In case you were wondering what work has been keeping me busy lately, allow me to proudly point you to...

The new and delightful website of the Centre for Social Innovation!

This site is a proud production of Communicopia, my friends and colleagues in Vancouver, BC. Built with Drupal and turned around on an impressive timeline, this site kept me very busy for a while (I was the project manager), but I'm delighted with the final product.

This particular project was also very close to my heart, as I have been working out of the Centre (or CSI as we affectionately call it) for six months – both working at a desk on my various projects, and teaching yoga classes to a group of enthusiastic tenants/students. I cannot say about about the people, the space, and the atmosphere. It is not even slightly an exaggeration to say that this place, in large part, *made* my Toronto experience. I am forever grateful to have landed in such a warm, fun, beautiful community and space. Check out the members to get a sense of who's in there!

I have bunches of appreciation to offer to both the amazing team at Communicopia, and the dedicated staff at CSI. Hats off to your professionalism, your integrity, and your ability to turn around a terrific product while still having a good time. Cheers to that!

Just a little promo for a workshop I am organizing here in beautiful summery Toronto... Coming up July 24-25, 2007.

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Have you heard the buzz about Facebook, MySpace, blogging, and other popular social web tools, and wondered whether they could be useful to your organization... but not known where to start, or how to sort the good stuff from the hype? Come and learn from two of Canada's top experts on web strategy and participation design for the not-for-profit sector!

The latest generation of Web 2.0 (or "social web") strategies and tools offer powerful opportunities for organizations to improve the way they work, communicate their messages, empower others, and serve the public. In this workshop you will learn how the latest tools for online collaboration and community building can make your organization smarter and more effective.

WHO:

So this week on ChangeEverything we have the following survey question:

Would you support mandatory recycling in Vancouver?

It's an interesting question, and if you're Vancouver-based, I urge you to go and cast your vote. For me, the question brings up a few funny memories, and a couple of questions.

So when I lived in residence at the University of Western Ontario, every room was provided with a garbage can, and a blue box for recycling. Garbage was collected straight from our rooms, but recycling had to be carried down to the basement and sorted by the individual. You try and guess which option the lazy and usually hung-over dorm students usually chose?

And thus I became known as the Recycling Bitch, because I would come down the hall and pointedly ask people about the recyclables in their garbage cans. (This phase of my life was likely related to the times when I used to scrape extra butter off my dad's toast, to save him from the heart attack I was sure he was asking for.) Needless to say, I was in favour of mandatory recycling then. I was *extremely concerned* about everyone else's seeming lack of concern about our lovely fragile planet.

And now, ten years older and a wee bit wiser, I think I would still be in favour of compulsory recycling. HOWEVER, I also wonder how much good recycling actually does, and I have yet to hear a truly compelling argument to persuade me that it's really a solution.

I would rather see people recycle than not, but I am not really in favour of forcing recycling, if one of its main spin-offs would be to allow people to be complacent about their consumption habits. Let's face it, downgrading the masses of garbage we create is just not the final solution. Let's face it, we need to STOP USING SO MUCH!!!

And there endeth my rant. Go vote.

I should have blogged this, oh... a month ago... but better last than never. :P

Before Christmas, Alex Steffan from WorldChanging wrote to ask me whether I'd be willing to answer their "What Next?" question. They were looking for a range of submissions about emerging and inspirational movements and ideas, to be posted on their site. My first thought was "oh no, I can't answer that... I don't know enough about the new cool things in sustainability." But then I realized that that initial feeling was actually masking a deeper feeling for me, and so I replied to Alex with my real response.

And they published it! I was flattered. But the best part was that I had dug a little deeper, and written something that I believed – which is better than trying to come up with someone in line with what I thought they wanted, or worse, assuming that I had nothing to contribute.

You can read it, and see the comments, here.

Call me a hippie, but I place myself firmly in the "we have to change ourselves first" camp. In my mind, there is no single tool, model, idea, or key piece of knowledge that is going to tip the scales in favour of the world we want to see. I am inspired and endlessly relieved by the practical, solutions-based work being done by so many in the world today – WorldChanging writers and readers among them – but it's as important that we look deeply into ourselves as it is that we look deeply into innovative tools and models for saving the world.

I'd go so far as to say that all would-be worldchangers have an obligation, to themselves and to the greater whole, to embark on such an exploration. The violence we see in our world, the injustice, the apathy, the resistance to change, the fear... all these things originate in each of us, and often in incredibly subtle ways. So befriend yourself, in all your imperfection. Wake up. Stop hoping for external "solutions". Get really honest, first with yourself and then with others. And then begin to allow what you discover to change you, and in turn to change how you engage with the world.

Call me a hippie, but that's my vision for real social change.

I got an email last week, from a reader of this blog. He couldn't figure out how to comment (note: you need to create a user account, because I was getting flooded by spam). Anyhow, I asked if I could post his comments here, and he agreed. So, to follow up on the Kunstler stuff from earlier.... here are his comments.
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I have had a long-standing interest in New Urbanism, so I am very familiar with the writing of James Howard Kunstler.  Thus, I found your posts about him interesting, to say the least, and I felt the same way about peak oil and the coming "Long Emergency" for some time.  Therefore, I wanted to drop you a note and say:  if there is one thing that can be said about Jim Kunstler:  "a soothsayer he ain't."  It can't be put any more succinctly than that. 

Your friends and collegues are right to be skeptical about Kunstler's doomsday scenarios, particularly in regards to Y2K, though his misfires go well (well!) beyond that major one.  Some time ago, in fact, when I was feeling a bit down about all the coming catastrophes of which Kunstler prophesizes with almost orgasmic glee, I took a lunch hour and actually combed his blog archive and made a list of his predictions.  I have enclosed this list below, for your perusal and enjoyment. 

Since the day I compiled it, I have not wasted one moment worrying about whether to bring children into the world (my wife and I are expecting #2 in June!). Yes, I think peak oil is real, and yes, I think suburbs were/are a really bad idea and quite destructive, but that doesn't mean socio-political events are going to conveniently coelesce into a bizarre personal revenge fantasy, where all the "clueless" are punished in amazingly "poetically just" fashion.  It's staggering, actually, just how muck Kunster's outlook echoes fundamental evangelicalism--a world outlook he regularly mocks!

So, Sarah--keep doing your yoga and keep enjoying your life and your friends, and everytime a doomsayer puts too much of a shackle on your buzz, read ol' Jim's list of failed predictions below and have a good ol' chortle.

Warmest regards,

Tom
Pennsylvania (USA)

PS--His predictions of a war between India and Pakistan a few years ago is one of my faves--right up there with "the great flu outbreak of 2002"!!

Here goes:

December 16, 2001:
“After Christmas (2001), we are going to see a retail work-out that will make your heads spin, including (Kunstler predicts) the tanking of some major national chains. Duck and cover.”

I just watched something kind of intense, from my front row seat in the window at JJ Bean on Commercial Drive.

I heard sirens roaring down the street, and mostly tuned them out, the way you learn to do when you live in a city. But then right outside where I was sitting, I saw a guy push another guy off a bike. It looked to me like they were starting a fight, and then another guy ran up and pinned the bike guy down. I hate watching fights and I was disturbed.

But then all the sirens stopped out front and a cop ran out of a car, and pinned the bike guy (who I guess is what they were after). His head banged into the ground in the process. The other two guys walked away. Okay, fair enough so far... I guess they got the guy they were after. Obviously I had no idea what he had done.

But then another cop got out of the car, and ran over, and delivered a swift kick to the guy (who, for the record, was pinned and not resisting at all), and put cuffs on him. Cuffs, fine, but the kicking seemed unnecessary to me (and to everyone else gathered around the window behind me).

More cops arrived, and they all stood around laughing together as they started searching his bag. The guy is lying there, nose running, totally submissive, and the cops are treating him like he's not even human. Granted, I have no idea what his crime was, and perhaps it was something awful. But still. He's still a person.

If you feel like a little tear-jerker to set your weekend off to a good start, then let me introduce you to the GuluWalk. In case you haven't heard the story...

Every night, in rural northern and war-torn Uganda, tens of thousands of children walk hours into the nearest urban centre, to avoid abduction by the army and to sleep in relative safety. In the morning, the trudge back to their villages again, to work for the day, and then do it again the following evening.

Stop for a second. Can you even imagine that?

So a couple of years ago, two guys in Toronto found out about this, and decided to follow this routine for a month, to raise awareness about these children in Uganda. One of them kept a blog, and it's been making me cry as I read it. The words of support from Ugandans and others are heart-wrenching to me.

Now, the GuluWalk has grown into an international peace movement, and an annual event with walks happening all over the world. Though the founders actually walked every night for a month, then slept downtown only to walk back home in the morning, they've scaled the concept back for broader public appeal. So fear not, you can now participate without having to walk all night and sleep in the streets.

The GuluWalk program has raised a LOT of money, just by getting lots of regular people involved. Their fundraising backend is powered by Artez, a company that I'm doing some work for. And I'm blogging about it just because I find it pretty inspiring, and thought other people might too...