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Refugee community in Uganda starts own food production
Food is known as a community builder. At the side of food preparation and consumption the kitchen has traditionally been the family place to meet, talk, interact, help or simply be. In many cultures the food related activities take many hours and are the kernel of family or community life. In Uganda, the people in the Nakivale refugee settlement, asked their government for a few fields in which to develop their own food. The local government granted them the use of nearby fields for a period of 10 years including the option to buy them as property. Gradually local people started to get motivated to join the cultivation team. International foundations, such as STIR, try to help with small amounts of money, acquired through GoFund (link here), to allow the community to purchase materials, seeds and even water. We also provide online advice, as FRE2SH, on how to develop a local economy, providing recognition and fair sharing methods for those that invest time and energy in the cultivation process. We are pleased to see how many people are gathering and developing the food community.




Breaking with 10000 years of history
10000 years ago humankind developed the desire to own and control things. This had disastrous effects on our psychology, taking out the worst of our behavior. It may arguably be a phase in our human development, necessary to learn to deal with our impulses. In our current era this mentality has brought us on the verge of societal collapse and sincere doubts about the sustainable perspectives of our species, despite all technologies and science at hand. In a recent publication about Place Based Sustainability, an article was included about the breaking with this history of societal conditioning around financial growth and status. Instead of developing the mainstream attitude, I personally decided to step out and define my own human values based reality. A reality that would become Sustainocracy over time. The article also describes the process of the city of Eindhoven to define its own authenticity and identity as a city.
We see this break away attitude appear more and more, also in regional development, where quality of life gains in importance rather than just financial growth. In this short video I describe the painful human phase of greed, suppression, misuse of people and resources, warfare, etc that we are leaving behind us. Instead we define our authenticity and identity as wellness driven species, integrating ourselves back in a symbiotic way with ourselves and our natural environment.
Danny Khursigara about the effects of purpose
Purpose is heart driven, meaningful, caring. It takes care of productive relationships, successful institutions, joyful employees, passionate creativity and more. But purpose is often difficult to find in a financially driven performance society which has a head driven resonance (competitive, calculating) and structure. When we started with Sustainocracy we asked institutions and citizens to engage in the cocreation of healthy cities and regions. This common purpose has an effect of convergence among all, combining the diversity of authentic talents into a common mission. The heart becomes leading and the head follows. It has a huge, positive impact on all involved and also on the issues at hand, locally and globally.
Listen to the inspiring TED talk of Danny. We are planning to create a series of events together to develop purpose, authenticity and passion together, contextually engaging in the sustainability challenges at hand in the world.
