The Vision
A Healthy, Peaceful World
Engaging and empowering community leaders, educators, and others working for pro-change with innovative tools, practices and learning activities for improved participation, collaboration, unity and impact for healthier communities, organizations, and systems.
"We shape our tools, then our tools shape us". Marshall McLuhan, philosopher, media analyst, Winnipegger. I love this quote for a few reasons. First because it connects the process and the outcome, the “what” and the “how”, like community development does, like I do. Plus, it speaks to the invisible impact of our digital age on us as humans, and our connection to the natural world.
This image of the basket with a shell, a stone, a pinecone and a feather also have meaning as these are tools I use in my workshop on healthy communities. These natural objects are about strengthening our connection through our community building work to each other and the natural world. The feather represents our spiritual well- being, the stone our mental or cognitive well-being, the pinecone our physical well-being and the shell our emotional well-being. The health wheel is foundational taking us from the personal, to community and the systemic.
Working together we can come out of our shell using social innovation and community work, we try not to be too hardheaded, nor flighty, nor spread ourselves too thin, scattering ourselves like pinecones seeds in a fire. The world is on fire but our evolution together is the transformative cooling water.
Many teachers and leaders have had the same message: the ends must match the means. Or we can't solve problems from the same way of thinking that created the problems.
The way we organize, run meetings, communicate, and make decisions must fit with the vision for what we aim to do. I offer tools and techniques to ensure our 'what' and our 'how' mutually reinforce each other.
Are You?
An Educator
Do you teach challenging topics that can be met with controversy, in social studies and social science courses, health education, English, or other areas, whether at the middle school and high school, or post secondary and adult education levels. Are you looking for engaging and empowering learning activities for students?
A Community Leader
Are you part of a community based organization as a staff or board member, or a volunteer, or are you a public service worker, union member or elected official who also wants healthy, peaceful communities, real organizational and systems change. Being an active citizen requires unique leadership skills, so you can share the workload, not burn out, and be in it for the long haul to share your experience and expertise.
A Consultant or Coach
Are you a facilitator, strategic planner, organizational and systems change consultant, coach or mentor? Find tools to ensure you have a lasting impact and help leverage real change. A part of being a change agent is empowering people to implement changes long term, after your consulting, training or coaching is complete.
My Two Approaches
Two Approaches
Process Design & Facilitation
Community development is a beautiful thing with many tools. Often when we are working for social change we host events that neither engage people nor lead to collective action. Here are some things I can help with:
Two Approaches
Social Inovation
for Social Change
Social innovation has become like the flavour of the month, and like the term sustainable development it has many interpretations depending on your world view. Social innovation comes from the community
According to the Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience, based on their research into systems transformation, social innovation is ‘a new program, policy, procedure, product, process, or design that seeks to address a social problem and to ultimately shift resource and authority flows, social routines, and cultural values of the social system that created the problem in the first place
