We met on Friday night at Waimea garage for a potluck dinner. We seemed glad to see each other and a bit sad about the drop-out rate from last year but determined to get started and also acknowledged the benefits of not having to accommodate so many people and adjust to new members.
The first chapter of Paul Hawken's new book, Blessed Unrest was distributed. I loved the final paragraphs:
Inspiration is not garnered from litanies of what is flawed; it resides in humanity's willingness to restore, redress, reform, recover,re-imagine, and reconsider. Healing the wounds of the Earthand its people does not require saintliness or a political party. It is not liberal or conservative activity. It is a sacred act. -adapted from "Blessed Unrest" -How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming by Paul Hawken pub 2007 Viking
We also talked about the work of social entrepreneur Bill Drayton. I'm particularly inspired by his image of changemakers as white blood cells:
The most important contribution any of us can make now is not to solve any particular problem, no matter how urgent energy or environmental or financial regulation is. What we must do now is increase the proportion of humans who know that they can cause change. And who, like smart white blood cells coursing through society, will stop with pleasure whenever they see that something is stuck or that an opportunity is ripe to be seized. Multiplying society's capacity to adapt and change intelligently and constructively and building the necessary underlying collaborative architecture, is the world's most critical opportunity now. Pattern-changing social entrepreneurs are the most critical single factor in catalysing and engineering this transformation ...”— from “Everyone a Changemaker”, by Bill Drayton (2006)
We looked again at the Changemakers slide show and a few issues arose from this.
One of us spoke about noticing his resistance to entering the group and realising that this was a normal part of starting a project and that anything worth doing brought about resistance. In getting on with it in spite of resistance something shifts and enjoyment follows.
Another talked about wondering if it was possible to stay in the group even if she were not able to manage a “proper” 5-10 project and as the group responded with encouragement to think small and stay in the group she opened up to the possibility of blogging. Her honesty seemed to open up a possibility of engaging creatively with 5-10-5-10 rather than experience it as a burden.
Someone else talked about the difficulty she had with using her professional knowledge as a basis for her 5-10 project and the issue of whether she should charge for it or not. The group helped her realise that getting on with it was what was important, and that she could think through the issues of what and who to charge. That being paid or not being paid didn't need to diminish the status of the work she was offering.
We all engaged with the 5-10-5-10 in some way disidentifying from the “should” aspect of them to allow what felt possible manageable and enjoyable in terms of the complexities of our current lives. For instance there aren't 10 of us this year and there is nothing magical about the number 10.
Two members spoke about the national picture and how it required support both financial and in energy to help co-ordinate and facilitate the starting of other Changemakers groups. It's exciting to hear of the national co-ordinator's enthusiasm and that he is introducing 5-10-5-10 to young people at the Hope gathering this weekend.
We all talked about our 5-10-5-10 projects as far as we had got with them. It was great to look forward to meeting on Saturday as well.
On Saturday we started to think about what we wanted from the group. One of us condensed the need to have evenings that were "inspiring, encouraging, refreshing." That there should be an attraction to look forward and that we could use Ted's talks downloaded from the internet to focus each evening. There was an element of resistance to this, lets talk about what we need to learn rather than opt for an easy option of infotainment. We discussed this a little and saw the need to have an attractor to the evenings and to acknowledge the limits of our own weariness after a day's work. After discussion we thought the 5-10-5-10 engagement could happen within the learning friendships and the evenings could start with a video and then be a discussion or dialogue following this. We got the idea that other changemakers from previous years or friends of changemakers could be provided with a list of these videos and could come if they wanted to. Every 4th night would just be for the Changemakers group and we could assess how things are going and tune in to our 5-10-5-10 projects and what support or skills we needed to learn for them.
Other things we discussed were the call to be intentional, where to put our money and energy and its centrality to the opportunity of Changemakers. That intentionality lies behind a to do list. Also being accountable as citizens to each other.
We discussed advocacy and pressure groups and how these were different from Changemaker groups in that we were trying to be reflective and active rather than reactive. That building and maintaining relationships was more important and made more difference that advocating issues.
We were given an image of changemaking not being about publishing your recipe but more about waking up to yourself as an ingredient in the recipe revealed by is in relationship with each other. Looks like mystery. Changemakers seen as a method of making Heart Politics more systemic to people's lives, to make Heart Politics more sustainable, how to create gathering less defined by who showed up to them.
5-10-5-10 could be adapted to other pre-existing groups. A good approach might be If you were to spend 5% of your income on a social change project what would it be, if you were to put aside 5% of your time to do 10 things what would they be, who would you like to meet with to support your social change work...etc.
We drew our Intentional Learning Friendship partners out of a hat.
We watched Larry Brilliant's talk at the World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship and were inspired by his story about eradicating Smallpox.
We realised we could get through the programme design with out meeting on Sunday but that we didn't have enough energy for a circle sharing so we talked about our responses to the video a little and checked out. It felt like we had been meeting together for a long time and had accomplished a lot in terms of re-designing the form Changemakers Taranaki will take this year. We completed tired but satisfied.
The main things I learned were to keep open to co-creativity in the structure and content of Changemakers so that we are forming a group, learning in the group and finding out what best serves the group at the same time. I became enthusiastic about recording the process in some way so I could reflect on it and that our experiment might be useful to other Changemaker groups that might follow. A vision starts to unfold of many kinds of Changemaker groups as each one engages creatively and tunes the resources and the precedents to their own needs and context.
