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Defragging Transformation

...bringing together pieces of seemingly disconnected ideas and information which, taken together, constitute transformation, our access to transformation, and why transformation matters.

Travels with Melanie

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By SW - June 26, 2006

Well, she's not gone yet, but my friend Melanie will be heading out to Africa (Kenya) soon... The only thing I know is that by Labor Day, she'll be a whole new person!!

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I got this from Sandy Robbins , who I saw perform the poem in May 2006, and it is written by the poet Marsha Truman Cooper . First published in River City, and then in "Substantial Holdings" (1987, 2002) FEARING PARIS Suppose that what you fear could be trapped, and held in Paris. Then you would have the courage to go everywhere in the world. All the directions of the compass open to you, except the degrees east or west of true north that lead to Paris. Still, you wouldn’t dare put your toes smack dab on the city line. You’re not really willing to stand on a mountainside miles away, and watch the Paris lights come up at night. Just to be on the safe side, you decide to stay completely out of France. But then danger seems too close even to those boundaries, and you feel the timid part of you covering the whole globe again. You need the kind of friend who learns your secret and says, “See Paris first.”

Time to unleash the human spirit?

By SW - June 04, 2005

My friend Mary Stroupe spoke about some of the things she's discovered during her years of working with The Hunger Project . The purpose of The Hunger Project is to end hunger. That's been the purpose of the organization since it's inception in 1977, and ending hunger is quite a different task from just feeding people. On an investor trip to small villages in Senegal, where the investors (not donors) had been noticing how incredibly quickly the villagers would recognize and jump on an opportunity, Karen Wolff (no relation) remarked to Mary that "The real shame is not the conditions that the impoverished people live in. The real shame is that we have so much and we're still afraid." Maybe it's not about feeding people, but about unleashing the human spirit , because when you do that, people can feed themselves.