Commuity-Building Experience

Choose two of the following from the “How to Build Community” poster on the cabinet near the door of room 206 (consider choosing actions with which you have little to no experience):

*Take Time to Get to Know Your Neighbors
*Sit on Your Stoop
*Plant Flowers
*Use Your Library
*Play Together
*Buy from Local Merchants
*Take Children to the Park
*Have Potlucks
*Garden Together
*Pick Up Litter
*Read Stories Aloud
*Dance in the Street
*Talk to the Mail Carrier
*Help Carry Something Heavy
*Barter for Your Goods*Start a Tradition
*Bake Extra and Share
*Sing Together
*Mediate a Conflict
*Seek to Understand
*Learn from New and Uncomfortable Angles

If you're looking for more options, try here...

After you've made your choice, perform the act. Repeat if necessary. Repeat repeatedly if you find the action to be one that is worthwhile.

Then, use your wisdom, your creativity, and that big ole heart of yours to reflect on the experience(s). Consider using the following questions as a guide. Make up some of your own questions if it helps…

*What was the short-term impact of your action on you? on others?

*What might you imagine the long-term impact will be on you? on others?

*How might your neighborhood/community/our school/this world look if this
action became more common than it is now?

*To what extent did this experience allow you or others to feel ‘more alive in the time’
that you have?

*On one level, such little gestures do not change the world. On another level, it is
precisely such little gestures that change the world. Care to comment?

*Post your responses to any of the above questions here by clicking 'New Post' prior
to class on each of the following dates:

Monday, November 16th, 2009 & Monday, November 23rd, 2009

Have fun!

Richard Louv on Time

“I think the main problem with television and other electronic media is that they steal time from other activities. When kids are in nature, time isn’t stolen. It’s amplified. There’s a greater use of all the senses at the same time, that amplifies time, that make us feel more alive in the time that we have.”

Richard Louv, author of the book Last Child in the Woods

Marie Winn on Time

“I think that one of the most important things for people to consider about television is not so much what it makes the child do, whether it makes the child more violent or whether it makes the child greedy and want to buy things, but the very simple idea that the hours that you spend watching television displace other life activities. You’ve only got a certain amount of hours in a day, and so now it becomes very important to consider what would they be doing otherwise.”
Marie Winn, author of the book The Plug-In Drug

A Civic Renaissance

“America throughout its history has been exceptionally civic-minded. However, we now see a public that is withdrawing from communal life, choosing to live alone and play alone. We are becoming mere observers of our collective destiny. A civic renaissance is a proven possibility and the future well-being of our nation depends on it.”
Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone and Better Together

from Jean Vanier's Community and Growth

“Communities are truly communities when they are open to others, when they remain vulnerable and humble; when the members are growing in love, in compassion, in humility. Communities cease to be such when members close in upon themselves with the certitude that they alone have wisdom and truth and expect everyone to be like them and learn from them…In community, people let down barriers; appearances and masks disappear. But this is not easy. Many people have built up their personalities precisely by hiding their wounded hearts behind the barriers of independence and of the attitude, ‘I know, you don’t’. They are highly active and their activity is based on a need to assert, to succeed, to control, to do projects and to be recognized. Others have constructed around their hearts a mask of depression, or of timidity or submission to others; they do not dare allow their true person to rise up inside them.”
Jean Vanier, author of Community and Growth

Asset-Based Community Development

“Each community boasts a unique combination of assets upon which to build its future. A thorough map of those assets would begin with an inventory of the gifts, skills and capacities of the community's residents. Household by household, building by building, block by block, the capacity mapmakers will discover a vast and often surprising array of individual talents and productive skills, few of which are being mobilized for community-building purposes. This basic truth about the ‘giftedness’ of every individual is particularly important to apply to persons who often find themselves marginalized by communities. It is essential to recognize the capacities, for example, of those who have been labeled mentally handicapped or disabled, or of those who are marginalized because they are too old, or too young, or too poor. In a community whose assets are being fully recognized and mobilized, these people too will be part of the action, not as clients or recipients of aid, but as full contributors to the community-building process.” John Kretzmann, co-author of Building Communities from the Inside Out