I am really quite pleased with this new iPhone/iPod application that allows me to write from anywhere. I have always wished I could write on the spot, when I am most inspired and WordPress’ leap into the mobile world seems to be my answer.

So onward with my new found vigour, I hope that it allows me to break the procrastination chains and bring you more wonderful stories about community!

Continuing education by the community, for the community. 

Seeing a need to respond to the needs of a community constantly fluctuating and striving to cope with blinding and often confusing transition, Simon Fraser University’s Continuing Studies Department created the Philosophers’ Café. 

Meeting together throughout the lower mainland, the regular café gatherings are open to the public with no pre-registration. The environment is attractive to a diverse crowd of formal academics and academics of the heart. Each session is moderated by a pre-selected individual hailing from one of many universities or colleges. Topics have ranged from sex talk to poverty, politics to poetry, never shy on exploring the issues that strike us all at one time or another. 

The goal is simply to bring people together for one common purpose: To learn. It is a creative and innovative way to discover meaning in a manner that seems to always leave behind the byproducts of camaraderie, unity and enlightenment. 

Comfortable in casual surroundings, lifelong learners teach each other through the every day discussions about real life experiences. The Globe & Mail said “The Philosophers’ Café might be the most successful continuing education program in the country” (October 27, 2003) 

In a time when many are struggling to belong in our community in a meaningful way, the Philosophers’ Café series provides a unique circuit to build interpersonal connection. 

The next False Creek Community Centre edition of the Philosophers’ Café is on December 6^th at 7 pm. The topic is “The Art of Dying.” 

Philosophers’ Café

False Creek Community Centre, 1318 Cartwright St, Granville Island

Everyone welcome. No pre-registration required. Admission $5.

The Art of Dying Constantly relegated to a taboo status, the encounter of personal death is possibly the single most pressing and crucial moment of our existence. Can we face it straightforwardly? Joyfully? How? Further, how does society with its current values and customs help (or hinder) us to die peacefully? 

Moderator: Miguel Rodriguez is a writer and poet from Spain, currently residing in Vancouver with his partner and daughter, where they coordinate and live at a settlement house for refugee claimants. He has written numerous essays (long and short, but not very good ones he says) on many different topics, including Eastern and Western philosophy, religion, art and literature, politics, economics and science. He publishes periodically in a variety of journals and magazines.

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is a truly sustainable community oriented endeavor operated in the style of Social Enterprise. The basic premise is that members of the community purchase shares in a farm or community garden and in return for their investment they withdraw food weekly or by weekly. The farms income from shares and commercial accounts go to fair wages, and general operations.

There are many advantages of being a shareholder. In addition to quality food that is produced healthily and holistically, many CSA farms also give shareholders power in major decisions that affect the food at annual meetings. 

The local community is also a beneficiary as CSA farms are mast often very sustainable. The impact on the land and plants as well as the treatment and care of animals is often far more ethical and controlled. The opportunity for small scale farmers to be successful in their endeavors is also greatly increased.

In North America, a basic share may be $350-500 for a season (18-20 weeks). There may also be a variety of share types ranging from full to half seasons, single people to family shares. Costs are typically calculated based on the budget of the farm rather than weight or volume of food. The pricing system is usually agreed to democratically as is the variety of food produced. All sign a “shared risk and reward” agreement that commits them to sharing in the success, or failure, of the farm regardless of the unpredictability of the season.

In a time when many are searching for healthy and safe sources of food, Community Supported Agriculture is a strong option for many families.

Growing up in a small town often comes with the experience of being familiar with the vast majority of the population. In a town of 500 people, one has a high probability of knowing everyone on their block. Living in a downtown condo, one housing 200 or so people, one has a high probability of knowing not one of the people living in the same building.  

Humans are social creatures. Our instincts to settle in clusters and flock to causes with other like minded folk are simple and undisputable examples of this fact. Ironic how the closer we seem to live to each other the less likely we are to “know” our neighbours. How many times have we said or listened to someone we know say, “it’s so hard to meet people” or “it’s so hard to make friends”? We walk down streets, sit at coffee shops, go to movies, shop at malls, ride buses… all the while surrounded by hundreds of other people. The bigger the city, the more people seem to be afraid to say “hello”. 

Our hero? The internet. 

Enter: Social Networking sites. 

Facebook, Myspace, Nexopia, Bebo, LinkedIn and the list goes on and on. Wikipedia notes that at last count there were over 200 Social Networking sites providing frameworks for us to get to know each other “safely”. 

It all began in the early 90’s with BBS (Bulletin Board Services) and Usenet. Before Windows and before IPods when the internet was text based and the majority of users were still in secondary school and college. As we hurl through the Internet Revolution at light speed, Social Networking sites become more advanced and far more popular. 

On September 7^th, 2007, MySpace had OVER 200 million registrations from around the world. Receiving more hits than internet search deity, Google, MySpace is by far the most successful of all the Social Networking sites. It even comes complete with Groups (online clubs for like minded users), MySpace TV (for user generated content), Films (professional content), Music (both major labels and new breakthrough artists), Comedy (for new and popular comedians), Blogs, Email, Instant Messaging, and the list keeps growing. 

MySpace and similar sites provide users with a safe and entertaining platform to step outside of their condos via the internet and build a community on their own terms.  Staying in touch with friends is easy even as we go about our busy lives. Any user has the freedom to create groups, plan events for real world activities, upload photos, chat via email, make new friends and generally most other types of social activity. 

One of the most common benefits from free membership is finding all those old friends that have been lost through the years. Most users have tales to tell about how they found their first love, high school chum, forgotten coworker or long lost relative within days of joining on of these popular networks. The ease of building and maintaining our social relationships is definitely an attractive advantage in a time when one of our biggest complaints is that we have no time.  

And it is big business too. In July 2005, MySpace was purchased by News Corporation (Fox Broadcasting’s parent company) for $580 million dollars US. Facebook, MySpace’s biggest and fastest growing competitor, was rumored to have been offered $750 million in early 2006. It is also rumored that the asking price for Facebook was around 2 billion dollars during that same time frame. 

Shocking many in October, 2007, Microsoft purchased a 1.6% share in Facebook for a startling $240 million. More astonishing was that the 3 ½-year-old internet community was appraised by Microsoft at $15 billion dollars. 

$15 billion dollars. 

It seems that making friends is good business. Regardless of the obvious profitability of such an enterprise, the positive affect of making a sense of community popular and easy is definitely worth the price.  

Social Networking sites may just be a blip in pop culture, destined to fade into the night with pet rocks and Flock of Seagulls, but one thing is for certain, millions and millions of people around the world are herding to them today.

Free Hugs. 

It’s a simple sign and a simple idea that has, in its own way, changed the world.  

Juan Mann (a pseudonym and a homonym of “one man”) had a mission. He wanted to brighten up one person’s day with a hug. He didn’t hug someone he knew, he simply began offering free hugs to total strangers on the streets of Sydney, Australia. 

On September 22, 2006, a music video featuring Juan’s endeavor was posted to YouTube, kick starting the phenomenon that today is Free Hugs. The footage, shot in 2004 at the Pitt Street Mall in Sydney, showed Juan’s walk through the mall holding a sign that read “FREE HUGS.”

It started with one hug from a stranger. One year after the YouTube release, hundreds of Free Hugs campaigns have sprung up from the grassroots of communities worldwide.  Even Oprah invited Juan to her show. Today anyone can join the movement by signing up at the Free Hugs website. 

Free Hugs Worldwide: 

AUSTRALIA

• PERTH & WA

NORTH AMERICA: 

• LOS ANGELES
• NEW YORK
• SEATTLE  (Video)
• TORONTO
• BAY AREA
• NEWFOUNDLAND
• PORTLAND
• MONTREAL (Video)
• VICTORIA, BC, CANADA
• DENVER 
• BALTIMORE (Marley Station Mall)
• SAN DIEGO
• VANCOUVER, BC, CANADA (Video)
• OTTAWA

EUROPE 

• ST PETERSBURG, RUSSIA 
• ZURICH
• KRAKOW
• TORUN, POLAND
• KIEV
• SPAIN
• OPORTO, PORTUGAL
• SWANSEA, GB
• BARCELONA
• MOSCOW

MIDDLE EAST

• TELAVIV1 (Video 2) 

SOUTH AMERICA 

• VENEZUALA

ASIA

• MANILA, PHILIPPINES
• SEOUL, KOREA
• INDIA + THE WORLD/AMMA
• CHINA (Video)

 List reposted from Tribe

We often hear influential opposition, activist and special interest groups speak mellifluous rhetoric calling on the government to solve the underlying social issues responsible for creating crime instead of simply penalizing more severely. Everyone knows that the true solutions to crime start with treating poverty, homelessness, addiction, mental illness, and the multitude of other influences.

The fact is that governments typically focus on solutions that will appear to have the greatest impact over a four year term while sacrificing real solutions because historically, without some visible changes in an electoral term, they won’t be around after that if they have nothing to show us. It is really the catch-22 of politics; any real change requires solutions with no immediate visible result, public outcry and no re-election yet band-aid solutions can get you re-elected (at least once) but provides no real solutions.

It’s like impulse voting. We elect our government based on instant gratification not sustainable policy. We’re like the addict just waiting for the next big hit while we sacrifice our future one quick pseudo solution at a time. Sometimes it seems like we set our own governments up for failure.

One new idea seems to be swimming up the proverbial political stream.

Projected to open in early 2008 is the new Vancouver Downtown Community Court. A first of its kind in BC, this justice initiative is intended to truly be the community’s court. It is envisioned as a major part of the solution to the crime problems of the Vancouver downtown core.

How is another justice initiative going to be different then typical band-aid solutions?

It sounds suspect…

This one really is different though…

Currently most offenders in the downtown core are repeat offenders. They are arrested multiple times each year and significantly affect the lives of all members of the community. The resources required to administer justice really outweigh the lack of effectiveness. These offenders are typically struggling with significant multiple barriers to being contributing member of the community. Many are immersed in poverty, homelessness, addiction, mental illness, a lack of employability skills and the list goes on. They are the ones referred to when we say “we need to find solutions to the contributing social issues to crime.”

Not only does it cost us in the delivery of justice but in most cases the same people are drawing on the social services coffers too. Traditionally, the cooperation between the justice system and all of the organizations and agencies is quite lacking. With such large gaps stemming from no collaboration it is no wonder so many fall through the cracks.

What is the difference with this Community Court? This court will see justice, health and social services coming together in an integrated case management model. They will work with a problem-solving approach; these services will provide a drastic improvement to our response to crime and subsequently to poverty.

Focusing on the big three (poverty, addiction and mental illness) this new endeavor will see three major benefits.

The first is a large increase in effectiveness and efficiency in the use of justice, health and social services. Better collaboration and integration of service delivery will allow resolutions to be developed on an individual basis. It will make available a far more complete solution that is centered on fostering the offender’s success.

Swifter resolutions as a result of efficient case management will lead to fewer court appearances. It will also provide the offender with solutions to their underlying needs quicker in a time when the window of their willingness to accept help is short. For the community, this second benefit will be visible by swifter accountability.

Innovative and solution focused sentencing will take into account the offender’s background, criminal history, health and social service needs. The real meat of sentencing will be in the method of significantly changing criminal behavior through balancing treatment of the underlying causes of crime wile also tackling the crime itself. This third benefit is really where we can see the attractiveness of this new initiative.

The court will not focus on big ticket federal offences. Most of what it will address is the offences that typically would be handled by provincial court. These crimes are pretty diverse and include property crimes, assaults, street dealing, etc.

Working together in support of the Vancouver Downtown Community Court will be:

• The provincial judiciary
• Ministry of Attorney General
• Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General
• Ministry of Employment and Income Assistance
• Legal Services Society
• Vancouver Coastal Health
• Forensic Psychiatric Services Commission
• BC Housing
• Public Prosecution Service of Canada
• Vancouver Police Department and
• The Defence Bar

This new initiative has instilled in me a whole lot of faith that government can find long term, creative and innovative solutions to social issues. Every human being has deep intrinsic worth and we as a community are responsible for recognizing this and nurturing in fellow members of our community. Justice is nothing without forgiveness and by coming together to solve an individual’s social issues we can begin to recognize true equality and inclusively while developing strong communities. By allowing the community to get involved in building real solutions to their local issues we can see true sustainability.

 Thrifty Foods, Tsawwassen (map) 1207 – 56th Street, Delta, BC

Saturday, November 3, 10am – 3pm.

The bottom line is also the driving factor in government. Cuts are never made to social or community programs on the basis of effectiveness. Even the least effective social programming serves a purpose. Government never “wants” to cut programs or funding either. Do any of us really believe that the powers that be are out to get us? It may appear that way on occasion but in reality governments typically are doing what they think is right; trying to juggle the degree of public outcry with meeting the bottom line of a budget that would cause equal outcry to miss.  

What’s a Government to do? Or the bigger question; what’s a Community to do? Some innovative thinkers, more and more, are creating new ways to both satisfy a bottom line and contribute to a social aim in a sustainable and effective way. One of these progressive ideas that is truly on the move is that of a Social Enterprise.

Social Enterprise

Social Enterprises focus on what is referred to as a triple bottom line. They not only deliver on the financial bottom line like every other enterprise, they also focus on a social and environmental bottom line. They do this by doing business that is congruent with a social purpose.

The Social Enterprise Alliance defines a Social Enterprise as: An organization or venture that advances its social mission through entrepreneurial earned income strategies. Organizations accomplish this in diverse ways including:

• Using profit from the business to support social aims such as the Salvation Army Thrift Stores.
• Accomplishing a social aim through its direct operation such as Ecoworks in Langley, BC.
• Working independently as a private business such as Working Assets.
• As an independent Not For Profit group or part of a bigger organization such as Above the Underground in the Fraser Valley.
• In partnership between both NFP and traditional business such as Future Foundations an Abbotsford, BC.

Social Enterprises are beginning to pop up on mass as our culture becomes more aware of the impact traditional business has on society. It is very common to see programs being funded in part by the Canadian Federal Government as Service Canada sees its way to support more skills development solutions to under and unemployment. Many of these are multiple organization partnerships like the Baristas Youth Skills Link Programs in Surrey and Burnaby, BC.

Pacific Community Resources, in partnership with the Surrey School Board and Starbucks Coffee Canada and with funding provided by Service Canada has developed the Baristas Program. The program intends “to provide youth with barriers to employment with employability skills and a dynamic work experience in Starbucks outlets, assisting with the attainment of exciting careers in the growing retail food service sector.” There are three ingredients that are key in giving youth opportunity they may not have gotten otherwise. The first is a six weeks of lifeskills and workplace success skills that help participants overcome barriers, and provide them with basic soft skills essential to maintaining gainful employment. In its second component, participants get to practice their learned skills on the job during nine weeks of work experience at a Starbucks location. Here they are given skills in the Retail Food Industry while gaining important experience that will help them when they move on to the open market. They are also provided with support as they conquer the barriers that have limited their success in the past. The third and final component is training and guidance in searching for sustainable employment. This final step gives participants the last piece they need to join the workforce.

More meaningful then simply employment, the Baristas Program fosters the development of strong and healthy self esteem in its participants. They empowered to step into the world and become responsible, productive members of the communities they are part of. In recognition of their efforts and the success of the program, the popular program was awarded the BC Career Development Award of Excellence 2004 by the Career Management Association of BC.

In a time when the bottom line is ever more important that the humans that make bottom line success achievable, the Social Enterprise movement is indeed a bright and shining light. They are increasingly more popular and employ a degree of inspiration through increasing innovation and creativity in building and developing sustainable community. As we accept the growing inability for government to provide all required community supports, we are driven to look for new ways to find solutions to community challenges. Social Enterprises give us this solution and their limits are only restrained by the constraints of ones own creativity.

I was in the Canadian Forces at the time and posted in Edmonton with the 3^rd Battalion Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry. We were deployed briskly and with little warning; one minute enjoying Tim Horton’s coffee while telling “war stories” from training exercises and the next traveling east in the largest military ground convoy any of us participating in it had ever seen. It was surreal and exciting and we had little idea of what was going on.

Most of us had no idea there was a natural disaster happening until we hit the ground. I remember waking up and groggily peering out the window of the transport to see a lake. As we slammed to a halt and the shock stripped away my sleepy stumble I realized that what I was seeing was not just another of Manitoba’s 1000 lakes. In the dark it just looked like old farm debris junked in the water. Piling off the bus we could see that it was in fact a small community overrun by the surging Red. The river was rising so fast that it had un-expectantly taken the road we were driving on, cutting us off from our destination. The entire convoy turned around destined for an alternate route and after driving through long stretches of submerged roadway, we arrived in Ile Des Chene, Manitoba.

We spent the next three weeks in a community centre at the middle of this little town south of Winnipeg. Every day started in the dark of the morning and ended in the dim of the cold prairie nights. We filled sandbags, built dykes, bailed water by hand and pump. We spent days up to our ankles and knees in dirty contaminated water that had flowed over landfills, gas stations, feed lots, chemical dumps, and hundreds of other undesirable locations that I still don’t really want to think about. We worked alongside homeowners and Heterites, farmers and firemen, and over 70,000 volunteers from all over the United States and Canada.

I really didn’t do much in the army. I am convinced of the fact that for the most part my Military career was uneventful as pertaining to official duty. I look back and there is nothing that compares to the weeks spent fighting the flood. I always had a deep passion to be part of something at a level that I just couldn’t seem to find in the usual ways. I joined the army to find this devoted belonging and find it I did. Nowhere was this more obvious then while struggling with trench foot on 3 hours of sleep with hands blistered and bleeding tossing sandbags down a daisy chain of strangers who had all come together for one common purpose: Helping our neighbours.

In that three weeks this community of residents, military, relief groups and volunteers filled and distributed 8.1 million sandbags, 3.7 million by hand. Over 23,000 members of the community were provided with emergency social services. Approximately 45,000 truck loads of clay were used to build earth dykes. The water was over 6 feet deep in the communities south of Winnipeg and often the sandbags would be pilled higher than the roof tops of the houses they surrounded.

In times of desperation, people come together. These statistics are more than simply numbers; they are quantitative figures, undisputed evidence of a miracle. These ingredients came together to do more than save some property. Property was just collateral to the hope and love that was really created by the unity of purpose that was in action.

Houses were lost despite all of our best efforts. We moved with such determination and unity that anyone could have been fooled to thinking the house belonged to us. I was standing on the dyke of one with ten or twelve others racing in fluid motion to shore up a failing section when the wall on the other side could simply hold back no more. It collapsed and the pressure from 6 feet of flood water overtook the house in seconds with enough force to shatter windows and knock doors off hinges. The pocket of safety created by the dyke filled so quickly it was as if the water was always there and we just never saw it.

We piled into the big black 15 man assault raft, wet like drowning rats, cold, defeated and loaded with adrenaline. As we motored the family to the safe shoreline of what was once the highway leading into Ile Des Chene, the family, despite being distraught by loosing it all, were grateful and at peace with the fact that every possible human act was done to save it. It was simply an unavoidable act of destiny that was set to occur no matter what.

It was at that very moment, looking into the faces of those newly homeless victims of nature, that I felt the sense of belonging and purpose I had been craving for as far back as memory serves me. Like a heroin addict chases the dragon, I have been looking for this degree of community ever since. I want to find it, hold onto it, share it and use it to inspire the rest of the world to realize that we are all one; we are community.

I don’t believe that we need to wait for the undeniable force of nature gone wild to discover the spiritual experience resulting from a deep unified responsibility for each other. We as humans, when unified in a tight community, can make miracles happen. I really believe that even conflicts as profound as war and religion are insignificant when faced by a community that acts in love, not fear, to find a collaborative and lasting solution.

It has been just over ten years since the “Flood of the Century.” Ten years since my community awakening and the spiritual experience that has influenced so much of my life. It has taken these ten years to find the clarity and focus in my life to articulate my passion for belonging. This will not be a typical blog. This is just an expression of passion that begins my latest endeavor to foster an attitude of common responsibility, unity of purpose and shared respect in communities big and small. I hope that future posts about all things related to building community and fostering unity inspire and motivate people to put a little love into the lives of their neighbours.

After all, we are community.