Save Your Change and Change Your Community ...

A Year of Positive Action: Week Fifteen

Save your change and change the world… okay, maybe you won’t save the world but you could sure help your community! If you set aside your loose change each week through the end of the year you will be surprised at how much you accumulate! Then, if you donate this to an organization doing good in your neighborhood you can really make a difference…and you won’t even feel a pinch in your wallet!

Thanks Positivity Nation for this fabulous idea!  If everyone contributed just a little, imagine the fabulous resources our community could build ....

Wendell Berry’s 17 Rules For A Sustainable Economy

"A proper community, we should remember also, is a commonwealth: a place, a resource, an economy. It answers the needs, practical as well as social and spiritual, of its members - among them the need to need one another. The answer to the present alignment of political power with wealth is the restoration of the identity of community and economy.
(pg. 63, "Racism and the Economy")"
— Wendell Berry (The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry)

Wendell Berry is an American poet, novelist, essayist, philosopher and farmer.  He was born on August  5 1934 in Henry County, Kentucky, where he still lives and farms on the family farm.

He is a strong defender of family, rural communities, and traditional family farms. He has developed  these 17 rules for the healthy functioning of sustainable local communities:

1. Always ask of any proposed change or innovation: What will this do to our community? How will this affect our common wealth.

2. Always include local nature – the land, the water, the air, the native creatures – within the membership of the community.

3. Always ask how local needs might be supplied from local sources, including the mutual help of neighbors.

4. Always supply local needs first (and only then think of exporting products – first to nearby cities, then to others).

5. Understand the ultimate unsoundness of the industrial doctrine of ‘labor saving’ if that implies poor work, unemployment, or any kind of pollution or contamination.

6. Develop properly scaled value-adding industries for local products to ensure that the community does not become merely a colony of national or global economy.

7. Develop small-scale industries and businesses to support the local farm and/or forest economy.

8. Strive to supply as much of the community’s own energy as possible.

9. Strive to increase earnings (in whatever form) within the community for as long as possible before they are paid out.

10. Make sure that money paid into the local economy circulates within the community and decrease expenditures outside the community.

11. Make the community able to invest in itself by maintaining its properties, keeping itself clean (without dirtying some other place), caring for its old people, and teaching its children.

12. See that the old and young take care of one another. The young must learn from the old, not necessarily, and not always in school. There must be no institutionalised childcare and no homes for the aged. The community knows and remembers itself by the association of old and young.

13. Account for costs now conventionally hidden or externalised. Whenever possible, these must be debited against monetary income.

14. Look into the possible uses of local currency, community-funded loan programs, systems of barter, and the like.

15. Always be aware of the economic value of neighborly acts. In our time, the costs of living are greatly increased by the loss of neighborhood, which leaves people to face their calamities alone.

16. A rural community should always be acquainted and interconnected with community-minded people in nearby towns and cities.

17. A sustainable rural economy will depend on urban consumers loyal to local products. Therefore, we are talking about an economy that will always be more cooperative than competitive.

What is Community Led Development?

Community led development is a movement that is gaining traction around the world as people in under-resourced, neglected or impoverished areas seek to rebuild their communities and re-establish a sense of pride in the place where they live.  Its about communities working together across traditional boundaries to create change and solve the problems they face.

Community led development is:

• inclusive
  'Powerful communities create a place for everyone's gifts - there are no strangers - Mary Nelson
  
  
• open and transparent
• happens from the inside out
  'Meaningful and lasting community change always originates from within, and local residents in that community are the best experts on how to activate that change.' - Peter Kenyon, Bank of IDEAS
• constant, two-way communication
• builds capacity
  'Communities that view their citizens as their greatest asset and invest in the development of their full potential are those that will have the capacity to effectively compete in the global political, social and economic arena' - David Littrell
• uses local resources as much as possible
• embraces differing viewpoints
• encourages communities to support and take ownership of the solutions they create for themselves
• believes in the community's ability to solve its own problems and make things happen

How do you define community led development?

Consensus at all Cost?

Image by markusthorsen via Flickr

It would be a rare community that survived great change - or small change, or even no change at all - without conflict. Communities are hotbeds of intrigue, egos and differing personal agendas, so it stands to reason that somewhere along the line people are going to cross swords.

As I see it, its not entirely a bad thing. If managed properly conflict provides opportunity for growth.

Why is it then, that many community groups seek to impose consensus at all cost? Why do we make it so difficult for people to stand up and say what they honestly believe? Why do we think that to do great things we have to all like each other? Why is it so hard to tell people when they are not doing a good job?

Surely a strong, reslilient community that truly embraces diversity is one that has realised that true consensus cannot be reached without some degree of conflict?

Start a Community Newspaper

A simple way to bring your community together is to start a Community Newspaper. Its amazing the news you can dig up if you ask around.

In my community we have gone from one side of an A5 page earlier this year to this latest masterpiece:

November NL #5

10 Community Projects that Build Social Capital

Image by a.prakharevich via Flickr

I've just gotten back from the fantastic Small Towns Conference in Kaiapoi. One of the speakers was Peter Kenyon - a social capitalist and community enthusiast from Australia. He had some incredibly inspiring stories about successful small town development, I am so excited about helping to put some of his ideas into action in Mataura.

If you are looking for some great projects to get your community humming take a look at this awesome list from Peter's Bank of I.D.E.A.S website:

1. Establish a Community Garden
2. Establish a Community Newspaper focusing on local assets, people, and positive and inspiring stories
3. Create a local project fund where 3 or more neighbours can apply for street/neighbourhood projects/events
4. Hold a Community Reflection Day to give residents an opportunity to think about where they have come from and where they want to go
5. Encourage local organisations to adopt a street or flowerbed and to care for its beautification and apprearance
6. Instigate a local business awards programme to highlight and celebrate local businesses
7. Establish a Community Bank with all profits going back to community projects
8. Start up a Community Physical Fitness Programme eg. 'Push Ups in the Park'
9. Support local schools to discover, study and write about local history
10. Establish a Community Cultural Foundation that encourages locals to contribute and become 'Friends of the Foundation' to develop arts and culture within the community

For the full list of 128 projects visit Bank of I.D.E.A.S

Do Your Home Work

I was reading this great article form Yes! Magazine today - 31 Ways to Jump Start the Local Economy. I've come away feeling all inspired.

The ideas aren't earth shattering. As my venerable father commented, if we looked back to the time when he was growing up, many of the suggestions in the article, such as buying less, fixing things, putting down roots and being part of the community, were the norm.

My favourite idea is:

Do home work parties. Each month, go to a different household to do major home greening, a garden upgrade, or some deferred maintenance.

I can see that would be such a positive and uplifting thing to do in Mataura. The town is a little bit run down, and people don't have a whole lot of money. I would love to pull together some funding and help people to fix their homes, tidy their gardens and make the town look a little more loved. It would help create such a sense of pride in our town and community spirit.

I don't want to give you the wrong idea about Mataura. We have plenty of beautiful homes with well kept gardens that people obviously take pride in.

Wouldn't it be great if all the homes could look like that? And rather than bemoaning the fact that some people can't, or won't, maintain their houses why don't we step in as a community and help each other out?

Take a Walk Around Your Town

I've been speaking recently with a prominent New Zealand businessman/tv personality about how to resurrect Mataura and encourage business back into the town. I had hopes that he would be able to offer some pearls of wisdom, perhaps some encouragement and avenues of investigation for us to follow. But no, unfortunately he pronounced Mataura dead and told me that we are wasting out time trying.

Today, I was walking around Mataura delivering 'The Mataura Messenger" - our monthly news sheet and it struck me how very alive Mataura is.

I was impressed by how many tidy, well cared for homes there are. I saw groups of kids playing together and enjoying the summer evening. I admired beautiful, well-tended gardens. I noticed (with some envy) how many homes have bountiful vege gardens. I strode past neighbours talking to one another. I was greeted by people I knew - and people I didn't.

Our main street may well be dilapidated and almost empty, we certainly have more than our fair share of run down homes and uncared for sections of land, and there is no doubt that apathy is hindering progress towards a stronger community. But Mataura is not dead.

I think our Businessman's idea of a thriving, successful community is different from those of us that live here. We aren't looking to create a megacity generating huge profits (although huge profits would be nice I guess) and we don't need to be the centre of the universe to have achieved our goals. What we are looking to create is a community where people have choices. We want to be able to run our businesses in our town and have some control over our community destiny.

It will take time to rebuild our community. But there are certainly people who are prepared to invest their time to make a difference. It will also take perseverance and continued effort. Fortunately there are people who have been working towards this goal for sometime already and who are willing to keep fighting the good fight on behalf of the community.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Shame on you Dr Jack Phillips!! Give us back our Town!!
  
• Mataura Fights Back
• Mataura Makes the News
  
• Mataura is For Sale
  

5 Ways to Build Community Every Day

Image via Wikipedia

Gone are the days of the front porch communities. Yet, I did some research and I found that the average person spends more than 5 Years in line. 5 years, that translates into 1,825 days or 43,800 hours or 2,628,000 minutes! That is more than two and a half million minutes. Think about that the next time you are standing in line at the local supermarket, bank, or at your local coffee house? What could you do with 2.6 million minutes? What kind of community could you strengthen?

Taken from: theordainedbarista.wordpress.com

There are so many opportunities in everyday life to strengthen our communities if you are prepared to be brave enough to stand out from the crowd and make a difference.

It doesn't take much - a smile here, a compliment there, a little bit of chivalry . . . but these days its not the norm and for many people the sheer randomness of encountering a bit of 'nice' in their day puts them on guard. And for many of us, the possibility of sideways glances or brusque rebuffs is enough to put us off even trying.

If we want to make our cities, towns and neighbourhoods into really strong, socially cohesive communities, then we need to be prepared to personally make the difference. If other people look at us askance, so be it. There's no need to start with a dramatic gesture like Juan Mann and his Free Hugs campaign if that's not your style, there are lots of little things you can do as you go about your day that can be just as effective.

Here's some ideas for everyday community building to help get you started. Go on, be brave, be nice, have fun!!

1. Pay someone a compliment. Its amazing what a conversation starter a compliment can be. Compliment someone on their hair, their kids, their shoes . . .
   
   
2. Open the door for someone. I know, as a Mum of two (one in a stroller), just how much of a help this can be. But you don't have to just help someone with their hands full, simply holding the door for the person coming up behind you is a gesture that doesn't go unnoticed.
   
   
3. Pick up rubbish. Nothing says 'community pride' like tidy streets and parks! If you see litter about in YOUR community, pick it up!
   
   
4. Say hello to your neighbour. You can't have a strong community if you don't know your neighbours. Start by saying hello next time you see them!
   
   
5. Remember people's names - you know, the guy at the local dairy, the gas station attendant you see every day, the postman, the local librarian . . . if you want to make people feel part of the community calling them by name is a great start!
   

Related articles by Zemanta

• NICE Site: The Illustrated Guide to Free Hugs
• Community Matters