MARCH 28TH, 2009
By F. DAVID PEAT
You are invited to join the Internet Seminar on Rabbit Meat Production in Cameroon (06-30 April 2009).
The seminar is organized by the Integrated Biosystems Network, International Organization for Biotechnology and Bioengineering.
(www.iobborg.net)
You can participate via email or online. There is no registration fee.
Participation by email:
To register, send a blank email to:
rabbit-cam-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Discussion messages will be sent to you by email and you can respond with comments or questions to :
rabbit-cam@yahoogroups.com
Online Participation:
The webforum is at http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/rabbit-cam
Messages are for public viewing but if you wish to write, you will need a yahoo account (or just send an email to rabbit-cam@yahoogroups.com)
You can view earlier messages at:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/rabbit-cam
Contacts for Assistance:
Jacky E.L. Foo
Jackson Ntapi
MARCH 28TH, 2009
By F. DAVID PEAT
Jacky E.L. Foo is from Program Officer, Environment & Sustainable Development for Globetree (www.globetree.org)
Jacky writes
during the last 12 months (since April 2008), I have been working in Kenya on a project about food self-reliance by vulnerable children. Seven rabbit houses were set up and the concept is to sell rabbit meat to the host organizations. Income
made is deposited into micro-loan funds and which children who manage the rabbit houses may benefit one day. Many of them may not go to secondary school and even fewer for higher education. Such rabbit houses provide the skills they may need to start their own rabbit farm when they leave school after Class 8 or Form 4.
Cameroon has caught up with the idea and will hopefully go the launch of “Rabbit Network Cameroon”
www.globetree.org/africa/rabbit-net
www.globetree.org/africa/maikona
MARCH 28TH, 2009
By F. DAVID PEAT
Copies of this six part video can be downloaded from
http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2009/03/26/credit-as-a-public-utility-the-solution-to-the-economic-crisis-by-richard-c-cook-videos/
It is by Richard C. Cook, a former U.S Treasury analyst who also worked in the Carter White House and for NASA and writes on public policy issues.
MARCH 27TH, 2009
By F. DAVID PEAT
A new paper has been added to the Gentle Action library. It is the Ubuntu Declaration for a Just and Sustainable World Economy that was signed in London on 25 February, 2009 by Cherie Blair and Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu.
Leaders from the public, private and civil society sectors are invited to endorse the Declaration with the aim of gaining as wide as possible support for the document.
To endorse the Ubuntu Declaration please send your name, your organisation’s name and an electronic version of your logo (if applicable) to jrostampour@rightsandhumanity.org
MARCH 24TH, 2009
By F. DAVID PEAT
Dambisa Moyo, an economist born in Zambia who has worked for Goldman Sachs and the World Bank, is author of Dead Aid: why aid is not working and how there is another way for Africa.
In many ways here arguments parallel those of “Gentle Action” where she shows that the $1 trillion aid to Africa over the last 60 years has done little fo alleviate poverty, disease, corruption and civil war.
Her goal is for Africa to wean itself off aid through sustainable economic and social development.
Moyo’s book is published by Allen Lane in the UK and by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in the US.
MARCH 18TH, 2009
By F. DAVID PEAT
A new case has been added to the Cases section of the Gentle Action website. It is an overview of the book The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, suggesting a paradigm change in the way we think about the world’s poor.
MARCH 18TH, 2009
By F. DAVID PEAT
There is a new “case” in the Cases section of the website. It tells of Daniel Ellsberg’s meeting with Gary Snyder in a bar in Japan and the far reaching implications of the discussion they had well into the night. The Dharma Bum
MARCH 17TH, 2009
By F. DAVID PEAT
I have been suggesting that gentle actions often emerge out of a period, no matter how brief, of “creative suspension”; a state in which the mind become open to other possibilities and feels free to travel along different roads.
From talking to artists and writers it is clear that something similar is related to bursts of creativity.
I would like to hear from people visiting this blog of how they exercise “creativity suspension” in their own lives – at work, recreation, with the family, or when approaching a difficult new problem.
MARCH 17TH, 2009
By F. DAVID PEAT
I’m hoping that those of you who visit this blog will begin to post some of your own examples of cases you know or may have read about – cases involving organizations, or sections of society, that operate on trust. Or examples where trust has been violate and the economic or social consequences of that breaking of trust.
So please feel free to post, or email your examples to me at info@paricenter.com
MARCH 14TH, 2009
By F. DAVID PEAT
A new paper has been added to the Gentle Action library: “More advice for summiteers on reforming the global casino” by Hazel Henderson
MARCH 4TH, 2009
By F. DAVID PEAT
One of the cliché’s I discuss in my book Gentle Action is of “experts” and aid organizations who fly in to some third world country, observe the poverty and poor living conditions and ask how they can help, what can they teach that community, and how best to provide aid and financial help.
But Jonathan Glennie, writing in the Guardian newspaper turns that perception on its head quoting, for example, a couple who had spent 20 years working with marginalised communities in rural India who on their return to Glasgow said: “We thought we knew what poverty was, and then we came to Easterhouse.” Glennie points to the conditions in areas of the United Kingdom with its crack houses, teenage knife crime, high percentage of pregnant teenagers and classrooms out of control.
His article can be found at
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/katineblog/2009/feb/27/development
MARCH 2ND, 2009
By F. DAVID PEAT
As of 2 March two new cases have been added to the Cases section of the website, thanks to Siraj Izhar who at the moment is visiting India
