By Shae Hadden
This spring, seniors and students of Richmond, British Columbia are coming together again in the garden on Richmond High School’s property. Seniors who live in the high-density housing around the city centre started the Community Garden in the same plot of land that the High School had used for its garden in previous years. Working in the same space, they have created the beginnings of intergenerational relationships with students of the Fit for Lifeand Pre-Employment English classes who learn about gardening, sustainability, local foods and nutrition while they work the soil.
The Richmond High School & Community Garden pilot project, an idea of Evergreen, a national charity that makes cities more livable, was initiated last year with grants and funding from 7 different companies and community agencies. This model hybrid garden, sponsored in 2010 by the Vancouver Foundation, includes four 3’ x 32’ beds for the students and 16 garden boxes with 6’x 6’ plots for the seniors.
After the implementation of the garden on school grounds, teachers adapted school curriculums to include activities such as: learning about local foods and adapting recipes; growing herbs and spices for use by culinary students in the cafeteria program; creating tasty, nutritious snacks students can reproduce at home; making bread; and digging and building new gardens. Students who may have experienced difficulties learning in the classroom became receptive, helpful and useful in the garden.
“The students enjoy being in a non-academic environment doing different tasks,” said Ian Lai, local chef and project coordinator in this pilot program. Ian, founder of the Master Gardeners program of the TerraNova Schoolyard Society (which brings 300 elementary school children a year into a 65-acre local community garden to learn about soil science, gardening and cooking from volunteer experts and teachers), will be mentoring two Richmond High students to maintain their school garden during the summer months this year. These students, stewards of the Richmond High School & Community Garden site, will spend two half days per week learning how to garden from Ian and connecting with the local seniors while they tend their garden plots.
This year, both generations are planning to cook together or share a potluck meal together at the high school on Earth Day, World Food Day and possibly Harvest Festival in the fall. Seniors and youth have developed a mutual comfort with being in each other’s ‘territory’: just by being in proximity to each other over an extended period of time, they have gotten past the stereotypes about people who are older or younger. Old and young alike now share and explain what they know and keep an eye on each other’s gardens.
“We see the Richmond program as a model of what a hybrid community/school garden could be,” adds Ian. “If other schools and districts who own the land their facilities are on would convert a portion of their school grounds to gardens, they could support learning objectives, local food production and the ‘green’ movement, as well as develop intergenerational collaboration in their communities.” © 2010 Shae Hadden. All rights reserved.
Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action
Tagged with:
community_garden
evergreen
gardening
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terranova_schoolyard_society
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youth
By Shae Hadden
The New York Times reported
on March 5th that the U.S. is helping the Somali government prepare to take back Mogadishu. As part of a counterterrorism
strategy, this American support may make the country, steeped in anarchy
for 20 years, less hospitable for Al Quaeda and Al Shahab and its
allies. Young Somali men who have been training for the past few months
in neighboring Djibouti, Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda and Sudan are now
reinforcing the 6,000 to 10,000 troops, freshly armed and equipped, that
will be led by General Gelle. What this means for the Somali people
waits to be seen, but in all probability, it will involve more forced
displacements and refugees seeking asylum.
While government
forces in Somalia get ready to regain control in the capital, Djibouti
is steeling itself. According to Ann Encontre, UNHCR representative in
Djibouti, southern Somalia and Mogadishu have been relying on local food
supplies since WFP withdrew its food aid program in January this year.
Local UN staff in Somalia have been distributing non-food items, such
buckets, pots and pans, and UNICEF have been providing vaccinations.
Other agencies on the ground have been catering to people’s needs where
they have access outside of Mogadishu. But by April, Somali’s reserves
from its 2009 bumper crop might run out. It is expected that hundreds or
thousands more of its 1.5 million uprooted citizens will desperately
try to cross the 36-mile long border with Djibouti, avoiding Kenya’s
closed borders and Ethiopia’s numerous roadblocks, to find refuge and
sustenance.
Djibouti is supportive of the Somali government.
This tiny coastal nation, with its scant rainfall and rising
unemployment, already imports most of the food for its 600,000 citizens.
Considering Djibouti now shelters 13,000 registered refugees in Ali
Addeh camp and 1,000 Somali and non-Somali asylum seekers in urban areas
(many of whom have been here since civil war broke out two decades ago
in Somalia), the gap between what the government can provide and what
the people need will continue to grow larger. Currently, Djibouti
government staff and UNHCR staff screen incoming refugees at the border
at Loyada to verify they are legitimately coming from the troubled zones
of Somalia (and not peaceful areas like Somaliland) before granting
them prima facie status. Once they are registered, fingerprinted and
photographed, legitimate refugees are taken by truck to Ali Addeh, the
closest camp in the district of Ali Sabieh, which shelters 12,000
people.
All refugees here face two possible solutions: local
integration or resettlement. Recently the U.S. government started a
resettlement plan for people at risk, taking in approximately 400 of the
most vulnerable women, household heads and some of the longest-staying
refugees in the camp. Meanwhile, brilliant university students, young
men who left Ethiopia in 2005 along with others who fled Mogadishu and
Eritrea, find life in the camp untenable: they have no future there.
Education facilities and resources only are available up to grade 8 for
2,000 of the 3,000 camp children. Resources are needed to build a
secondary school to accommodate the 1,000 adolescents who are receiving
no secondary or higher education, especially the young male adolescents
who, like the ex-Mogadishu university students, are all potential
targets for recruitment by Al Quaeda and Al Shahab. UNHCR is discussing
the possibility of establishing resettlement programs with Canada,
Australia and Nordic countries to ensure opportunities exist for those
who are willing and able to create a new life elsewhere.
For
those who remain in the camp—and that is the vast majority—life focuses
on the essentials: shelter, food, water, healthcare.
It is an
ongoing struggle to meet the needs of new arrivals. There are never
enough tents to provide shelter, and in the extreme heat and
strong winds of the region, families are left to fend for themselves.
Soon after arriving, many women, unable to make ends meet, are forced
into domestic service to feed themselves and their children. “Girls are
exposed to sexual violence at all times,” shares Ms. Encontre. “We see
them being forced to work as domestics as young as 8 years old, and very
often they come back to the camp pregnant after having been raped by
the men of the household.”
“We’ve been seeing an alarming
number of refugees coming into the camp from south and central Somalia
who are severely undernourished, anemic and sickly,” adds Ms. Encontre.
Last year, the UN started a nutrition project with donations from
a French company that provide robust proteins, vitamin A and iron in
the form of enriched peanut butter. UNHCR supplements this with liver,
sardines and vegetables. Currently, one medical doctor from the
Asian Medical Doctors Association bears responsibility for the health of
all 12,000 people in the camp. This one doctor cannot possibly meet the
growing needs of the camp’s population.
Cooking has its
challenges in terms of energy resources. The French Army brings in
20,000 litres of kerosene to the camp each month and every family
receives an allotment. However, without the benefit of energy-saving
stoves, the women must resort to scouring the desert for sticks,
trees and charcoal. Not only do they destroy the environment in doing
so, but they also put themselves at risk. Young girls and women now have
to travel 5 to 10 kms to find firewood and water: a number have been
assaulted and raped by men from the camp and the surrounding areas and
districts. Lighting some key areas around the camp with solar panels may
provide some limited protection, but cannot address the underlying
issues: lack of sufficient fuel and lack of respect for women.
Water
is even more essential than food and energy in this very arid desert.
Providing 20 litres of safe drinking water per day to each refugee in
the camp poses enormous problems. The area has received its first rains
in 6 years, but the sheer number of refugees has pushed the area’s
natural supply to its limit. Each week, money goes to pay for a rented
truck that brings in water from the closest well, which adolescents
from the camp help distribute. The relatively inexperienced refugees
are responsible for chlorinating their own water with pellets, a
critical task with latrines still located downstream and upstream from
the camp.
In January, the team of Djibouti’s French-speaking
water experts who were to be working on setting up a proper water
filtration and preservation system for the camp were sent to Haiti
to help with relief efforts there. Meanwhile, the camp, on standby for
another team to be identified, hopes to find assistance to buy their own
water truck. Discussions are being held between UNHCR, UNICEF, and the
Government focusing on the possibility of digging another bore hole in
the camp or of opening a second camp in an area where the water supply
is more plentiful. Wells in any location require permits and the help
of outside experts for at least a year to supervise the necessary
work.
The cries for help are many.
Efforts to
empower the Somalis caught in this situation focus on providing them
with essential skills and opportunities to contribute to their refugee
community. Adults and young children alike clamor for lessons in
English. Every afternoon, parents sit in on their children’s lessons in
the camp school for an hour or two to learn what they can. The camp’s
university students and adolescents all speak English as their common
language, and crave to learn more. Local Catholic and Protestant
churches have housed volunteers teaching here in their accommodations,
which are a 45-minute drive away. UNHCR’s guest house is available near
the camp as well; however, volunteers tend to stay for only three to six
months before moving on. The need for volunteers to teach English
has not yet met the demand. At the same time, opportunities for French
language courses are also very welcome by refugees to help them
integrate locally into this Francophone country.
Last
October, the UN began running several pilot projects to keep refugees
busy, provide additional food and give them some income. Those involved
in income-generating projects (involving activities like sewing,
baking bread, providing tea and cool drinks in cafes and selling goats,
meat and vegetables) receive a certain amount of money to run their own
small ‘business’. They must account for their expenses and report their
profits every week. Refugees use their earnings to buy clothes and
shoes. The initiative, funded by several thousand dollars saved through
restructuring done at UNHCR’s headquarters in Geneva, is a beginning.
If
you or your organization are interested in contributing time or
resources to the process of empowering the Somali refugees living in
Djibouti, please visit www.givethemshelter.org and join UNHCR’s campaign
to send them 2,600 much needed tents. To find out more about the living
conditions and the situation of Somali refugees, join a live Twitter
feed organized directly from Djibouti with Kathryn Mahoney, UNHCR public
information officer, on March 23.
12 am EST
9 am PST
7pm Geneva
6pm London
5 am Sydney
© 2010 Shae
Hadden with Jim Selman. All rights reserved.
Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action
Tagged with:
al_quaeda
al_shahab
djibouti
mogadishu
refugees
somalia
unhcr
unicef
By Shae Hadden | Bio
My
habits of reducing and reusing come from a tradition I inherited from
my family, a tradition that firmly believed in the value of sharing and
stewardship. My father used to tell me of Depression days when his
mother would wash the tea bags and dry them for reuse, and when he,
being a ‘middle’ son in a family of 13, could always count on wearing
‘hand-me-downs’. Considering the environmental and economic crises we
face, it’s no surprise that the principles of communal sharing,
stewardship and ‘gifting’ are feeding the move to reduce, reuse and
recycle. People of all ages are looking at ways to keep ‘stuff’ out of
landfill sites. In the 1960s the hippies of Haight-Ashbury
opened ‘free shops’ to swap clothes, shoes and personal items. In the
US today, ‘giveaway shops’ have evolved into ‘swap sheds’ in rural
towns (where people leave things that are usable but unwanted for
anyone to take) and ‘free stores’ or ‘free bins’ on college campuses
(stocked with donations or items that students have sorted from trash).
Official give-away stores with retail storefronts have existed in
Amherst, Massachusetts and in several locations in the Detroit area.
And The Free Store operated in NYC until March 2009. An online version of this concept has emerged. There’s a free national website where you can search for items by zip code: Take Me I’m Free. The global player in this scene, the Freecycle Network™,
comes out of Tucson, AZ. This online network of 4,836 groups with
6,601,000 members is moderated by volunteers. Of course, there’s always
the FREE listings on Craigslist as well. An
‘offline’ development is the Really Really Free Market (RRFM)
movement. Collectives of people commit to creating community around
sharing resources and caring for each other: they gather in community
spaces to share goods and services, clean up afterwards and take home
what they are unable to give away. The first RRFM was organized in
protest of the G8 Summit during the anti-globalization protests of 2004
against the Free Trade Area of the Americas. RRFMs have emerged across
the U.S., and the first Canadian one was started in Toronto earlier
this year. Next up… how ‘gifting’ influences our lives online.
© 2009 Shae Hadden. All rights reserved.
Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action
Tagged with:
free_store
freecycle
gift_economy
really_really_free_market
recycle
reuse
rrfm
By Shae Hadden | Bio
I
was in an interesting conversation recently about how we can interact
with people who hold different beliefs than ours. The question posed
was, “How can one be with someone whose beliefs are the antithesis of
our own?” An important inquiry to engage in, considering that a clash
of beliefs is at the heart of most conflict and strife between people.
Responses
from the group varied from escape (“We can’t be with them at all, so we
leave”) and avoidance (“We can’t be with them, so we avoid them”) to
pity (“The only way we can be with them is to think how sad it is that
they hold their beliefs”), and curiosity and compassion (“We can be
with them by observing their thoughts and relating to their essential
humanness”). Many in the conversation found it difficult to move beyond
pity. And yet, even pity is insufficient to resolve a conflict. For one
who pities still sees themselves as being ‘more’ or ‘better’ than those
they pity.
When we pity, what remains unspoken is sensed and
colors the relationship. I worked for a manager once whom I pitied, and
that contributed to increased antagonism between us—for it didn’t
create an opening for us to discuss what we shared in common and what
we both considered to be our birthright as humans. Basic things, such
as:
• Access to education and meaningful work
• Freedom of expression
• Safe places in which to live, raise children and grow old, and
• Access to sufficient resources (food, water, shelter, medical care) to be healthy.
We
clung to our beliefs as if they were what we knew to be ‘truth’.
Unfortunately, the relationship deteriorated and I chose to leave the
organization. I found out years later that she had eventually left
shortly thereafter. Neither of us got to have a conversation about what
we really cared about, because we were entrenched in our positions
about ‘what was so’.
One of my friends once pointed out to me
that, for them, beliefs are not knowledge. That seemed to me to be
self-evident at the time, but in l my recent conversation about
beliefs, I became aware that many confuse their lives by equating
beliefs with knowledge. Yet, it seems to me that when we collapse what
we hold to be ‘truth’ (our beliefs) onto what we think we ‘know’, we
shut down any possibility of anything else being ‘true’. When we cling
to what we believe and know as ‘truth’, then we destroy all chances for
peace.
According to leaders like the Dalai Lama, true
reconciliation (and perhaps the only peaceful way through the world of
differences we inhabit) is available to us through wholehearted
compassion. When we can see and interact with others as human Beings
(as individual souls having human experiences) instead of as a
maelstrom of beliefs, then perhaps we can begin to live together
peacefully. I’m certainly not advocating that we condone behaviors and
actions that destroy life in any way. However, setting ourselves up as
better than another because of what we believe is a covert form of
resisting their beliefs.
Perhaps what underlies our
difficulties as a species is a belief that it is not possible to
fulfill everyone’s birthright to the basic elements of life. This type
of thinking contributes to our disagreements over resources and rights
and creates the so-called battle between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have
nots’.
What if … we individually and collectively choose another belief?
What if … we see the world as being sufficient for all our needs—as long as we respect each other and the planet?
What if … we see it as our responsibility to each other and to future generations to base all our actions in this belief?
What if … we focus on collaborating instead of resisting each other?
Perhaps
we could develop a whole new set of beliefs from this—beliefs that
support and serve our collective future and the future of our world. © 2009 Shae Hadden. All rights reserved.
Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action
Tagged with:
belief
conflict
future
knowledge
peace
possibility
truth
 By Shae Hadden | Bio
With
elections today in Canada and next month in the U.S., this is a good
time to remind all the women we know to exercise their right to vote--a
right which we've only had for less than a century. In July
1917, a group of 33 women picketed outside the White House, asking for
the right to vote. They were rounded up by 40 police wielding clubs,
brought to Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia and imprisoned for
"obstructing sidewalk traffic". [ Read More]
Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action
Tagged with:
courage
history
right
vote
By Shae Hadden | Bio
Traditionally, a generation was defined as the time between the birth
of parents and the birth of their offspring (about 30 years). Recently,
however, a more accurate definition would be a group of people born and
shaped by a particular span of time. The eras of Generations X, Y and Z
span much less than two decades each. And every generation experiences
life from a different perspective including changing societal values,
technologies and career options. These different perspectives are very
apparent when we communicate with each other. [ Read More]
Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action
Tagged with:
collaboration
generations
intergenerational
language
multigenerational
By Shae Hadden | Bio
The premise being that we CAN talk it through…
This
is the question that epitomizes the possibility that the World Café
represents. It is the question that informs Anne Dosher, the
80-something ‘Elder’ of the World Café and Board member of the World
Café Community Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to developing and
disseminating this and other innovative dialogue approaches. I recently
had the privilege of interviewing this gracious, generous and engaging
lady—the human embodiment of what I imagined the World Café phenomena
itself to be—with a few inquiries of my own.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action
Tagged with:
culture
dialogue
multigenerational
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world_cafe
By Shae Hadden | Bio
I was reading an article about ethical wills
recently that got me wondering about what kind of legacy I might leave
behind if I were to die tomorrow. This type of ‘leave behind’
document—like diaries, journals, books, letters and photo albums—are
usually loving prepared over the course of several years. Nowadays, we
also have innumerable opportunities to record our lives and thoughts
online to share with friends and family. So why bother going to the
trouble of preparing an ethical will in addition to a legal will?[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action
Tagged with:
conversation
ethical_will
future
wisdom
By Shae Hadden | Bio
How often have you caught yourself ‘tuning out’ when listening to a
friend, family member or acquaintance? Or had someone point out that
you aren’t really listening to them? We
have all, at one time or another, done so—whether consciously or not.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action
Tagged with:
boredom
listening
loneliness
love
relationship
By Shae HaddenBio
It’s my pleasure to begin this series of portraits with the story of a
man who has inspired me to persevere with my commitment to exercise
regularly since I met him two years ago. When I decided to begin this
column, I immediately thought of Richard Gauntlett as the epitome of a
person who is redefining the culture of aging through his actions. “You
don’t have to a specialist or a particularly great athlete to
accomplish your goals. All you need is to be clear about what you’re
setting out to do, commit to keep going through the difficulties, and
give yourself the freedom to take as much time as you need.”
[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action
Tagged with:
aconcagua
climbing
fitness
goals
kilimanjaro
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richard
By Shae HaddenBio
How often do we take time to look a little closer at beautiful works of
art? To learn about the culture that shaped the images we see?
I recently had an opportunity to visit a unique gallery in my
community. Founded and run by a Canadian who is committed to bringing
Australian Aboriginal art created by women to North America, the Jan Townend Art Gallery
features paintings, textiles, weaving and basketry. The British art
critic John Ruskin once said, “All great art is the work of the whole
living creature, body and soul, and chiefly of the soul.” The powerful
paintings I saw at the gallery amply conveyed the soul of the
Aboriginal people—its beauty, strength and hidden meaning. The
deceptively simple style is grounded in a complex ceremonial tradition.
Consider that these people have no written languages, so their art is a
visual record, a way to communicate their history and culture: the
images help them tell their creation stories, their ‘dreamtime’, their
explanation of the world they live in. Pausing to view the creative
work of these women made me realize how my hectic, technology-driven
life has left me disconcertingly out of touch with my own soul. And in
speaking with Jan, I gained a greater understanding of what this art
means to the artists and their communities.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action
Tagged with:
aboriginal
art
culture
gallery
tradition
wisdom
By Shae Hadden
Bio
On Conversation Street, there are no age limits, and traffic can flow in both directions simultaneously.
Musing on intergenerational
conversations today. I’ve always been drawn to talk with people older
than myself. Perhaps this is because I’ve never felt comfortable with
my peers. I could blame it on the educational system (I was thrust
ahead of my age group in school to keep me interested in learning and
never really got to socialize with my kids my own age)…or on my own
shortcomings (I just didn’t know what to share with them in a social
setting). My peers all seemed so much more self-assured than I, so
confident about their way of seeing things. And I was just full of
unanswerable questions and endless insecurities. I found it easier to
chat with my next door neighbor’s grandfather instead of playing in the
sandbox… [ Read More]
Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action
Tagged with:
conversation
empowerment
intergenerational
listening
 I was struck by the overwhelming sense I had that this woman was no
longer waiting for something...or someone...to come along. That she was
at peace just being here...on the stairs somewhere between here and
there, yesterday and tomorrow. Just present here and now. At the starting point to serenity.[ Read More]
Written by eldering at Wisdom in Action
Tagged with:
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