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Phil's Blog (59)

The difference difference makes

Learning from ‘What makes us human?’

From the Introduction to ‘What makes us human?’

“(Appreciation means) that we finally stop putting people into categories and enjoy the discovery of each other’s strengths: city and slum dwellers, saints and sinners, straights and all the others, the protected and the vulnerable, natives and…

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Added by Phil on January 17, 2017 at 10:17am — 2 Comments

Appreciation

As a way of introducing people to Jean-Louis’ book ‘What makes us human?’ people are being recorded talking about their experience of SALT in their lives. For good or ill, Anu Sieberk recorded my contribution this morning. In it, I talk about how the idea of ‘Appreciation’ has altered my life. You can see it at…

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Added by Phil on January 11, 2017 at 5:30pm — No Comments

What makes us human?

Jean-Louis’ book is now out in English. The title of the book is ‘What makes us human?’ We have used this challenging question for a long time in the Constellation and it is, indeed, a fine title for the book. I don’t know if I should say this, but what I like even more is the sub-title for the book, ‘The story of a shared dream’.



The Constellation is truly the story of a shared dream. I suspect that for each of us there was a time when we saw that what the Constellation was…

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Added by Phil on January 9, 2017 at 8:12am — No Comments

SALT: T is for Trust too

As facilitators, we often talk about the consequences of applying SALT with a group. But what happens when SALT is the way of working within a group and you are part of that group? How does it feel to be part of such a group? I would like to give some personal reflections on this experience.

What happens when you deliberately support, appreciate, learn and transfer AND when you feel supported, you feel appreciated, you feel that others recognise that you have something that they can…

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Added by Phil on January 29, 2016 at 12:06pm — 2 Comments

"Social services are broken. How we can fix them."

I would like to recommend a Ted Talk by Hilary Cottam called ‘Social Services are broken. How we can fix them.’

https://www.ted.com/talks/hilary_cottam_social_services_are_broken_how_we_can_fix_them?language=en

If you don’t have 17 minutes to listen to the whole video, try the first 5 minutes.

If you don’t have 5 minutes, you can read the transcript of the…

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Added by Phil on January 22, 2016 at 8:52am — 1 Comment

SALT, the expert and the facilitator

In the Constellation, we make a distinction between the expert and the facilitator. When we are an expert, we recognise our own authority to diagnose the problem and to give a solution. When we listen and reflect, we become part of a conversation where we can support and appreciate without judgement.

In the Constellation, we do not diagnose and we do not provide a solution. We believe in the capacity of others to find their own solution to their own problem. (And therefore we must…

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Added by Phil on January 15, 2016 at 11:46am — 2 Comments

What is a Knowledge Fair? What is a Knowledge Fair?

During 2013, a small group of people worked on a project to organise the stories that appear on this site so that we can learn more effectively from the experiences of Local Response described here. These experiences sit at the heart of Knowledge Fairs. We organise the content into what we call Knowledge Assets. This note explains a little more about Knowledge Fairs and Knowledge Assets. At the end, there is a link to more material and examples. 

The idea of…

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Added by Phil on January 31, 2014 at 8:55am — 2 Comments

Dare to know: the dream of Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant is a German philosopher who died more than 200 years ago. He taught us how we should seek to live our lives and I find that what he said then is relevant for how I live my life today.

Here is the dream of Immanuel Kant. It seems to me that he is talking about Local Response. And his dream is a dream for the Constellation. I shall carry it with me into 2014.

"Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use…
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Added by Phil on December 31, 2013 at 10:46am — 4 Comments

Silent Transformation

This story comes the Global Learning Festival held in Chennai in 2012. It is told by Aniruddhan Vasudevan. You can find it and many other stories told at the Learning Festival at https://sites.google.com/a/communitylifecompetence.org/the-global-learning-festival/home…

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Added by Phil on December 20, 2013 at 9:00am — No Comments

The power of the learning cycle

This was told to me by Ms. Charkaporn Pandontong of Ta Wang Tan in Ta Tum Sub-district, Pa Sang District, Lamphun, Thailand:



"When we did the Self Assessment 2 years ago, we found that for practices 1 and 3 (the first one about raising awareness and the third one is about linking care and prevention) our score was rather low. In the analysis we thought that this…

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Added by Phil on December 13, 2013 at 9:06am — 2 Comments

Measuring your progress is a job for a team

This is a transcript of a video clip by Gaston  

In the video, he describes the community of Ta Wang Tan in northern Thailand:

"This is in northern Thailand in the province of Chiang Mai, a little community called Ta wang taan. This community has been using…

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Added by Phil on December 13, 2013 at 9:00am — 1 Comment

Checking on progress in Mount Hagen, Papua New Guinea

In this YouTube video, Gaston discusses how the young people in Mount Hagen, Papua New Guinea, keep their finger on the pulse of what is happening in their community. If you want numbers, they won't have them. But they do have a sense of the progress that the community is making and they are able to take action when they see a problem. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1n-OmxxWdnk…

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Added by Phil on November 29, 2013 at 10:00am — 3 Comments

More about inclusion at Hua Rin Temple in Thailand

I recently wrote a blog about measuring the response of a community to inclusion at Hua Rin Temple in Thailand. I have been asked if I had more detail about the measures that the community took in order to encourage inclusion. Here they are. The conversation took place in 2006.

The Health Centre in Thung Satok sub-district, San Pa Tong district, Chiang Mai province…

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Added by Phil on November 18, 2013 at 10:38am — No Comments

Measuring our way to inclusion

This story was told to me by the Abbot of Hua Rin Temple, Phra Athikarn Tahanawat, in 2006. I used this experience recently so that we could understand more clearly the power of measuring progress in a consistent and persistent way. I thought that perhaps it might be useful for others.

The people of Sanpatong District in northern Thailand worked long and hard to ensure that people living with HIV/AIDS were accepted by the community. In such a situation, it is easy to become…

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Added by Phil on November 6, 2013 at 3:37pm — No Comments

Listening with filters

This note is based on an article and a podcast by Malcolm Gladwell. I will give the links at the end of the posting. 

In the article and podcast, Gladwell asserts that when we listen we filter what we hear through our own biases. He tells the story of Konrad Kellen who is seen by Gladwell as having the gift of listening without filters. It is a fascinating story and I recommend it. The story tells of the disasters that can follow when we listen with filters and I think that he is…

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Added by Phil on July 31, 2013 at 11:30am — 8 Comments

Death Competence

This is the story of John. He died recently in a village in what I think is the most beautiful part of my country, England. During his long life, John lived and worked in many places, but he died 5 miles away from where he was born. He was 85 years old when he died.

John was a quiet, even shy man. But he had a wide range of interests. He had a deep love of music. He…

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Added by Phil on February 8, 2013 at 8:54am — 9 Comments

Would you like to learn more about the learning tools that we use in the Constellation?

I have started to put content on a site called 'Constellation Learning'. The hope is that it will contain material for people who facilitate the Community Life Competence process.

 

I have added a section called 'Learning tools' to this site. It contains a description and discussion on the Constellation Learning tools. It is taken from the updated version of Blended Learning. The tools discussed are AAR, learn-and-share, story telling, peer assist, knowledge asset and knowledge…

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Added by Phil on April 4, 2012 at 11:23am — No Comments

We appreciate strengths. But what is a strength?

Carol Dweck is a professor of psychology at Stanford University. She has carried out a set of experiments with children that make a distinction between appreciating talent (‘You are very good at that.’) and appreciating effort (‘You really worked hard at that.’)

Here are some quotations from her work.

‘In the last 1990s when our country was at the height of the self esteem movement, the self esteem gurus told everybody to praise their children’s intelligence, to…

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Added by Phil on December 13, 2011 at 10:07am — 2 Comments

A song about malaria from Nanergou in Togo

Jean-Louis' video from Mali reminded me of a wonderful experience of singing and dancing from Togo that continues to inspire and to please me.But it also shows the remarkable power of song to get messages across. Here is the link

Added by Phil on September 3, 2010 at 6:26pm — No Comments

SALT: ‘Confession with everything turned upside down’.

Recently I had the opportunity to spend a week working with a group of young people. We spent the time in a world very different from their normal environment of a large city. And you could say that the week was about

appreciating the strengths of these young people.



At the end of one the sessions that I ran, one of my colleagues a retired priest started to talk to me. ‘You know’, he said, ‘what you do is very similar to Confession, but…

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Added by Phil on May 13, 2010 at 9:00am — 1 Comment

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