Breakthrough Change

A few weeks ago I was listening to Sounds About Right: Audiobooks to Help us Understand the World. It was episode 47, Breakthrough Community Change: A Guide to Creating Common Agendas that Change Everything with Paul Born.

For those who may be unfamiliar with Paul. He is the co-founder of the Tamarack Institute and amongst many other great accomplishments also founded and was the Director of Vibrant Communities, a Canadian national network of nearly 500 cities and communities ending poverty, deepening community, building youth futures and advancing climate transitions.

As I listened I was really struck by his words, enough to order a copy of the new book, which I’m about to start to read. He articulated something that I strongly believe in so well, so I’ll just use his words.

“In most of our communities there’s a lot of good work being done every day. Thousands of people helping and doing good work. And for the most part they are what I call transactional actions, they are making the lives of people in need a little bit better, and that’s a good thing. We can’t stop doing that, we don’t want to stop doing that. But we need to ask bigger questions.  In reality we have to end poverty. We have to turn around or at least adapt to climate change. The solutions that we currently have in play, they are not ending, they are maintaining. Somehow we’ve become okay with that. In Canada you cannot actually become a charity for ending poverty, you can only be a charity if you alleviate it. Everybody needs to keep doing good stuff, but you’ve got to unite at a higher level at a systemic level while you are doing the good stuff. “

He went on to say, ” Breakthrough community change is about uniting a community. Collaborating, working together. If we want large scale change we need to have a systematic process of uniting people, engaging them, mobilising them and then creating a framework in which they can work together. The only way to bring about effective change in a community is to find a way that works with the communities unique set of circumstances. A breakthrough is when we start thinking about ending poverty rather than alleviating it.”

I really, really loved the question posed, “How might we create a community in which poverty might not exist? How then would we live within and with each other?”

It’s the work locally, and it would be such a joy to collaborate with other liberators in the borough of Wigan. If this speaks to you, do connect.