:Title: Community at Opok Farm Village :Author: Linda Nowakowski :Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2007 15:59:12 PDT :URL: http://www.ned.com/group/opokfarms/news/3/ One of the most important aspects of a sufficiency economy community, in my opinion, is the community. Community is where you find support and where you can find help in times of trouble but also and maybe more importantly, a group to share and celebrate successes with. The King of Thailand has proposed the Sufficiency Economy Philosophy as a development tool starting at the very lowest level. At the very lowest level you have the people who in someways are the most fragile (and in some ways the strongest!). They are the people who feel even a slight change in circumstances in their gut -- literally. When the Asian financial crisis hit Thailand in 1997, it was the poorest of the poor farmers who got hurt the quickest and the hardest. And they felt that crisis in their stomachs, with nothing to eat. Volume-wise, they were not hit the hardest but someone who loses a real estate investment is much better able to handle that shock. The more you have, the safer it is to take risks. Sufficiency entails three components: 1. moderation 2. reasonableness 3. a self-immunity system, i.e. being able to cope with shocks from internal and external changes. Two underlying conditions are necessary to achieve this sufficiency: 1. knowledge (breadth and thoroughness in planning, and carefulness in applying knowledge and in the implementation of those plans are required) 2. morality (people are to possess honesty and integrity, while conducting their lives with perseverance, harmlessness and generosity) What I want to talk about here is the development of community as a part this system. ---- **Comments** :Author: Linda Nowakowski :Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2007 16:11:36 PDT Earlier this year, I attended a presentation by Peter Hurst and subsequently got to spend time with him as we looked at the Asoke communities here. He presented the concept of Deep Community. Deep community can be described as a community or group that has tasks to do together and works efficiently at those but becomes "deep" when it provides the room and support for people in the group to do personal development work. This "automatically" happens in Asoke communities because the thing that brings most of them together is an desire to work on personal, spiritual development. They join the community for that and then the tasks of living in and supporting the community are secondary. Most groups or communities come together from the other side; they come together in order to accomplish some goal or purpose and the personal work is secondary or non-existent. I think the best example that I can think of of a deep community that most of us are familiar with is a good, functioning, supportive family. And that is what Asoke feels like to most people coming in to it -- family --- a big extended family. As we look to helping the people in northern Uganda resettle, it seems to me at least, that they need support, physical and emotional/spiritual. And I believe in many ways the latter is more important than the former because it helps condition us to deal with hard times. Next month, I will be taking a group of students who are interested incoming to Uganda with me in March, April and May to live in one of the Asoke communities and we will be working on many things. But the most important will be intentionally working on building a community among ourselves that will get us through the time in Uganda and help us model that kind of supportive community. This is enough for now of the plans of the Thai group! Comments? ---- :Author: Linda Nowakowski :Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2007 06:29:59 PDT :Modified: Wed, 19 Sep 2007 06:50:55 PDT A second thing that will be happening next month is that my students will be learning about living in a sufficiency economy community. They will be learning how to farm, how to cook, how to make organic fertilizer, how to recycle, how to build, how to make soap and herbal medicines. They will spend a month on a vegetarian diet no where close to a Pizza Hut or McDonald's. They will also be learning to appreciate life without a lot of the things they are used to. There is TV at the Asoke community, but not individual TVs. The community watches TV together. Most of the students I will be taking to Sisa Asoke are not poor .... not by local standards here and certainly not by Ugandan standards but they are poor by western standards. They aspire to live like Americans. (I wonder where that dream came from!) I will be very interested to see what their reaction is to people who have **chosen** to travel a different path and to find happiness, joy and personal growth in a life style that says that possessions are not the way. For those of you unfamiliar with Buddhism, The Buddha, before his awakening, came form a royal family. He was a prince but renounced that as not leading to true happiness and he went on a spiritual "quest". The concept of renouncing wealth and choosing to live a simple life will not be new to them but seeing it in action, I suspect, will be learning that story on a new level. While building this community and helping Aj. Khwaundin to set up the learning-by-doing school is central to my personal goals, it is too broad to be a research proposal. My research will focus on a wee, tiny, small part of this and that is the evaluation tools. I have been working on developing tools that will help us to measure personal and community development. (I hope they are better at that than the Gross Domestic Product or Human Development Index are) I will be testing those tools when I am at Sisa Asoke by interviewing and surveying that community. I will be teaching the students how to interview and ask questions and listen to and record answers. That means we will be working a lot on language. They will learn how to keep a detailed journal. The rainy season should be done while we are there (though it doesn't feel like that right now!) and we hope to be able to do some building. Learning how to make temporary structures and permanent. In the `discussion with George Ayittey`_, He emphasized the need to get down to the bottom and deal with the grass-roots cheetahs rather than the "governmental" hippos. In the Sufficiency Economy Philosophy, we see the same thing... an emphasis on starting at the bottom and working on the individual. I think that all of us know this concept on some level or another. Change only happens one person at a time. The King called it an inner explosion. Here is an image that might help .. image :: http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1060/1007465931_f51a4c0cb6.jpg I believe each of us has to change ourselves. I also have finally realized that I can not change you. (Boy, did that release a lot of energy to other more useful projects!) I can live my life and hope that it influences you. There was a chant/song that I learned from Thich Nhut Hahn's sanga when I went to hear him in Bangkok a few months ago: .. line-block :: Breathing in, Breathing out Breathing in, Breathing out I am blooming like a flower I am fresh as the dew I am strong as the mountain I am firm as the earth I am free Breathing in, Breathing out Breathing in, Breathing out I am water reflecting What is real, what is true I feel a space Deep inside of me I am free, I am free, I am free I am not sure that Buddhists hear the same thing I do in that second verse, but to me it tells me that I have to live my life so that what people see in me is real and true. I have to put down my masks that I might have to protect me from the world or perhaps to hide from the world or even to pretend with. When I can do that I can finally communicate. Christianity is very similar I think. God gives us empowering forgiveness in the gift of His Son. But if we can't admit our faults (it's required to ask for the forgiveness) then the gift sits on the table unopened. Everywhere around the world, people are taught that we need to stop, admit that we are imperfect and need the help of others. We must admit our need of community. Until we do, we will wallow in our pain, and suffering and continue to create more misery for ourselves and others. The only thing I can do is in my own life, witness to the power of community. I can only work to reflect what has worked for me and listen to what has worked for you and see if there isn't something there that will help both of us grow. Mainly that is what I want to work on in Uganda in March, April and May. I want an opportunity to meet the people who want to make this incredibly powerful community in Uganda. I want to see the phoenix rise out of the ashes of war in northern Uganda and become a beacon to others that from want and pain and sorrow we can rise to joy and power and that it can be done sustainably, and in a better way than has been reflected by the industrialized west. Amen. Let us pray. ;-) [End of preaching!] **Edit: repaired the image link.** .. _`discussion with George Ayittey` : http://www.ned.com/group/econo-politics/news/0/ ---- :Author: David Braden :Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2007 06:46:21 PDT I admire your approach to life and would like to support your efforts described here. As you know, I have some ideas on these matters. Let me know if you think we can, together, forge a deeper understanding. ---- :Author: Christina Jordan :Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2007 02:12:13 PDT This "automatically" happens in Asoke communities because the thing that brings most of them together is an desire to work on personal, spiritual development. They join the community for that and then the tasks of living in and supporting the community are secondary. So the challenge we face in practical terms is to create the conditions under which people (which people apart from households of children?) can make that choice - keeping in mind that in making that choice people will be choosing to move out into the wilderness onto land that is not their own, to invest of themselves in a concept that is completely foreign, new and unproven to them. I have some rough ideas on how we might think about this in practical terms. I wonder first if anyone else has insights/thoughts into how to practically create the conditions under which such a personal, life-changing choice can be made. ---- :Author: Linda Nowakowski :Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2007 02:52:21 PDT Why don't we think about having the community be a cooperative? The original talk was to provide the families with a 25 year lease to provide land security. If you made the community a cooperative, and gave the cooperative a 25 year lease that would give them the land interest. We are preparing a video that shows scenes from the brand new community here on the University campus with temporary structures and the growing number of permanent structures. Then we will show a community that has been around almost 20 years (Sisa Asoke) to see what can develop. This will remove some of the foreignness. How far is the area of land that is being worked on from the area that will be the village? Might it be possible to build a temporary community so that they can see it work? Can you give me some time lines like school year, seasons (rainy season, planting seasons)? We had a teacher from Uganda on Onet who was going to walk us through the government requirements for a school. She has disappeared with onet :-(. Can you put me in touch with someone who can advise us here? How much does an average teacher make a month? In rural Uganda, when are meals usually taken? What do they usually eat? (an OT aside - I asked someone, sometime to please check the markets and make me a list of the fruits, vegetables and grains available. Also need to know the availability of chilies, noodles and soy sauce.) What is a normal daily schedule? (When do people usually get up in the morning - not you Christina!)school hours, work hours I will be bring a community with me who is familiar with this life style. I believe that 2 of the students will be Asoke members and Khwaundin. All of the rest of us will have lived in the community and worked on developing community building skills for a month (next month). I think that by working together as a community and seeing that community can lighten the load (many hands makes light work), by seeing that by sharing, they can have more opportunities than going it alone, by experiencing what the community can be, the newness and foreignness of it will vaporize. ---- :Author: Christina Jordan :Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2007 03:29:32 PDT :Modified: Sat, 22 Sep 2007 03:30:45 PDT I think that by working together as a community and seeing that community can lighten the load (many hands makes light work), by seeing that by sharing, they can have more opportunities than going it alone, by experiencing what the community can be, the newness and foreignness of it will vaporize. Agreed, but who are *they* and how/when do we get them there to see that? ---- :Author: Linda Nowakowski :Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2007 03:46:53 PDT Maybe you start with the people you have working there now and who have families. They need someplace to live right now and even if they decide that they are going to move on to family/clan lands, they will have experienced it and will talk. ---- :Author: barbara spalding :Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2007 14:16:45 PDT Hi Linda, I want to share with you that I have been a student of Robert Aitken since I was about 20. I am now almost 57. I have met Thich Nhat Han and others who have encouraged and taught us to be genuine and mindful. I have studied Buddhist meditation with several other teachers such as Joko Beck and Taizan Maezumi, but they don't get mentioned much. I don't think I ever shared this with O/Net. I lived in Zen Meditation Centers for 20 years of my life. So there it is. Aitken Roshi is quite elderly now but he just keeps going. I plan to visit him within the next year. Do you know of him? ---- :Author: Linda Nowakowski :Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2007 15:14:02 PDT Welcome to the conversation, Barbara! I am not familiar wit Aitken Roshi, thous I just googled him and there is a lot where I can check him out. As I have read and studied about Buddhism, I have found it valuable to read teachers who are fluent in English rather than just reading translations of say Thai teachers. I have become increasingly aware of the particular nature of a language to speak to a particular culture. It is one of the concerns I have in thinking about describing this community to Ugandans which I guess is why I am more or less opting to bring a community and live it rather than try to explain it. Please join this conversation and help me understand how to communicate this more deeply in English! ---- :Author: Christina Jordan :Date: Tue, 25 Sep 2007 17:17:12 PDT Christina Jordan said: This "automatically" happens in Asoke communities because the thing that brings most of them together is an desire to work on personal, spiritual development. They join the community for that and then the tasks of living in and supporting the community are secondary. So the challenge we face in practical terms is to create the conditions under which people (which people apart from households of children?) can make that choice - keeping in mind that in making that choice people will be choosing to move out into the wilderness onto land that is not their own, to invest of themselves in a concept that is completely foreign, new and unproven to them. I mentioned I had some rough ideas, and some of those crystalized in a long discussion with Norbert earlier this evening. I am excited about some of the possibilities within reach. OK. So in simplest terms our first focus needs to be on introducing people to the concept of inner personal work. I would like to think about how we might structure a series of group retreats for a couple of different target community groups during the time that Linda's group is visiting from Thailand. A 3 week school holiday period will fall within that time, during which we can invite x number of child headed households to come to the farm and stay for the full holiday period. Kind of like a summer camp for them. during each of the 3 weeks, the children build community through working with different target groups on learning about a number of inner healing tools. We can draw from the Life in Africa communities in Gulu and Kampala, as well as from the farm workers and vocational trainees. And perhaps the local catechists. We can also think about inviting more international folks for one or all of the weeks. An aside that's related - I had dinner the other night with a dear old family friend - a dutchman named Wilfried who has lived in Uganda longer than I have. Norbert and I ran into him serendipitously at the airport when the kids were last coming back from visiting their dad in Ethiopia. Wilfied and my children's father went to grammar school together, and rekindled the tie when we moved to Uganda in 1998. When I saw him bells went off in my head about him playing a role at the farm, and our dinner confirmed that I really want to explore how we are going to get Wilfried on board as project manager for a couple of years. Not only does he know everyone who does everything to do with organic farming in the country, but Wildfried also owns a piece of farmland in southwestern Uganda on which he has long envisioned developing into a residential vocational school for orphans. Lately he's been doing a lot of project evaluations as a consultant - he specializes in the *appreciative inquiry* approach. The day after our dinner, he was headed off to Holland for the first 2 in a 7 part series of courses that will license him as a practitioner of *The Journey* approach to inner healing, which he is dying to put into practice in Uganda... basically to encourage these childrens' development into cheetahs who live their lives in better control of the confusion that emotional turmoil and trauma can cause. He seemed excited at the prospect of spending some time in Northern Uganda, and I really think he'd be a great candidate for keeping the balls in the air on the various activities that we want to see happening in the next 2 years. So combine what Wilfried has to offer with what Linda's group has to offer and bring in these other groups during a structured time period to live with the children in the wilderness and to work together with them on a different project for the community that they will obviously leave there. And maybe we keep inviting the same and/or additional people and child-headed households back for similar retreats during all of the school holiday periods in 2008, until the community has progressively built - together over the course of 1 year - everything the community needs to start a school there in Feb 2009. The main thing that we need to make this happen is some kind of lodging with sanitary facilities. There are water sources and we can purify that water for the time being for these groups until more investment in water infrastructure is possible. Plus we also need a farm store built very soon. If we can get the pressed earth brick machine from World Vision that they offered, it can make 3000 bricks per day. For vocational training and longer term community purposes, though, we'd like to also have a hand press or two (they can only make about 200 bricks per day). If we can get the bricks made this fall, then maybe Cory (who is already planning a trip to Uganda in November) and some other folks we might recruit from different parts of the world might want to come and help build those very first buildings. That could be a lot of fun. But then it would be really roughing it - camping out in the wilderness! Come to think of it... there is also an exceptional school holiday in November this year because of the CHOGM meetings. I wonder if we might be able to invite some children out to be a part of learning to build those too... ok now I am rambling, but I feel like this approach could take us in the right direction. Thoughts and suggestions welcome... Must got to bed now - will post to other threads tomorrow :) ---- :Author: Linda Nowakowski :Date: Tue, 25 Sep 2007 18:44:58 PDT At one of the sessions I went to with THICH NHAT HANH this year, he was talking about `deep listening`_. He talked about listening to someone and not commenting...just listening (you could ask for clarification if you asked nicely). You could not comment on what you heard for 48 hours, during which time you felt what the person said. This was a about a workshop_ that they led at Plum Village in France where they invited Israeli and Palestinian leaders to come together and listen and then talk. The results described were nothing short of amazing. Mortal enemies after 3 days, walking quietly together sharing. I truly believe that people need to have their stories heard. They don't need to hear a sermon or usually even have someone commiserate with them. There is a need to speak the words and get them out of us. But that takes a group of people who have learned how to listen and worked at it and practiced it. That is part of what my students and I will be doing next month. Learning to listen. And then learning to speak with `loving speech`_ (numbers 8 and 9). It is that kind of community that I hope we will be able to model to potential community members so that they can come to appreciate the value of the community in our dreams. .. _`deep listening` : http://www.ncf.ca/freenet/rootdir/menus/sigs/religion/buddhism/introduction/precepts/precept-4.html .. _`loving speech` : http://www.plumvillage.org/HTML/practice/html/14_mindfulness_trainings.htm ---- :Author: Christina Jordan :Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2007 01:32:33 PDT Listening, understanding, forgiving - not only each other but *ourselves* as well. Lately in dealing with some personal health issues I've been learning more and more about new connections that are being made between emotional and physical development and healing. The Journey includes a wonderful exercise where you imagine a campfire and invite your younger self who went through a challenging time to sit next to you at the campfire. You have a guided discussion in your own mind with that younger you, that leads to self-forgiveness. It's a lovely approach to imagine introducing to these children who have been through *so much* trauma. The Ugandan wildlife guy David Bale introduced us to at Gulu University came to the meeting we had with his cousin, who works for a German research firm that's looking at post-war trauma. He was telling us about some of the experiences of children he's been interviewing in the camps. One girl watched her mother die violently when she was about 5, while the mother pleaded with her to take care of the baby sister she was holding. The baby later died, and now 5-6 years later the girl still hardly speaks. He did get her to talk to him (he listened) and what became clear was that the guilt she was experiencing over the baby's death was completely debilitating her. The children in these child-headed households have had such a huge burden to bear in caring for each other *with zero means or skills* but with 100% of the responsibility. When I was up in Gulu this summer it really felt to me that *forgiveness* of self and others needs to be at the core of the values I'd wish people to discover in this community we're dreaming. So Linda, do you think the retreat series idea during the 2008 school holidays could offer a workable format through which we can start to actually create this? I need a practical *something* to start working toward on this end - there are lots of wheels that need to be put into motion. If we can agree on a format through which some of these community building ideas can manifest, then I can know where to direct those wheels in the months between now and January. ---- :Author: Linda Nowakowski :Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2007 05:29:58 PDT We are talking about health and well being on some many levels. 1. Certainly there is a need to deal with that personal crisis and teaching people how to listen and empathize is a step that needs to be taken. Deep listening and loving speech (or what ever you want to call that combination of skills) is one of the first steps that needs to be taken. It is part of what we will be working on next month. 2. I hesitate putting economic health next but I think it impinges on so many other areas that it needs to be looked at early on. I mean here economic health in its very broadest and perhaps earliest sense (at least in western civilization). It is also in Buddhist Economics and in something that I heard referred to in Budapest as Mindful Economics. Sustainable development means having different dreams than western advertising would like us to have. I believe that there is a segment of the west that, for lack of a better term, I am going to call post-consumer. They have played the consumer/capitalist game and have realized that stuff doesn't bring happiness or wellness. The wellness that we are all really looking for is within us and within our communities. As economics is about (I think) maximizing well-being, we need to think about how to help people think about well-being rather than "stuff". I had dinner last night with the director of the BBA Program I teach in. She had been off last week-end doing some research interviews for the Dean. She was talking with a group of families that had all spent at least a week visiting Sisa Asoke. She said that when she interviewed the adults and they said they liked it or didn't for what ever reasons it seemed to make sense. But she said what surprised her was the response of the children (10-13 ear olds). She said that every single one of them when asked if they would like to live there permanently - EVERYONE OF THEM said yes. She asked them why but prefaced it with a statement like "But, you wouldn't be able to wear pretty clothes or have video games or go out to restaurants and the mall." They all, to a child, said they would like to live there because it was so peaceful. Totally messed up her hypothesis but I think it is interesting and significant. There is a place for the kind of economic development that the west has promoted, but there is a place, I believe, for learning how to balance that with values that are based on people and nature rather than accumulating and consuming stuff. I am not talking this "Destruction of the American Dream" talk in order to keep anyone down or deny anyone anything. (I want to build a village where I would love to live.) I am saying, let's learn from what has happened in the US and not make the same mistakes over. Let's not even think of a society that dreams of a car for every person. Let's not even think about developing a society that has 5 people in a house with 4 televisions. Let's build a community that is a model and thinks intentionally about it's development. Let's build a community that looks around itself at the natural and social environments it finds itself in and figures out how to thrive in that space in a way that doesn't damage either the natural environment or the social environment...a way that sustains both. Part of that "western economic health" is what enables things that are certainly valuable - health, education, culture and entertainment. But we need to think through all of those things carefully too. 3. Too often western development steps in and throws out culture and indigenous knowledge as primitive. Basically, I think, that is often a really bad idea. Indigenous crops have a lot of advantages over imported varieties. They developed to that region and its eco-culture. That indigenous variety is adapted to the climate, the soil, the pests. The imported variety requires special fertilizers (please be sure to read that as extraordinarily expensive) or intense irrigation (read that as destructive to the natural environment). The local wisdom often knows special values (medicinal) of local plants and herbs. Why do you suppose there are drug companies scouting around rural, areas in under developed countries searching those things out in order to patent them. Imagine having to pay for the herbal tea that you have always taken for a fever. Globalization is in the process of turning the world into a white bread world where every city in the world looks alike and every place eats the same things, and watches the same movies, listens to the same music and loses all of it's native character. It steps into a place like Thailand and makes the children think that the local culture is out of date and not cool. They think that their traditional stories should be replaced with Shakespeare because that is much more cook that the Ramakien. What a loss. 4. Along with economic health comes financial health. This development needs to come with a measure of education. How to expand financially while minimizing risk. Got ideas on how to tackle all of those? I have final exams, final reports and an essay from each of my students that were handed in today. I need to get them graded. Tomorrow I have to administer an English placement to the graduate students. I will be around a bit less for a few days. ---- :Author: David Braden :Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2007 06:38:41 PDT :Modified: Fri, 28 Sep 2007 06:40:15 PDT Linda and Christina, I have enjoyed your most recent posts and I believe that you have raised important issues. I think it will help you if you will examine the point of view from which you are analyzing these issues. - from the point of view of each individual or family, there are certain needs_ to be met. - from the point of view of the organization (community) that you hope to create, you will attract and retain participation as a function of the participant's perception of how their needs are met. There is a third_ level of analysis. At that level, it is not necessary to choose a "western" approach or a "traditional" approach. I see it as the need to create a stable "base economy" from which all other things are possible. I would look at it as - "This community must find ways to provide food, clothing, shelter, education and health care to all its residents" and once that is accomplished, we will champion **Our Children** to go forth and excel in the world. .. _needs: http://www.aboutus.org/3DN_Human_Needs .. _third: http://www.aboutus.org/3DN_Three_Dimensional_Networking ---- :Author: Christina Jordan :Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2007 08:07:13 PDT Seems to me we're all on the same page about the kind of community building we want to see happen. What I **really** need now is a starting point for organizing the scheduled context in which this kind of community building can actually start to happen. Linda said: Deep community can be described as a community or group that has tasks to do together and works efficiently at those but becomes "deep" when it provides the room and support for people in the group to do personal development work. This "automatically" happens in Asoke communities because the thing that brings most of them together is an desire to work on personal, spiritual development. They join the community for that and then the tasks of living in and supporting the community are secondary. **Can the idea of a series of retreats for personal work held during the school holiday periods in 2008 provide the context in which participants can come together for personal work and achieve community oriented tasks together?** If not that format, then I need another suggestion of how/when/in what context to mobilize people to start forming these bonds together. ---- :Author: Linda Nowakowski :Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2007 15:08:20 PDT I had asked you before if you had made any contact with the diocese there about working with the community on spiritual work. The Roman Catholic church has a tradition of meditation and personal development work in community. Retreats where there were times during the day to work with trust building and sharing, times to learn and practice listening skills and speaking skills mixed in with community work times that had building, clearing, farming, cooking, cleaning...all would be good! In many ways that is what we will be doing at Asoke starting in a week! ---- :Author: Christina Jordan :Date: Sat, 29 Sep 2007 06:01:39 PDT Glad to hear you think the retreat idea can work in theory - now we need to think that through in practical terms. we do have good ties with the catechist training center at the Diocese in Gulu - the catechists are the Catholic church's community workers. If we have a program/agenda to invite their participation in, then the appropriate catechists in the camps/communities surrounding opok farm can be contacted and mobilized. ---- :Author: Evvy Bryning :Date: Sat, 29 Sep 2007 06:19:01 PDT what age group would the children involved in this retreat be? I do think the retreat could be a very effective community building tool. For one thing it will introduce them to the farm but more so, it will take them totally out of their current environment with all the challenges and difficulties they face on a daily basis and introduce them to new and different ideas and possibilities. Total emersion tactics I think are very effective in teaching new ideas or philosophies because the distraction of the norm is removed. This type of retreat takes an idea and turns it into a reality. ---- :Author: Linda Nowakowski :Date: Sat, 29 Sep 2007 19:45:15 PDT I am not sure that you need to limit the age. As there will be adults in the community, the parents should be free to attend as well...maybe you have break out sessions for different groups. Adults with adults. Maybe even splitting boys and girls as some things might not yet be shared openly but might be with peers. I have posted a possible proposal_ for the $10,000 Razoo speed funding. Please read and comment. .. _proposal : http://beta.razoo.com/topic/show/448 ---- :Author: John Powers :Date: Sat, 29 Sep 2007 21:29:48 PDT I will comment later, but on first read it seems perfect as it is. ----