Pari Publishing

Reviews

Inspire, Issue 21

http://ebbf.org/718.html

Why

Why did 132 of Zimbabwe’s 140 clothing factories close down?
Why is a ramp for a bridge in the Guatemala jungle located a mile away from the river it is supposed to span?
Why is Voluntary Service Overseas asking young people not to volunteer?
Why did a village in Zambia become dependent on alcohol and transistor radios?
Answer: Because people really want to help.

How

How did a man walking down a road transform an inner city?
How did a man sitting in a church free thousands of political prisoners?
How did a woman sitting on a bus change a country?

To find the answers read Gentle Action: Bringing Creative Change to a Turbulent World, the book that provides creative alternatives to society's dependence on quick-fix solutions
How can we build a kinder world for our families, our businesses, our society and ourselves?

Gentle Action explores ways in which we can exercise more effective, creative and noninvasive action from the local to the international level. The book is packed with examples of ways in which individuals and groups have totally transformed economies, societies and situations by means of gentle and creative actions. It also highlights those far-too-many cases in which well-meaning attempts to help or to provide aid have gone disastrously wrong; wrong because the organizations involved were over rigid, failed to understand the complexities involved and operated from “outside the system”.

An invaluable resource for everyone from CEOs, policy makers, community leaders, opinion makers, aid organizations, business groups, consultants and politicians as well as parents and indeed anyone who is trying to make a difference.

The Pop!Tech Blog

http://www.poptech.org/blog/index.php/archives/1863

The recent book Gentle Action: Bringing Creative Change to a Turbulent World argues that smaller, community-generated interventions — or “gentle actions” — should be considered before dramatic, top-down programs. The author, F. David Peat, is a physicist and a prolific writer on science and the human condition. He is the founder of the Pari Center for New Learning, housed under the sloping rooftops of Pari, a medieval town in Italy.

Peat's examples of gentle action range from Kiva.org-style online campaigns, which connect donors directly with beneficiaries, to spontaneous offline community efforts to raise trust and generate goodwill among neighbors. He argues that the aggregate of many of these gentle actions working in concert can have a greater impact than a handful of grandiose world-changing projects backed by influential stakeholders. In fact, the author implies that many small actions can help to undo the harmful consequences of massive and poorly-conceived community development projects.

Peat encourages us all to be more reflective, arguing that people and institutions should think deeply about the inherent limitations and uncertain consequences of any effort to improve a community. He makes the case for individuals and institutions to hold back quick judgment on what it takes to effect positive social change, contending that philanthropists and international organizations should harness the creativity and assets inherent in the communities they wish to serve.

For instance, the author cites a disastrous do-gooder project during the 1950s on the part of the British colonial regime. Officials stocked Lake Victoria in East Africa with the high-protein but difficult-to-fish Lake Perch species. The foreign presence of the species threw the delicate marine ecosystem into a tailspin, transforming the region into a polluted commercial fishery at the expense of traditional ways of life.

“Gentle Action is not some fancy, idealistic dream but a highly practical proposal,” Peat writes. I couldn't agree more, but I'm not sure that the author's call for humility alone will convince stuck-the-mud institutions that their perceived knack for choosing the right course of action on any given issue is part of the problem.