I find myself returning so often to these words of Thomas Merton that I figured it would be worth dedicating a blog post to them: “There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist fighting for peace by non-violent methods most easily succumbs […]
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What does it mean for an environmental organization to work expressively, to live out the values of sustainability and deep ecology in its day-to-day work? Most environmental organizations striving to be coherent focus on behaviour. Do we recycle? Do we compost? Do we use energy-efficient light bulbs? Do we reduce our use of water and paper? Do we bring our own mugs? Sustainability is not this tame. Sustainability requires […]
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In this podcast, we speak with Sushrut Munje and Tolu Ilesanmi about their experiments in transforming the underbelly of the cleaning industry. We met Sushrut last year at a workshop we gave in Mumbai a few months after he launched his new cleaning business Hammer & Mop. Recently he re-connected to see if we could […]
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I’m stumbling along, trying my best to remain in the single file line the path has forced us to form. We crest the hillside, overlooking a quiet river freckled with boulders and dragonflies. I overhear Jonathan and Kirsten chatting in front of me. They are introducing themselves, having only just met on this day hike organized through the Cape Town Hiking Group. I hear Kirsten say that she works for the National Treasury […]
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We recently came across an illuminating talk by Nicaraguan psychologist Martha Cabrera- Living and Surviving in a Multiply Wounded Country. In her talk, she describes the uniquely holistic approach to societal healing that she and her team developed over a decade of experimental work in Nicaragua.
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Once members get past the initial challenge of putting together a jigsaw puzzle of missing parts, they quickly realize that something greater than bike repair and the inhalation of kerosene is happening here; a sense of purpose and community is beaming through the interaction of those involved in the repair.
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In this short reflection titled “Nothing to Fight Against”, Zenkei Blanche Hartman, a political activist-turned-Zen monk, describes the turmoil she felt when she confronted the disconnect between her deepest values and her experience of activism. It is a good reminder that organizational incoherence is not simply an abstraction about social change. It often manifests itself […]
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A couple of months ago I received an intriguing note in my inbox from The Berkana Institute. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Berkana, you might know one of it’s founders Meg Wheatley, a well-known author who writes about […]
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The first thing that struck me from the talk and that had me celebrate inwardly was that these insights are now surfacing at various points through various people who have all been keenly and committedly observing their environments and coming to similar conclusions: That organisations are […]
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We are excited to share this talk that Warren gave last month at University of Cape Town exploring the organizational dimensions of social innovation. In our experience, few social purpose organizations spend much time looking at how their own organizational cultures support or hinder the kinds of changes in the world they are working so hard to create. In this talk, Warren challenges us to consider how much of our current difficulty in fostering and scaling social innovation is bound up in this disconnect. What kind of change might we create if […]
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