Restoring the flow of abundance at Kufunda Village

Last week, I spent a few days at Kufunda Learning Village in Zimbabwe. Here are just a few of the many activities that were going on:

In the herb lab, Patricia and Enock are blending tincture of Artemisia with lemon juice and raw honey to help a neighbor who is suffering from chronic asthma. They will provide a month’s supply of this remedy for free. Patricia dreams of opening an herbal clinic in town where she would work four days a week so she could spend the fifth at the Kufunda clinic and keep it free.

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Walking On to Gifting: Shop of the Open Heart

It’s 9 AM on Black Friday (for those of you outside the U.S., explanation here), and I’m hiding out in my parents’ home on the North Shore of Boston. My uncle invited me to join him in bringing coffee to nearby Walmart strikers, but I can’t bear the thought of going out there long enough to accept his invitation. When did the conspicuous consumption of our culture become so crushing that some of us choose to cower in our homes?

A few weeks ago, as the holiday season was threatening to cast its glittery shadow, my Walk Out Walk On colleague Aerin Dunford and I had a conversation about how to navigate the transactional culture that dominates the six weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year’s. We asked our usual question, “What would Walk Outs do?”, which shifted our attention from what’s wrong with this time of year to what’s possible. My learning from witnessing Walk Outs is that they tend to waste very little energy in trying to transform old systems—it’s debilitating and there’s minimal return on the effort. Instead, Walk Outs turn their attention toward the future—designing and experimenting with how the world could be. Read more

What makes us believe that money is the best solution to our world’s challenges?

Last week, I received an intriguing email in response to Walk Out Walk On. A 28-year-old owner of a U.K.-based Internet marketing firm wrote this:

You have convinced me that my plan to amass wealth and give it to those in need is going to make things worse because it’s not ultimately sustainable. So as a wealthy westerner, what CAN I do to help?

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Isn’t this evidence that humans are by nature compassionate, caring and generous?

Yesterday, a friend forwarded an email that she had received from someone in Sendai, Japan. It was an intimate and moving portrait of survival there—a story no doubt many of us our hearing these days. I was particularly struck by these few lines:

 

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