questioning the system of organisations

It's been over a month since I have posted last and there has been good reason for this as I have had quite a difficult time feeling free to put the thoughts I wanted to write into public space, but you see that itself is a symptom of what I have been wanting to write. Let me rewind a bit and fill you in on the rest of the story...

For quite a few years now I have been involved in a conversation about charity, organisations, economics, empire, resilience, justice, community, love and faith. This conversation has led down a path of learning and experimentation, steps of faith and opening up to new paths of questioning. I won't put forward that I have come to any answers I have only refined and found better ways of expressing my questions. I have become increasingly sceptical of organisations, corporations and churches who create bodies that do charitable work. That is not to discount their motives or their genuine desire to help people. I do on the other hand wonder what version of 'good' is being sought through these acts of charity. Are these bodies set up with a desire to liberate and not co-opt; are they rooted in a belief that they don't have a monopoly on the answer for what people need or do they fool themselves into thinking there is this answer for people and that they know what it is? Are charities and organisations the best way to address societies woes? These are the questions I carry with me in my pocket as I attempt to act on the world and continue to contribute to a conversation that more and more people are joining.

In April I decided to take a very active role in a new organisation being set up attempting to learn whether or not it is possible to create stop-gaps to prevent this community from becoming co-opting and instead directed towards liberating, freeing and releasing people to discover their potential. We are working with an existing community of people, many of whom are classed by the government as vulnerable (not sure exactly what this means really) and just about all of whom suffer from a breakdown in community and resilience, (sounds a lot like the majority of the people in our society). On the ground it is fantastic, the majority of my time interacting with the community is through finding out people's dreams and attempting to introduce them to people and paths to help them achieve them. I love being in that place. One level up from that though is where the learning and difficulty seems to present itself. I am quickly learning that the system we have developed over the thousands of years we have been trying to help vulnerable people in society isn't set up in a way that can start releasing people. I have also been finding that certain questions can't even be articulated in certain circles simply because there is no vocabulary to translate ones questions into those circles. Legal barriers begin to come up as one established 'organisations' and certain questions get barred from being acted out on. It becomes difficult and stressful yet still enlightening and educational.

Over the next few two months we will be facing the 'make it or break it' time for the new structure we are putting in place. I only pray we can make room for questions to be asked at all levels and ensure their is a space for everyone to be able to ask their questions about what is set up (I realise as I write this that organisations seem very static don't they). I welcome any new streams of thought on this as there are some great examples of groups who have circumvented the problems we have placed in front of ourselves, but then again most of those groups never went as far as to set up and organisation....

Homeless and Politicians

How can we help the most marginalised reclaim their voices? Recently through a discussion with some of the guys who frequent the centre I work in I discovered a profound sense of political opinion and knowledge. This same group of men sits around a table five days a week and chats through the new things they read in the news and hear on the radio. Although It's good that they have an outlet for these discussions I asked them what they do about their opinions, if they ever share them with anyone else or vote in the elections. For some reason this threw a spanner in the works and some felt that politicians were all corrupt or that we can't do anything because no matter who we vote for they will just do what they want.

This challenged me as its a similar critique I have heard when I used to challenge students to lobby their politicians. So I decided to try and create a space to allow the members of our community to meet with and pose questions to politicians. On Wednesday we had our first visit. An MEP came and spent time touring our project and one of our community members spoke with him sharing his thoughts on why we do what we do and how successful it is and then for 40 minutes the MEP went around and shared coffee and time with various people having lunch. It became a very interesting space. Lots of varying opinions were shared but the exchange was one that seemed to be releasing. The only person who seemed to feel out of place was the MEP's assistant.

It was an interesting experiment and will be even more interesting next time... It might be good to try and get an interested group together who does this regularly.

Food Inc...

For those of you in America this is a very important film, for those of you elsewhere these are questions to ask about your own food system...

Food Inc. - Trailer - [HD]1080p

ALP to GMM

Grassmarket & Edinburgh Castle
Originally uploaded by superhoopsa

Its only 3 days until I start my new job at GMM/GCP and although I am very excited about that, I am sad to be leave the Adult Learning Project. There are lessons I learned here which will be extremely valuable to my new post. I learned that real learning has to start with dialogue and that we truly can do education differently. We do not need to teach at people to try to get them to fit into the box we think they should fit into. ALP has been working for 20 years and it has been working as apart of the local government but has also been challenging the way the local government makes its decisions. It is a real active critique that critiques itself along the way.

When I start at GMM much of my time is going to be working with a large number of volunteers... volunteers of all ages. From having conversations with people over the past month it has become apparent that a good portion of my job is going to be inspiring people to take on the dream of the project. To show them the vision and help them catch the idea and get behind it. Those times when volunteers all get together and get excited about it the atmosphere becomes electric and ideas start flying and people get excited... what we need is to spread that throughout the project and to the service users and supported volunteers. We need to re-initiate the praxis cycle and get people dreaming and critiquing what is going on now with that dream in mind... begin pushing and acting towards that dream... that is my challenge but that its catching... small pockets of people are beginning to run with it...

The Death of Wolf Larson

sea-wolf
Originally uploaded by cdrummbks

The Death of Wolf Larsen

I've just finished reading Jack London's Sea Wolf. I wanted to read Into the Wild, but the used book store I went to didn't have it, so i picked up Sea Wolf and White Fang (which I read when I was very young) in its place. I chose Sea Wolf because it was the older of the two and knowing the setting of into the wild, white fang and children of the north I expected that setting, but ohh was I in for a treat, it was almost entirely at sea...

It was a discussion of materialism vs. sensualism... with a bit of a discussion about the classes mixed in. I forgot how poetic London's writing was... I'm defnintly going to dig into White Fang soon... though I think I'm going to start Tolstoy's The Cossacks first... If you ever get a chance, go pick up some Jack London and have a read!


here is the wiki on Sea Wolf

A Move and New Questions

It is official now that I am going to be the new field worker for the Grassmarket Mission/Greyfriars Community Project. I make the move 1 April. This is an interesting move for me because it is into a project I have been working with in various capacities for over 3 years now, and the project itself is on the cusp of making huge strides in what it offers and what it is attempting to address. If you read back through my posts you will see one about the development and vision for the future of this project.
 
In my new role, I hopefully will get to draw on my experience with different community projects and adult education centres though translating that information into a new scenario may prove difficult at first. When working with marginalised people, many of whom are homeless or at risk of homelessness there are extra questions that have to be asked. This became very apparent to me the other night in my Friere reading group when we were talking about formal education and how the system of education we all by into itself is a tool of oppression and can easily prevent well minded people from achieving much because the system doesn’t work in their favour. A question I am asking right now is how do we use education as a tool for liberating people when the people you are working with are plagued by loss? I was told yesterday by someone I respect in radical education that the answer for our time is isolation. Finding ways of ending isolation helps move people to re-enter communities. But soon it will be my job to translate that into the practical…  which is where the real cycle of praxis begins.

Cafe visits and lent

Contessa goes out for coffee
Originally uploaded by MiranC

The first week of our lent experiment has gone surprisingly well once the caffeine addiction was kicked, and for our feast on Sunday we visited Iglu in new town, a restaurant specialising in local food to see what they could cook up, I had rabbit and my wife the wood pigeon. It would recommend it.

Some thoughts on my experience thus far… Normally I go to cafes to sit and read and do a bit of work but I am finding that extremely difficult as I very rarely find anything to drink/eat and when I do it has nearly always been apple juice and shortbread. Joce said she found a wee juice bar on Victoria Street where she had a carrot and apple smoothie. I wonder… if when we meet people in cafes we always have communion over coffee, tea, biscuits, muffins, cake etc... what would the indigenous version of this be? Some would say beer or whisky in a pub but what about during the day? There really isn’t that option in Edinburgh. Any thoughts?

I leave you now as I go enjoy pea and ham soup left over from last night’s dinner