Book Aid International

At Book Aid International, we know that books change lives. We are dedicated to increasing access to books to support literacy, education and development in sub-Saharan Africa, in some of the poorest countries in the world. Every year, we send around half a million brand new and carefully selected books to our partners overseas, which are read over and over again by millions of readers. All our books are either donated by UK publishers or purchased locally, so every book we send is of the highest quality. In villages and cities, refugee camps and reading rooms, schools and universities, Book Aid International books are giving people the chance to learn and to build themselves brighter futures.

Each book we send costs us only around £2 to source, ship and deliver – so with a monthly donation of just £6, you could to provide around 36 books worth £400 every year to some of the poorest countries in the world.

Visit www.bookaid.org to donate and find out how you can help us to change lives.

Did you know?

We know that the world is changing, and changing quickly. But do we really realize how fast that change is occuring?

Studs Terkel

Studs Terkel, who died at the age of ninety-six last year was famous for his oral history of the lives ordinary Americans through through his “The Studs Terkel Program” broadcast from his native Chicago between 1952-1997 and his books such as “Hard Times” and “Working”.

In 1929, at the start of the Great Depression, when Terkel was 17 he experienced an epiphany which determined the future of his life. He was walking by the house of a family that had just been evicted. Their few possessions were sitting on the sidewalk. But that evening, electricians, plumbers, and carpenters who lived in the neighborhood came over, moved the family back in, turned on the gas, and fixed the plumbing. He said, “It’s the community in action that accomplishes more than any individual does, no matter how strong he may be.”

Naomi Klein tells Charlie Rose “It’s Time to Put Away the (Obama) T-shirts

On his May 11th show, Charlie Rose asked Naomi Klein, the critic of corporate globalization, about the state of the economic crisis and the next steps President Obama should take. Naomi said that “the love of Obama is so over the top and this thing that happens to us, particularly in times of crisis, where we almost regress and we want to believe our leaders are going to take care of us–I think that’s unhealthy–I think it’s time to put away the t-shirts and all the memorabilia. He is the president of the most powerful nation on Earth and the superfan culture of the campaign has to be replaced with an engaged citizen culture that puts respectful pressure from below.”

David Peat comments, “the most powerful nation on Earth” has become such a cliché when referring to the United States. But powerful in which sense – size of its army, influence on global markets, population size, moral leadership, use of new technologies? The word “powerful” has both negative and positive contexts and what adjective would apply to India or China?

Any comments?

The British Class System Lives!!

While this has nothing to do with Gentle Action it may amuse you.

Do the British still maintain a class system? The scandal that is rocking the British parliament concerning expenses claimed by Members of Parliaments would appear to suggest that the class system is still running at full blast!!.

Among the items claimed – and paid for – at taxpayers’ expense are:

Labour MPs

two new toilet seats
diapers
a fridge
floor tiles
an ice cube tray
a baby carriage
porn movies for spouse
mock Tudor beams for house
hanging flower baskets
plugs for bathtubs

Conservative MPs

hanging a chandelier
maintaining the tennis courts
cleaning the moat
having the piano tuned
horse manure for the roses (380 pounds sterling)
maintaining a cottage in the grounds
hiring a mole catcher
cleaning the swimming pool
maintaining the helipad
mowing the paddocks
removing lichen from walls

And the Liberal Democrats’?

They claimed for:

a rocking chair
a feather duster
a trouser press
a lampshade
a toilet brush
bus tickets
Hob Nob biscuits

Enrique Benitez wants to make a better world.

Enrique Benitez from Tamaulipas in Mexico wrote to me about what he was doing to heal himself, his society and the planet.

Each day he spends around two hours planting and caring for trees in order to make a forest in a public area. It is an area of 57 acres where people can walk, jog or mountain bike. But more than the forest itself he is trying to gather together some like minded people and bring about a change in the culture around him.. Each Saturday from 8-9am he meets with others to talk and exchange ideas of how to make a better world. The meeting is informal and with no agenda.

His car has a large sign in the rear window “Trees for Free” along with his phone number. The trees are provided for by the local government and Enrique will deliver them to a person’s home and at the same time make a new friend.

Enrique also plans to produce his own food using the John Jeavons biointensive approach and get other people involved in his community.

He has started a DVD library with films such as Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” and Patch Adams, Gandhi, Erin Brockovich, Patton, Braveheart, Farenheit 9/11. People can borrow this for free and he feels that by watching these films people can begin to educate themselves.

People drop off used batteries at his house and he takes them to a center that disposes of toxic waste. This also has the side effect of bringing him in contact with like minded people.

He would like to become involved in a community that operates like the ashrams of Gandhi, one that is non-dogmatic and has respect for life and universal values.

Finally he asks us all for suggestions as to how to make his life more useful and fulfilling.

Webinar Postponed

We have decided to change the time of the Webinar to a Saturday so that more people can participate. It will now take place on Saturday 23 May. Please go to the Social Actions site for more information and to register http://my.socialactions.com/events/gentle-action-introduction-and-1

Mastering the Internet

Two British newspapers, The Sunday Times and The Recorder ran stories on 3 May that the British Government had spend one billion pounds in a hitherto secret project to monitor all e-mails, website visits and social networking sessions, as well as telephone calls over the internet, landlines and mobiles. The project called MTI (Mastering the Internet) would use thousands of “black boxes” covertly installed within the Internet’s infrastructure.
This news disturbed groups concerned with privacy. In turn, the Home Secretary announced that 2 billion pounds of public money would be spent to enable telephone and internet companies to retain information in separate data bases. She also claimed that plans for the centralized monitoring system would be dumped.

What are your reactions to this?

A Farm Story

California Polytechnic University in San Luis Obispo has been a predominately conservative agriculture school for a long time. They have catered to students who come from rural agriculture areas where big ag business has taken over the scene. Big agriculture corporations, such as Monsanto, also contribute large amounts of money toward grants and scholarships for students and professors who continue their research agenda like planting genetically modified corn and testing their pesticide brands. Needless to say, the word “organic” wasn’t too popular around the Cal Poly campus for some time.
In the early 1980s a couple of recently graduated students joined the Peace Corps and went off to a rural area in a foreign country (not sure which one) to teach people about big agriculture business and the endless possibilities of making lots of money. However, something entirely different occurred. As the volunteers spent time with the locals they began to learn about their agriculture habits instead. They began to see how these people had spent thousands of years perfecting their agriculture, and through this time had built a sustainable system in harmony with the environment. The volunteers had never learned about anything like this through their university education. They were deeply impressed, and quickly realized that the sustainable way in which these people practiced agriculture was a better way for people and the environment. The volunteers then returned home with their new knowledge.

And back to graduate school they went. They returned to Cal Poly excited about their findings, but they weren’t greeted with the same enthusiasm. As they began to research these “new” ideas, they began to stumble across words like “organic”, “permaculture”, “biodynamics”, “sustainable”, and people and philosophies such as Rudolph Steiner’s Anthroposophy. Indeed, their new knowledge wasn’t new at all. Yet, when they attempted to bring up the information in their classes, as one student remembers – “I was threatened with an “F” by one professor if I ever mentioned the word organic in class again.” So, the students were on their own.

They couldn’t get permission to start an organic research farm on campus, but they were allowed a 2 acre plot of land for student experiments, which they named “The Student Experimental Farm”. This farm quickly became the haven for lost farm souls. Those seeking another way. Those who communed with the plants and animals, and closed the week with drum circles and fire dancing by moonlight. Many sustainable farming practices were employed, including a small organic plot which in time came to be certified organic by the CCOF (http://www.ccof.org/)

Since there was quite a bit of aggression from students and professors at the university, these sustainable farmers learned to keep to themselves. They adopted a motto around the idea that they should just keep to what they are doing instead of fighting the status quo, in hopes that one day the university would see the light. For about 15 years the Student Experimental Farm remained small, until one day a couple of students decided to experiment with a Community Supported Agriculture Program (CSA). People in the community could enjoy local organically grown produce for the price of a weekly box or 4 hours of farm volunteer work, AND support their local university students at the same time. They also acquired 9 more acres of campus land for experimental use. When I first began working for the farm in 2005 we were packing about 20 boxes a week (a box feeds a family of four). Now the farm provides over 300 boxes of produce for the community, as well as participating in several local farmers markets. At one point the Cal Poly Organic Farm CSA was the fastest growing business on campus. They have also created the Sustainable Agriculture Resource Consortium and through the efforts of this organization Cal Poly offers classes in organic and sustainable agriculture through its curriculum.

The original Peace Corps students are no longer at the farm. Although they stop by from time to time and share their stories about how different it was when they started. My experience working on the farm was one of the highlights of my life, and I have enjoyed watching the farm’s contribution toward the creation of a “Green” community in our area. We had a saying on the farm, “If you take care of the Earth, the Earth takes care of you.” There were moments when I was harvesting vegetables with butterflies and bees buzzing, frogs hopping by, birds singing, and lady bugs landing on my nose, where I knew this is how it should be, and I could feel the Earth giving thanks for my work. These are the moments that kept these students going. These were the moments of Gentle Action.

http://www.calpolyorgfarm.com/