Building Leadership Capacity in Faith-Based Economic Development

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Shown L to R: Carlos Steward, Asst. Dir., Recreation; Lisa Braun, Executive Director; and Dawn Brown, Asst. Dir., Workforce Development at Ohio City Power with Lee Kay, Grant Coach and Consultant at Neighborhood Connections. Image Credit: Lisa Braun

Ohio City Power is an emerging place-based and virtual network that provides recreation, skills training and employment opportunities for the homeless and jobless at St. Paul's Church and Community Outreach in Ohio City, Ohio.

Ohio City Power programs strengthen community projects, relationships and collaborations for leadership capacity in faith-based economic development. 

2012 programs focus on:
  • The development of Ohio City Power projects to address neighborhood issues;
  • Encouraging new and stronger relationships between Ohio City community residents and local leaders; and, 
  • Supporting emergent opportunities for the development of community leadership, organizational  and community capacity building. 
Ohio City Power itself is comprised of a small core leadership network embedded in other supporting and evolving sponsor, partner and collaborating networks.

Open models such as Ohio City Power connect assets, talent and resources to transformative creative initiatives and business development for regional prosperity.

Ohio City Power 2011-2012 activities are funded by a grant from Neighborhood Connections, an affiliated program of the Cleveland Foundation and member of Grassroots Grantsmakers, an international affinity group for grassroots funders.

On Tuesday February 1, 2012, Ohio City Power leaders (shown above) met with Lee Kay, Grant Coach and Consultant at Neighborhood Connections to talk about how Ohio City Power programs are growing and developing.

Stop by to learn more, and contribute your insights and knowledge to improve this network of practice by visiting  http://www.ohiocitypower.net/ 

"The Pattern of Renewal: What to Look for and Help Bring Forth" by Christopher Reynolds

Chris Reynolds, teacher, musician, and traditional healer, writes about the regional economic and cultural transformation already taking place in Northeast Ohio at its centers of creativity, spirituality, and healing. 

He writes,

In our time, the general pattern is that the world, as perceived by the orphan, is much more expansive, meaningful, loving and merged with spiritual realities than the “real” world as delineated by the current family, educational, religious, political, scientific and technological systems. 

The resultant isolation and suffering brings the orphans to a crisis point that many do not survive. The individuals who do manage to find the healing information for their lives, usually through a form of death and rebirth experience, are now gathering in greater numbers at our local creativity and healing centers.

Chris writes further,

The renewal our region is seeking has already been quietly underway for some years now. This essay is a Calling in itself to those who would be leaders to invite those centers and individuals who have been living in this renewed, holistic manner into public awareness.

There is an astounding amount of wisdom for our times waiting to be welcomed home and permitted to share what Joseph Campbell in the Hero of a Thousand Faces called, “The Boon”, with the culture at large. 

Time, money, effort, generosity invested in the wave of renewal I described opens a better way forward for the future generations.

Who is the orphan in your community and how will you welcome their creative, wholistic insights?

 

 

The Passion of the Western Mind

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Homework from Chris Reynolds - teacher, musician, and traditional healer - in this collection of his favorite books connecting the power of creativity and the power of one's ties to the land, both integral to the economic and cultural renewal of regions.

…so I would like to introduce you to a thinker named, Richard Tarnas, and in particular, his book, “Passion of the Western Mind” which is followed by “Cosmos and Psyche”. For Tarnas, the falling apart that we’re doing right now is the end of a twenty-five hundred year arch. And for him, the passion of the Western Mind, what he calls the ‘Western Development’ has been predominately masculine, predominately male.

And the proof he uses for it, is the names of the human being in all languages in the West are, ‘man’, ‘lum’, ‘wom’ – it’s all, when we talk about a human being we say, ‘man’. For him, at this time in history, we are going through the end of man.

That doesn’t mean the end of human beings; it means the end of a way of life. And for him, the future looks like a completing of the masculine in the feminine or a sacred marriage where there is a balance between the two.

And I like to think of what we’re going through now in those terms. If you look through our culture through that lens, you will see all the qualities that were cultivated over the last twenty-five hundred years have reached a point where they no longer work. There’s this old way that’s dying around our feet and at the same this new way is rising up.

So, I would like to say again, the way it looks regionally is, where the new ground is breaking through, through what’s falling apart, is these healing centers, these places where the people who fell apart and who are coming back together. So, it’s right in our midst. The important thing for us as leaders is to be able to allow what wants to die, to die. And that which is being born, that’s where we would place our interest.

Learn more from Chris about the relationship of creativity, traditional rites of passage, and the cosmos to mindfullness, passion, and meaningful civic engagement at his page on I-Open.

Follow the wisdom of civic leaders across these I-Open communities:

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Copyright 2010 Betsey Merkel http://www.betseymerkel.extendr.com/ and I-Open http://i-open-2.strategy-nets.net Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works. Institute for Open Economic Networks (I-Open) 4415 Euclid Ave 3rd Fl Cleveland, Ohio 44103 USA

The Renewal of Culture - Christopher Reynolds, M.Ed., Teacher, Musician, and Traditional Healer

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Chris is passionate about "waging creativity" - as he does this in all his work - to nurture that which is growing forth from the land, to help things to be born, instead of destroying things. His art movement, "urrealism", teaches others how to bring forth what's best in people. 

Chris describes our shared challenge is "to be able to respond to what has not been seen before. The energy needed to do this in the classroom is the same energy that is needed to renew a region's culture.

Creativity is not just making things, it is in how you perceive what is before you. Each of us holds a receptive mirror, a unique way of seeing things, and when you are able to use the mirror, that quality is 'presence' - the capacity to reflect back and see the creativity, to see what is coming forth. Teachers in touch with their 'mirror' can reflect back and show the future it's own face, responding in such a way to strengthen what is coming forth.

When the future is carried in - in the classroom - it's carried in with shaky legs, it's weak, it's unsure, and you don't know where it came from. This is the kind of presence someone will bring."

Learn from the wisdom of civic leaders across these I-Open communities:

Copyright 2011 Betsey Merkel and I-Open. Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works. Institute for Open Economic Networks (I-Open) 2563 Kingston Road Cleveland OH 44118 Phone: 216-220-0172 Web: http://i-open.posterous.com/