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Streetfront Builds a Community for Troubled Youth Around Running

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Photo courtesy of the Vancouver Courier

Hidden away in a pair of joined portables on the cusp of Britannia Secondary’s property is one of the Vancouver School Board’s most dynamic and inspiring programs.

It’s called Streetfront. Captained by Head Teacher Trevor Stokes, Streefront is an alternative program aimed at giving kids that don’t fit into regular secondary school a second chance by making them work for it. How? Marathon running. For the past decade, Stokes has been taking bunches of youth to compete (and finish) in the Seattle and Vancouver Marathons. Frequently the youngest competitors of these 42.195 kilometer races are Streetfront youth.

For Stokes, the marathon is a perfect metaphor for his students’ lives, particularly the lives of troubled kids used to quitting (and being quitted on). He’s fond of saying that during a marathon, there are 42,195 opportunities to quit. That his students choose to push their physical limits and persevere says a lot. Their drive to train and prepare over the months of less glamorous running in the rain and mud of Vancouver leading up to the run says even more.

Streetfront youth run three times a week and also do a wide range of other physical activities like soccer, basketball and skiing. Their runs take them everywhere. They run to nearby parks one day and then all the way to Deep Cove (in another suburb of the Lower Mainland) or Stanley Park the next day. Stokes says the running instils an impressive amount of discipline and structure in lives that frequently completely lack it.

The program is one of a number of innovative alternative programs offered throughout the city. It’s designed for Grade 8 – 10 students. During the semester, the students spend approximately 35 days out of 190 school days in the outdoor environment. This includes three full day camp trips. In between the runs and outdoor excursions, students work on math, sciences, socials and English.

The results have been inspiring. Some students that have failed or been kicked out of several schools thrive at the Streetfront program.  Others have managed to pull their lives together, find work, enter back into secondary school and go on to university. Then there are the alumni. Stokes says groups of them still keep coming back to run with him and his students, years after graduating. Talk about a powerfully inspiring community.

Stories from the Writers’ Room: Kids, Creativity and Careers

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A burgeoning superstar being tutored by a gentleman in a plaid shirt who needs to do a better job of knowing when the camera's on him...

Last week I was lucky enough to work with Sarah Maitland and the Kidsafe Writers’ Room team to create and deliver some superawesome – and super educational – literacy programming for kids from East Vancouver during their Winter Holiday Break. The program content was career-related – Wait, where are you going? No, trust me, it was fun and not serious at all and you will enjoy reading this!- and it was absolutely inspiring to work with over 160 kids as they invented their jobs of the future.

Fun fact: a student who enrolled in college or university in September 2011 will probably work in a job that does not exist today. For this reason, I often encourage post-secondary students who I meet to imagine and/or create future work that will address future challenges/opportunities and to consider the skills that will be needed to tackle this kind of work. It’s not my idea, but one that stems from guru/personal-hero, Jim Bright, who teaches the aptly-named Chaos Theory of Careers to students, practitioners and job seekers the world-over.

Needless to say, I was extremely curious and very excited to see how the kids, who ranged in age from five to fifteen, treated this exercise. For starters, here is a selection of some of the job titles that were created:

  • Teacher
  • Space Cooker
  • Cleaner
  • Driver
  • The World Helpers (there was a “Kids with Problems” helper, an Animal Helper, and a Health Helper)
  • Sky Welder
  • Inventor
  • Physicist
  • Super Spy
  • Star Gatherer
  • Owner of a Petting Zoo for Endangered Species
  • Poop Collector
  • TV Watcher
  • Video Game Tester
  • Fart Soldier
  • Princess
  • Social Worker
  • Toy Maker
  • Solar Plane Engineer
  • Veterinarian
  • Inventor of the Massaging Toilet

Interesting. And awesome.

So, how did the kids get here? Well, before working with some exceptional volunteer tutors to complete an activity sheet (pictured), I engaged the kids in a discussion about jobs – and work – that has come and gone over the last 150 years; the idea was that the kids needed to know what work started and stopped, and when it did, in order to get a sense of what might come in the future. The discussion was actually more of a yell-fest (there should be more yelling in school, in my opinion), as I brought up volunteers who held up a picture of a job (e.g. Lamplighter or Pony Express Rider), which I explained to the group, and then moved it along a giant time line (crafted on a huge piece of white paper), which spanned from 1875 to 2025. When they got to a point on the time line that the audience didn’t agree with, we all booed. And when the kid got to the right spot (this differed from group to group, as some of the kids felt that vinyl record production stopped in 2010) everybody cheered.

And that’s how we got to the activity sheets. Here are some examples of the great work these kids did:

I’ll go so far as to say that pretty much everybody enjoyed the group-activity (even Lucy, the intractable volunteer who experienced/put-up-with all 10 of my workshops); however, watching the kids – especially the boys – tackle the worksheets was a bit different. About half of the kids immediately took to the activity. The others, well, I can safely say – and I say it with much fairness – that not everyone became immediately super-enthusiastic about their career during the holidays…when they’re eight years old. And here’s the magical thing: as soon as the activity was framed with the questions ‘what do you like to do?’ and ‘how can you turn that into something that you could do for work?’ nearly everyone got into it. Oh, and the fact that the kids got to draw pictures as themselves doing the work was pretty darn fantastic. Especially the Fart Soldier!

Describing the very good feelings that bubbled within when the kids proudly shared their pictures and stories with me and especially when they excitedly (and some, I’ll admit, begrudgingly) commented on the value of the exercise and that thinking about a future career – or simply what careers might look like in the future – was “really helpful” or “important” or “pretty cool” is difficult to say the least. So I’ll just say that working with kids in a way that helps them to think about blending interests, talent, passion, and future possibilities in the world of work was as enjoyable as it was meaningful.

So, what’s the work that you want to tackle in the future?

–

All photos courtesy of Sarah Maitland

The Early Entrepreneurs Experiment

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This is all kinds of community-awesome.

Earlier today, Friend of The ‘Boot, Zac Whyte, shared the video below, which is a very awesome Taylor Conroy’s Destroy Normal campaign. Check it out here:

Simply put, there needs to be more of this. Later this week I’m going to be writing a post about my volunteer experience with Vancouver’s Kidsafe Writers’ Room, and part of my article will discuss the creative horsepower of kids. The Early Entrepreneurs Experiment wonderfully gets to the heart of this fact, as it showcases how kids as young as six can have a positive impact on their classmates, their neighbourhoods and people from communities that are thousands of kilometers away.

Further to this, entrepreneurial projects provide exceptional educational testing grounds – or case studies – where learners can apply concepts (math, writing, performing, building, repairing, etc.) in an integrated capacity. Through such experiential learning, students have the opportunity to use multiple academic (and life) skills all at once in the same place as part of a team. In addition to a basic understanding of our interconnected global village as well as learning how to positively and successfully engage in the business of life provides youngsters with a head-start on building the skills that will help them to not just be – but to lead – the change that they want to see in this world.

Finally, never underestimate the power of kids’ creativity. Sir Ken Robinson has taught us that schools aren’t properly designed to engage and expand it with our communities’ kids. Which is why we should invest more in our kids’ ideas before they’re crushed by a system that encourages certain kinds of thinking that will prepare people to solve the same old problems in the same old way. And this isn’t a great way to be or to lead change.

Well done, kids!

–

Masthead photo courtesy of Sustainable Sanitation

How to Shelter Everyone – Lessons from First United Church

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Does everyone deserve a place to sleep? Photo courtesy of quinet

Nothing spoils Christmas like thought of dozens of people sleeping outside in cold, wet Vancouver weather. It’s been an ongoing struggle for years and isn’t likely to change anytime soon.

In 2008, shortly after the municipal election and right before the city was blanketed in dumps of snow, the city, province and non-profit housing leaders were able to open HEAT (Homeless Emergency Action Team) shelters to put the option of a roof over the head of some of the city’s most vulnerable individuals.

For the past three years, ground-zero for the emergency housing effort has been First United Church. Each winter night, Rev Ric Matthews, Sandra Severs and their church staff find beds (or pews) for hundreds of hard to house, hardcore, street homeless people. The shelter was hard to miss. A block east of Main off Hastings St, it is constantly surrounded by a gaggle of street people and their shopping carts full of belongings.

Mathews, Severs and their team were committed to housing anyone and everyone who needed help. No-one would be turned away, regardless of who they were, what they’d done in the past, where they were supposed to be living or how many people were trying to get in on a given night. You’d think such a commitment of open-armed acceptance would be welcomed by civic and provincial leaders looking to combat street homelessness. And it was, at least for the first few years.

But then complaints started to roll in. There were reports of sexual assaults by some shelter residents against others. It was evident that many of the government’s “best practices” weren’t being followed at First United. Then the city’s fire department got involved when it came to light that the fire code was being violated by the number of people sleeping in the shelter in a number of nights. The church leadership’s refusal to turn anyone out into the cold didn’t square with their insurance and liability contracts. The issue came to a head First United was forced to to turn away 27 people in one night due to fire safety bylaws. Matthews, Severs and another operational manager promptly resigned and a media uproar flared as the issue of shelter best practices vs. exclusion of the needy came to the forefront. Matthews summed it up aptly in a recent interview with the CBC:

We need a separate way of trying to deal with folk who fall through the cracks… The problem is that while that’s totally appropriate and necessary, there are folk who get excluded by that process. By the very definition of the word, there are folk who are seen to be a threat to others and who can’t be inside of that facility.

Now Matthews and his top lieutenants have resigned, BC Housing’s funding for the shelter has come to an end and First United will no longer be offering 200 shelter spaces to some of the city’s most marginalized citizens. Two new housing shelters have been announced by the province to replace First United’s stock of beds, but these will likely not be able to operate with the same “open-arms” approach of First United. Whether there will still be as many places for aggressive, criminal, alcoholic, or heavily drug addicted homeless folks remains to be seen.

One thing is certain, the demand for housing (especially as it gets colder) from this particular hard-to-house demographic is not likely to evaporate any time soon. The loss of an organization committed to housing and servicing this population could be a significant blow to the efforts of Vancouver and Victoria to deal with the Metro Vancouver homelessness crisis.

While it’s understandable that leaders in both the United Church, city and province would be uneasy with First United’s “no one will be turned away”, I wonder what will happen when dozens of these 200 street homeless people hit the streets, not beds, in the coming cold winter nights.

Photo courtesy of jmv

99 Ways to Leverage our Humanity – Part 4

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[Editor's note: And so concludeth the experiment. This has been an incredibly inspiring community-driven team effort - thanks to everyone who has contributed to this list! The world's Occupy Movements might be dwindling, resting or might just be unreported. Many elements of the Occupy Movement have issued demands. Personally, I see many problems with demands, as they imply binary-negotiating and/or unchangeable beliefs. Personally, I see more value and possibility in ideas and collaborative brainstorming - though this is a much harder process for certain. Some other folks share a love for collaboration and they have kindly offered their ideas in world-changing list-form. So, without further ado, here is the conclusion of this superawesome series that is meant to get our community thinking about how our brilliant, passionate, inspiring, adaptive, funny, delicious, healthy, and innovative humanity can make the world a better place. Thanks for the memories, everyone!].

How can we leverage our humanity to solve the world’s problems?

Here are ideas 1-25. And here are ideas 26-50. And here are ideas 51-75. And here are ideas 76-99:

  1. Repair things. Or at the very least bring things that need fixing to the people who know how to fix ‘em.
  2. Number 13 is solid, yes. Just don’t forget to hug your friends, too.
  3. Share in sport with people. Playing basketball, volleyball, soccer, football, rugby, and even non-sports like baseball represent a shared experience that transcends language and culture. And it keeps us healthy, too!
  4. Have an opinion about triple-bottom-line sustainability principles. Discuss these opinions at dinner parties.
  5. Speaking of discussions/arguments, don’t confuse disagreement with dislike or disrespect. Embrace the power of healthy debate – echo chambers aren’t incredibly innovative.
  6. Trust people.
  7. If your/our current political system is so uninspiring that you cannot bring yourself to participate in it, well, fair enough. Here’s the thing, though. Apathy makes winners of the corrupt. So, if you don’t like the system of which you’re a part find the other people that share your opinion/values/ideas and work together to change it.
  8. Speaking of Number 82, please don’t confuse this with anarchy. In fact, we can leverage our humanity by ensuring that whenever we meet any self-proclaimed anarchist who is not named Tyler Durden that we impose structure on their life in some way. This is both hilarious and meaningful, as it could be the thing that stops anarchists from breaking stuff with no positive outcome in mind.
  9. Explore spirituality that is different from the stuff on which you were raised.
  10. Work hard and be nice to people
  11. Be a doer, not a sayer. Too many people say things but never follow through
  12. Push your boundaries by reading something you wouldn’t otherwise pick up – if you need to, join a good book club to empower a thirst for different types of knowledge
  13. Help other people – I firmly believe the key to happiness for the vast majority of people is to spend a sizable (though not overwhelming) chunk of your life making others happy.
  14. Live near your work; walk wherever you can; cycle or bus the rest of the time
  15. Feel comfortable with modesty – feel convinced that big/flashy/expensive isn’t often necessary/better/preferable
  16. Trust in the universal strength of your own mind and body.
  17. Try not to life too much in the past, too much in the present, or too much in the future – all are important and should try to be balanced out
  18. While there are a lot of problems in the world, there are a lot of people who are doing a lot to solve them. Appreciate what people are currently doing and stay positive while constantly striving to make things better
  19. Don’t underestimate the impact your actions – however small they may be – can have
  20. Spend time with animals.They’re good for the soul.
  21. As a conversation starter, ask people what they’d most like to occupy. The answers will undoubtedly be hilarious and thought provoking.
  22. Volunteer for something meaningful all year long, not just during the holidays.
  23. Downsize your life. People can do more with less. Even better, we can do less with less.
  24. Read this series, as it’s a pretty great map for how to make the world a better place.

So there it is. Now get out there and occupy some of these ideas!

The Britannia Homework Club

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Who are you?

We are a non-profit society that draws its students from Vancouver’s 3 poorest neighbourhoods – Strathcona, Grandview-Woodlands and the Downtown East Side.  Our mission is to support the academic, social/emotional and financial needs of youth at Britannia Secondary, struggling to graduate and achieve post-secondary success by providing free tutoring, fresh fruit and snacks, and bursaries for post-secondary education.  Each year, approximately 370 students attend Homework Club, and we have provided between $3,000 and $9,000 worth of bursaries each year.  This year, we had a shortfall in funding and appealed to a variety of sources in hopes of securing enough money to sustain us this year, and expand in the future.  We entered the Aviva Community Fund for a chance to win $150,000 and last week, found ourselves in the semi-finals.  Our plans for the money can be found on the Aviva website www.avivacommunityfund.org/ideas/acf11198 and you can learn more about our organization at www.wix.com/ksleary/homework-club

How is your organization fun?

Nutella, Nutella, Nutella!  It’s what the kids line up for, and probably one of the few ways to make homework fun!

What is your organization’s superpower?

Blasting through obstacles like homework, finances and social/emotional problems to help kids in need.

How do you use it to build community?

While we work primarily with high school aged youth, the program has broader benefits for families and communities as younger siblings and parents see the powerful benefits of school attendance and success. By strengthening families HWC also promotes effective community capacity building because strong families are the building blocks of strong communities.

99 Ways to Leverage Our Humanity – Part 3

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[Editor's note: I must start by saying that what unfolds below is a team effort - thanks to everyone who has contributed to this list! So, for better or worse, many parts of the world have been recently occupied - and in some places, like Vancouver, this may or may not be coming to an end. Many elements of the Occupy Movement have issued demands. Personally, I see many problems with demands, as they imply binary-negotiating and/or unchangeable beliefs. Personally, I see more value and possibility in ideas and collaborative brainstorming - though this is a much harder process for certain. Some other folks share a love for collaboration and they have kindly offered their ideas in world-changing list-form. So, without further ado, here is part three of a four-part series that is meant to get our community thinking about how our brilliant, passionate, inspiring, adaptive, funny, delicious, healthy, and innovative humanity can make the world a better place. Thanks for the memories, everyone!].

How can we leverage our humanity to solve the world’s problems?

Here are ideas 1-25. And here are ideas 26-50. And here are ideas 51-75:

  1. Hike.  Get out in nature’s bosom.  Commune with the forest spirits.  Skinny dip.  Roll in dirt.  It’s clean.  Sit.  Listen.  Yell!  Pee your name in the snow (men only, I think).  Play capture the flag.  Know Nature.  Know Its value to you personally.  Because you can’t want to protect something if you don’t even know what it is.
  2. Cycle.  You’ll see more and feel good.  Buy rain pants and suit up.  You’ll be dry under you clothes (and naked!).  Be visible.  Cyclists are the future:  fuckin non-motorized, non-electronic cyborgs on wheels.
  3. Draw.  Not for art’s sake.  For communicating.  Long before we wrote, we drew.  On cave walls and on bark and hide.  Appreciate the symbolic nature of signs and symbols, and the miracle that allows all humans to interpret them.  Ed Emberley is a prophet.
  4. Drink.  Water.  H2O.  Its ubiquity only adds to its many mysteries.
  5. Learn.  A language.  Or several.  Or even just a smattering of words.  Knowing another’s tongue is the quickest way to break the ice and will allow you to more easily understand ‘the other’.
  6. Objectify.  Be partial.  Know that your opinions are opinions and based on what you believe you know.  Do not mistake passion for rightfulness.  Choose to be emotional; do not make emotional choices.
  7. Listen.  You talk too much.  Listening allows for ideas to reveal themselves to speakers who may not even know they have such ideas.  If you can’t listen, pretend to listen, as this often has the same effect.
  8. Keep.  Imbue physical objects with meaning.  A ring, a rock, or even a house.  We are physical creatures living in a physical world, not virtual avatars.  Don’t tear down old buildings.  Believe in ghosts and spirits.
  9. Teach.  To teach is to learn well.  Whether it be abstract or practical knowledge, by teaching it you will learn it deeper, and it will become you.
  10. Smile.  In monkeys it lowers tension and creates group harmony.  We are all monkeys.  Faking is acceptable as it often leads to the real thing.  Emotions and your facial muscles are inextriclaby linked. You can fool your own brain.
  11. Don’t.  Don’t do anything.  Eke.  Survive.  Be simple.  Learn the art of inertia.  Laziness is godliness.  The planet will thank you for it.
  12. Think critically. Do not accept things for what they are and ask lots and lots of questions.
  13. Perform. Sock puppets, Shakespeare, Improv, and Musicals are great ways to tell stories as well as tackle the pesky problem of fearing public speaking.
  14. Dance with people. And, to quote a wise man named Jim, “never let the rhythm control your dancing.”
  15. It might’ve been said before but it bears repeating: learn another language. This will help when you visit other places. And it will really help you visit communities not just tourist attractions.
  16. Have heroes and role models who exist in the real world, not the hyper-sexed and overly violent fictional worlds of so much media.
  17. Send handwritten thank you cards. First, because it’s the right thing to do. Second, people love getting mail and, let’s face it, the cards are outstanding advertising for your personal brand!
  18. Be skeptical and question authority. This doesn’t mean rebelling against anything and everything; it just means that you shouldn’t take everyone at their word all the time.
  19. Strive to be a bit more of an armchair economist so that you can understand – and share knowledge about – the complex workings of the global financial system.
  20. Commit to keeping the complex complex. Sometimes simple solutions come at the erosion and sacrifice of necessarily complex and important things.
  21. Remember that the things you own end up owning you. The only logical solution here is for you to give your things away so that they can own other people.
  22. Take off/out your headphones and/or earbuds and listen to the world around you. This will expose you to funny things, interesting things, and things that will inspire you to engage members of your community in conversation.
  23. Collaborate. Like a symphony. Working together is the only way that we’re going to pull ourselves out of this mess.
  24. Find common ground with someone who has a totally different worldview than you. It’s possible. I mean, Kurt and John do it every day on this blog!
  25. Recognize that humanity’s adaptability will see us through tsunamis, earthquakes, peak oil, and the zombie apocalypse; however, there will be catastrophic collateral damage and many of us will not survive the next 100 years. Try your best to be okay with this fact and also try really, really hard to not be a weird survivalist who makes people super uncomfortable while riding the bus…

–

Masthead photo courtesy of Kurt Heinrich, who is awesome.

99 Ways to Leverage our Humanity – Part 2

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[Editor's note: I must start by saying that what unfolds below is a team effort - thanks to everyone who has contributed to this list! So, for better or worse, many parts of the world have been recently occupied - and in some places, like Vancouver, this may or may not be coming to an end. Many elements of the Occupy Movement have issued demands. Personally, I see many problems with demands, as they imply binary-negotiating and/or unchangeable beliefs. Personally, I see more value and possibility in ideas and collaborative brainstorming - though this is a much harder process for certain. Some other folks share a love for collaboration and they have kindly offered their ideas in world-changing list-form. So, without further ado, here is part two of a four-part series that is meant to get our community thinking about how our brilliant, passionate, inspiring, adaptive, funny, delicious, healthy, and innovative humanity can make the world a better place. Thanks for the memories, everyone!].

How can we leverage our humanity to solve the world’s problems?

Here are ideas 1-25. And here are ideas 26-50:

  1. Find photos from the nineteenth century. Strive to emulate the facial hair styles found in the photos. It is hard to take yourself too seriously with a silly looking beard or mustache and the world would likely be a better place if we all took our ourselves less seriously.
  2. Find your passion. And help others find theirs, too.
  3. Volunteer at something. It could totally sync with your interests and talent and get you the experience you need to start a career, or it could be a task, trade or activity that makes a difference and/or brings you pure joy.
  4. Strive to eat foods that are inspired by other cultures and contain locally harvested ingredients.
  5. Go camping. And take an urbanite with you so that they can see the stars!
  6. Honour your grandparents. Ask them to talk about their lives. Listen with pure love.
  7. Practice compassion. You may not be able to take on all causes, but you can send your support in spirit. Leverage those warm fuzzies, draw from the marrow of your own sorrows, and send loving understanding out to all who struggle.
  8. Forgive someone. Feel that painful weight you’ve held in your chest for years? Let it go.
  9. Come to your senses, and no, I don’t mean your common sense. Savour delicious morsels, pause to listen to cello players peeling out beauty in the subway, lift your face up to the sun.
  10. Another way to leverage your humanity is to make out more often. Grab your lover and take luscious long moments to reconnect. Simple pleasures will fuel you in the good fight.
  11. Do whatever you can to empower women, especially in the developing world. Honestly, doing what we can to be in possession of more female leaders will make the world a better place.
  12. Speaking of #31, to the senior citizens (about 78% of our readership) out there, leverage your epic knowledge of life, the universe and everything and tell it to one, or several, young person/people.
  13. Speaking of #37, which spoke of #31, to the young people (about 4% of our readership) out there, write down our elders’ life lessons. Ideally, digitize them on the Internets.
  14. Google “Slow Food.” When you begin to think about the taste and texture of what you consume, you also start to think about the quality of your food and where it comes from — it’s amazing what we realize when we slow things down.
  15. Watch a TED talk once a week. Start with this one.
  16. If you have children or you want to have children, consider what poet Kahlil Gibran wrote: “ You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far. Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness; For even as He loves the earrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.”
  17. Laughter feels so good. Find the “funny” in as many things as you can. People are more likely to listen if they think you don’t take yourself too seriously.
  18. Take the opportunity to gain a basic understand of how the law works; of how your body works, of how your car works and how your computer works. And the teach your children. It’s nice to be able to fix even the most basic of problems, yourself.
  19. Personally, I think this is one of the most important things you can possibly do to change the world: tell the people you love, like, and care about how you feel about them. Today. This week. This year. Text, email, call or set up a coffee date. It’s hard at first but if we close ourselves off to the words that heal others, we risk hurting ourselves.
  20. Start a book club and hand over your reading time to someone else — you never know where inspiration is going to come from.
  21. Continue to give to charities but consider whether the non-profits you support encourage the people on the other end to climb up and out of poverty and prosper. Kiva is a great organization to start with as well as charity:water.
  22. Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken. Also, let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier.
  23. Get involved in mentoring; inspire someone who is coming up in the world and also soak up wisdom and experience from people who have been where you want to go and done what you’re planning to do.
  24. Listen actively and carefully. Showing that your absorbing someone else’s story is a immensely rewarding experience both for yourself and for the one telling the story.
  25. Have children. The world recently reached 8 billion and we have a population crisis. Yet, having a child can be the ultimate affirmation that another life will make your world better.

–

Masthead photo courtesy of Kurt Heinrich, who is awesome.

99 Ways to Leverage Our Humanity

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[Editor's note: I must start by saying that what unfolds below is a team effort - thanks to everyone who has contributed to this list! So, for better or worse, many parts of the world have been recently occupied - and in some places, like Vancouver, this may or may not be coming to an end. Many elements of the Occupy Movement have issued demands. Personally, I see many problems with demands, as they imply binary-negotiating and/or unchangeable beliefs. Personally, I see more value and possibility in ideas and collaborative brainstorming - though this is a much harder process for certain. Some other folks share a love for collaboration and they have kindly offered their ideas in world-changing list-form. So, without further ado, here is part one of a four-part series that is meant to get our community thinking about how our brilliant, passionate, inspiring, adaptive, funny, delicious, healthy, and innovative humanity can make the world a better place. Thanks for the memories, everyone!].

How can we leverage our humanity to solve the world’s problems?

  1. Read and teach more history so that we understand where we’ve come from and that we’re going into a dark and scary place if we keep up this path of taking, making and wasting nature, people, and the environment.
  2. Count back your ancestors to the early decades of the Industrial Revolution (mid-18th century). Think about how far we have come in so few generations. Think about the costs. Try to imagine the world and your decedents in two centuries (six to eight generations) time.
  3. Make people laugh (I recommend Demetri Martin) or wear funny/awesome superhero costumes on days that aren’t Halloween.
  4. Play sports, particularly soccer, as it is the most accessible and global-reaching sport that we have going at the moment.
  5. Throw and attend dinner parties.
  6. Embrace used corduroy things, for they are artifacts of a noble and honourable fabric.
  7. Create art and artists, support artists and their art.
  8. Stop for a moment and refocus on your mission, you’ve probably strayed a little from your core goal and a little refocusing will help you do the good you originally planned. *unless you’re @cobracommander, then please feel free to be distracted.
  9. Learn to play an instrument from another culture. Bongos/congas/the ukulele count if you’re North American.
  10. Plant stuff, all over the place.
  11. Get a bike, get on that bike, and ride through your communities. You’ll discover where you live is way more interesting than you ever thought it was from your car, and you’ll be doing your part to help alleviate the obesity crisis as well.
  12. Do something really nice for someone completely out of the blue. Make sure it’s not in response to something nice they did for you.
  13. Hug a stranger.
  14. Befriend a farmer. A lot of them are nice people and they have a lot to teach us. Plus they make it possible to buy good, local and healthy food in bulk, dropping the price point down from the farmers markets or yuppie focused organic butcher shops.
  15. Spend time writing. The internet makes consuming culture very easy and I imagine many of us are reading, watching and listening to a wide range of content every day. Creating is a very different process and it helps focus the mind and forces you to really think through your opinions. If you need an outlet, I imagine the Daily Gumboot is still accepting applications.
  16. Read Thomas Paine’s The Rights of Man. Think about our government. Imagine ways to change it, improve it, and fix it. Don’t give up on representative democracy. It is still a radical ideal that we need to strive towards; not something we need to replace.
  17. Try to learn something new every day. Continual passion for learning can only lead to growth and development – a crucial foundation to soling the world’s problems
  18. When you disagree with someone, try to understand the situation from their perspective. And be open to changing your stance. Defensiveness has not gotten anyone anywhere.
  19. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that owning more things will make you more happy. It will not.
  20. Travel.
  21. Read item #16. In addition to striving for representative democracy, strive for deliberative democracy.
  22. Master a craft and share it.  None of us are good at everything but we’re all good at something.  Figure out what that something is and pursue it.  Look for mentors as you learn the craft and once you’ve mastered it become a mentor.
  23. Embrace the spirit of the Infinite Tomato Project to make your home more food secure.  Learn how to save seeds, grow your own food, cook what you’ve grown, preserve the harvest, and become attuned with the seasons.
  24. Ferment things in your home, whether bread, pickles, beer or wine.  Yeast are micro-organisms that humanity has been cooking with for at least 4,000 years.  In today’s fast-food culture they can teach us patience as they take hours, weeks or years to do their work.
  25. Do something new every month to reduce your environmental footprint.  Completely changing lifestyles that we are accustomed to is hard.  Gradually introducing new behaviours and focusing on one thing at a time makes it easier.

Part 2 (ideas 26-50) will be on the blog next Monday, November 28.

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Masthead photo courtesy of Kurt Heinrich, who is awesome.

The Case for Wal-Mart

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The mega-company is called Walmart and its – or his/her, because corporations are people – motto is Save Money. Live Better. I will venture a guess that – ahem – about 99% of this blog’s readers do not believe that Wal-Mart, the world’s biggest private employer and largest public corporation, allows our global community to live better.

And perhaps this is true. I mean, the company distributes a lot of stuff that we don’t really need, makes messes while figuring out how to deliver these things, and is really and truly the antithesis of local. Over the past decade, communities from South Korea to Argentina to Germany to Canada have fought Walmart’s entrance into their neighbourhoods. The company’s labour practices have been called into question. Oh, and their logo is a friggin’ Sun!

And perhaps there is more to Walmart’s unstoppable and pervasive global presence than most people know. Perhaps the company – or s/he – deserves a bit more credit for the very high standard of environmentally-friendly business practices that it – or s/he – demonstrates to all the other multi-national corporations out there.

For example, check out this totally unbiased footage from a documentary about sustainability that involves Walmart:

Thoughts? Feelings? Zero waste?

Okay, so this isn’t technically from a “documentary” – it’s from Walmart.com’s Press Room. Still, the message is a compelling one. Especially since I’m pretty sure that the word “environment” isn’t used once by anyone in the video. The corporation – s/he – has the goal of making zero waste because such a thing is good, if not great, business.

Also, Walmart is the global distributor of stuff-we-don’t-need and this means that s/he holds a lot of power in terms of what kind of packaging  in which suppliers wrap the things that we don’t really need. To say the least, Walmart can bring change from global to local more efficiently than our local retailers, the store’s sale of millions of LED lightbulbs will do more to lower household electricity use than any Canadian or American government policies ever could.

In the world of triple-bottom-line sustainability – where financial, natural and human capital are all ingredients to the shared value created by a business – Walmart has always been found wanting when it comes to taking care of people; however, the innovative employment opportunities – based on cooperative principles – demonstrated in emerging markets like Brazil are pretty darn interesting. And, for the record, many local small businesses pay and treat their employees terribly, too. At the end of the day, though, treating people well is also good for business, so don’t be surprised if Walmart finally gets there, too.

Finally, I just have to say that, as an amateur humourist, the idea that Walmart’s Zero Waste initiative probably began with a bunch of c-suite people brainstorming what could, should and would be crushed in the Cram-a-lot is just plain hilarious.

Um, so I guess I’ll wrap up by saying, um, thanks Walmart? [Editor's note: this feels weird...].

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Masthead photo courtesy of Walmart Stores