Event Announcement: Social Enterprise in Cork- Seminar

Monday 26th November, 9.30am- 4.30pm, Jury's Hotel, Great Western Road, Cork.
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The West Cork DESEO Partnership has organised a Seminar to illustrate the benefits and potential of the Social Economy sector for the Region.

The Seminar will bring together the principal initiatives to promote these initiatives locally, and gives their drivers a chance to explain their vision and aspirations, their achievements and the obstacles that they face.

In addition to Social Entrepreneurs from Cork and West Cork, the Seminar will include speakers from Cork City and County, the Islands Federation of Ireland, Social Entrepreneurs Ireland, West Cork LEADER and Clann Credo, as well as delegates from Northern Ireland and from the European REVES Network.

The Seminar aims to be a watershed event for a more effective partnership between local authorities, social enterprises and communities, as well as an opportunity for prospective social entrepreneurs to find out about the potential of this activity in their region.

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more information available on;
www.carberyhousing.eu

Flights and Landings

Quite a lot has happened in the last year. I am now in Dublin, writing up, and looking at ways to develop this project further. Exciting times ahead!

By following the archive links in this blog you can still read through my travels

April 2006: Ireland
May 2006: Ireland, Kenya
June 2006: Kenya, Uganda
July 2006: Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique
August 2006: Mozambique, South Africa
September 2006: India
October 2006: India
November 2006: Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia
December 2006: Cambodia, Vietnam
January 2007: Australia, New Zealand
February 2007: New Zealand, Tonga, Samoa
March 2007: United States
April 2007: United States, Ireland
May 2007: Ireland.

I will be keeping this blog alive with periodic updates, and you can still contact me at

exceptional.lives (at) gmail.com

Cape Cod meets Cambodia

Watching a film changed Sarah Symons’ life.. and her husband’s, and her kids, and her neighbours, and groups of women from Cambodia to India.

The film was ‘The Day my God Died’. The topic Child Sex trafficking. And the response from Sarah moved from initial horror to ‘What can I do to help prevent this?’ That question led her, and her husband John, to set up ‘The Emancipation Network’ (TEN) which buys and imports handmade products from survivors of trafficking and people who are at a high risk of being trafficked. When an alternative income stream for families and communities is assured, the risk of trafficking is radically reduced- a correlation Sarah saw that she could strengthen.

TEN now import goods and products from 14 different organisations, and are expanding their reach. John and Sarah’s home in Cape Cod became there office and storage depot and operates in a flurry of activity. Arriving to their home I was quickly taken on the grand tour, introduced to large boxes of goods-from hand embroidered bags to handmade paper- each top quality, and told about the story of the people behind the products.

Once the goods are purchased they are then distributed and sold though a series of ‘Awareness Parties’; a Tupperware model of sales, organised though a network of volunteers. The parties are a chance not only to sell goods (and thus provide an income to the artisans) but also increase awareness about sex trafficking.

John and Sarah are examples of the power of commitment. With a background in investment banking, John brought his business know-how to the job, looking at business models that are scaleable and economically viable in the long term. When he realise that the TEN model could really work, he quit his job in banking and teamed up with his wife to expand the business. This month they are opening their first retail outlet in Cape Cod.

My weekend with John and Sarah was a full of fun and inspiration- not only for learning about TEN, but also spending time baking with their fantastic kids Maya and Luke, and waking up to their dog Dakota tugging at my blanket to play!

Their door was opened to me as a stranger, and I left it as a friend.
How wonderful!

Architect with Attitude- Meet Mardie Oaks

Mardie Oaks was trained as an architect. Only it is not just houses she now builds, but communities, helping to integrate those on the margins of society.

Walking down the streets of San Francisco it is clear that there is a housing crisis. The homeless are everywhere. I’m not sure of the exact number, but it is in the thousands; many thousands. So when Mardie mentioned the margins, I assumed she meant this group. However, those who she works for are often the forgotten group; people living in institutions who in order to be able to function in mainstream society need special housing conditions. So, thinking about these needs, Mardie and her team at Hallmark Community Solutions design and renovate homes with these criteria in mind. High quality, affordable housing is the aim and finances are sourced though mainly government streams and revenue, in ways which have not previously been done.

Mardie was recently awarded an Echoing Green Fellowship for her innovative efforts.

Mardie and Tony Deifell (her husband, fellow social entrepreneur, see next blog), handed me the flowing quotation as I was leaving their home. It’s a reminder to them of the power of commitment, both in their work and marriage. It is a reminder to me too- it is the same end quote from Goethe which I had on my fridge door, urging me on.

Thanks Tony and Mardie.

We had definitely committed ourselves and were halfway out of our ruts. We had put down our passage money – booked a sailing to Bombay. This may sound too simple, but is great in consequence. Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets:

‘Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!’

[The Scottish Himalaya Expedition, 1951]

Cafe Culture gone Cyber

In a city which seems to have more cafes than clients, what happened to café culture?

Here in San Francisco, cafes are more akin to libraries. Talking is almost a faux pas- this is laptop land, so wired it is wireless. If someone speaks, others look up with that same furrowed brow which condemn wandering whispers in the dens of college reading rooms.
Here it feels as if the entire café going society is about the sit a national exam; their backs bent over their keyboards, their looks worried. This is pin drop, hear it territory.

Want to meet me at a café to chat? Too risky. I’ll meet you at the library instead. In the meantime I’ll just order another coffee and check my email!

Closing the Circle

Its funny, the further away from ‘home’ I travel, the closer I eventually get. I’m not trying to be philosophical here, it’s just the geography of round the world trips. Now that I have reached San Francisco, I’m three quarters (ish) of the way back to Ireland.

I have put ‘home’ in inverted commas for a reason, because the more people who have opened their doors to me, and the more places I feel are ‘home’.

This time round I am in the home of Susan Megy, one funky lady, who I ‘met’ virtually through the Omidyar Network and who has been cheering me on while I loop around the globe. Another funky such person is Jean Russell, who has been helping me all along with contacts and suggestions for people to meet. When she heard I was going to be in San Francisco she flew down from the Chicago region to catch up in person. It’s been fantastic to put faces to these names and I feel so privileged to be able to connect such good good people. Thanks Susan and Jean.

Irish doors will open in return… just let me get back ‘home’ first!

Some of the faces and frolics

Take II to Tonga

Did someone just press pause?

I’ve jumped back in time, ten years in fact, when I lived on these islands. I’m now on Vava’u, my haunt back then, to visit the family who I lived with, and give myself a dose of the pacific, which time and memory has somewhat warped.

But it is all coming back to me now. The sights and sounds are familiar; crickets at dusk, a gecko’s chirp, cockerels crowing at ungodly hours, church bells ringing out for attention, palm trees everywhere, green green land, and ocean- lots of it.

It is so familiar that it’s almost as if time has stood still.

The pigs still torment the dogs, the dogs still torment each other.
The Vava’u high school uniform; deep wine, white shirts and the girls wearing bright yellow ribbons. They wave gestures of welcome. Malo’e’leli’, I shout, ‘Yo’, the reply.
Women in mourning, dressed in black, with traditional woven straw mats tied around their waists.
The shop fronts colourful, inside selling not much at all or overpriced imported goods.
A box of cornflakes is a treat. An ice-cream, pure indulgence!

Coming back I expected many changes, but what I see is not as dramatic as I thought would await. I see too many cars, too many plastic bags and more yachts in the harbour. There are some more shops, more restaurants… but not that many more. The market has moved closer to the wharf. There are a few internet café’s. The post office is looking more bedraggled. It still takes about 2 months for a letter to arrive from Europe, and that’s by airmail!
There is an ATM machine, which makes life a lot easier. The roads have been resurfaced; what once was like negotiating a deep ravine is now a smooth cruise (EU funding made it here).
The graveyards are even more colourful, with knitted quilts adorning gravesides.
The mosquitoes still bite.

The coral around my regular swimming spot has grown. I’ve seen new fish which I never saw before; in all a myriad of colour and stripes and shapes bringing new meaning to magnificent. The water is a warm bath, the snorkelling a meditation on diversity.

Yes, this is the Pacific.

The people are still big; big boned, big wasited. A heavily starch based diet- taro, tapioca, breadfruit, sweet potato, yam combined with coconut milk make this place a slimmer’s nightmare. Tasty but ‘waisty’. But then there is mango, passion fruit, soursop (a white fleshy sweet fruit), watermelons and pineapples so juicy, they dribble sweetness with every bite. These islands know how to provide.

I wander the streets and memories come back. Wonderful!

Community Communing

Thoughts of community centres used to conjure images of grey haired grannies nodding off in chairs. A visit to Karori community centre, in one of the suburbs of Wellington changed all of that. There was indeed lots of grey hair, some no doubt the heads of grannies, but there was little nodding off, and lots of young faces too.

Eithne Wyndham Smith, one of two managers of the centre, gave me a tour around and a run down on activities. There is indoor bowls, meals on wheels, a drop in centre, a youth centre (complete with pool table and video games and two youth workers), a toy library (like a book library, only with toys- great idea), a parenting room.. among other things.

To help fund it all is an ‘op shop’, manned by volunteers, where the sales profits are fed back into the community centre to help with the running and maintenance of the services.

I popped along to the centre because in all of this talk about social change it is easy to ignore the things on our doorsteps. Community centres are hubs for bringing people together and for many an entry into new friendships. To others it is more than just that, but a lifeline.


(It was a case of small world syndrome when meeting Eithne. She mentioned that her daughter, Theresa, is currently working with the UN in Lesotho. I mentioned that a friend of mine, Joanna, is also working with the UN in Lesotho. One minute later Eithne pulls out of her email a photo of Joanna and Theresa having dinner together. Small world indeed- I love it!)