Resilient Japan

April 21, 2011 By

Hello friends,

Right now my work has taken me to Japan — in a big way.  We’ve launched a new website:  www.resilientjapan.org as host for this work and the commentary I am writing from there.  I will be bringing some of this over into Resilient Communities, because it is the same work.  But right now most of my writing is on this small new website.  Please come see what’s happening beneath the visible surface in Japan.

I’m working closely with Art of Hosting – Japan and KDI’s Future Centers — both described in earlier blogs from my work in Japan last year.

Blessings,  Bob

Share

Filed Under: Art of Hosting, asset-based, BC, Bob, emergence, Future Center, Japan, KDI, Resilience, Social Innovation, Strenght Based Tagged With:

One week in Japan

April 12, 2011 By

Mt. Fuji revealed itself today, for the first time since I’ve been in Kiyosato, a small town in the mountains a couple of hours south and west of Tokyo.  This silent sentinel is always on the rim, hosting Japan.  Often hidden by many layers of clouds, it is always there.  Sometimes just a glimmer… I love it when Fuji-san shows itself.  It helps me to quiet my spirit and simply be present.  Again and again, that is what many of you have said in these  days:  Stay present.  Be where you are.  Notice what calls your attention.  Act with respect, compassion and dignity.  Stay clear while staying unattached.  Be prepared to be surprised.  Stay connected.

Yesterday we met for a day to sense why might want to happen.  Let me give a little background.  The KEEP at Kiyosato (http://www.ackeep.org/) was started in the 1930s by an American named Paul Rusch who brought modern farming practices to Japan.  He helped people here transform their mountainside into a demonstration center for new ways to raise cattle.  Along the way he helped to build a hospital here, another in Tokyo and founded a University in Tokyo.  Quite a guy, to say the least.  His spirit is deeply present here, although he died in his early eighties more than 30 years ago.  There never was a grand plan for the KEEP, it simply evolved overtime, working with the people and possibilities present in this one small area in Japan.

Among other things, it is a lovely space now where groups come to meet and people arrive for quiet retreats.  Last year we held two major training events for Art of Hosting here.  While the Tohoku region where the disasters struck on 3/11 is some 250 miles to the north, the disasters struck here as well.  First, and most powerful, it shows up in the subtle field.  The deep connections which hold people together in Japan also mean that the grief in one part is felt throughout.  So there is a deep collective grieving here.  People say time and time again is that the future for all of Japan is different now.  Some things may stay the same, but everything needs to be re-imagined.  The new Japan that emerges will be grounded in traditional values and beliefs, they say, and the future is different now.  Secondly, on a more material level, everyone is affected as well.  Occupancy at the KEEP is down to 30%.  Most young people have lost their part-time jobs.  Rolling power black-outs have hit all of Japan, including here.  Quakes have happened here in the last month as well.  People know their lives have changed.  They’re not sure how.

The week after 3/11, Yamamoto-san, a wonderful deeply present man who has been here for many years, got in the KEEPs bus and drove to Fukushima, the area where the power plants are.  He had to do something.  Somehow he found his way to one shelter among many.  A sports complex, it has some of the best conditions around.  2000 people — mostly in their 60s and 70s — now live there.  Only a small portion of the total number displaced by the disasters.  Only a small portion and totally overwhelming as well.  He brought 43 people back to the KEEP to stay in better conditions for a while.  A small drop in the bucket, but it was what he could do.  43 people who could sleep in real beds, have real baths, eat real food.  43 people who could be warm even while they still shivered with their grief.  Yamamoto-san took this small step, not knowing what was next — but trusting this beginning.

So yesterday we met?  What is next.  What can this small place do that might make a difference?  A difference in the lives of people who live near here, those from Fukushima, those from other parts of Japan.  A difference in the lives of those who work here are have seen the future they know disappear.  It is easy to get overwhelmed.  I know I did when I first heard Yamamoto-san’s story.  2000 people living with almost no privacy in a sports complex; for four weeks each day the government has brought them rice balls to eat.  Four weeks in which life as they know it is gone — and nothing in sight.  What can make a difference?

Kato-san had just returned from Sendai, a region he has been many times before.  When he got off the train, he knew the difference.  Not just the broken buildings — but what was in the air.  It just felt different.  Subdued, almost glazed over.  He saw some young people and talked with them.  Wandering aimlessly in the rubble they wanted to know — what can we do?  He had no answers of course.  Almost overwhelmed by his own sense of grief and loss, he could only stand with theirs.  Devastation, devastation, overwhleming devastation made even more real by the many pockets where life looks like normal.  Stores destroyed.  Stores shuttered.  Stores opened.  Side-by-side.

We spent the morning just dwelling in our confusion.  Sharing impressions.  Letting the grief flow.  Bewildered.  2000 people.  What could the KEEP do.  And what about the people here, and elsewhere in Japan, with their own grief.  We went on a trip to visit to the Paul Rusch Museum here to see what inspiration it might provide.  Paul’s story is quite inspiring.  By the end of his life, his motto of “do your best, and make it first class” was well know here.  It reminds me of the principle “get a clear sense of direction and then find the minimum elegant next step,” something Berkana has learned from the World Cafe Community.

What’s the direction?  Where are the starting points?  What resources does the KEEP have and how can they be used?  What can be done to invite people into their wholeness?  What might make a difference.  Many of us started drawing concentric circles  KEEP in the middle, then Kiyosato, then Fukushima, then all of Japan, then all of the World.  It’s all connected.  AND, one of the things Paul Rusch did was he connected people.

By the end of the day, there was still no clarity.  What’s the stone to drop in the middle of the concentric circles so they become ripples, leading outward to a newness?  A sense was present that some of what the KEEP might do is around youth and youth leading.  A sense that this facility has a new purpose.  A wondering if it might be one of the Future Centers — places of innovation to discover the future — needed now in Japan.

This morning an idea began to crystalize.  Yamamoto-san leaves tomorrow for Fukushima for three days.  He goes to discover what they have — not what they need.  He goes to look for several youth who have dealt with their grief enough to be ready to stand with each other to discover a next step.  Contours of a possibility began to be visible.  We will host an 3 day event at the KEEP in the middle of May.  It will be for around 100 people.  Most of them will be youth.  The majority will come from Fukushima and they will come from three sources — youth living inside the sports complex shelter who are starting to come back to life, youth serving in the shelter, and youth from the “normal area” around the shelter.  They’ll be joined by 25 or so youth from the Kiyosato area and 25 or so from Tokyo.  Purposes envisioned for this gathering include:

  1. Be in our grief together.  Be in all the different griefs surfaced by these disasters.
  2. Enjoy and breathe in this beauty.
  3. Connecting youth of different ages with each other as well as with other generations.
  4. Begin to see  the resources we have and how to use them.  What strengths, what assets, what dreams, what skills, what muscles?
  5. Learn some about how to host dialogues that matter, which surface grief and joy and possibilities and actions.
  6. Begin to support each other in making the changes we need ourselves, while visible to and connected with each other.
  7. Sensing into what else is possible in each of our lives and in each of our regions.

Of course, this will emerge and shift and change.  It may be something entirely different when Yamamoto-san returns.  But I think the core will remain:  releasing grief while continuing to stand with it. Connecting with each other.  Regaining some measure of authority over our own lives.  Discovering the minimum elegant steps which will allow self-organizing to emerge everywhere, and especially in the Tohoku Region, in Fukushima, at this one shelter for 2000 people whose lives have shifted so dramatically.

Honored to be here in these conversations.  Providing a listening presence and occasionally being able to speak in stories and ideas from Berkana’s work around the world.

Blessings,

Bob

Share

Filed Under: asset-based, BC, Bob, emergence, Future Center, Japan, Resilience, Social Innovation Tagged With:

Stepping Into New Possibilities in Japan

March 28, 2011 By

In a week I’ll be headed back to my beloved Japan.  What will I find there?  Community.  Friends and family.  Colleagues. Grief.  Destruction. Possibility. Fear. Hope.  All those and more.  My heart quivers some.  I am almost overwhelmed by all the images and stories that have flooded in over the last two weeks since the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disasters.  And, I am going to be with my community, with my kindred.  I’m carrying with me learning from the web of The Berkana Institute as I explore questions of what is possible now that was not possible before with my many friends and colleagues.

Over the last two weeks much of my time has been focused on Japan.  Connecting and supporting people, being in many conversations via twitter, facebook, skype, e-mail and even telephone.  Some ideas have been coming into focus that I want to share.  These are written as I see them.  They are based on many conversations and they are still my formulation of what might be helpful.  They are part of my starting point as I go home to Japan.

I see four main domains of work:

Grief and Possibility in the Tohoku Region.  Much has been lost:  25,000 people dead or missing; 500,000 people without homes; businesses, schools  and infrastructure destroyed.

  • This grief must be hosted.  Spaces need to be created which support people in speaking of their grief and loss and disappointment.  A safe space of talking and of listening is needed now.
  • And Tohoku can be re-created, stronger and more resilient than it ever was before.  What is essential is that people in Tohoku are in charge of this re-creation – not government, not NGOs, not well intended forces from outside.  People in Tohoku must come together in new ways to direct this recreation.

A new effort called  Japan Dialog -  is beginning to address these needs and possibilities.

A Wide Field of Possibilities. People around Japan and around the world want to support the people in Tohoku.  Think of this as an eco-system with many parts.  Some have ideas and resources for different community engagement processes.  Others know how to work with the strengths and assets still present in the communities.  Some know of more energy efficient and durable building techniques.  Others know of better ways to grow food sustainably.  These ideas can either be another tsunami that washes over the area, or they can be a rich ecology of possibilities which can support in the rebuilding.  Work is needed which can call this eco-system together.

The work of  Instituto Elos and the Oasis Game from Brazil may provide important tools for working in this area as well as the ABCD approach (Asset Based Community Development).  I’ve assembled some resources for this approach on my Resources Page

A Bridge to the Future. A third domain of work is the work of connecting Tohoku with this wide field of possibilities.  Spaces and places are needed which support this connection between the people in Tohoku and these many possibilities.  This bridge must be wide, solid and flexible, supporting robust dialogue and design which supports people in creating new future possibilities.  The work that the Knowledge Dynamics Initiative at Fuji/Xerox has done to bring Future Centers into Japan will be a foundation for this bridge.

Possibilities

Bridge To Future

Tohoku Tomorrow

New Relationship To Energy. The earthquake came.  The tsunami came.  What stayed was the radiation.  Perhaps there is an opportunity for a new dialogue in Japan about how much energy is needed to live happy lives.  Japan might choose to learn how to live with less.  If that choice were made in Japan, it would be put into action immediately.  Japan might provide critical leadership for the rest of the world on this important issue.  This is a deep dialogue that needs to be hosted well in the coming months.  There are no easy answers – just very important questions.

Who might help?

In many ways Japan is a large country and a very small community.  Over the last year I have had the opportunity to work with many people and organizations who might be, I believe, the key players to work in these four domains.  I know there are many others as well.  Over the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing stories from our work together.

And many, many more.  Japan is ripe for change.  Please visit some of my blogs here from November and December, 2010 to get a sense of the possibilities

And please come visit here from time to time.  I arrive in Japan on April 5th and will be there until the first of June.  I’ll be sharing stories and learning here from time to time.  Please also visit http://bit.ly/dMALkr for a story about Resilience in Japan from the latest Fieldnotes from ALIA — Authentic Leadership in Action.

Share

Filed Under: ABCD, Art of Hosting, asset-based, BC, Bob, communities of practice, emergence, Enspirited Leadership, Future Center, Intergenerational, Japan, KDI, Oasis Game, Resilience, Social Innovation, Strenght Based, systems of influence Tagged With:

Helping People Design Their Own Communities

December 17, 2010 By

Yamizaka-san and I were invited to do a workshop in Osaka.  Yamizaka-san was a landscape architect 10 years ago.  Now he’s something else?  But what does he call it?  A community developer?  A community designer?  Both of those have the sense of someone working from the outside.  He works from the inside and is no longer sure of what to call his work.

40 or so people joined us at a small café in Osaka for an evening of dialogue.  Yamizaka-san is a charismatic character.  A decade ago the death of a dear friend helped him realize that he wanted to make a difference with his own life.  He kept noticing that he was attracted to people’s true stories and started to find his path.

He and I each spoke for a time before moving into several rounds of World Café.  We’d only met earlier that evening and didn’t know much of each other’s stories.  But as soon as we met, I was thinking about my friends from Elos Institute in Santos Brazil.  Ten years ago they were architects as well.  And they changed.  Like Yamizaka-san, they had this weird idea that architecture should serve people.  Imagine that!

Yamizaka-san, like my friends at Elos, had never heard of Appreciative Inquiry or Asset-Based Community Development when they started their community work.  Like them, he began developing an approach that was based on listening – really listening – to people’s stories about what they want in their community.  He talks about how he coaches the teams of people he how sends how to “just listen.”  Don’t signal your agreement with what people are saying,” he says, “or they’ll start trying to tell you want they think you want to hear.”

Just Listen.

When we’re helping communities develop themselves from the inside out, the role of the outsider is to listen.  From a place of listening it is sometimes possible to offer an idea or two, a story from somewhere else, or some conceptual frameworks.  From a place of listening it is possible to respond to the true requests that arise in the group.  But it comes from this posture of listening.

In a conversation in the U.S. in September with my friend Nomura-san from Fuji-Xerox’s KDI, we started to develop the idea of the sacred outsider, a different role than the expert outsider.  The sacred outsider is a mirror, reflecting back the knowledge and wisdom present in the system while occasionally sharing a glimpse of possibilities from beyond.

It was a lively evening in Osaka.  People sparked each other’s enthusiasm and experience and shared their ideas about how communities can design themselves and how some of us can be sacred outsiders to that process.

Share

Filed Under: asset-based, BC, Japan, KDI, Resilience, Social Innovation, Strenght Based Tagged With:

A New Zimbabwe Emerging

November 15, 2009 By

I arrived in Zimbabwe several days ago, my first visit this year.  Since before Kufunda Learning Village was a glimmer in the heartmind of its founder, I have been journeying here.  When people ask what I do at and with Kufunda it is often with a typical assumption of people in the global north that I am coming here to teach them something.  I come here to learn.  Of course, this dichotomy between learning and teaching is a false one.  But mostly, I come to listen.  To witness.  To ask questions. To be present to the changes taking place at Kufunda and in Zimbabwe.  I also come to connect Kufunda with others around the world — calling forth connections and relationships which help us all learn.

I first visited Zimbabwe in 2001 and have been witness to many years of things falling apart.  Everything I’ve thought I knew or understood about collapse have been challenged.  Each collapse is unique.  Perhaps the only common thread is that times of collapse are a call for resilience.  In some ways the country “hit bottom” last year.  Some progress has been made since then, but for people who feel like they are at the end of their rope, it is slow and agonizing.

I came here aware of the pain and agony some were feeling.  It wasn’t until I arrived that I also felt how strong the winds of shift are as well.  So it is all present at the same time — agonizing stuckness, emerging creativity, willingness to change.  When you’re stuck, what do you do?  I was thinking this morning about cross country skiing on groomed trails (perhaps an odd thought since the daily temperatures here are in the 90s).  When I’m skiing and see a crash coming, it is almost impossible for me to remember to simply lift my ski out of the track, and to take it from there.  That first step, lifting out of the current track, can be so darn hard.

At Kufunda the need to do so is clear.  The structure and processes which brought Kufunda to where it is today cannot continue.  Among other things, the global economic crisis has shown up here in the form of fewer donor dollars.  But even beyond that, it is clear that changes are needed.  Kufundees have been able to spend a lot of time over the last five years learning how to host processes which help them develop deep relationships with each other.  They have learned how to do permaculture.  They have learned how to build with local materials and how to move towards zero-waste.  They have learned how to use herbs for healing.  They have learned how to share knowledge with surrounding communities and are beginning to learn how to help those communities reach out to others.  Everything from bee-keeping to “arbor-loos” are part of the culture.  There are many pieces in place and part of the work over the last several days has been looking at how to shift those pieces into a more productive overall pattern.

One of the questions I’ve had for years is about how Kufunda reaches out beyond the six communities it has ben working with since 2003.  Even that is more clear.  It does it through partnerships.  For example, one of the friends of Kufunda founded something called “Tree of Life.”  It is a process which works with victims of torture to help them heal.  It is a powerful process led by the former victims themselves.  Once people in villages are more healed, what next?  Perhaps a partnership with Kufunda provides part of that answer — Kufunda can come in and help them remember ways of being a healthy village again.

Enough for now.  Lot’s happening and I’ll be writing more!

Share

Filed Under: asset-based, BC, emergence, Powers of Place, Resilience, Zimbabwe Tagged With:

St. Luke’s Health Initiatives

September 8, 2009 By

Yesterday I was preparing for a phone call with the St. Luke’s Health Initiatives in Phoenix. They’ve invited me to participate in their December annual conference as a “not-expert” giving a “not-keynote.” After reading through the notes from their recent planning meetings, my attention went to the website to deepen my understanding of what they are doing. And I was blown away. The first documents I came across was StLukesHealthInitiatives-Fall03. It is an amazing look at resilience in health. It begins with a suggestion familiar to many of us: what if rather than being the absence of illness and pathology, health is actually the harmonious integration of mind and body within a responsive community?

In the frame work St. Luke’s has been using, there are at least three central components of resilient social-ecological communities: diversity, redundancy and feedback loops. They go on to define community as group of people with diverse characteristics who are linked by social ties, share common perspectives, and engage in joint action in geographical locations or settings — and then go on and define what each of these things actually are. It’s a powerful report and the points directions for each of us to attend to our own health. The video to the right is a work in progress which illustrates some of this thinking.

So, after reading it, I head back to the St. Luke’s website for more. And quickly I’m led to StLukesHealthInitiatives-Fall08, the report five years later. Take a look at it. The quality of the work and the directness of the language is delightful. The report ends with 16 lessons learned:

  • FOCUS ON COMMUNITIES-AS-PLACE. We build healthy, resilient communities in physical, space-bound settings where we live, work and play. The siren song of communities of interest, practice and identity can enhance our ability to improve community health, but it can also direct our attention, resources and energy away from place-bound connections of social reciprocity and support.
  • START WITH SHARED CONVERSATIONS. This will lead to shared relationships and shared identity. These, in turn, will contribute over time to shared meaning, shared trust, shared motivation and shared action. The result is the adaptable, engaged community.
  • PULL, DON’T PUSH. ATTRACT, DON’T PROMOTE. Invite others in to build networks of engagement, involvement and shared action. Don’t treat people like consumers or clients. Attract others bymodeling the result you desire. Don’t promote an ideology or set of techniques everyone else has to accept.
  • TAP INTO INDIVIDUAL AND COMMUNITY STRENGTHS. Use these to build tangible assets (housing jobs, infrastructure) and develop the knowledge and skills (education) that create the conditions for optimal health and sustainability.
  • DEVELOP AND EXTEND NETWORKS OF LEARNING, PRACTICE AND ACTION. Think associationally. Build up and out, down and in simultaneously.
  • BE A CONNECTOR. Channel and connect ideas, energy, resources. Everything flows from this.
  • SPEAK TO POWER. Find and encourage the community’s collective voice to connect with economic and political resources in ever wider circles of influence, investment and consequence.
  • CONSIDER THE AUDIENCE. Adapt your language and message frames accordingly.
  • MOVE FROM ACCOUNTABILITY TO LEARNING. Disseminate what you learn as widely and transparently as possible. Accountability will arise naturally from the shared learning (meanings) of the community.
  • SEED AND FEED. Start with a focused task or project that has a good probability for success. Build on success by scanning for new opportunities and sowing seeds. Pursue those that take root and start to grow. Not all of them will.
  • INVEST FOR LONGER TIME PERIODS. Seeds that take root do better with focused, longer-term investments of human and financial resources. Be watchful – but don’t be in a rush to hurry on to the next big thing.
  • TAKE TIME TO MAKE TIME. Community building is long distance and never ending. Get off the clock now and then. Replenish yourself and others. It always winds back around.
  • DRINK FROM THE WELL. Find, nurture and drink from community wells of trusted information, services and social connections. They are individuals and organizations alike. If you can’t find one, drill for one. Connect others to it.
  • PLAN TO ORGANIZE, ORGANIZE TO PLAN. Do both in pencil so you can adapt to change.
  • LISTEN, LEARN AND LET GO. People come from very different places. Let them speak. People learn in different ways. Give them options and time. Lead by example. We raise healthy children this way. Why would communities be any different?

FIRE, READY, AIM. In community building, clarity emerges from practice, not practice from clarity. Start with action (fire), refine your practice based on what you’re learning (ready), then develop your theory of change (aim). Use that theory and knowledge to inform further practice, and so on in a cycle of never-ending adaptability, learning and change.

This is good, solid thinking. What’s also striking about it is that it isn’t rare anymore. Of course, it would be a huge stretch to say it is common thinking — but that’s the direction.

Frequently these days I’m confronted by the fact that we know a lot about new ways of thinking and being. Many of us no longer have any particular faith in the ways things have been done in the past. We’re even beginning to develop common language. I loved it that these reports speak of using attraction rather than promotion, for example. In the Berkana Exchange community it was Unitierra in Oaxaca, Mexico where I first heard people talking about commotion rather than promotion. Exactly the same idea. Or Nipun Meta from Charity Focus talks about fire, ready, steady, but it is the same essence as fire, ready, aim in the report’s last point.

The question, of course, is what will help us all practice more consistently in the field defined by these principles, values and beliefs? What’s growing here that can be cultivated? How do we begin to create frameworks, processes and structures which help us practice and learn in this field rather than always being distracted and thrown off balance when someone comes asking for our strategic plan or pre-planned outcomes?

Share/Bookmark

Filed Under: asset-based, BC, emergence, health, Resilience Tagged With: