wakefield United Church. “If everyone was like the people of Wakefield,” she says, “the world would be a better place to live in.”

This is one of many stories from a wide variety of sources and a multitude of forms contributed by people upon request for my 70^th birthday in November 2018.   They are posted without editing, with the attribution that was with them.  I will be posting these regularly until they run out. There are about 7 more to go! If you have others to add, please send them to me soon!

As you know, I live in a small prairie farming town. A small town of ordinary people (+/- 800 of us) who do ordinary things. About the most exciting event in our town is the Volunteer Fire Department’s drive through town around Christmas, flashing lights and all, to distribute candy canes and fire safety reminders to each home. Small towns have their own ways of making things happen. News gets around very quickly through an ancient form of social media – neighbours talking to each other. It is common courtesy in town for motorists and pedestrians to acknowledge each other as they pass by – just a brief wave does the trick. Our local food bank and associated thrift store are volunteer-operated. The seniors’ lodge and long-term care facilities have strong local volunteer support. An accessible playground was erected this year with the help of 40 volunteers working for 3 days in 30 C degree weather. Ordinary people doing ordinary things make this an extraordinary community. But people don’t seem to think about it very much. They just do what needs to be done. Small things make a big difference.

This is one of many stories from a wide variety of sources and a multitude of forms contributed by people upon request for my 70^th birthday.   They are posted without editing, with the attribution that was with them.  I will be posting these regularly until they run out next year sometime: if you have others to add, please send them to me.

I like to find my inspiration in everyday life, through ordinary people doing extraordinary things, which then makes those people far from ordinary.

One person who has given me great inspiration and who makes me strive to be a better citizen is my Boss, my Neighbour, my Friend, Mary-Margaret McMahon.

My inspiration started when I realized how much the current City Councillor had done years before when she was an ordinary citizen.  On a big scale, with 2 young kids in tow, MMM was working to save the environment.  Ona smaller scale, she was working to make her community a better place.  She was involved in her children’s school .  She was involved in creating one of the best Resident’s Associations in Toronto, Danforth East Community Association (DECA) and was instrumental in starting a wonderful Farmer’s Market, that is still going strong today.

There are far too many accomplishments since winning her seat as Councillor to list.  But trust me, they are amazing.

But it is the accomplishments that this powerhouse neighbour, mother, friend did on her own that inspire me to be the best I can be in my community.

This is one of many stories from a wide variety of sources and a multitude of forms contributed by people upon request for my 70^th birthday.   They are posted without editing, with the attribution that was with them.  I will be posting these regularly until they run out next year sometime: if you have others to add, please send them to me.

Peter Taylor, Boston, USA, 19 November 2018

I am grateful for the influence of ICA Toronto. ICA has informed and inspired my running of events that affirm Ordinary-People-Making-a-Difference principles, especially: “There is insight in every response. We know more than we are, at first, prepared or able to acknowledge. When we are heard, we can better hear others and hear ourselves.” Here are two relevant stories; both about processes that followed the death of a family member.

Twenty years ago, at a wake for a family member who suicided, I took the opportunity to lead a go-around in which everyone said one thing they appreciated about the person and one thing they had difficulty with. Even the youngest relative there, a 9-year old, had clear things to say on both counts. Speaking and listening allowed us to acknowledge the ambiguity of losing someone whose mental health issues had challenged each of us: when and how do we stay involved and when do we step back and care for ourselves?

Three years ago, after my wife, Ann, died from ovarian cancer, we had a pot-luck party, which is what she had requested instead of a funeral. I asked guests to “introduce yourself to someone you don’t know and share what it meant to have Ann in your lives.” Each hour, starting at 11 in the morning and going into the evening, I rang a bell and for ten minutes people took turns to reflect or share a simple story “that captures how having Ann in your life has influenced you.” I had actually started this process nine months earlier so friends and family members could write when visits weren’t possible. But Ann thought the notes sounded like eulogies—“I am not dead yet!” was her retort—so I archived them on a private blog. After her death, I asked for permission to make the blog contributions public then added condolence notes and audio recordings from the party and two memorial events. At some point I wondered if blogs could be downloaded into a word file—yes. I realized the steady assembling of small contributions was adding up to material for a book. A few months later, audio recordings transcribed, cover and interior style designed by a former student, photos selected, and copies scanned of 14 years of letters Ann had written to a friend as young adults while they both worked to become writers (and etc.) became Ann(ie) Blum in Our Lives ( http://bit.ly/ABIOL2016).

At first, I called it a “memorial book” for Ann, but then I saw that the blog from which the book emerged was my way of allowing many people to have their voice. And for that voice to be one heard by a community, not only by the immediate family receiving the condolence notes. But why do people need to have their voice heard in a community? At first I thought I was giving recognition to the fact that many people were grieving Ann, not just me, her partner of 30 years.

But then I saw that the value of people having their voice heard in a community is that we—this includes me—have very partial narratives about what the loss of someone means for their lives. We say something—such as “I so miss her” or “Cancer sucks” or “I’m doing as well as can be expected”—but we know there’s more to what we are feeling. Things that are hard to articulate, things that are hard to know whether this is the person and the time to explore it with. So those things often get left un(der) explored; we just carry on. The book allowed, however, readers to bring their own thoughts to the surface through hearing the partial things others were able to say, to give voice to. And also to learn more, which adds to those thoughts. In that way, there is more play, more processing of what each reader wants to carry forward as part of their own lives.

Although these two stories revolve around deaths, they are also stories in which allowing everyone’s voices to be raised contributes to people making a difference to the life-direction-making of themselves and others.

Linda Evans got involved in organ donation efforts when her husband needed a transplant 10 years ago or he would die. The hospital he was in said they could not get him the organ he needed and he should write his will and make funeral arrangements . Rather than stand by and let that happen, Linda moved heaven and earth to find a viable alternative. Mayo Clinic in Florida gave Gary a second chance at life and the transplant was successful. Ever since that time, Linda has dedicated some of her efforts to enlisting people to donate organs so that no one ever has to go through what she and Gary did.

This is one of many stories from a wide variety of sources and a multitude of forms contributed by people upon request for my 70^th birthday.   They are posted without editing, with the attribution that was with them.  I will be posting these regularly until they run out next year sometime: if you have others to add, please send them to me.

This is a story one of my hospice clients told me.

She and her husband took in a young (around 7-8 yrs old) multi-racial boy.  He was around the age of her grandchildren, so she told him he was one of her grandsons.

She found out he was being made fun of and bullied on the school bus.   So the next day she escorted him to the school bus and got on with him.  She faced the children and said:  “hi kids (small town, they all knew her)—this is my grandson, Johnny (not real name).   Will you all be friends with him and include him in your games.”

No more problems.  A beautiful solution.

This is one of many stories from a wide variety of sources and a multitude of forms contributed by people upon request for my 70^th birthday.   They are posted without editing, with the attribution that was with them.  I will be posting these regularly until they run out next year sometime: if you have others to add, please send them to me.

One happened just this morning as I was driving my daughter to school. Marena is my 15 year old daughter and we were on our way to school and work, driving slowly on the icy roads after a major over night snow fall that continued through the day today. As we slowed to a real crawl we exclaimed ‘ok what the heck is the problem up there??!!’  It turned out to be a fellow in a Jeep that had spun around half way and hit the curb. He had one tire on the curb and was trying to back up. Both our lanes of traffic stopped and gave him plenty of room to try and back up on his own. It appeared he wasn’t going to get very far as his wheels were spinning. Marena and I watched this unfold, and I said ‘oh someone just needs to give him a little push’ and just like that, a fellow who was walking down the street toward the bus stop began pushing. Soon another fellow joined him and the Jeep was back on the road, heading the correct direction, and everyone was on the move again slowly and carefully. Marena and I cheered and she said to me, ‘Mom, I love Canada!  That was the most Canadian thing I have ever seen!’  This warmed our hearts today – and it was SO simple!!!

The other story I have is from the most recent Facilitation exercise I have been involved with. Our Unit is part of the process design and facilitation of the Alberta PDD Review (persons with developmental disabilities). Meaning that we are going around the province with the Panel (independent people appointed by the Minister) to review the PDD program, listen to stakeholders and draft recommendations for improving the PDD system (engagement sessions are being held all across the province for the month of November and into December; we are talking with service providers, parents/caregivers, government workers and people who are PDD recipients and as such have developmental disabilities. We planned a process that can work for listening to all these groups). Anyhow, the other day while in one of the rural Alberta communities, there was a fellow who receives PDD assistance from the province who attended one of our sessions. He was SO thrilled with the opportunity to share his ideas. He engaged in each and every activity we had designed to make sure that his voice was heard. And his special idea that he emphasized throughout the process was: ‘talk to me. I have ideas. We all need to work together. And people just want their needs to be met.’  There was no more powerful input than that in all the people within the system. This said it all and said everything. From someone who receives the PDD program assistance. Now we just need to make that simple request happen – listen to the people and meet their needs. That’s all.