Judy Wicks transformed her Philadelphia restaurant into a Community Food Enterprise. She has created multiple environmental and social good. Restaurant profits are sourced from local farms – farmers are featured on some of the menus. From a simple start of looking for free range pork, her enterprise has snowballed into a huge range of sustainability projects.
Here is a link to another video with more info. Do you have a similar enterprise in your city?
Di Celliers was concerned about the increasing demand on food banks to feed the poor. She was also aware that a lot of fruit goes to waste in back yards. She drew on her social and church networks and workmates at the ASB bank to inspire and mobilise people to pick fruit in backyards.
In a little over a month, Di’s initiative has spread across Auckland and the idea has been picked up in other regions in New Zealand. Auckland City Mission now collect the fruit weekly and distributes the fruit to 70 foodbanks.
Community Fruit Harvesting now has a Facebook presence and a website is hopefully on its way. The Facebook page is a great example of community engagement and social networking’s capability to connect people in a cause. You can hear Di talking about the initiative on National Radio. Here’s Di picking citrus.
Another Auckland initiative is ooooby.org, (Out of our own back yards). It has been set up as a social business that harvests produce grown in backyards, micro growers and from local farms. Customers sign up for a $27.90 weekly box of fruit and veges.
These initiatives are inspiring steps to a more sustainable means of food production and supply. The benefits include providing free or inexpensive nutritious food, building community bonds through engagement and volunteering and providing micro-enterprise opportunities.
Here is Muhammad Yunus explaining the social business concept.
Images used by permission of Di Celliers
Engagement hasn’t been the default mode of communication. So it stands to reason that we need to re-evaluate how we communicate for engagement, and learn to use some new tools. Earlier posts looked at the communication spectrum and the shared meaning model. You can add dichotomy busting as a tool to surface the underlying thinking that will support or hamper engagement.
Humans have this natural drive to create neural patterns. (See below for a cool YouTube video providing a great metaphor for creating neural patterns). Our primitive nature, for survival purposes, prompts us to categorise things – good/evil, friendly/hostile, in the box/outside the box, potential meal/might eat me. Sharp distinctions aid quick decisions and these dichotomies are useful for our survival. But for higher thinking, dichotomies are a mixed blessing.
In I Am Right You Are Wrong, Edward deBono illustrates how ideas can become polarised with an elegant metaphor. Imagine a drop of rain falling on the peak of a mountain range (such as the Andes). If the wind is blowing from the east, the raindrop will end up in the Pacific Ocean; if the wind blows from the west, it will traverse other lands and end up in the Atlantic. Dichotomies tend to polarise. Edward deBono claims that dualistic, right/wrong thinking, came from the ancient Greeks and today,plagues our institutions, public and private. It is embodied in our language and works well for argument and physical sciences, but no so good for engagement. The author then highlights the need for more flexibility in our thinking.
Our existing perceptions, concepts, models, and paradigms are a summary of our history. We can look at the world only through such a framework. If something new comes along we are unable to see it. Or, if we do see it, we see it as a mismatch with our older perception so we feel compelled to attack it. In any case we can judge it only through the old frame of reference (page 283).
Dichotomy busting
Our dichotomy buster is a quadrant, aided by questions of enquiry. Its is similar to polarity mapping, but I believe, simpler.
When a strong dichotomy exists, the positions can be seen as polarised on a continuum. Here the costs associated with engagement create the polarity. Engagement is seen as resource hungry and tight budget constraints position engagement as being an expense.
If we change the continuum to a quadrant, we open possibilities for increasing positions from two to at least four. Here is the same example below.
Notice that in the top right hand corner questions direct attention to finding synergy between what might have been conceived as polar opposites. And notice how this relates to the deBono quote above – we are impelled to look to new ideas for solutions.
But people are challenged by this. Recall the raindrop, travelling down one side of the Andes. As it travels it gravitates to deeper and deeper channels until it reaches the see. So it is with deeply patterned thinking. It is very easy to reach polarised conclusions.
…the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. –F Scott Fitzgerald
If you use the dichotomy buster please let me know how it goes.
Just decades ago, the gulf between health practitioners and the many Mäori (the indigenous people of New Zealand), impacted on the quality of health outcomes for Mäori. Bridging this gap is an engagement process.
This is the first of my engagement stories and it is close to home. My wife, Huria works as an educator for Te Poutokomanawa (Mäori Health Services) at Whangarei Hospital in northern New Zealand.
My ancestors were European, Huria’s were Mäori and Polynesian. They both shared a world-view that accommodated both the material and spiritual. Both the spiritual and material influenced health practice. For example, monasteries often included a pharmacy. Both cultures relied heavily on herbal treatments.
When Europe entered the Age of Enlightenment in the 18th Century science displaced tradition. Scientific truth became synonymous with progress. Like teenagers discovering new capabilities, the followers of science viewed traditional medical knowledge as something to leave behind. Science became increasingly reductionist, and the only thing that mattered was what could be measured. Hopefully the “teenagers” will come to appreciate the wisdom of their elders.
Even as a Pakeha (New Zealander of European origins) the medical world seemed unwelcoming and sterile. I still avoid hospitals and medical clinics. Doctors seemed to treat people as objects rather than people, and some still do. To those from an indigenous tradition, the gulf is much wider. Medical practices were alien. People were separated from whanau (family), and hospital culture (individualism, medical jargon, cold and impersonal, command- control practices) clashed directly with Mäori cultural practice. Medical language was even less understandable than English for native Mäori speakers.
Prompted by poor health outcomes for Mäori, the government passed legislation in 1993 and 2000 to ensure that Mäori could, among other things, “contribute to decision-making on, and to participate in the delivery of health and disability services”. The two main changes were the development of Mäori Health providers and the development of Mäori Health Services with the public health system.
The Mäori Health Strategy is based on three principles articulated as Treaty of Waitangi principles:
To achieve this, in practice, where Huria works the main initiatives are:
For Huria, Mäori cultural practices happened from the start. The image below is from Huria’s powhiri (welcome) on her first day at work. The powhiri is a ritual of encounter. Huria was supported by Mäori elders and family members, some travelling for half a day to attend. The family handed her over to the new employer, with the understanding that they will care for her. The powhiri is an expression of both engagement and appreciation. It was heart-warming to hear people speak so warmly of Huria’s qualities – a great way to start any new job.
Other common cultural practices Maori bring that change the flavour of the work environment are karakia (prayer) and waiata (singing).
No doubt there are those who think that this is a waste of money, and it would be better to fund more operations. But ultimately these engagement processes will change both health practice and Mäori perceptions of health practice for the better. Surely, if Maori are more comfortable and at ease in the environment that is attempting their healing, the outcomes will be better.
Health models based purely on scientific practice are deficient. Mäori academics contribute to the engagement process. Mason Durie’s Te Whare Tapa Wha model, for example, positions health as a function of four interconnected dimensions:
Two engagement principles are illustrated here. The first is the benefit of sharing world-views. If any system of knowledge becomes too insular and too dependent on its own resources, its ability to adapt and develop is compromised. Western medical models can only benefit by learning from traditional and indigenous world-views and vice versa. The more engagement, the better the learning.
The staff working for any organisation, should look like the communities they serve. Having a diverse staff is not just a nice idea. People are more likely to feel at home and want to use services if they see people working there who look like them, speak like them and dress like them.
Ultimately there will be no need for Mäori Health Services, because Mäori will be more represented at all levels of staff, and the two world-views will sit naturally beside one-another. Hopefully it won’t take too many years for this to happen.
Steps to Sustainability 