The day will come when nations will be judged not by their military or economic strength, nor by the splendor of their capital cities and public buildings, but by the well-being of their people: by their levels of health, nutrition and education; by their opportunities to earn a fair reward for their labours; by their ability to participate in decisions that affect their lives; by the respect that is shown for their civil and political...
New ideas pass through three periods: It can't be done!
It probably can't be done but is not worth doing.
I knew it was a good idea all along! -- Arthur Clarke (1917 - 2008), British Futurist and Author of 2001 Space Odyssey |
A generation that acquires knowledge without ever understanding how that knowledge can benefit the community is a generation that is not learning what it means to be citizens in a democracy.
-- Elizabeth L. Hollander (1817-1885) |
We must drop the idea that change comes slowly. Today changes come fast; and we must adjust our mental habits so we can comfortably accept the idea of stopping one thing and beginning another overnight. We must discard the idea that past routines, past ways of doing things, are probably the best ways. On the contrary, we must assume there probably is a better way to do almost everything. We must stop assuming that a thing which has never been...
Its time to awaken to the fact that we don’t have a health problem, nor a social care problem, nor a youth problem, nor even a safety problem, we have a village problem. In our heart, we know the solution to each does not lie in reforming silo by silo but in organizing our silos the way people organize their lives, so that the neighbourhood becomes our primary unit of analysis and change.
– Cormac Russell |
We live in a world in which we need to share responsibility. It’s easy to say, ‘It’s not my child, not my community, not my world, not my problem.’ Then there are those who see the need and respond. I consider those people my heroes. -- Fred Rogers |
This land doesn't belong to us. This land belongs to seven generations down the road. I pray that the water that we drink, | the water that we swim in, will be there for our great great great grandchildren. As well as all over the world. I pray that the land that we walk on, the trees that we enjoy, will be there for our generations to come. These things, they all come together with health. Health of humans. Health of the animals. And health...
“Loneliness is not just something for individual Canadians to solve on their own” says Susan Pinker, psychologist and author of The Village Effect, a book about how face-to-face communication is linked to good health, longevity and happiness. “It’s a public health problem that has to be addressed in the way our cities are designed, the way our educational systems are run, the way our health care is considered and managed, and how we...
A key challenge in today’s world of constant change is to realize that traditional leadership concepts and methods, while appropriate for current projects, are often counter-productive to the kind of transformational capacity building | that will be necessary for the future vitality of communities. 21st century leadership will require more than just shifting from tasks to processes, or from linear thinking to systemic thinking. It will...
