Learning Together. Building Community.

Feb 15, 2022
3 min

Reflections on Well-being as Wealth

This idea of rethinking wealth in terms of well-being is really capturing people’s imagination. I received responses from readers with insights, stories and quotes that illuminate what this could look like. Below are a few of them. Keep the ideas coming! This is a future are co-creating together and it’s going to take all of us. Eye of the Needle Gary Reusche shared this thought: “The ‘Eye of the Needle’ was indeed a narrow gateway into Jerusalem. Since camels were heavily lo

Empowering Girls — Global Sojourns Giving Circle

May 27, 2021
8 min

Community

Empowering Girls — Global Sojourns Giving Circle

Twenty-five years ago, Priscilla Plummer was sitting with a group of women in a village in Mozambique. Knee-deep in the research for her master’s degree, she wanted to learn about the realities people were facing in Southern Africa. As she got to know the women in her village and listened to their stories, Priscilla realized their experience was very different from the picture painted by the big development organizations with their projects and programs and reports. It was cl

Kindred Spirits Shine Through the Darkness

Apr 8, 2021
3 min

Community

Kindred Spirits Shine Through the Darkness

A single act of kindness can light up a dark day. Recently two strangers, different as snowflakes, met each other on the street. They could have easily passed on without a word, but a kind offer changed everything. Here is the story my friend Leslie shared with me… Stuck in the Cold and Dark In February 2021, almost a year into COVID-19, the power went out in my neighborhood during an ice storm. I was literally alone in the dark for days, a pod of one during this COVID time.T

Mar 12, 2021
5 min

Learning

Lessons from Uganda

I recently talked with Aaron Enyetu, who arrived here from Uganda just a few months ago. Aaron has worked both as a volunteer in the community-building work of the Baha’i community, and as a professional for Kimanya Ngeyo, an organization based in Jinja that promotes the empowerment of rural people to participate meaningfully in the development of their communities, families and themselves. One of the organization’s areas of focus is sustainable organic farming methods. Eager

Feb 4, 2021
1 min

Learning

The Conversation is Getting Air Time

We’ve been catching up on old episodes of The Unicorn and the one we watched last night profoundly impressed me. This was episode 3 (season 2) “It’s the Thought That Counts” and they actually played out that very awkward conversation when the white friend realizes he has been insensitive to his black friend. They walked through the whole thing—the white guilt, the black person explaining that you can’t put the burden of making you feel better on me, the constant vigilance tha

Jan 28, 2021
3 min

Community

How difficulties can build community

As we learn to embrace diversity at all levels of society, it helps to have examples of what inclusion looks like. I recently talked to Ruhiyyih, who shared her story of being accepted and included despite difficulties and differences. Facing Medical Difficulties After a near-death experience in Tibet and an extended hospital stay, Ruhiyyih slipped into a severe depression and decided to return to the U.S. to live. She had been living and teaching in China for nearly 10 years

Jan 20, 2021
3 min

Learning

Lessons of Winter

How do we weather society’s storms? Winter is tough. There is no pretense when the cold weather hits. There can’t be. When the leaves are stripped from the branches, nothing is hidden. It’s all laid out for us to see. Winter shows us what is broken. It shows us what is strong and sturdy. And it shows us what is new and emerging. The world is in winter right now, and there is much to learn. Seeing What Doesn’t Work Winter storms are fierce and cold. High winds shake loose dead

Dec 3, 2020
5 min

Learning

How do we get better at listening?

Have you ever been in a conversation where someone was only half listening? Or have you caught yourself impatiently waiting for the other person to finish so you can say your piece? Neither one is very satisfying. But actually, there’s more to it. The complex, intertwined problems we are facing can only be solved when we start to really hear one another. No one person has the answers. It’s going to take all of us. And that means listening. So how do we get better at this esse

Nov 19, 2020
2 min

Learning

What does inclusion look like?

Have you ever been on the fringes? Have you experienced being on the outside looking in? What does it mean to be welcomed into a group? What cues tell you that you’re part of the team? How do you welcome someone else? Feeling Invisible I was talking with someone the other day who was going through a rough time. In all her social spaces, she felt left out and invisible. With one group, there was a scheduling conflict and she had to miss a couple sessions. When she returned, it

Apr 6, 2020
3 min

Learning

What makes communities successful?

How can we best build, join and harness our local and international communities? Ethical Business Building the Future (EBBF) recently held a webinar to explore these ideas: Best Practices in Building, Joining, Harnessing Communities. They asked their most experienced community builders to share their insights. Here are a few highlights from the webinar. Jenna Nicholas is the CEO of Impact Experience. They work with under-served communities in places like Puerto Rico and Houst

Feb 27, 2020
5 min

Learning

Building Welcoming Communities

Let’s talk about a small town somewhere in rural America. Pick one; there’s probably such a town near you. For decades, people have been drifting away, moving to the big cities for education, jobs and opportunity. As a result, the town has dwindled. But now, times are changing and populations are shifting. Maybe the local manufacturing firm has trouble filling open positions and starts recruiting among immigrant and minority communities in the larger cities. Or maybe the town

Anatevka: Village Building in the Modern Age

Dec 12, 2019
2 min

Learning

Anatevka: Village Building in the Modern Age

A Universal Village The musical Fiddler on the Roof has a very special place in my heart. When I was about 12, our little town put on a full production of the show, thanks to the genius of our high school drama teacher, Dana Brown. He magically recreated the village of Anatevka on the stage of our middle school gym. He transformed a sheep farmer into the fiddler and the mild-mannered wife of the middle school principal into the shrieking ghost in Tevye’s dream. It was an incr

Jul 26, 2019
3 min

Learning

Collective Will and Inner Coherence

The little town of Ii, Finland, has set an audacious goal—to become the first zero-waste town in the world. And they’re well on their way. The Little Town That Could This tiny community of 10,000 people has already moved to completely renewable energy sources—geothermal, wind, solar, wood chips. They no longer use any fossil fuels; no gas, no oil, no coal. They’ve already switched to electrics cars. As a result, they reduced their CO2 emissions by half between 2007 and 2015.

May 10, 2019
3 min

Learning

Reaching Across the Generations

Have you ever noticed how we tend to separate people by age in this society? The young and the old are shuttered off by themselves. What are we losing? How would we benefit by reaching across the generations? My daughter and I were looking for a place to sit and chat one sunny afternoon recently and found a bench overlooking a grade school playground. Below us, we saw all kinds of people doing all kinds of things, peacefully coexisting. The little kids were playing on the mon

Mar 7, 2019
3 min

Learning

It Takes a Village

Grace Reed’s article on Solving Homelessness talks about how effective the village model is for getting people off the streets and back into stable lives. A village… It also takes a village to raise a child. I was sharing all this with a friend the other night and suddenly we both realized—it takes a village to do anything! We think we are independent. We think our success is our own. And so we look at those who struggle and say, “Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.” But we

Jan 11, 2019
2 min

Learning

Learning Together

We’ve just finished a series on consultation and how it can be a powerful tool for learning together and building community. Now we’ll be focusing on learning itself. We’ll be exploring learning from all angles—individual learning, learning in groups, learning in the family, learning as a human race. We live in urgent times. Humanity is at a turning point. We have the ability to change our trajectory from one of conflict and environmental catastrophe to one of collaboration a

Oct 25, 2018
2 min

Community

Humanity’s New Horizon

Every day the headlines bring fresh news of a world in turmoil—conflict, confusion, catastrophe everywhere. Where does one turn for hope? What we are experiencing, really, is the birth pangs of a new era. We are on the threshold of a whole new stage of human history. Never before have we been able to see the entire planet at once, let alone travel its expanses effortlessly or communicate with each other so fluidly. Never before has humanity been able to see itself as a whole.

May 4, 2018
4 min

Prosperity Stories

Filming Inspiration

Interview with Shaba Rahavi After graduating from Portland State University with a film degree, Shaba Rahavi decided to take a break from the job hunt and got involved in the community-building activities of the Baha’i community. Finding her own sense of purpose and inspired by the spirit of service in the youth around her, she started thinking about how to capture all this on film. She and a friend brainstormed ideas about documenting youth who are being of service to their

Mar 26, 2018
10 min

Prosperity Stories

Rethinking Government

Interview with Mary Li Mary Li is the director of the Multnomah Idea Lab (MIL), a learning lab within the Multnomah County government that explores and tests innovative ideas to help people and communities thrive. I met Mary at the 2018 Elevating Impact Summit, where she participated in a panel focused on collaborative governance. It was so illuminating to meet someone in government who is actively seeking out new ideas and finding ways to implement them and bring them to sca

Feb 24, 2017
2 min

Community

How We Mapped Our Neighborhood

Have you ever wondered what you would do if disaster strikes (earthquake, tsunami, tornado, etc.)? The Washington Emergency Management Division has developed a Map Your Neighborhood program to help neighborhoods prepare for such emergencies. We held our Map Your Neighborhood meeting the other day and it was amazing. Everyone was happy to be there, grateful for the chance to meet all the neighbors and eager to get to work. We live out in a rural area, so disaster isn’t some re