Wednesday, October 15, 2014, 02:33 PM - The Solidarity Economy & Microfinance
How do small producers and artisans get a leg up in a globalized world? Community organizing and support to local economies for a start combined with solid historical, market and contextual analysis. Taught the Livelihoods and Markets course with Yogesh Ghore at the Coady Institute the last couple of weeks. Such a treat. Yogesh is highly experienced and adaptive. Participants had rich experience to share from cooperative and federation organizing to pushing policy and legislation at national levels. Colleagues from Latin America, CUSO partners, most representing cooperatives and associations- a few government representatives- shared their work in such diverse areas as wild medicinal plants, wild almonds, honey, fruit/jam, cacao, coffee.
Great debates about the extent to which what we are doing is contributing to or building alternatives to the neo-liberal model. We work toward the bottom-up solutions where cooperatives can network and build their capacity to market their goods and do well, particularly in niche markets like fair trade and organic produce. But what of the producer cooperatives who choose to become distributors for large grocery chains. Tapping into a larger system allows smaller coops with capacity issues to focus on what they know-production. Is this an alternative economic model or more of the same? Does it depend whether it is wild medicinal plants or a commodity like coffee? These are the tensions and trade-offs. No easy answers.
Friday, October 10, 2014, 12:12 AM - Inspiring
The Cathedral in Mainz
arm in arm
we strolled the cloisters
emptying colour
built from
bird prayers and monks
walking face to face
knowing when to step forward
knowing when to step back
words fully attended
as rare and unlikely as
our symmetry
I can still hear your voice in the corridor
Gudenkenflugem
I can still hear your voice in the corridor
our symmetry
as rare and unlikely as
words fully attended
knowing when to step back
knowing when to step forward
walking face to face
monks and bird prayers
built from
emptying colour
we strolled the cloisters
arm in arm
For Karl Osner
We lost a great man this year. One of my most inspiring mentors was an unlikely one- an elderly German man, a bureaucrat formerly studied theology. We talked about art and faith, poverty and justice. We fought a lot too. He took me under his wing but, in spite of the decades between us and our experience, always as a peer. I learned how much you can learn from a colleague who is really a friend. How important it is for our work not to talk about work. What it really means to listen.
He took me to where he grew up in the Black Forest and areas nearby. We roamed museums and churches. I wrote this poem for him after a visit with him to the Cathedral of Mainz.
Karl founded an approach based on dialogue that brought countless policy makers from Germany and parts of Europe to live and speak with marginalized families. That some of these methods have been reduced to case studies or life stories missed what he intended which was dialogue without agenda. Reflection without a log frame. Who we are in all of this and what it means. SEWA, WIEGO, Mohammed Yunus and others have captured this spirit. We are blessed to have known him and been touched by his humanity. For more on his work and life see the link below.
| related link
Tuesday, September 9, 2014, 12:48 AM - Outdoor adventure
Wednesday, August 13, 2014, 10:39 PM - Inspiring
200 miles of bike lanes and one with 40,000 bikers a day.
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Friday, June 27, 2014, 07:22 PM - Poetry and Writing
If economic security
I mean agency I mean
justice is not bred to
move in political realms
is it because the path is simply
one of snakes and ladders, spirals
because we don’t find the right
balance of love and power,
between growing trees and
navigating jungles or we chickegg
the poor thing into parts until
it’s stuck or dying
failed to watch
how it moved. Is it
because we miss in it
the moral power, the
imagination, intoxication,
the trust, the critical
intangible of the
townhouse, the gathering,
the dialogue, this dialogue,
our kite and our stars.
This found poem was generated from a forum that I participated in at the Coady Institute on the links between economic and political citizenship. For me, as I describe in my bio, the two have always been tied though political (in the broadest sense) agency cannot be assumed.
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