Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Imagine this - transforming the untransformable

Image from video Our Community, Our Vision

Last blog was about cohousing as a way out of a Wire-esque future. Here's another.

I love winning stories, especially in places with special challenges. Winning stories have power; cynics are exposed with winners under their nose.

Wins in Philadelphia have appeared here previously in the Semillia arts initiative and the city's vibrant South Street.

Eastern north Philadelphia however has special challenges. At a policing conference last week I spoke to a participant from a 2010 SafeGrowth training. Sarah Sturtevant is a talented member of Philadelphia's LISC team and shared some wonderful stories with me.

One was about a redeveloped Rainbow de Colores park. See Sarah's blog HERE.

Kids playing in a transformed park

A few other wins are described HERE.

Then I came upon a great video of their visioning sessions. Says one person in the video: "When you build a plan to fix problems you might be wildly successful and fix all the problems, but still not create a good community."

How true.

The video Our Community, Our Vision.



Thanks Sarah to you, your fellow LISCers, and especially those community members and local organizations committed to wins. You all remind me of another Sarah I wrote about a few years ago. She too was remarkable.

Thanks for your inspiration.

4 comments:

  1. tod schneiderOctober 21, 2011

    Great video. The emphasis on what we do want, instead of what we don't, can make a huge difference in outcomes.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousOctober 24, 2011

    Hello!

I just want to thank you for your wonderful blog safe-growth.blogspot.com.



    I read the post "Imagine this - transforming the untransformable" and then I spent another hour on your blog by reading your posts with pleasure :) Every article is interesting and easy to read. I really like the "Avoiding a Wire-esque nightmare - Part 2".



    I work for Jooble. We aggregate job adverts around the world.

I am not really sure if the link to our website in United States - jooble-us.com, will be appropriate for your blog, but if you believe it will and it is possible to add it, I would be really grateful to you!

    Serge Lavange

    ReplyDelete
  3. GSavilleOctober 24, 2011

    Thanks very much, Serge, for your kind comments. Much thanks.

    I am publishing your request as I get many just like it every week. I respect folks trying to make a living by doing the kind of work you do and i appreciate how difficult it is to get links on a very large internet.

    Unfortunately my policy on SafeGrowth is not to advertise or link to commercial sites unless they are directly relevant to the content of the blog itself.

    Thanks again for your comments and good luck in your work.

    ReplyDelete
  4. UnknownApril 10, 2014

    I think that it is awesome that we are trying to make improvements on society. I just hope that we can help everyone around the country to have a better living situation. I also think that we should focus more on improving our county and then help others when we are on our own feet.

    Jason|http://www.mhmhc.com/home-care-hourly/

    ReplyDelete

Please add comments to SafeGrowth. I will post everyone except posts with abusive, off-topic, or offensive language; any discriminatory, racist, sexist or homophopic slurs; thread spamming; or ad hominem attacks.

If your comment does not appear in a day due to blogspot problems send it to safegrowth.office@gmail.com and we'll post direct.