Tonight was our worldwide dinner party as part of the Feast on Good movement. We made our own pizza and had a nice dessert (thanks Claire!) The issue we chose to tackle was poverty in our area.
Here's what we came up with.
Poverty is a real issue in our area. We want to help but we know that we can't solve hunger by throwing cans of food at people. We can't solve the homeless problem by sentencing vagrants to a life of unaffordable mortgage repayments. Getting kids into college or university is not the answer if interest on their student debt becomes a personal millstone and a national curse.
Empowerment is personal. It starts at home. It starts with people.
Why not empower people to make their own stuff, to build their own eco-houses, to cook their own food, to live well without luxuries, to grow vegetables and milk cows, to fix their own cars, to create blogs, to butcher meat, to see how life shared together can create a commonwealth that benefits everyone?
We will create a tent village experience on a farm that will empower young urban people on the fringe to take the reigns of their lives and start creating stuff that will sustain them.
Our next steps are to build camping facilities on our land, share the idea widely, and identify the skill base and resources.
We can do this with volunteer labor, free use of the farm, and with only $5000 which is needed to build some camping facilities, an outdoor kitchen and some scholarships for at-risk youth.
We will launch in December 2012 and run all through January.
Thank you Feast family for the encouragement to make this happen.
