Welcome

Rebecca is Founder and Head Coach of Bestseller Bootcamp located within the Centre for Social Innovation in Toronto. She lives downtown Hamilton and is active with the South Stipeley Neighbourhood Association and the South Sherman Hub. As a result of this recent immersion into a vibrant residential neighbourhood, a thriving professional community and her daily trek around the golden horseshoe, Rebecca is exploring new ideas like cooperation and collaboration. Rebecca has a lot of first-hand experience being herself but is new to the whole community thing. Unless you count family.
This blog is dedicated to all the hard-working community-builders; though you be unsung, your music will resonate for generations.

Powerful Mojo

I have this notion that I created the world. That my imagination continues to create, edit and modify the world as I inhabit and respond to it, as I grow, as I want new things.

And just as I created my world, so too did you create the world you live in, through your own desires and fears and goals.

This idea gets interesting when we acknowledge that we are both sharing the same world; that this place where your reality and mine overlap responds to my imagination as well as to yours. As I play with the idea I conclude that sometimes your vision is stronger than mine, so you get the green light or the good parking spot. Sometimes my vision is powerful indeed and people believe me and invest in the vision and it becomes real. Some people’s visions are so strong and communicated so well that we all get caught up in it and the world seems to change before our very eyes.

What if I could get people to believe in this idea? What could we do together with magic that powerful? What if this was my vision and I could find a way to communicate it so that enough people believed in and invested in it. Would it become true? Could something that most people believe to be impossible become a no-brainer in the future?

Oh, it’s happened plenty of times. You and I can both come up with examples. So why haven’t we as a species embraced this kind of magic?

I think that we are afraid of it. That we don’t really want to be in the drivers’ seat all the time, be responsible for our choices, be the ones to decide what happens. I think we don’t always know what we want.

Sometimes it’s bad enough to want what we want, never mind having it happen.

Sometimes having something happen is bad enough, never mind realizing that we wanted it.

I envision life a bit like a Holo Deck or a global role-playing game where the rules are made up as we go. It might be that we come here to play this game, in spite of its hazards, for the emotion, the excitement, the adventure, the learning. It seems to me that however you phrase it, it always comes back to the same thing: the people. We play this game to be with the people. To build a community, to have someone to play with.

So maybe I didn’t exactly create the world, but I like to think I have a hand in creating World 2.0. And I like to think that you’ll come and play with me.

Examples and Opportunities

It’s my impression that here in Hamilton we have a disproportionately high percentage of the population living in poverty. And yet there seems to be an entire industry devoted to alleviating or eliminating it.

It has been my experience that two of the most valuable things that we can give to someone, at any age and in any situation, but particularly to people who are struggling with poverty, is access to examples and opportunities.

Most of us are not lifestyle innovators. We go with the flow and are influenced by peer groups and the examples that surround us. And there’s no good reason we should each need to reinvent the wheel. And yet, if the wheels keep turning and we’re still struggling with the same problems, problems we may not even be able to identify, then maybe we need a new wheel.

The key word is ACCESS. It seems to me that many of the classic efforts to fight poverty actually create barriers to access for many people. Consider low-income housing projects where they lump everyone in together providing no alternative examples to anyone, or schools within a public system that are not created, maintained or valued equally and therefore actively create barriers to opportunities for many students.

Once upon a time I delivered the mail for Canada Post and for a while I delivered to a particular stretch that was full of overly large buildings each of which seemed to be stocked full of people with identical problems as if some agency said, “Lets stick all of these people here and all of those people there, that will make OUR jobs easier.” But it didn’t make the lives of the tenants any easier, as evidenced by the building in which everyone in it was on some form of disability pension. Each of the customers that I dealt with was either blind, or in a wheel chair or was physically challenged in some way that made it clear that there wasn’t a lot of opportunity for them to help each other.

“Can you change my light bulb for me?”

“Lady, I can’t even see your light bulb!”

Another route that I delivered to had a good mix; it had a fancy condo building, a city homes building, a co-op townhouse area, a school, a community centre, a commercial strip and a park at the centre of it all. This model provides access to diverse examples for everyone and untold opportunities; for work, engagement or relationships that will be mutually beneficial.

Now the city of Hamilton is faced with some development opportunities, and I keep hearing about plans that are homogeneous. Plans that lump people into little ghettos; poor ghettos, old ghettos, business ghettos, arts ghettos. It doesn’t matter what or who you ghettoize, it’s still a ghetto. And it will become one unless enlightened people take advantage of successful examples and have access to opportunities to create value for others.

Lets mix it up folks. The gene pool benefits from variety and so does our community. Now is our opportunity to look for good examples and ask; “What do we really want to create?”

Engaging through food

I did some fru-fru fromage for the reception of the Canadian Conference on Social Enterprise last night. I was really pleased that they seemed to dig my approach to the ubiquitous wine and cheese.

The Right Honourable Paul Martin spoke about engaging the community through social enterprise and triple bottom lines (profit, social good, environmental good). He envisioned a day when social enterprise (which I take to mean everything from large non-profits like United Way to independent social entrepreneurs) will have access to the same incentives and benefits as corporate, for-profit organizations. He held that organizations working for the public good are already engaging the public and employing 8.7% of the Canadian workforce, and that now we need to engage the government for the same set of rules that the rest of the country plays by, for a fair crack at being sustainable.

“I like the way you engage with people,” someone said to me as I hovered around the table, making sure people knew that the Ontario cheddar was particularly good with Cobs’ Apricot Loaf, and I wondered if she meant through food. I thought of my years of doing wine & cheese events in the theatre, of bringing snacks to rehearsals as a stage manager, of hosting Christmas, of doing neighbourhood brunches and BBQs and having not just random muffins at the Bestseller Bootcamp sessions but yummy unpredictable fare from the Guerrilla Gourmet, and I realized, yeah, I guess I engage with people through food.

I spent the morning wondering if we each have our own unique way of engaging with people? Mike, aka, The Best, seems to engage with people through helping; doing the dishes at Christmas, setting up for neighbourhood brunches and BBQs, helping people move (come to think of it, how come his back only hurts when we move?), helping people fix things, or helping them to have a good time.

All this time I thought it was through words, through writing, that I would or did engage with people. Or maybe through the future and seeing what it could look like if…

Maybe we aren’t limited to just one way of engaging, maybe it’s a package deal. But it is a fun question to ask – How do you engage with people?

It looks like Paul Martin’s way of engaging with people is through social enterprise; helping to make the world a better place. And possibly through fru-fru fromage, though I forgot to ask if he liked it.

Wanted: A Heroes’ Hero

People have perceptions and expectations around money that continue to amuse and amaze me. If they think you’ve got some, then you are suddenly attractive on some level, if they think you haven’t got any, then they treat you like you’re contagious. And yet, it’s all perception.

A recent email debate on the subject of Free Food at CSI revealed to me that even Hero Central has plenty of people helping the world on empty stomachs. We put on a brave face, focus on results and count our lucky stars when some event or other has left-over muffins or Indian food.

This is almost a little too hard to think about. Somehow you get into a groove of thinking of things in terms of us and them or those in need and those who help. And the reason this is hard is that if you’re working on fighting poverty, there is some plan to get people from A to B to C. But the people doing the helping are already at C. They already have an education and certain developed-world expectations of themselves and are generally doing the job they love to do, but financially speaking, they’re at the c-for-ceiling.

If you live in a large city and have a spouse and two kids, the poverty line is $37,000. (2005 stats) And yet it is fairly common for someone working in the social-sector-white-collarish jobs to earn, say, $27,000. (2009) If your spouse happens to be a stay-at-home parent or an artist or some other low-income situation, this could very well represent your total family income. I know we live in a free-marketish world, certainly in one where we are privileged to choose our careers, but we all benefit so much from the work that our social sector people are doing.

I wish I knew how to launch a campaign to find us a Heroes’ Hero.

We all make choices. Some people buy fancy cars and live in tiny little condos. Some people rent big houses and have no car. I pay a cleaning lady but can’t afford home internet, cable tv or a car. Everyone makes choices and the differences in our choices is what makes us interesting to each other, and what creates the opportunity for relationships. Mike bought a tall ladder so now neighbours can borrow it when they clean their eaves troughs. One neighbour has a weed-wacker so Mike borrows it to trim the yard. You see where this is going. (I have an office with a wine rack, so other people store their wine there!)

Sometimes people say to me “You don’t know what it’s like!” And I want to say, “Yes I do,” but what I don’t want to do is have a race for the bottom, play the game of who suffered most. I’d rather say, “What do you need? Where are you going?” And help you to find a path or the strength to take it.

In the mean time, some people are doing what they like to do and going where they want to go and helping other people tremendously, and they still only get $27,000 a year. For that, I wish I could find a Heroes’ Hero who could somehow issue Christmas bonuses to everyone, an annual trip somewhere warm, some new technology for their home or a kitchen makeover. Or just feed the heroes. Imagine what a difference it would make in the morale of these Everyday Heroes? (Not to mention their grocery budget!)

So next time you meet someone with $40 million dollars, send them to me. We’ll invest it, and the interest can put about $20,000/year to each person at the League of Canadian Justice; the people who make school breakfasts possible, who keep rivers clean, who advocate for the voiceless. You can be sure that it isn’t going to happen on its own.

And I beleive that the Heroes are as deserving of some joyful perks as the next guy.

Community warms my heart… and I hope to warm your spirits!

The cafe is shaping up so nicely that I find I don’t want to leave at the end of the day. Now that the furniture is in, I have twice sunk into the window seat and fallen asleep after a day of painting, cleaning, meetings and schlepping things from home. Luckily my dog Stella wakes me up. She has been my constant companion during the set-up so I was dismayed to discover from the Public Health inspector that she wont be allowed to keep me company on the night shift in the cafe. There goes my erstwhile bouncer. Not everything is smooth or how I imagined it, but in a strange way, all the little bumps seem to be edging me each time into better directions.

I am amazed at how helpful and encouraging the people involved have been from the city planning office to the inspectors to the adjacent shops on King street. It’s like a whole new community that I belong to suddenly. It feels like a new language which previously I had been ignorant of and now I can understand what the people are saying. Now they are talking to me and not just around me.

I remember when I was looking after the kids and had become a bit, I don’t know, agoraphobic? At home I always felt like I should be out making more money, at work (Canada Post) I felt like I should be doing something more meaningful (school) and then at school I felt like I should be at home being leaderly or helpful. Meanwhile, I somehow lost the ability to communicate with grownups, to converse about anything other than what the kids were up to and I knew that wasn’t so interesting to my peers. I came to hate answering the phone and used to take a different route home from the subway every day so that I wouldn’t pass anyone I knew, like shop keepers and what not. I couldn’t figure out how to say hi to them if I wasn’t shopping.

Nowadays, I am quite happy to blah blah with people as I pass them, and surprised when I say “Hey, I’m opening a cafe around the corner” and they say, “Yeah, I heard, when are you opening?”. How great is that? People know me and I know them and they’re not afraid to say hi to me and I’m not afraid to say hi to them. And maybe they’ll all come in for a cappuccino or a Cameron’s and I won’t be weird about serving it to them.

So Bootcamp people, CSI people, family people. I haven’t forgotten you. Just got to open up shop so that I can spend the downtime on reading and writing and helping other people write. Of course, I am being scolded by the brothers for envisioning downtime in the cafe. “That’s your vision?! You’re supposed to envision line-ups and being unable to keep up with demand!” It’s true, I do hope there is demand, but I really am looking forward to the quiet times to doodle, day-dream or actually converse with the people who drop in then.

Maybe it will be you… Stay tuned for the Grand Opening!

Heart of the Hammer

Heart of the Hammer Cafe: Where arts and letters meet coffee and tea; where neighbours come to visit with thee!

So I am opening this cafe, mostly so I can have a nice spot to hang out in the neighbourhood and also so that our neighbourhood groups can have a place to get together with quality fare. I am overwhelmed by the outpouring of enthusiasm, well-wishing, offers of help, of stuff, of skills and of expertise. I am amazed at how things are just falling into place.

It is not a new idea for me. It has been rattling around in my mind, the business model adjusted from city to city, venue to venue, so that when a few things clicked into place, I just pressed GO. And of course tapped all the people with relevant skills and experience at CSI, in the Hub and especially in the family.

Occasionally someone gets caught up in pointing out all the impossibilities. All the things one ought to do or else. This pointing out of all the pitfalls serves as a platform for I told-you-so when things go wrong. Having gotten inured to this kind of onslaught over the years, I had come to think that maybe I was Master of the Impossible. But now I have a new theory.

I learned to fly a glider before I had ever been in a commercial plane, and in fact, before I even had my drivers license, so my first time above the clouds was a surprise. In a glider, you have no motor. You fly by Visual Flight Regulations, meaning that, you always have to be able to see the ground. Meaning that you don’t fly above the clouds. But one day, I was going for a check flight with Colonel Villeneuve and the tow pilot actually pulled us up through the cloud layer, which was magical… and silent. Somehow, you expect sound from a cloud, like static or soap-bubble popping, but it was like the pause in the movie soundtrack. I held my breath. And then we popped out above it which was… awesome. I actually gasped. Blinding white sunshiny brightness. And the soundtrack resumed.

I think that once you have seen for yourself first hand that it is always, always, always for ever and no matter what a sunny day above the clouds, then it kinda doesn’t matter what goes on below the clouds. It doesn’t matter if you’re right or wrong or how long it took to get somewhere. After that experience, you have a big picture that helps you to put things into perspective, to keep your eye on the important things. Like family and community and doing things you love to do and helping others to do things. I think that if you focus on the important things it is much easier to succeed.

But now I realize that for some people it is more important to be right than to be successful.

Falling Through the Cracks

“Aw, you fell through the stairs and got hurt and no one was there to help you?” This, from Sophie, age 2.5. It’s the third time she has recounted the story and I can see the empathy and concern on her face. She pulls my sleeve down so that she can’t see the scrapes. This time, she adds a solution, “I need to find a friend for you!”

Sometimes you just need a little bit of sympathy. I found mine. I am awed and shamed by the compassion of a two year old and her sense of responsibility towards her fellow creatures. I wonder what happens to us along the way that we should find this so amazing, that we so easily ignore the pain of those around us, turn a blind eye to someone’s suffering.

Are we perhaps competing with each other, letting others fall by the wayside because then our chances of survival or success are better? Or is there just plain too much suffering around, too much need?

What if each of us took responsibility for those in our daily trajectory, the way Philip does with Tony, making it his mission to check up on him, advocate for him and give him a voice beyond his perch on Roncesvalles. Or the way Sarah does with the new family in our neighbourhood, taking on the challenge of helping them to integrate in spite of a language barrier. Imagine if everyone had mentors, advocates or friends who looked out for them. And what about the people who look like they don’t need any help at all?

Somehow, knowing that Sophie cares makes it all ok. I feel better knowing that she is watching out for me. Later that night, she began rocking herself to sleep chanting “I’m getting scared, I’m getting scared…” (Too much Hallow’een?) So I went into her room and did a little magic dance and hurled all the scary energies way up into the ether. Then I put up a little positive energy bubble to keep them away.

She may not beleive that I can do that, but maybe knowing that I care will help her to sleep a little better.

In Praise of Praise

I admit, I get a little nervous when I send love notes to people. I know it isn’t cool. There’s nothing like a little aloof drama to keep people reaching, but I make it my mission to speak my truth as often as possible.

It doesn’t always work. If you’re doing an MBA you might as well wear a sign that says CONTAGIOUS. If you work somewhere with lifetime job security, where the only way to distinguish yourself is by stepping on others, you might as well lay down.

But, if you’re lucky enough to be self-employed, to be able to choose your colleagues and clients, it’s a whole new ball game. Just say it! When you see or hear something that’s great, mention it. Chances are you’ll surprise someone. If you’re lucky enough to work at a place like the CSI, you find that you are not alone. You find yourself with other people who see the good things and aren’t afraid to point it out, other people who send love notes.

I know it isn’t just here, but for sure it is still the minority of workplaces that people are happy, look forward to coming in and to being with each other. My sister works for The Strategic Coach, a Toronto-based coaching outfit serving the who’s-who of entrepreneurs and from what I hear, people have loved to come to work there for over fifteen years. I like to think that those entrepreneurs who have been through the Coach program have also gone back to their companies and changed things for the better; that they have employees who like the company they work for and enjoy being part of the team.

But it takes a sense of confidence and well being to tell other people what’s so great about them, and we don’t always have it all of the time. In the wrong place, among the wrong people, this kind of openness is taken as weakness, spells you out as a loser. Then, it takes a great deal of courage to be true to yourself much less speak it. So cheers to the positive people everywhere!

You know how I can tell that we have not even come close to critical mass? Cause it’s still such a surprise and delight to wake up and find a love note in your in-box. Thank you Colleen!

Oh for the day when we can take that sort of thing for granted!

Love me – Love me not

I’ve been a little flaky with my time lately, double-booking myself right and left. I hate having to choose between two good things but it’s even worse if you’ve already committed to both.

One morning I had booked myself at two conflicting community-building events; one at the office and one in the neighbourhood. At first I thought it was a no-brainer. The office one was just a breakfast party, while the other one was a pow-wow involving the Hamilton Spectator, Mohawk College and Trivaris coming together with social entrepreneurs of all stripes to see what kind of partnerships might be possible to help build stronger communities. All three of these organizations are tremendously generous, industrious and visionary in their conviction that communities start with people, and I love them for it.

You too, on reading this, might conclude that this second opportunity was a goldmine of potential, ripe for idea expression (my forte?), resource tapping, and yes, an ulterior motive to pitch my community blog as a Community Column to the Spec. Until almost the last minute, so did I.

But when I asked myself what these two events had in common, it was the community-building. And when I asked myself what differentiated them, it was the community-building. I have been at the Centre for Social Innovation and with the South Sherman Hub for the same length of time, but because I see the work people daily-ish, my own integration, sense of belonging and commitment has progressed a lot faster and further than with the neighbourhood group where we meet only monthly and with a rather high turnover of attendance.

I realized that at work, there would be people expecting me (since I had sent out the invite, if nothing else) possibly even missing me, whereas at the Hamilton meeting, no one actually even knew me as an individual. As a representative of the hub, they might expect someone, but not me in particular.

So I went to work and we had waffles and eggs and home-made jam and freshly squeezed orange juice and an unbelievable number of people showed up early and everyone kept saying “we have to do this more often!”. I wonder if choosing the CSI Breakfast is one of those things that Philip would call “not a business decision”, meaning, I suppose, not founded on sound business principles. I wonder how common it is and if there really is a payoff to choosing the sound business principles over the  people we love and who love us back? And therein lies the answer to what motivates me; those people.

Maybe it was Seth Godin, or possibly that other guy, who claimed that what we all want most is to be missed. I beg to disagree. If that were true, I’d have gone to the high-potential meeting while enjoying being missed at the low-stakes breakfast.

I think what we all want most is to be wanted.

Mi Casa Su Casa (My Coat: Your Coat)

There I was thinking about the perfect sort of wool coat that I would just love for this fall, while aware that I can’t really justify the cost or the need for yet another coat, when all of a sudden while digging for papers in the attic, I find a pristine Hudson Bay 4-point blanket coat.

Hudson Bay 4-point blanket

You know the kind; off-white wool with the coloured bands.

I try it on, and voila! It fits! What kind of magical universe do we live in anyway, where you just want things and they appear?

I tell myself that this coat fetish is the result of too many years without one. I remember being 11 years old or so and delivering the Globe and Mail at 5am. I’ll admit that I was probably the worst delivery girl ever, constantly zoning out and wondering, “Did I give one to that house and they brought it in already, or did I forget it?” I hated to collect money and would usually burst into tears when I had to ask, particularly if the people didn’t have it on them since I was always behind in the collecting.

However, this is when I first met the wonders of the universe. I’d like to say that I thought of it like The Force, an energy that binds and pervades all of us, but truly, I thought it was just me. (You can’t imagine what a relief it is to read stuff like The Secret and find out that all of you can wield the force as well; whew, so I don’t have to save the universe all by myself!) Anyway, maybe it was just mind over matter, when on cold winter mornings in Guleph (Ontario) I used to head out to deliver my papers, no coat to speak of, and I’d do a little “please please please” dance to the moon and stars in the hope that they would keep me warm. It generally worked, at least long enough to get the papers sorted, stuffed and delivered.

This is my excuse when people think I have quite enough coats already. “I don’t have one for THIS occasion,” I tell them, and hope that I never have occasion to need a newspaper delivery coat again.

So I text around to find out how this coat really wound up in my attic (after test-driving it on a walking tour of the neighbourhood with my dear Stella) and find that it is yet another in my brother Andrew’s collection of ladies coats (?) that don’t fit him (??). His girlfriend assures me that he is saving it for his ebay retirement scheme and ok’d the notion of me keeping it warm till then.

What is family for but to give away each other’s clothes and fulfill all your little fashion whims?