THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE
A Tapestry of Faith Program for Adults
WORKSHOP 7: IMAGINING A TRANSFORMED WORLD
BY PATRICIA HALL INFANTE AND DAVID H. MESSNER; DEVELOPMENTAL EDITOR: GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL
© Copyright 2013 Unitarian Universalist Association.
Published to the Web on 9/30/2014 12:07:32 AM PST.
This program and additional resources are available on the UUA.org web site at
www.uua.org/religiouseducation/curricula/tapestryfaith.
WORKSHOP OVERVIEW
INTRODUCTION
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. — Margaret Mead
This workshop explores innovative models for economic relationships. We all know that material deprivation and economic inequality persist, even in a world of abundance. This workshop invites participants to think of persistent inequality and deprivation not as a failure of human goodness or commitment, but rather as a call for greater imagination and willingness to enact new ways to connect people in meaningful and just economic relationships across social and geographic boundaries. Participants reflect on individual and collective economic deprivation through an understanding of need and interdependence, thereby opening the door to creative individual and collective economic solutions. Hopeful stories highlight economic systems and models serving people and communities better than have our inherited systems and models.
Three creative economic models are presented in this workshop: Microfinance (Activity 3), Resilience Circles (Activity 4), and Crowd-funding (Alternate Activity 1). In a 90-minute workshop you can explore two of the three. Read the entire workshop in advance and decide whether to substitute Alternate Activity 1 for Activity 3 or Activity 4, depending on the needs and interests of participants.
Review the Accessibility guidelines in the program Introduction under Integrating All Participants.
GOALS
This workshop will:
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Participants will:
WORKSHOP-AT-A-GLANCE
Activity | Minutes |
Opening | 10 |
Activity 1: Our Economic System: How Are We Left Wanting? | 15 |
Activity 2: Understanding Financial Interdependencies and Complexity | 20 |
Activity 3: The Microfinance Revolution | 20 |
Activity 4: Resilience Circles | 20 |
Faith in Action: A Crowd-funding Experiment | |
Closing | 5 |
Alternate Activity 1: The Crowd-funding Movement | 25 |
SPIRITUAL PREPARATION
Set aside a time to reflect on economic interdependencies in your life and community. Consider how your livelihood is connected to other people and institutions in your community and in the wider world:
As you reflect, you may wish to review the work you did earlier in your financial autobiography.
Share your reflections with two or three other people, and ask them to share a little about how they understand their own economic dependencies. With them, imagine new and creative economic relationships that might make a difference in each of your lives and in the lives of others in your community or the wider world. Carry this receptive and imaginative spirit into your leadership of the workshop.
WORKSHOP PLAN
OPENING (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Sound the chime and invite participants into quiet reflection as you prepare to enter into a time of centering and sharing. Invite a volunteer to light the chalice as you share these words:
We light this chalice in the spirit of imagination that calls us together,
for the commitment to become collaborators together,
and in the hope that we may be sensitive and courageous
in the journey we extend farther today.
Go around the circle, passing the talking stick if you have chosen to use one. Invite each participant to say their name and check in by sharing something they've witnessed since the last session that made them feel inspired or hopeful about the power of money to make a difference in people's lives.
Sound the chime to signal the end of the centering time.
ACTIVITY 1: OUR ECONOMIC SYSTEM: HOW ARE WE LEFT WANTING? (15 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Invite participants to reflect on economic inequality they witness or experience in their daily lives. Offer two or three minutes for silent reflection on these questions:
After two or three minutes, invite participants to briefly share examples of economic injustice or economic constraint that holds people back. You might offer an example yourself and then go around the circle, writing responses on newsprint. Remind participants that, for this and all other sharing, they may pass if they so choose.
Once you have recorded a good number of examples on newsprint, ask participants to consider the questions below, one at a time. Elicit several responses for each question and document the responses to each question with a different color marker, on the newsprint, before moving on.
ACTIVITY 2: UNDERSTANDING FINANCIAL INTERDEPENDENCIES AND COMPLEXITY (20 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Say:
This activity explores how apparently independent human and economic phenomena in communities are actually connected. We will see how a complex, interdependent system can be resistant to fixes that focus on just one aspect of a problem.
Share the contents of Leader Resource 1, Seeking Out Root Causes. Ask participants if the web of interdependencies described in the example resonate with their own experiences in their communities or in social justice initiatives in which they have been involved. Allow five minutes for sharing of experiences and observations.
Distribute Handout 1, The Southside Neighborhood Case and ask participants to read it. Then, brainstorm a list of the economic needs and constraints in the case study and capture them on the newsprint sheet you have posted. Ask, "Which issues are connected, and how?" Guide the group to name direct and indirect causes, influencing factors, or related issues. As each connection is named, draw a connecting line. You may also wish to record the type of relationship (direct or indirect cause, influencing factor, related issue, and so on).
Then, ask the group to be the policy makers. Ask, "Seeing the whole system, where and how would you intervene to have the most effect?" After three or four people have responded, say:
We're going to look at a couple of models which intervene in an economic system loaded with needs and constraints by empowering individuals and groups to change their economic equation.
ACTIVITY 3: THE MICROFINANCE REVOLUTION (20 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Explain that Muhammad Yunus originated the concept of microfinance or microcredit. Show the first 2:21 minutes of the video and the segment from 5:23-8:44.
Lead a discussion using some or all of these questions:
ACTIVITY 4: RESILIENCE CIRCLES (20 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Say:
In this activity we will learn about and practice with the idea of "resilience circles." In this economic model, people work together in small, covenanted groups to provide mutual economic support.
Explain that resilience circles are ongoing community groups whose members respond creatively together to economic adversity through learning, mutual aid, and social action. Distribute Handout 2, Resilience Circles and ask participants to read it. Invite questions or comments. Ask if any participants have had a similar (formal or informal) support group experience. If so, invite them to share something about their experiences.
Invite participants to imagine that they are a newly convened resilience circle. Their assignment is to generate together ways to serve their mission. What learning, mutual aid, and social action projects could your group do in the near future? Encourage participants to make the role play as real as possible. For example, what skills or services could be shared that are actually needed and then available within the group. Ask the group to try to agree on at least one actionable "real" item in each area (learning, mutual aid, social action). Offer to serve as the scribe while the group generates and evaluates ideas together. Allow ten minutes for the role play.
Then, invite reflections on the experience. Ask participants what felt encouraging, difficult, surprising. Then ask:
CLOSING (5 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Distribute Taking It Home. Invite everyone to form a circle and join hands. Ask participants to reflect quietly for a moment and then share a word or phrase that describes one insight or take-away from this workshop. Distribute copies of from Singing the Journey and lead the group to Hymn 1017, "Building a New Way." Extinguish the chalice.
FAITH IN ACTION: A CROWD-FUNDING EXPERIMENT
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Invite participants to experiment with alternative funding of a congregational or group social justice initiative. Introduce information you have gathered about recent social justice project ideas that have not been realized due to financial constraints.
Examine the project ideas together, using these questions:
Engage the group with other congregational or group leaders to agree on a project that offers good possibilities for crowd-funding. Then, make a plan to launch a crowd-funding initiative, including a project budget, description, and implementation tasks. Present your plan to the appropriate congregational or group leaders for support and/or approval. Divide responsibilities for fundraising, communication, and project implementation once funds are raised among the participants and others who wish to be involved.
After all preparations are made, launch the proposal on your selected crowd-funding site!
LEADER REFLECTION AND PLANNING
Make a time for reflection and discussion with your co-facilitator after the conclusion of the workshop. Consider these questions:
TAKING IT HOME
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. — Margaret Mead
In this workshop we began to imagine how people and systems can work more creatively and effectively together to serve the well-being of a greater number of people and communities. Imagination begins on a foundation of attentiveness. Make a practice of noticing the places in your daily life where people and economic systems are working in a creative way, stretching beyond "business as usual." Even more importantly, attend to the places where, with a little imagination and more generous effort, our economic relationships and systems could work better.
Begin with a newspaper, news website or blog, or television or radio news. Each day for a week, mark, clip, make note, or otherwise save the stories which show creative economic relationships. For example, is Community Supported Agriculture in the news? It is a model for creative economic relationships between farmers and customers. Reflect on opportunities in your own primarily relationships and interactions to engage different economic exchanges and structures. Identify experiences or news items that suggest unexplored opportunities for creative thinking. Could you and your faith community support innovations which better serve their partners and communities?
After a week of careful attentiveness, find a conversation partner with whom to share findings, observations, and possibilities for future action. Involve family members and/or friends in exploring new ways to fashion economic relationships.
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 1: THE CROWD-FUNDING MOVEMENT (25 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Explain the phenomenon of crowd-funding. You might say:
Crowd-funding is the process by which large, often widely dispersed communities can quickly come together to contribute resources to projects. Widespread Internet access and a growing array of web-based project-donor clearinghouses have made this approach possible and increasingly successful and popular.
Ask if participants are familiar with crowd-sourced projects or would like to share a personal experience. Then, distribute Handout 3 and invite participants to read the UU World blog post.
Show the group the Faithify website and invite comments, observations, and questions. Encourage those with knowledge of crowd-funding to answer questions as they are able. Visit another crowd-funding website and show projects in various stages of fundraising. Lead a discussion, using these questions:
You may wish to use the final question as a bridge to the Faith in Action Activity for this workshop.
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 7:
HANDOUT 1: THE SOUTHSIDE NEIGHBORHOOD CASE
The setting is a neighborhood on the south side of a major American city. The average household income is nearly $100,000 per year. However, nearly one-third of the population lives on less than $25,000 annually, approximately the same percentage that lives below the poverty line.
The neighborhood is sharply divided into sections along lines of race and socio-economic status. It is home to numerous renowned historic sites, though tourism levels are far below sites in other parts of the city.
The neighborhood houses a major national university with more than 15,000 students and teachers. Few members of the university community are originally from the surrounding neighborhood. While many live in the neighborhood while they are in school, few stay following graduation. Many members of the faculty choose to live outside of the area.
Students at the elementary schools perform well below the state average on standardized tests and several schools may soon be closed due to poor performance. When this happens, children will be transported by bus to other neighborhood schools.
Manufacturing, which provided many jobs in the early and middle years of the 20th century, has declined dramatically. Large areas of industrial land and buildings remain unoccupied and available for redevelopment.
Large-scale public housing projects occupy a significant portion of land but have become notorious dangerous and undesirable places to live. Calls to raze these developments are increasing.
Rates of street crime, already high, are rising. In one recent weekend, 200 people were injured or killed in gun violence in the city, representing some of the hundreds of deaths in each of several recent years attributed to gun violence. A high proportion those injuries and deaths are in this neighborhood.
The trauma center for the hospital in the neighborhood has been closed in order to consolidate city trauma services, in another neighborhood. Hundreds of new police officers have been assigned to street patrol from administrative assignments and are authorized for special overtime pay which allows them to work longer hours.
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 7:
HANDOUT 2: RESILIENCE CIRCLES
Adapted from "What Is a Resilience Circle? — An Overview" published by The Resilience Circle Network, a project of the Institute for Policy Studies Program on Inequality and the Common Good. Used with permission.
A Resilience Circle is a small group of ten to twenty people that comes together to increase personal security during these challenging times. Circles have three purposes: learning, mutual aid, and social action.
The economy is going through a deep transition, and economic security is eroding for millions of people. We're worried about our financial security and about the future we are creating for our children. Many of us aren't part of communities where we can talk openly about these challenges and fears.
In response, people are forming small "Resilience Circles" of ten to twenty people. These groups are exploring a new kind of security based in mutual aid and community support, and helping build a new kind of economy that's fair and in harmony with the earth.
Resilience Circles help us:
How It Works...
Three Components of a Circle
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 7:
HANDOUT 3: FAITHIFY AND OTHER CROWD-FUNDING MODELS
Used with permission.
Several years ago, Mass Bay-Clara Barton District Executive Rev. Sue Phillips heard our UUA’s Chief Operating Officer Rev. Harlan Limpert lift up Apple’s iTunes store as an example of the role our UUA could play in the future – providing the architecture, platform, and basic rules for the wider community to share and “sell” ideas.
Meanwhile, crowdfunding – using the internet to attract funding for commercial and nonprofit projects from countless individuals – and crowdsourcing – using the internet to engage an almost limitless number of people to share ideas and services – have become global phenomena. At the same time, Congregations & Beyond – our UUA’s initiative to lower congregational walls and recognize UU ministries outside of congregations – has captured the imagination of our movement’s most creative and entrepreneurial thinkers.
Many folks throughout our movement began dreaming of a UU crowdfunding platform, and while the project is being hosted by the Mass Bay District, Faithify is the result of lots of imagination, goodwill, and passionate excitement from a wide array of people. The Rev. Sue Phillips, District Executive for the Clara Barton and Massachusetts Bay Districts shared, "This is the future of Unitarian Universalism. This is synergy at work. We are about to launch the only denominationally funded crowd-funding platform, that we know of, in the world."
The Faithify website, currently in development, allows users to browse and follow projects, share them with their networks, and fund those they wish to support. It bridges geographic and generational boundaries by using 21st century technologies to connect passionate innovators with funders excited by the projects. The overall aim of Faithify is to ignite new ministries in new venues, formats, and communities as well as offer a place of renewal through deeper connection and impact to our faith.
Explore the Faithify (at cbd-mbd-uua.org/drupal/content/faithify) page on the Clara Barton and Mass Bay Districts website.
Explore other crowd-funding websites:
THE WI$DOM PATH: MONEY, SPIRIT, AND LIFE: WORKSHOP 7:
LEADER RESOURCE 1: SEEKING OUT ROOT CAUSES
Excerpted from "Efficient' Solutions Address Only Symptoms; Addressing Root Causes Requires Changing Power Imbalances" from the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) Social Sustainability Resource Guide, 2011. Used with permission.
There is much debate about distinguishing between symptoms and root causes. An old analogy—but with a new twist—may help. Imagine a woman is hungry. So we give her a fish. She's less hungry. But, when we leave, she's hungry again. We only dealt with a symptom. We all know the better approach, right? Teach her to fish. She can now feed herself and her family can teach others, and we've "worked ourselves out of a job." We've addressed a deeper cause: the lack of skills/knowledge needed to catch fish.
But have we gotten to root causes? Doubtful. Why didn't that woman have the necessary skills/knowledge already? Other people—men—fish in her community. Why was that woman denied the opportunity to learn this skill?
Maybe after more digging we find out that (1) fishing is considered a commercial activity in that community, not a foodstuff for community members, (2) fishing is taught in the local school, but girls are not attending, and that (3) women have no access to the lake because fishing is considered "men's work". So, we work with community members to change those informal institutional rules. Imagine, after five years, women are permitted to fish, and fish can be consumed in the household.
Have we reached down to the root causes yet? Maybe. But let's say that after some years of trying, the informal institutional rules still aren't changing. We investigate. We find out that commercial fishing is the only source of income through which government taxes can be met by community leaders. We find out that local fishers are being ripped off by middlemen. We discover that taxes are very high because they are needed by the government to pay down the loan on the dam that created the lake. We also find that income from selling fish makes up 70 percent of local dowries, customarily the responsibility of men—fathers and uncles—to provide. We also find that the water in the river is badly polluted and the fish are contaminated because a company mining gold upstream dumps tailings into the river. This story may seem complex; but it illustrates why symptom-oriented development so rarely creates lasting change. In every chapter of the story above, there is a "development project" ready to be implemented. Let's teach fishing, do gender awareness training, leadership training, marketing. Let's clean the water, do income generation, fine the mining company, lower taxes, get the lender to be more flexible. All of these symptom-oriented things are necessary but not sufficient.
Root causes are relatively untouched, however. At the heart of this complex situation is that certain actors—urban elites, probably—have the power to direct resources and opportunities, capture rents and affect others—rural communities far from the corridors of power. Within communities themselves, long-standing forms of social inequality (sometimes reinforced by customary law) may be left unchallenged. Distant decision makers can act with relative impunity. At the end of the day, the poverty and injustice in our hypothetical fishing community isn't so "local" after all: it's tied to the policies of distant governments and private sector companies.
"Root causes" refers to this interlocking system of relationships between social actors. Poverty is about power, and power is about how people relate to other people.
FIND OUT MORE
Microfinance
Resilience Circles
Crowd-funding