Today I am feeling inspired by the people around me.
More specifically, I am inspired by those who live with the intention to connect with those around them, those who create a sense of belonging both for themselves and others, those who value the concept of community. By our very nature we are social creatures, and I feel that as a society (specifically the millennial generation) our social lives are both on over-drive, but at the same time a little lost.
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A new inititative of the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation is motivated by this idea:
"Imagine if we unleashed all schools' full potential to foster the social and emotional wellbeing of children and youth"
This notion is at the core of the inspiring effort known as WellAhead and it is already having an impact on6 schools in British Columbia, Canada.
Many are cold… but few are frozen
Those words by the exquisite writer Anne Michaels provide a glimpse into the source of Canada’s ingenuity.
You can’t understand Canada without understanding that you are never very far from winter here.
Our ingenuity comes from snow, ice and a harsh cold climate. Yes, it is warming. But it is still pretty cold in most places for a good portion of the year.
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Recently, I was invited to speak at a conference of not-for-profit organizations on the topic of “How to Recruit More Volunteers.” The conference organizers must have been distressed when I began my remarks by asserting: “What we need is fewer volunteers and more community.” I went on to explain what I see as the difference.
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In June 2016 the Tamarack Institute held one-day workshops on Deepening Community for Collective Impact, focused on exploring ways to deepen community for achieving social transformation. With plans to personally attend one of these workshops this month, I realized it would be timely to finalize my reflections on the event hosted by Tamarack last year that I had shared I was attending, both to prepare myself for the workshop, as well share with others the ideas that I learned so far.
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Last Fall, Tamarack's Paul Born visited Orillia and presented at the City's Georgian College Campus. While there, Paul praised the community for their recent Sunshine Initiative - a bus, transformed into a mobile canvas, driven around town with an invitation for residents to use the bus as their personal suggestion box for how they would like to see their community improved. This project is a wonderful example of deepening community and working towards a common goal. Paul left feeling inspired by Orillia residents, praising them for their citizen-led initative: "Collaboration isn't just about working together; it's about common energy. It's all of us working to implement a plan."
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