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Opok Farm in Northern Uganda is a project in development on 300 acres of land to support 150 child-headed households by setting up a sufficiency economy village.
Through Razoo.com and ned.com I have been in contact with Linda and Christina, who are leading this project, and I am excited by their openness and heart.
Your help is needed NOW to win $10,000 for Opok farm. All you need to do is join razoo.com ... then join Opok farm ( beta.razoo.com/groups/opok_farm_village ) and Action Hero Network ( beta.razoo.com/groups/act...ero_network ).
If either group wins the grant, the money will go to support Opok Farm and it will make a huge difference... taking only a couple minutes of your time. Opok farm will be a life or death opportunity for a lot of children.
In addition to creating sewing rooms, I'm also planning to create a huge bamboo dome at the farm that will serve as a gathering place and dorm. The info about that can be read at: www.ned.com/group/opokfarms/news/2/
Through ned.com, we are sharing ideas about what is happening now and can be done. I've been looking for a group like this, and I'm sure they'd welcome others with new ideas and fresh energy.
These are two quotes from a thread I read today on ned.com ( www.ned.com/group/econo-politics/news/0/ )
"another one of Mwenda's rants I've heard about locally is about all the very young people (arrogant, inexperienced, primarily out to glorify their own experience & find themselves) coming to "volunteer" their wisdom about how the world should work, all in the name of helping Africa. Quite simply put, kids will often behave childishly, and today's young (post-high school/college age) volunteers are getting themselves labeled a pretty childishly behaving group as a whole.
I agree with Mwenda that the new fad in youth driven international grassroots "aid" is indeed showing itself to have some inherent drawbacks. Maybe the problem is in the premise that it's Africa who needs help - I don't really think it is. I think most of the Western kids who come to Africa today are looking for something, and they think they are going to find it here by "helping" Africa become more like them. Arguably what they really need to be doing is looking at what Africa has to offer in terms of lessons about what their own lives are missing.
It occurs to me the way to find the right approach is to reframe the question completely - not what can we do to help Africa and how do we make that happen, but what can Africa offer to help us improve our societies, and how do we make that happen?"
+++++second quote:
"Money isn't wealth, it's just a kind of signal which can be used to help identify good ideas and channel more resources to them. On the internet we are increasingly finding alternative ways of identifying and signalling what things are worthwhile.
And the better the network does this, the less need there is for money to be involved at all.
Most of us here at <Ned> take this idea of wealth creation via a communication network very seriously. And I think it's the heart of Christina's vision of Webbed Empowerment.
She is so right in pointing out that Africa holds lessons for our own lives. "Helping Africa" implies a linear direction: handing out or handing down. Webbed Empowerment implies multi-directional communications. When we engage we are prepared to be changed by the engagement.
Christina is right that resource flows are not just about money. How we invent ways of creating wealth by Webbed Empowerment will say much about how much wealth we can create together as people.
Mwenda asks us to consider reframing the challenges of Africa: From Despair: Poverty Reduction; To Hope: Creating Wealth.
If we take seriously Christina's ideas of Webbed Empowerment, we see that wealth creation is not only about money. Money as Phil Jones says "money is a kind of signal" and that the "peerosphere"--a term Jones coined elsewhere--is a rival communication network capable of creating wealth."
++++End of quotes+++
These are important concepts that apply to activism everywhere, and anyone who is serious about making positive change in the world is invited to take part in these discussions.
www.ned.com
--
Connect to evolutionary grassroots movements through bi-weekly Cor Reports -- add yourself to the Google Group at www.actionheronetwork.net
Action Heroes Unite!
Through Razoo.com and ned.com I have been in contact with Linda and Christina, who are leading this project, and I am excited by their openness and heart.
Your help is needed NOW to win $10,000 for Opok farm. All you need to do is join razoo.com ... then join Opok farm ( beta.razoo.com/groups/opok_farm_village ) and Action Hero Network ( beta.razoo.com/groups/act...ero_network ).
If either group wins the grant, the money will go to support Opok Farm and it will make a huge difference... taking only a couple minutes of your time. Opok farm will be a life or death opportunity for a lot of children.
In addition to creating sewing rooms, I'm also planning to create a huge bamboo dome at the farm that will serve as a gathering place and dorm. The info about that can be read at: www.ned.com/group/opokfarms/news/2/
Through ned.com, we are sharing ideas about what is happening now and can be done. I've been looking for a group like this, and I'm sure they'd welcome others with new ideas and fresh energy.
These are two quotes from a thread I read today on ned.com ( www.ned.com/group/econo-politics/news/0/ )
"another one of Mwenda's rants I've heard about locally is about all the very young people (arrogant, inexperienced, primarily out to glorify their own experience & find themselves) coming to "volunteer" their wisdom about how the world should work, all in the name of helping Africa. Quite simply put, kids will often behave childishly, and today's young (post-high school/college age) volunteers are getting themselves labeled a pretty childishly behaving group as a whole.
I agree with Mwenda that the new fad in youth driven international grassroots "aid" is indeed showing itself to have some inherent drawbacks. Maybe the problem is in the premise that it's Africa who needs help - I don't really think it is. I think most of the Western kids who come to Africa today are looking for something, and they think they are going to find it here by "helping" Africa become more like them. Arguably what they really need to be doing is looking at what Africa has to offer in terms of lessons about what their own lives are missing.
It occurs to me the way to find the right approach is to reframe the question completely - not what can we do to help Africa and how do we make that happen, but what can Africa offer to help us improve our societies, and how do we make that happen?"
+++++second quote:
"Money isn't wealth, it's just a kind of signal which can be used to help identify good ideas and channel more resources to them. On the internet we are increasingly finding alternative ways of identifying and signalling what things are worthwhile.
And the better the network does this, the less need there is for money to be involved at all.
Most of us here at <Ned> take this idea of wealth creation via a communication network very seriously. And I think it's the heart of Christina's vision of Webbed Empowerment.
She is so right in pointing out that Africa holds lessons for our own lives. "Helping Africa" implies a linear direction: handing out or handing down. Webbed Empowerment implies multi-directional communications. When we engage we are prepared to be changed by the engagement.
Christina is right that resource flows are not just about money. How we invent ways of creating wealth by Webbed Empowerment will say much about how much wealth we can create together as people.
Mwenda asks us to consider reframing the challenges of Africa: From Despair: Poverty Reduction; To Hope: Creating Wealth.
If we take seriously Christina's ideas of Webbed Empowerment, we see that wealth creation is not only about money. Money as Phil Jones says "money is a kind of signal" and that the "peerosphere"--a term Jones coined elsewhere--is a rival communication network capable of creating wealth."
++++End of quotes+++
These are important concepts that apply to activism everywhere, and anyone who is serious about making positive change in the world is invited to take part in these discussions.
www.ned.com
--
Connect to evolutionary grassroots movements through bi-weekly Cor Reports -- add yourself to the Google Group at www.actionheronetwork.net
Action Heroes Unite!
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