Here’s a 2,500 year old practice that might be worth something : ) We found a copy of Thich Nhat Hanh’s classic book Being Peace in the Kufunda library. In it he talks about an interesting practice that Buddhist monks use to begin any conflict resolution process. The entire community sits together, breathing, smiling, and […]
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Just thought I’d share this article that I wrote for the Centre for Community Organizations (COCo) last June. ——– A couple of years ago when we first began our restructuring at COCo, we considered the possibility that COCo had run its course and asked ourselves the question: Was it time for the organization to end? And while we ultimately […]
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We are in Cape Town for a few weeks and just got back from a meeting with Nathan Heller at The Hub, a co-working space for social innovators. Although The Hub Cape Town only recently opened its doors, the model has been around for a while and there are over two dozen Hubs worldwide in […]
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“All human activity emerges from our inwardness…our outward work in the world is a projection of our inner condition.” These are the words of Patricia Thompson. In her paper Being the Change We Want: A Conversation about Vocational Renewal for Nonprofit Leaders she writes passionately about the connection between vocational vitality and social change. Through the […]
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One of the things we’ve gotten used to in meetings at Kufunda is ants. Also millipedes. Also sitting on rocks. Dogs. Five-year olds. The occasional bat. Weird little crabbish things that dash about randomly in a panic. Straw. Wind. A careening traffic of odors – of bodies, blossoms, life. Tana’s last post was about reclaiming […]
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As a facilitator, I’ve spent a lot of time over the years experimenting with how to create organizational gatherings that feel especially vibrant and meaningful. Although I love this work, it has been feeling a bit stale to me lately, and I’ve had a hard time understanding why. This morning, I had something of an […]
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In my last post, I talked about the enlivening effect of seeing every person as belonging to our social purpose organizations. I mentioned Social Identity Theory, which explains how difficult holding such a universal intention can be. Social Identity Theory offers a particularly dispiriting explanation of how crudely we construct our identities through the groups […]
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I’m seeing it again. The tilt toward everything. Most people say it is impossible. That community is always closed. That we only know where we belong when we know whom and what we have barred. In a review of several books on community participation, Malcolm Payne argues that community identity is necessarily formed through a […]
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I really enjoyed reading Alex’s recent post on Foulab. It got me thinking of how similar our relationship to technology is to our relationship to organizations. So much of our waking energy flows through and around organizations, yet we rarely take time to really understand how they work and to empower ourselves to tinker with […]
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Rennie and I have spent an emotion-filled couple of weeks leaving our home and friends in Montreal and flying across the globe to our new temporary home in Kufunda Village, Zimbabwe. Contrary to the title of this post, Kufunda is quite land-locked, nestled under a large canopy of trees on a farm outside of Harare, […]
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