Sunday, 25 January 2009

You'd think we do nothin' but cookin' and eatin'

I had to return the NDN's soup jug as she'd brought me round some hot veg broth the other day. So I prepared a pretty decent orange and carrot soup - worrying everso slightly about complicating the reciprocity and the implication of snobbing-up the relationship - and took the jug back full. I followed it up later with a warm wholemeal loaf and came away with a couple of warm scones and a bit of gossip.

Previously: Hot soup

Reciprocal neighbouring

25 Jan 2009 18:07:13 | Vignettes

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Talk About Local William Perrin has announced his Talk About Local project which will promote the model of neighbourhood online networks, training local activists to exploit the technology to communicate and network. Talk About Local will train several thousand people in 150 disadvantaged places in England to set up locality/community/neighbourhood based websites. The project will use UK online centres as its delivery backbone. Talk About Local will catalyse an online resource and community for people publishing neighbourhood or community websites, so that people can help each other. Talk About Local will give these citizens the basic skills to communicate online more effectively and at less cost than using traditional means. By networking citizens together, they will be able support each other in their local activism, as well as on technical publishing issues. This will lead to stronger more effective community action. The project couldn't be led from a better source nor have a greater chance of success. All power to his elbow. The pic is of a young journalist I met at an inspiring project called Harlem Live, which was training young people to be online reporters back in 2000. Looks like they've travelled a fair way.
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Talking about hope Hope is exactly the kind of psychological resource you probably don't give much thought to if you who don't need it. I've just learned a little about how much it matters to refugees and homeless people. My colleague Linda Constable and I spent some time helping to run a living library session at Crisis in London the other day, and it was an absolute blast. About a dozen members of the Crisis English Club put themselves forward as 'Books' to talk about their experiences; the 'Borrowers' were mostly Crisis staff and volunteers, gaining insights into how the process might work for the organisation elsewhere. The pic shows the engaging Kazem, a Lebanese refugee who gave his book title as Homelessness, hopelessness and hope. Another described himself like this: ‘I became an alcoholic with my wife after becoming homeless and destitute. I am very proud because for ten years now I haven’t had a drink.’ We learned something else. When the Books were being briefed by our contact at Crisis, she said she expected them to hold back from talking about the more disturbing and harrowing experiences in their lives. On the contrary: every one of them took the considered opportunity to willingly discuss those central life-disrupting episodes and their lasting effects. Such is the power of this simple device. Previous posts on Living Library.

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