CESO support of Aboriginal communities’ development in Canada informs its International work

Last week, the Canadian Executive Service Organization (CESO) sponsored an event in Victoria, coinciding with CESO’s 50th anniversary and National Volunteer Week. The event welcomed Volunteer Advisors, local government and community leaders, clients, and supporters. I’m a Volunteer Advisor with CESO. I attended. CESO is an international development organization working in Canada, with Aboriginal communities, and around the […]

Reframing British Columbia

In my mind, I have a picture of the place we call British Columbia, on Canada’s west coast. If I lived here 150+ years ago, I would have a different picture. Though the land is the same, the borders were different; they’ve been re-framed, many times. In a recent series of videos, former Vancouver Mayor, and current MLA […]

Four Things We Can Do To Accelerate Justice Fairness

Bryan Stevenson, Founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), is helping address the crazy inequalities in the US justice system; much of which is along racial lines; e.g., mass incarceration of blacks, “1 in 3 black males born today can expect to end up in jail or prison”…. At a recent Google ‘Zeitgeist Minds’ […]

The Three Sisters Approach to Managing Conflict in the Organization

We need to learn more of the old ways, and adapt them to today’s situations. Where I live, the oldest ways are of Aboriginal, Indigenous, Native origin. In Master chef and educator Dan Barber’s agitating book, The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food, he pays respect to the Iroquois’ Three Sisters Strategy, a […]

Nowhere Else on Earth

With good collaboration, anything is possible. Collaboration in the Rain Forest Up the coast from where I live in British Columbia is a one of our world’s natural treasures, the Great Bear Rain Forest.  It’s the context for an epic collaboration, involving environmental groups, government, forest industry and First Nations.   It’s also the context for […]