Monday, April 20, 2015

Local, Regional, and Internationally. Resilience. The Importance of Community.

http://www.fastcoexist.com/3044933/the-power-of-human-resilience-after-major-disasters-and-the-importance-of-community


The Power Of Human Resilience After Major Disasters— And The Importance Of Community

Researchers had the unique chance to measure the "happiness" of vulnerable New Orleans residents before and after Hurricane Katrina. The results are uplifting.
Two years before Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, killing 1,800 people and destroying more than 60% of the city’s housing stock, a group of researchers embarked on what was then an average academic study designed to improve the educational performance of about 1,000 low-income parents enrolled at two community colleges in the city.
The storm disrupted the researchers' entire study but proved to have a silver lining: Their initial survey was suddenly incredibly valuable for an entirely different purpose. If the researchers, based at several universities around the country, could get in touch with everyone again, they’d have something relatively rare in social science research: A before and after comparison of how people respond to the worst and most unpredictable kinds of disasters.
The Resilience in Survivors of Katrina ("RISK") Project was born, and the researchers ended up tracking down about 70% of their initial cohort twice: one year after the disaster and again after four years. They conducted the same surveys again, also adding questions about how the hurricane had affected their lives. In the years since these surveys, the RISK project has published dozens of studies that compare the pre- and post-Katrina results on topics ranging from post-traumatic stress, child outcomes, residential mobility, and mental health.
Laurie Barr via Shutterstock
One of the intriguing studies to come out of the work was published recently in theJournal of Happiness Studies. It looked at what you’d expect: The pre- and post-disaster levels of happiness among 491 of the survey participants, all women. It honed in on how they answered the survey question, "If you were to consider your life in general these days, how happy or unhappy would you say you are?"
The results, according Rocio Calvo, an assistant professor at Boston College’s School of Social Work and the lead researcher on the happiness study, were encouraging and surprising. Even only one year after the storm, almost 89% of women remained in the "somewhat happy" or "very happy" categories, though there was a drop in happiness on average. However, by four years after the storm, almost all of the respondents had gone back to their pre-storm happiness levels. "I think individuals are more resilient than they are given credit for," she says.
This is amazing to think about. These are already vulnerable women who went through major stress because of Katrina—85% of their homes were seriously damaged and almost one-third had lost a family member or close friend. On average, they experienced at least three major stress factors during the storm, such as no medical care for themselves or a loved one or no food to eat.
There was one exception: 38 women who continued to have lower levels of happiness even four years after the storm. They were more likely to be living on their own after the storm and reported consistently lower levels of perceived support from their communities.
"Our research showed that social support, both before and after Hurricane Katrina, was the main factor associated with women's happiness," Calvo says.
Calvo, who also studies happiness in Latino immigrant communities, believes the study underlines the importance of supporting the community fabric in vulnerable populations. Social workers, she says, can’t just come in and dictate how communities should use resources, even if they mean to help. "Communities might be poor and vulnerable, but they may know better than you what works," she says.
[Top Photo: imagist via Shutterstock]

Friday, April 17, 2015

ANTI VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN ACT (AVAWA) campaign. April 2015

Wale,  I fully support anti-violence against women.  Will do my utmost to spread the world to increase the signatures.

Charles


From: Wale Ajibade [mailto:wale.ajibade@africanviews.org]
Sent: Wednesday, April 15, 2015 3:51 PM
To: charlesdsharp@blackemergmanagersassociation.org
Subject: I need your support on this. Please read

Dear brother Charles:

I hope this message finds you in good health and at ease. Allow me to inform you that we have publicly launched the ANTI VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN ACT (AVAWA) campaign. We hope you will support the Bill by signing the petition.  We also hope that you will encourage your network to sign the petition as well and support our goal to reach 1,000,000 signatures. Volume of people signing on behalf of an organization will be shared openly and merited as co-signees of the petition and recognized partners.

As you may agree, we need all the support we can get to have the Anti Violence Against Women Act (AVAWA) adopted as an imperative component of sustainable legislative strategy for peace and security in Africa. The AVAWA initiative is a non-intrusive diplomatic strategy to mitigate as well as make ending violence against women and girls a top priority for African States. AVAWA suggests that the African States’ governments honor the existing provision for women as stated in their constitutions with a comprehensive, multi-sectorial strategic national plan for reducing and ending violence against women. Adopting AVAWA may encourage countries that do not have gender sensitive legislation in their constitution to recognize the need for such inclusion.  Your endorsement will make the AVAWA annual report a legal tender of nations’ accountability act on the issue of women and human rights. Failure to make effective use of the opportunity that AVAWA presents may subject African countries to a perpetual cycle of interventionist agenda that has no real effect.

Making AVAWA a priority gives Africa a great boost on its cause for self-determination with extensive benefit from the value of advancing the status for women around the world. It will also empower the Anti Violence Against Women Associations to create a global network and set stage for the PINK Africa Summit. Detail information about AVAWA is provided to guide you through the full understanding of the detriments of Violence Against Women and the all-encompassing benefit of AVAWA at this link: http://bit.ly/AVAWA-petition

Please click here to sign the petition: http://bit.ly/support_AVAWA

Thank you,

Wale Idris Ajibade
                Executive Director, African Views Organization

Friday, March 20, 2015

EVENT: March 24, 2015. Capital Hill. NSF Modeling and predicting severe storms.

Hurricanes, tornadoes and solar eruptions can have profound effects on America's economy, public safety and well-being.

A noon lunch briefing next Tuesday at the Senate Visitor's Center on Capitol Hill, sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, will provide an overview of the current state of storm research.

In particular, panelists will discuss work to improve risk assessment and hazard preparedness in order to mitigate vulnerability to storm impacts. 

What:A briefing about severe storms
Featuring:Roger Wakimoto, assistant director for Geosciences, National Science Foundation
Jenni L. Evans, acting director, Institutes of Energy and the Environment, Penn State
Howard B. Bluestein, professor, School of Meteorology, University of Oklahoma
Harlan E. Spence, director, Institute for Study of Earth, Oceans and Space, University of New Hampshire.
Where:Senate Visitor's Center, Room 212-10
When:Tuesday, March 24, 2015, 12 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.

Lunch will be provided.

RSVP: Please contact lisajoy@nsf.gov for more information and/or to reserve a spot.
NOTE: This is a closed event and reservations are required, and must be received by 9 a.m. on Monday, March 23, 2015.
-NSF-

Thursday, March 19, 2015

Volunteer Opportunity. April 2015

CSFI is looking for 15 volunteers to help with basic tasks during the DCOI event being held in DC on April 27-28, 2015: http://www.dcoi.org.il

We need volunteers to help with the following:

Admissions
Seating/Escort if needed
Hand out Agendas
Hold Microphones - Field questions
Advance the slides for speakers (If needed)

Advantages of volunteering:

Free Conference Pass
CSFI Certificate of Appreciation
Experience working at international cyber defense event
Opportunity to support CSFI mission
Lunch included

If interested, send your resume and contact information to: contact@csfi.us

Thank you for your support!

CSFI Management

Saturday, February 28, 2015

New Economy, a call to replace transnational corporate domination with local economies, control, ownership, and self-reliance.

http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/together-with-earth/replace-the-gospel-of-money-interview-with-david-korten?utm_source=YTW&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=20150227





Replace the Gospel of Money: An Interview With David Korten

What if we measured wealth in terms of life, and how well we serve it?

Issue73_KORTEN3392hires.jpg

 

David Korten began his professional life as a professor at the Harvard Business School on a mission to lift struggling people in Third World nations out of poverty by sharing the secrets of U.S. business success. Yet, after a couple of decades in which he applied his organizational development strategies in places as far-flung as Ethiopia, Nicaragua, and the Philippines, Korten underwent a change of heart. In 1995, he wrote the bestseller When Corporations Rule the World, followed by a series of books that helped birth the movement known as the New Economy, a call to replace transnational corporate domination with local economies, control, ownership, and self-reliance.

This month, Korten, who is also the co-founder and board chair of YES!, publishes a new book challenging readers to rethink their relationship with Earth—indeed, with all creation, from the smallest quantum particle to the whole of the universe. The world needs “a new story,” he says. “If most species, including Homo sapiens, are to survive, we must recognize Earth as a living being.” Korten talked about his ongoing metamorphosis with YES! Executive Editor Dean Paton.

Dean Paton: Tell me how somebody who was an organizational management specialist, and then a new-economy thought leader, made this leap into what is as much a spiritual proposition as it is a political one—that Earth is a living organism, that we all are essentially a part of this one big life form.
“It comes back to this: Are we a part of nature? Or apart from nature?”
David Korten: It’s not that hard, actually—once you get into the living-Earth frame—to see that Earth is essentially this organization of living organisms creating and maintaining the conditions essential to life. If you’re an organizational expert, or theorist, that raises a really fascinating question: How do these millions of organisms work in concert to maintain life?
Paton: As if everything has an intelligence and everything has a purpose? How is that relevant to your new book, Change the Story, Change the Future?
Korten: The new book sets up the juxtaposition between the old “Sacred Money and Markets” story and an emerging “Sacred Life and Living Earth” story. They’re two totally different frames that lead to two totally different ways of thinking about organizing society. You either see life as a means to make money, or you see money as simply a number useful for keeping accounts in service to life, but of no value in itself. Buying into the “Sacred Money and Markets” story that money is wealth and the key to happiness locks us into indentured servitude to corporate rule.
Paton: You’re saying it’s the traditional development model, or transnational capitalism, that damages Earth as a living community, including not just humans but all life forms. Yet we all depend on money, on the market economy. Do you really think we can just stop that dependence?
Korten: We will still use money and markets, but strip away Wall Street’s control of money’s creation and allocation. There was a time in the United States when most of our financial institutions were local. Which essentially meant that local communities were able to create their own credit, or their own money, in response to their own needs. We still depended on banks, but it was a much more democratic process.
Paton: Like George Bailey’s building and loan in It’s a Wonderful Life.
“We humans live by stories.”
Korten: Exactly. If more of our money circulated in our communities rather than the Wall Street casino, it would facilitate people organizing locally to meet more of their economic needs with local resources. Control of money is the ultimate mechanism of social control in a society in which most every person depends on money for the basic means of living—food, water, shelter, heat, transportation, entertainment. This leads us into the voluntary simplicity movement: The less I’m dependent on money, the freer I am. Realize that the only legitimate purpose of the economy is to serve life, is to serve us as living beings making our living in co-productive partnership with living Earth.
Paton: How does that translate into actions? If we get a thousand people to say, “I’m a living being born of and nurtured by a living Earth,” how does that stop fracking? How does that stop the Russians from pumping all the oil out of Kazakhstan and selling it around the world?
Korten: It makes very clear that destroying the natural living systems on which our existence depends, in order to get a quick energy fix or a quick profit, is literally insane.
Paton: So if we’re all living beings “born of a living Earth,” as you say, where does that start to show up in our lives?
Korten: A big piece of it has to do with recognizing the implications of our dependence on money. This goes back to development as a process of separating people from their means of subsistence production. The more people become alienated from their self-production, the more they become dependent on money—and the more they become dependent on the people who control the creation and allocation of money.
Paton: You mean when I’m dependent, I accept fracking.
Korten: Yeah, you say, “I need that money. They’re going to pay me to frack my property.”
Paton: Do you really think Americans are going to be able to cast off the belief that money is king?
Korten: I’d say a lot of people are casting it off.
Paton: Most of us respond to a 10-dollar bill. Or a bonus at work. Or a new car.
Korten: But we respond to that because we accept the “Sacred Money and Markets” story that money is wealth, a fabrication that is literally killing us.
Paton: So you say that our choice is between working with Earth and working against her?
Korten: It comes back to this: Are we a part of nature? Or apart from nature?
Paton: Why do you insist we adopt this “Living Earth” story?
Korten: Because we humans live by stories.
Paton: And that means…?
Korten: It means that to organize as ordered societies, we need a shared framework—basic values and assumptions—so that when I relate to you, I’ve got some idea of how you’re going to respond, because we share our basic story.
Paton: Do we have a choice?
Korten: Yeah, change or die. Quite literally. You really can’t grasp the new story—as a society—and continue to live the way we live. First you begin to move toward more voluntary simplicity, which is, literally, reducing your dependence on money. You start doing more things yourself. You pay much more attention to your relationships, to the gift economy. You perhaps get a deeper sense of being part of and a contributor to a living universe evolving toward ever greater complexity, beauty, awareness, and possibility. What would that mean for society, and then what does it mean for how I live? What is my contribution to the change society needs? I have a responsibility to be part of this change—which begins by changing the story.



photo of Abby QuillenDean Paton wrote this article for Together, With Earth, the Spring 2015 issue of YES! Magazine. Dean is executive editor at YES!

Reprints and reposts: YES! Magazine encourages you to make free use of this article by taking these easy stepsCreative Commons License

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