Marshall Rosenberg - the creater of Non-Violent Communication (NVC) - is coming to Vancouver this weekend to do a 3 day seminar! The people from the team going (me including 8 others) have got a deal set up where we only have to pay 50% of the price so we can actually afford to go to the whole thing. Im really looking forward to it as I've come to know it through others as an extremely positive and powerful tool in conflict resolution, peacekeeping and change processes.
The first day will be focused on NVC in relation to social change. The second day focuses on interpersonal relationships (privately and professionally) and the third day puts NVC into a world perspective and looks at it's use in relation to political and religious conflicts.
I will let you know how it goes. Im very curious about it my self :-)
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Happy News
SO! The amazing thing happend and our client approved our strategy with focus on implementation and action. We did a vision process with the executives yesterday and after that had a meeting with the president and his right hand to discuss the further progress of the project. They we're very positive and supported our idea. That means that we get 4 workgroups within the themes of Energy, Materials, Food and (probably) Education. The theme of the last one is still a bit unsure as the administrative coordinater right now is working on finding the participating staff. We are hoping for approximately 4-6 participants in each group. We will then function as project leaders till we leave in May, with the intent of leaving well progressing projects behind that can easily be carried on till the goal of becoming more sustainable is reached.
Also they have asked us to come and teach our facilitation methods at a weekend course in the end of April. Apparently there is a group of members in the union that are ready to take action on climate change in their local communities and want some help developing a campaign strategy and the methods within that. It is the first time I am given the opportunity to actually teach some of the methods that I have learned to others, so I am very excited.
One of the executives have further more offered us to stay in his appartment downtown while him and his wife are away for a month in April. All he needs for us to cover is basically whatever we use of electricity, heat etc. This is an extremely good deal, especially when you know the general downtown pricing (sky-high). It is extremely nice of him and it comes at a very good time. 3 people from our team still haven't found places to live and we are living very close in our appartment. We've figured out that the 3 people can live there + there will be an extra room that maybe 2 people from our appartment can occupy. Fantalastic baby yeah!
Also they have asked us to come and teach our facilitation methods at a weekend course in the end of April. Apparently there is a group of members in the union that are ready to take action on climate change in their local communities and want some help developing a campaign strategy and the methods within that. It is the first time I am given the opportunity to actually teach some of the methods that I have learned to others, so I am very excited.
One of the executives have further more offered us to stay in his appartment downtown while him and his wife are away for a month in April. All he needs for us to cover is basically whatever we use of electricity, heat etc. This is an extremely good deal, especially when you know the general downtown pricing (sky-high). It is extremely nice of him and it comes at a very good time. 3 people from our team still haven't found places to live and we are living very close in our appartment. We've figured out that the 3 people can live there + there will be an extra room that maybe 2 people from our appartment can occupy. Fantalastic baby yeah!
Friday, March 9, 2007
The Outpost Website
By the way...if you wanna check out how the team is doing in general and read about the different projects and areas of sustanability check out our common website www.kaospilotoutpost2007.com
My client: the BCGEU
Thought it might be time to share a bit about my client project. As most of you know I am working with an organisation called the BCGEU which stands for the British Columbia Government Employees Union. What they want us to help them with is getting started with a Climate Change Action Plan, that can make all their work practices enviornmentally sustainable. We're talking everything from printing on both sides of the paper to build sustainable buildings (a very big thing overhere right now: buildings get certified and can win awards for being build environmentally sustainable). The way we go about it is to involve the diffrent levels of the organisation as much as possible to create the greatest level of ownership. We therefore started out this wednesday with doing a process for 20 of the employees pumping them for all their ideas on sustainable actions that could be taking within the organisation. Our assumption was that all the knowledge needed is already within the organisation and it just needs to be released and organised. So far this seems to hold truth. The amount and quality of the material we took home wednesday was impressive. And already today we received a forwarded mail that showed that some of the participants from the workshop have taken action by sharing their new knowledge with ALL their colleagues via the intranet. They had even made an action plan that they encouraged everyone to follow. This organisation is just so ready for implementation! It is therefore our strategy to actually focus more on implementation than recommendations for the next 6 weeks. We have made a proposal/strategy that we are going to share with the executive committee (president, directors and secretary treasurer) on wedneday at noon - i really hope they go for it! It will require quite a lot of ressources from the organisation in terms of employee time, but is definetly the thing that will bring them forward fast and effectively AND give us great projectleader experience at the same time. Exciting exciting. Will make sure to keep you updated on how things go.
Appartment - Adrienne Clarkson - Party
Ok so it's been a while. That is only because a lot of things are happening!
We came home last thursday from a great trip in Tofino. The day before i left i went on a scenic flight on the smallest water airplane i've ever seen! Me, Kathrine and Fanny (our teammanager) found this guy that did 20 min flights over the island and it was great! Got pretty (pretty, pretty) fly-sick becuase of the unsteadyness of such a small plane but the view was amazing.
On the friday after coming home we were spontanously invited to an event by a friend of the school Peter McLeoud. He really lives in Toronto but was in Vancouver as co-arranger of something called the Lincoln-Baldwin Symposium. It is a yearly event that goes on for a weekend, where prominent speakers come and give lectures within the theme of citizenship. The key speaker this year was former governor-general Adrienne Clarkson - and boy could she draw perspectives together! She spoke for about 1,5 hours on how to co-exist peacefully in a diverse society. Very interesting views that could freshen up the integration debate in Denmark a lot. The whole thing was held at this fancy hotel called the Fairmount Vancouver Hotel which is somewhat equal to...well a very fancy hotel. Gold everywhere and everyone wearing suits and evening dresses. Yeah, we didn't 100% fit in but it was a great experience, and Peter McLeoud did what he could to introduce us to the rest of the people there. cool!
From that event we went to sign the contract of the appartment we will be moving into on sunday. Together with 4 others from our team (Maja, Kathrine, Tobias og Peter) Anders we are going to live in right in the heart of the city on the 10th floor. We have 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a living room and fully equipped kitchen. Besides that there is a jaquzzi, steam bath, sauna, gym, pool room and library that we share with the rest of the building. Seems like a really nice place and will be nice to live somewher with a bit more soul than the YWCA Hotel we are at now.
Today we are arranging and having a party for all our contacts in Vancouver at our homebase on Cordova Street.We have invited around 70 people so i think it will be quite big. The idea is to let all our clients and other contacts have a chance to mingle and get to know each other and US better. The event will start of with an old first nation (=indianer) lady coming and blessing the space with burning cedar wood. After this there will be some different speeches and then just PARTY!
We came home last thursday from a great trip in Tofino. The day before i left i went on a scenic flight on the smallest water airplane i've ever seen! Me, Kathrine and Fanny (our teammanager) found this guy that did 20 min flights over the island and it was great! Got pretty (pretty, pretty) fly-sick becuase of the unsteadyness of such a small plane but the view was amazing.
On the friday after coming home we were spontanously invited to an event by a friend of the school Peter McLeoud. He really lives in Toronto but was in Vancouver as co-arranger of something called the Lincoln-Baldwin Symposium. It is a yearly event that goes on for a weekend, where prominent speakers come and give lectures within the theme of citizenship. The key speaker this year was former governor-general Adrienne Clarkson - and boy could she draw perspectives together! She spoke for about 1,5 hours on how to co-exist peacefully in a diverse society. Very interesting views that could freshen up the integration debate in Denmark a lot. The whole thing was held at this fancy hotel called the Fairmount Vancouver Hotel which is somewhat equal to...well a very fancy hotel. Gold everywhere and everyone wearing suits and evening dresses. Yeah, we didn't 100% fit in but it was a great experience, and Peter McLeoud did what he could to introduce us to the rest of the people there. cool!
From that event we went to sign the contract of the appartment we will be moving into on sunday. Together with 4 others from our team (Maja, Kathrine, Tobias og Peter) Anders we are going to live in right in the heart of the city on the 10th floor. We have 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a living room and fully equipped kitchen. Besides that there is a jaquzzi, steam bath, sauna, gym, pool room and library that we share with the rest of the building. Seems like a really nice place and will be nice to live somewher with a bit more soul than the YWCA Hotel we are at now.
Today we are arranging and having a party for all our contacts in Vancouver at our homebase on Cordova Street.We have invited around 70 people so i think it will be quite big. The idea is to let all our clients and other contacts have a chance to mingle and get to know each other and US better. The event will start of with an old first nation (=indianer) lady coming and blessing the space with burning cedar wood. After this there will be some different speeches and then just PARTY!
Monday, February 26, 2007
Tofino here we come!
Today we left for a 4 day get away to Tofino on Vancouver Island. It is a beautiful, beautiful place with amazing nature and wildlife. The oppotunities for whale and bear watching are endless, and the vast variety of birds keeps your eyes peeled to the sky. Just today we saw 3 big american eagles floating across the sky only to take a soft landing on a bank on the mountain lake. The horisont is covered in snowy, mountain peaks and contrasted by the clear blue sky. Simply majestic. Ahhhh!!! The purpose of the trip is primarily teambuilding which we all know relly means relaxing and having fun hi, hi. We are staying in the Botanical Gardens of the Island. Here they have a nice wooden cabin with room for all of us. Right now people are cooking, chilling and haning out in the common area with their books and games. Think I will join them :-))
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
49 Cordova Street
Ok so the address is actually 49 Cordova Street and not 65. Not that it REALLY matters but this gives me an opportunity to mention the homebase again. The thing is that it basically needed a helping hand when we got here. The raw material - the rooms, common space etc was great, but the condition was...well poor, AND there were no furniture. As our first mini project we got 1000$ and 2 days to make the place look great with all the utilities we needed. Just to give you a feel the place contains around 7 rooms for group work, 2 big common space areas, 2 bathrooms and a big kitchen and dining area. So 1000$ wouldn't take us long with all the furniture, paint and cleaning remedies we needed. We therefore started looking into getting stuff for free and it was actually amazing how friendly people were with giving away their stuff. We also went to the dump yard and got lots of stuff that we made into tables, bences and so forth. When the two days had passed we ended up having a very nice space for the rest of our stay. Cool. It was such a cool team effort. Everybody chipped in and worked long hours to make this thing happen. Now it looks great. Yipeee!!
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