O.A.T.H.

I joined this site because of a link to a short video of Paul Hawken sent to me by a friend working for two years at Rhode Island School of Design and subsequently reading Blessed Unrest which resonated very deeply with me.

I am a founder member of World Family  - our motto is "We are committed agents of global change".

WORLD FAMILY - It began with a visit to Brighton UK by Dr. Makanjuola Olaseinde Arigbede (Seinde) autumn 2007 focussed on Food Sovereignty and working towards a Global Youth Festival which happened in December 2008 at Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife, South West Nigeria. There will be one every year. 3 members of World Family Brighton attended and we were greatly honoured by the students and smallholder farmers and uplifted by their commitment and intelligent self-advocacy around Food Sovereignty and rebuilding smallholder farming across Nigeria (initially) and the rest of the Continent, ultimately the world. We met and bonded with our brother Joshuah Konkankoh of BetterWorld Cameroon at the Festival.

World Family has since extended to include other partners. This is a list of organisations we are working with:

• United Small and Medium Scale Farmers' Associations of Nigeria (USMEFAN)
• Bundung Community Empowerment Project (BCEP) The Gambia
• Better World Cameroon (BWC)
• Eco-Shiva

The idea of celebrating indigenous cultures is very much a part of all our projects and the elements of Music, Theatre, Dance, The Theatre of the Oppressed (Agusto Boal) and so on run through and will develop with many of our partners.

USMEFAN - The origins of World Family as described above. Seinde has been working with smallholder farmers for over 32 years, as well as managing his own family farm. He started life as a medical doctor and Neuroscientist, extending his academic career as a post-doctoral fellow of UCLA. His charismatic and imaginative style isresponsible for the spread of farmers' movements in Nigeria and 3 to 4 years ago for the setting up of a program at OAU which challenged 10 students to step up and volunteer for a pilot project to work a farm on campus. 120 students volunteered, more than could be accommodated to work on available land, so the Vice-Chancellor of OAU kindly arranged for the University to donate sufficient land. Last year they had a bumper harvest of maize, but more importantly Seinde has succeeded in mobilising the youth to take up the challenge of making a profitable career out of sustainable smallhoilder farming.

http://worldfamily.ning.com/

http://myworldfamily.org/default.aspx

BCEP - Initiated by a friend in Brighton the project is a response to the high unemployment, particularly among young people, in The Gambia. A small group of activists is planning the launch and opening of a Community Centre and offices in Bundung and nearby Mandinering. It will be fronted by a solar powered internet cafe to help cover running costs and offer workshop facilities to local tradespeople in such areas as the production of handmade batiqs, sewing, motor mechanics, plumbers, carpenters etc. In return for the use of facilities skilled members of the community will offer training to the young and unskilled so that they can find or make their own employment. Thus the project will be self-sustaining and will offer a blueprint for reproduction in other places.

Website under design - link in a couple of weeks

BWC - Better World Cameroon is a home grown initiative which has been involved in building a blueprint for the future of Youth Development in Cameroon since 1996. It is centred around the Ndanifor Permaculture Youth Community Garden in the city of Yaounde training young people in bio-diversity conservation and natural resource management.There are various micro-projects being planned, and at their heart is a dual-purpose of providing self-employment opportunities for youg people by reconnecting youth to the land and their culture as a source of livelihood. A relationship is now being built with USMEFAN as they share very similar goals and aspirations. Such projects in Africa fly in the face of the traditional wisdom which is often expressed on the continent as "If your father is a doctor he will want you to be a doctor; if your father is a lawyer he will want you to be a lawyer; if your father is a farmer, he will not want you to be a farmer".

 ECO-SHIVA - Eco-Shiva arose as a collaboration between a member of World Family, Paul Chi and a businessman, community activist and visionary Gurupreet. In 1984 he bought about 10 acres of land in the Shivalik Hills, India, as a retreat for himself and friends. A Sikh profoundly inspired by Guru Nanak, Gurupreet developed relationships with local farmers and their extended families, struggling to preserve traditional Indian values and a lifestyle in harmony with nature.

However, social, economic and “developmental” pressures have been destroying the livelihoods of smallholder farmers and artisans, poisoning air, water and environment as in so many parts of India.

Gurupreet was saddened to see the poverty and ill-health, made efforts to safeguard their water supply and has been supporting about 25 villages in many ways for about 20 years. He believes that the concept of the Eco-Village holds the key to restoring and protecting natural resources and giving the local hillside communities the respect and support they deserve. In 2008 he introduced his ideas to Paul Chi in Brighton, and Eco Shiva was born.

The project is in a developing stage at the moment, and there is much work to be done to restore the long term health of many of the local people, particularly women, by improving their diet, and helping them identify causes and solutions. The website which offers more information week by week is under construction as this is being written and projects will include the growing and supplying of vegetables without any fossil fuel inputs (including transport by buffalo and bicycle rickshaw to the nearest city) as well as the marketing through this portal of hand-made products and artefacts to support the local economy.

OTHER ACTIVITIES

• I have been an amateur broadcaster on local radio, and shortly hope to find the time to join colleagues on the internet with Brighton and Hove Community Radio. In addition to co-hosting a daily local community magazine program, light-hearted but supportive of excluded minorities, I researched, produced and presented Vision Shack, inspired by all the "good stuff" that I knew was going on in the world but was never noticed by the mass media. There were 10 monthly programs on issues that belong in the sphere of Wiser Earth and Blessed Unrest. The link will take you to an archive of these 10 shows and some of the lighter programming as well.http://visionshack.ning.com/

• In Brighton and Hove I am a Tenant Representative in Council Housing, and Vice-Chair of the Sheltered Housing Action Group representing the needs of vulnerable older people. This has taken much of my time and energy over the last 6 months, but together with my Chair and executive we have achieved a great deal and are breaking new ground in people power, through making the democratic processes of tenant participation REAL not just aspirational box-ticking. This work will probably be an intensive engagement for the next 6 months to a year to ensure a secure and dignified future for the most vulnerable elderly.

• I am also an amateur Jazz/Blues/Ethnic/Fusion Flautist, and am developing my writing skills as part of my arsenal for effecting change.
  I have been more concerned with personal development than empire building in my life and therefore am coming late to the global party, just a few years, but the foundations that were so long in building are an invaluable platform for effective action now.

THAT WHICH IS TO COME

Apart from the possibility of new partners and projects within World Family and the extension of those projects into possible partnerships with funding bodies and NGOs working in the Food Sovereignty field (we are associated with the UK Food Group which has about 35-40 NGO members), there are various projects which are in part personal but also of benefit to others that will be developing.

I am participating in an Advanced Consensus Facilitation Course locally allied to a Core Relationships Skills Course. I am not certain exactly why I am doing this but the standards of human appreciation and the quality of dealings are such that the day long seminars are a refreshing escape from the polluting hedonism that plagues the City of Brighton and Hove, which can lie heavily on the psyche of the sensitive and evolving human.

On the "back burner" as they say I have a project of my own called Dragonfly which represents the practical applications of over 40 years as a seeker of truth, by which I mean a dissatisfaction with what the cultures I was and am exposed to made available - precious little in our Norther/Western "Developed" World.

As I grow older and gain experience and wisdom I appreciate that this has been a background to my life, not always consciously, since my birth in 1946, and for those who can stomach the idea, beyond. I say that because I am too grown up now to expect everyone to share my personal convictions. I have studied and taught in what is crudely labelled esoteric knowledge, involving personal, human and sel-development, and Dragonfly will be the distillation of all that is practically applicable to enhance and empower the lives of others as well as my own by re-engaging in that order of work.

That which is to come also has a special futuristic meaning for me. I believe that the human is engaged in a logarithmically accelerating process of change, development and preparation for a new Universal Engagement which I do not believe is as yet fully defined, an emergent form and structure to life on Planet Earth which will mean a return to a properly harmonious and symbiotic relationship between the Human and the Planet, the Human and the Universe and with intelligence we know little of but have sensed throughout the ages.