Seeds for a happy planet

I am impressed by this article and the simple truth that is in it… I copied it as a whole, because it is important that things like this get spread.
A city in Brazil recruited local farmers to help do something U.S. cities have yet to do: end hunger. by Frances Moore Lappé

“To search for solutions to hunger means to act within the principle that the status of a citizen surpasses that of a mere consumer.” CITY OF BELO HORIZONTE, BRAZIL

In writing Diet for a Small Planet, I learned one simple truth: Hunger is not caused by a scarcity of food but a scarcity of democracy. But that realization was only the beginning, for then I had to ask: What does a democracy look like that enables citizens to have a real voice in securing life’s essentials? Does it exist anywhere? Is it possible or a pipe dream? With hunger on the rise here in the United States-one in 10 of us is now turning to food stamps-these questions take on new urgency.To begin to conceive of the possibility of a culture of empowered citizens making democracy work for them, real-life stories help-not models to adopt wholesale, but examples that capture key lessons. For me, the story of Brazil’s fourth largest city, Belo Horizonte, is a rich trove of such lessons. Belo, a city of 2.5 million people, once had 11 percent of its population living in absolute poverty, and almost 20 percent of its children going hungry. Then in 1993, a newly elected administration declared food a right of citizenship. The officials said, in effect: If you are too poor to buy food in the market-you are no less a citizen. I am still accountable to you.

The new mayor, Patrus Ananias-now leader of the federal anti-hunger effort-began by creating a city agency, which included assembling a 20-member council of citizen, labor, business, and church representatives to advise in the design and implementation of a new food system. The city already involved regular citizens directly in allocating municipal resources-the “participatory budgeting” that started in the 1970s and has since spread across Brazil. During the first six years of Belo’s food-as-a-right policy, perhaps in response to the new emphasis on food security, the number of citizens engaging in the city’s participatory budgeting process doubled to more than 31,000.

The city agency developed dozens of innovations to assure everyone the right to food, especially by weaving together the interests of farmers and consumers. It offered local family farmers dozens of choice spots of public space on which to sell to urban consumers, essentially redistributing retailer mark-ups on produce-which often reached 100 percent-to consumers and the farmers. Farmers’ profits grew, since there was no wholesaler taking a cut. And poor people got access to fresh, healthy food.When my daughter Anna and I visited Belo Horizonte to write Hope’s Edge we approached one of these stands. A farmer in a cheerful green smock, emblazoned with “Direct from the Countryside,” grinned as she told us, “I am able to support three children from my five acres now. Since I got this contract with the city, I’ve even been able to buy a truck.”

The improved prospects of these Belo farmers were remarkable considering that, as these programs were getting underway, farmers in the country as a whole saw their incomes drop by almost half.

In addition to the farmer-run stands, the city makes good food available by offering entrepreneurs the opportunity to bid on the right to use well-trafficked plots of city land for “ABC” markets, from the Portuguese acronym for “food at low prices.” Today there are 34 such markets where the city determines a set price-about two-thirds of the market price-of about twenty healthy items, mostly from in-state farmers and chosen by store-owners. Everything else they can sell at the market price.

“For ABC sellers with the best spots, there’s another obligation attached to being able to use the city land,” a former manager within this city agency, Adriana Aranha, explained. “Every weekend they have to drive produce-laden trucks to the poor neighborhoods outside of the city center, so everyone can get good produce.”Another product of food-as-a-right thinking is three large, airy “People’s Restaurants” (Restaurante Popular), plus a few smaller venues, that daily serve 12,000 or more people using mostly locally grown food for the equivalent of less than 50 cents a meal. When Anna and I ate in one, we saw hundreds of diners-grandparents and newborns, young couples, clusters of men, mothers with toddlers. Some were in well-worn street clothes, others in uniform, still others in business suits.

“I’ve been coming here every day for five years and have gained six kilos,” beamed one elderly, energetic man in faded khakis.

“It’s silly to pay more somewhere else for lower quality food,” an athletic-looking young man in a military police uniform told us. “I’ve been eating here every day for two years. It’s a good way to save money to buy a house so I can get married,” he said with a smile.

No one has to prove they’re poor to eat in a People’s Restaurant, although about 85 percent of the diners are. The mixed clientele erases stigma and allows “food with dignity,” say those involved.Belo’s food security initiatives also include extensive community and school gardens as well as nutrition classes. Plus, money the federal government contributes toward school lunches, once spent on processed, corporate food, now buys whole food mostly from local growers.

“We’re fighting the concept that the state is a terrible, incompetent administrator,” Adriana explained. “We’re showing that the state doesn’t have to provide everything, it can facilitate. It can create channels for people to find solutions themselves.”

For instance, the city, in partnership with a local university, is working to “keep the market honest in part simply by providing information,” Adriana told us. They survey the price of 45 basic foods and household items at dozens of supermarkets, then post the results at bus stops, online, on television and radio, and in newspapers so people know where the cheapest prices are.

The shift in frame to food as a right also led the Belo hunger-fighters to look for novel solutions. In one successful experiment, egg shells, manioc leaves, and other material normally thrown away were ground and mixed into flour for school kids’ daily bread. This enriched food also goes to nursery school children, who receive three meals a day courtesy of the city.

“I knew we had so much hunger in the world. But what is so upsetting, what I didn’t know when I started this, is it’s so easy. It’s so easy to end it.”

The result of these and other related innovations?

In just a decade Belo Horizonte cut its infant death rate-widely used as evidence of hunger-by more than half, and today these initiatives benefit almost 40 percent of the city’s 2.5 million population. One six-month period in 1999 saw infant malnutrition in a sample group reduced by 50 percent. And between 1993 and 2002 Belo Horizonte was the only locality in which consumption of fruits and vegetables went up.

The cost of these efforts?

Around $10 million annually, or less than 2 percent of the city budget. That’s about a penny a day per Belo resident.

Behind this dramatic, life-saving change is what Adriana calls a “new social mentality”-the realization that “everyone in our city benefits if all of us have access to good food, so-like health care or education-quality food for all is a public good.”

The Belo experience shows that a right to food does not necessarily mean more public handouts (although in emergencies, of course, it does.) It can mean redefining the “free” in “free market” as the freedom of all to participate. It can mean, as in Belo, building citizen-government partnerships driven by values of inclusion and mutual respect.

And when imagining food as a right of citizenship, please note: No change in human nature is required! Through most of human evolution-except for the last few thousand of roughly 200,000 years-Homo sapiens lived in societies where pervasive sharing of food was the norm. As food sharers, “especially among unrelated individuals,” humans are unique, writes Michael Gurven, an authority on hunter-gatherer food transfers. Except in times of extreme privation, when some eat, all eat.

Before leaving Belo, Anna and I had time to reflect a bit with Adriana. We wondered whether she realized that her city may be one of the few in the world taking this approach-food as a right of membership in the human family. So I asked, “When you began, did you realize how important what you are doing was? How much difference it might make? How rare it is in the entire world?”

Listening to her long response in Portuguese without understanding, I tried to be patient. But when her eyes moistened, I nudged our interpreter. I wanted to know what had touched her emotions.

“I knew we had so much hunger in the world,” Adriana said. “But what is so upsetting, what I didn’t know when I started this, is it’s so easy. It’s so easy to end it.”

Adriana’s words have stayed with me. They will forever. They hold perhaps Belo’s greatest lesson: that it is easy to end hunger if we are willing to break free of limiting frames and to see with new eyes-if we trust our hard-wired fellow feeling and act, no longer as mere voters or protesters, for or against government, but as problem-solving partners with government accountable to us.

Frances Moore Lappé wrote this article as part of Food for Everyone, the Spring 2009 issue of YES! Magazine. Frances is the author of many books including Diet for a Small Planet and Get a Grip, co-founder of Food First and the Small Planet Institute, and a YES! contributing editor.The author thanks Dr. M. Jahi Chappell for his contribution to the article.

Thanks to Dave Pollard for the link!

Some weeks ago I told a good friend that I want to live in the energy or space or field where I can always ‘act in an instant’. This ‘acting in an instant’ is used by Otto Scharmer in his Theory U. It describes how you can be totally aligned in your self with your thinking, your emotions, and your actions and at the same time also be in harmony with your environment and third in resonance with the future that is emerging through you.

So, it is not following some instincts, or giving in to your longings. To me it is an alignment of your personality and your soul. In my experience it is a way of being totally alive. I guess it is like a bud of a flower, opening itself up more and more, step-by-step – a better word here is unfolding.
The difference between myself and the flower bud is that I get excited, and the flower is ‘just growing’? Or maybe the flower is always excited?

Why do I feel excited? Most likely because I wasn’t fully alive before. I was holding back a lot, I was silent, I didn’t take myself serious and many more ways of being ‘normal’ and ‘obedient’ instead of being fully alive.

Acting in an instant, it feels so good! The days and moments that it happens follow each other quicker and quicker. As if time collapses! There isn’t much scheduled in my calendar, which makes it possible to act in the now: to finish tasks right away; to take steps ‘one conference call at a time’, no big projects are figured out into detail, which then need to be accomplished, but a sensing of ‘right time, right space, right people’.

If time collapses, then space should collapse too. I can see glimpses of it in the ease of conference and Skype calls connecting people easily across the globe, in sending text messages from Belgium to Israel, but I am wondering,
if the time-space continuum really collapses can I disappear from here and appear right next to you???

Recently I attended three lectures, basically about different models of change and leadership for these times, and they all three ended with a similar kind of message.

The first one was Otto Scharmer who gave a workshop in a conference in Wurzburg. This conference was one in the series ‘Fields of Conflict, fields of Wisdom’ and this year’s theme was “I am. You are”. I value Otto’s book on Presencing and Theory U, because they gave words and a bigger framework to a lot of my intuitive knowing. I asked Otto afterwards the question of how to make sure that after going through the eye of the needle people don’t fall back into their ‘normal’ way of doing things. Basically his answer had two advices: be clear on your intention (don’t loose out of sight what you want to accomplish) and the second is to have a circle of friends to keep you in the creative spot.

The most inspiring lecture and workshop on the conference was given by Nicanor Perlas, a Philippine who has been integrating social activism and spirituality. He presented the Lemniscate Model, which uses the language of the hero’s journey of Joseph Campbell, and integrates more the ongoing iterations of the process than the U-process. One of the last points he named was that “a real living relationship and dialogue is a powerful entry point to a new sense of activism”. He named it the real ‘letting go’ and stressed the importance of a ‘a real relationship’ to be able to ‘return’ into the world after the moments or days of illumination. He named a real relationship ‘a spiritual path’, through which we can learn to hold our fluid state when we are encountered with boundaries in our self, in the other or in the organizations we live and work in.

Then a few days later I was totally amazed by a lecture by Julio Olalla, a man born in Chili, living in the US, but still showing his Spanish roots in jokes and even dance!
Fascinating enough he used the same language from Joseph Campbell! (The same book named in twice in three days time, I understand it as a sign to search for the book, somewhere on my shelves, and read it with the eyes I have now). The main point of this lecture was that emotional learning is possible and needed. He gave beautiful descriptions of the core qualities of different emotions: sadness, gratitude, passion, trust, tenderness… and stressed the importance of working with the body. He then pointed out that for ‘leap’ learning we need to gather in a ’sacred place’, which was named in former times “they sealed the temple”. In this space of care and trust the learning happens through speaking about your demons and emotions and when you are really listened to.

Real learning happens in real conversations, and conversations are as old as humanity.

Leadership in these complex times seems about providing a safe space where our humanness, in all its aspects, in its relational essence can thrive again. Whatever map we use, it seems to come down to “turn to one another”.

What happened on our second afternoon?
Somehow we started with a question about what we had learned in the morning; with the intention to harvest our wisdom,
suddenly almost all women were sitting and laying in one ’sister-heap’

a physical, in-the-moment acknowledging of how important physical touch and physical wellness is,
how important it is to have a connection with Nature..
how important it is to take the time to slow down. How so many times we forget to Be this Body!

I invited every woman to connect with their vagina, this place that holds potential, holds growth and unfoldment, until it, through birthing, manifests in the world. The feminine knowing – different with the mental knowing – goes through and happens in the body, and my sense is that the vagina is important in this regard. It seems to be a challenge for us Western educated women to trust in this inner knowing and speak and act from there before it is processed through our minds. Because that is how we have learned to speak; from our minds. But through our physical bodies, and this applies of course also for men, we connect not only with our heart qualities, but also with Source, this vast container of huge potential. And the question is how we can speak from that place inside, from the silence, before there are concepts in our heads?
I don’t remember how we arrived at talking about the anger inside, and the gift of power it holds. But suddenly everybody was off their chair or cushion, we followed our bodies, supported by music and each other, and expressed anger and power in many forms: with body, movement and voice. It surely was an intense, wild party! The sheer joy of being alive in this body!!!

We came back to our circle again,
the wave of energy had come down,
we were centered…
hardly any need for the talking piece to slow down the conversation; as we would take natural turns in the conversation.

Are we holding back our power out of fear? Which fear is it? To prevent what? Are we asking for permission? Or can we own our power and inform others how it is for us and how we will do it?

You can read more about this day on Helen’s blog.

“We are the system
- the system is not outside ourselves -
it is our own broken relationships that need to heal
- my relationship to myself, to life – to this earth – to the others – to the world -
that is how systemic shifts happen.

I am the need in the world – we are the system – we are the solution.
Meaningful conversations and real learning space heal our relationships.

We are invited to enter living from the heart….
From disrespect to respect,
from I know better to curiousity,
from judging to understanding each other,
from fear to love.
This is what we need to host now between us,
this is part of the Work of anyone who wants to help the world at this time.”
Collective insight during Art of Hosting training in Brazil, December 2007.

In March ‘08 there will be another Art of Hosting training in Belgium, to which you are invited! Look at the website for invitation and registration form.

Judy and I arrived today at noon at Angels Rest; a beautiful place with a beautiful name. You can feel, sense and see the care that has been used to create this place. We have our gathering in a huge space, which was probably a barn in former years. There is a very big window facing south-east with a splendid view.

I was amased by the richness and the depth of what was said in our first circle. The introduction was really minimal: half hour of movement and dance to become present in our bodies; followed by a welcome word and a little introduction into the gathering and about circle practice.

In this first afternoon we also shared the questions we all brought to the circle. Here they are as an example of the richness of the field that was gathered:

How can we deepen our sense of collectivity and honor difference?

How do we hang out in messiness and let it be OK?

What is the omnicentric leadership? How can we do that?

How can we be with wholeness, let go of control?

How can we be consciously in the world with the future emerging through us?

How can we let life happen and not be in the way?

What are the deep assumptions that we hold about ownership?

What is feminine warriorship?

How can we integrate the life enriching energies that lie in both ownership/entrepreneurial ventures and community initiatives?
Such a richness, competence and passion is gathered here!

Do we really see that? Are we conscious about what this could create? I truly doubt it… but I trust life and I fully trust the process. I think some magic will happen.

Part of the magic are three crystal bowls, brought by different participants, which make the most amazing, resonant sounds… I wish you could hear them…

All photos here.

It has been a long time since I did some blogging… but here I am again. I’m sitting here in the Boston area, in a newly painted home, some boxes still unpacked… sunrays falling through the autumn leaves outside… It is good living here, being hosted by my friend Judy, with whom I will facilitate the workshop or gathering ‘Women Moving the Edge’ from tomorrow on.

We took our time over the last two days to settle in into this emergent work. There aren’t a lot of exercices or theories to be prepared, it is more a way of getting into the right ’space’, sensing what is the deeper purpose and intention; getting aligned between the two of us; sensing into this particular group of participants.

I love to do this kind of work; although it is hardly ‘work’ for me. It is more like a way of living, of being in the world: living a life ‘on the edge’. You might be wondering what that is… There are many entry points to start some explanation about it, and I am sure it will never be linear.

One element is living with an open mind, an intention to be constantly in learning, to enjoy the moments that I become aware that my thinking was limited, was stuck ‘in a box’, to constantly live with and in questions that really matter.

Another element is living with an open heart. Many might say that they do that also – I don’t doubt that – but for me it means that I try to overcome my sense of seperatedness. I am not a defined person that can live on its own. I exist – or: I come into being – in the ’space in-between’, between you and me; between the trees and me; between the house and me… our language feels too small here, too limited as it uses ‘nouns’ who then can ‘do’ something, but it doesn’t give us a language for expressing the mutuality, the becoming that is happening all moments… Wouldn’t it be great to have this language where threes are named by the sound they make as the wind moves its leaves?

Living on the edge means also to be open to ‘the greater will’, to live your unique gift, to speak the right words on the right time and otherwise to be silent; to live as if always ready to die – no actions or words left for later.

This is more or less what we will try to accomplish in three days with 9 women who don’t know each other beforehand. Wondering how it will be different than the same kind of gathering we had earlier this year in Belgium. My hunch is that the listening, the openess to the subtle realities will be a little more difficult; but maybe that is my prejudice…

Why women? Not from a feminist perspective, but to add some deeper awarenesss to our feminine gifts that are so needed in our world. I want to go to the heart, the essence of being feminine. The better we understand, we ‘get it’, the easier to bring it into the outside world. I think that is my gift to bring to the world…

“I want people to sail with me through this puzzling and frightening world. I expect to fail at moments on this journey, to get lost–how could I not? And I expect that you too will fail. Even our voyage is cyclical–we can’t help but move from old to new to old. We will vacillate, one day doing something bold and different, excited over the progress, the next day, back to old behaviors, confused about how to proceed. We need to expect that we will wander off course and not make straight progress to our destination. To stay the course, we need patience, compassion, and forgiveness. We need to require this of one another. It will help us be bolder explorers. It might keep us from going mad.”

One paragraph out of an article written by Margaret Wheatley.

“Dear Friends,

This is the time for the emergence of a new feminine archetype. I call it the “feminine cocreator.” As we have fewer children and live longer lives, as the world heads into its “crisis of birth” of a new humanity, this feminine cocreator is arising. We are giving birth to the authentic feminine self and our work in the world because it is necessary for the survival and thriving of our very species.”

This is the first paragraph of an email send out by Barbara Max Hubbard (visionary, futurist, author) to announce the Women’s Wisdom Conference: Touching Greatness, Igniting Purpose and Passion, and also the book The Power of Yin.

Just now – today – when I want to announce the second Women Moving the Edge gathering, which I host and organise with Judy Wallace from the US. This is the first paragraph from our invitation:

“A purposeful gathering of conscious women who will:
• explore and move the edge of what it means to know, sense, and be our emergent collective future potential
• hold, embrace, and birth the unfolding wholeness together
• and in this process of discovery co-create new grooves in consciousness beyond our individual and collective edge

In this gathering we will not only explore the edge, we will be it, we will do it. Our world requires of us the courage to open, to engage, to inquire, to suspend, and to explore beyond what we think we know. Together we will co-create and be the vessel to awaken the inter-subjective “We”, the Being who comes alive through all of us together, who awaits our invitation to bring collective leadership into the world.”Although they are both about The Power of Yin, the difference is that the first format is about ‘Presenters’ and the second one is about ‘Participants’…

Regular users know that I am involved with The Art of Hosting, be it the art in itself or its community. It is the art of designing and facilitating meaningful conversations in whatever community – school – organisation they ask for it or are willing to engage with each other in ‘a road less travelled’.

Recently Ravi Tangri posted an interesting conversation on YouTube (in three parts) in which Phil Cass and Toke Møller tell the story of how these meaningful conversations came into being in the health care system in Columbus Ohio. It is really an amazing story and a very good example for other places and other areas of life.

In Columbus, Ohio, the question started around how to build an affordable and sustainable health care system in their region. Some time later they were asking themselves: What is a health care system for? and recently they had conversations about What is Health? I am in awe for Phill and all the others who are breaking new ground with something as simple as deep conversations…

Please take a look here. As I mentioned before, the whole story is in three episodes.

And Ravi did more! He looked around all over YouTube and gathered all video’s related to meaningful conversations. If you are interested, here is more!