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This is the final post – Part 9 – of the Community-Driven Tour 2010 to New Zealand.  (To read these posts from the beginning, head here.)

It’s hard to imagine all we have done and accomplished and seen in just a month. Virtually every day included work of some sort, whether that work was engaging a group of 300 conference attendees, phone sessions with coaching clients, writing, thinking.

And here it was, Saturday afternoon, the day before our flight back to the U.S. After our exhilarating time in Dunedin, we were pleased when Aly offered her home as our resting place for Saturday night. We anticipated a quiet dinner, an early night to bed, followed by a quiet day of packing and preparing to leave on Sunday.

Silly silly us.

Aly picked us up at the airport following our flight from the South Island, excited to tell us that Garth was in town to teach a course and would be joining us for dinner.

We had just enough time for a walk before dinner. And so we headed east from Aly’s townhome, through the tall trees and steep sloping paths of Western Park, down towards the harbor. On that very last full day before headinghome, we ended up in the exact spot where we had spent our first morning, watching our first New Zealand sunrise. The perfect circle.

Dinner with Aly and Garth was another perfect circle – a long night laughing and sharing stories with the two people whose relentless efforts had brought us to the land we now loved and couldn’t wait to return to.

Sunday morning. Aly had offered to use our few remaining hours to show us “her” Auckland. “You’ve spent a lot of time in East Auckland. Let me show you West Auckland.” How could we say no?

After a quick stop for coffee and pastries, Aly drove us into the rainforest of the Waitakare Ranges, barely ½ hour outside the modern metropolis that is Auckland. It is hard to imagine the city abutting so close to the dense green we are suddenly surrounded by.

The Arataki Visitor’s Centre is the perfect spot for us newbies – an interpretive museum to teach us about the rainforest, and all sorts of treetop decks to observe it from. Again we learn about the hazards of the possum; by now it has sunk in.

There are Maori totems everywhere in the Visitor’s Centre. Aly tells us that some fundamentalist religious groups have attempted to have the bold maleness of those totems covered up or otherwise “removed.” We sigh that fundamentalism everywhere is sadly the same.

We would love to stay, but Aly insists that we must get to our next stop during low tide. Another ½ hour’s drive and we are at Piha Beach, where the waves are huge and hazardous – the perfect draw for surfers. The tide is out, and I immediately roll up my pants legs to wade into the water, to explore.

Aly’s plans are about more than just wading, though. She leads the way towards the rocks, where we will climb to see what she keeps calling a “blow hole.” The rocks are covered with mussels of all sizes, from tiny babies to fully mature, ready-to-eat green lip morsels. Walking over that combination will definitely require shoes.

Unfortunately, I’m wearing my “toe shoes” – the Vibram 5 Finger shoes that cling to your feet and feel like you are walking barefoot (heavenly, by the way). Having taken off those shoes to go wading, I know I will never get my wet feet back into them. And so I tell Aly and Dimitri to go along without me. I’ll just hang out in the tide – not a bad consolation prize, I am sure.

The water is pure delight. I am smiling like a kid, thinking, “Tonight I will be on a plane heading home, and this afternoon I am…”

I don’t get to finish the thought. The tide came in with one wave, moving up from toes to knees to thighs in a matter of seconds. I turn sideways, letting the wave wash past me, intent that I will not be knocked down. I would like to say my resolve to stay standing was motivated by my desire to stay dry prior to our flight that evening. But in truth my only thought was, “Save the camera. Save the camera.”

The water recedes. I look at the mussel-covered rocks beside me, and there it is – a starfish. Not just a starfish, but a HUGE starfish. It has 12 arms. It is purplish orange, if there can be such a color.

Before I can say aloud, “Oh my God, a starfish!” I see another. And another. They are everywhere.

The starfish has great meaning around the Community-Driven Institute. Based around the work of Brafman and Beckstrom, we have strived to build the Institute’s work around the “starfish” model of leaderless leadership. I have no words to describe what it felt like to encounter the living emblem of that work.

Aly and Dimitri return from seeing the blow hole. Dimitri is all smiles, telling me it is magnificent and hoping his photos came out to show me. But all I can do is stare and point and smile. We are surrounded by starfish. Even Aly had never seen anything like it.

We shoot for as long as time will permit, and then we are back in the car, heading to the third and final stop of the tour. Aly winds the car up one mountain road and down the next. I nap in the back seat until the car stops again.

We are at Muriwai – a rookery for Australian Gannets. Being from North America, neither Dimitri nor I had heard of these birds whose heads are shaped for diving into the water at speeds as fast as 140km per hour ( approx. 90 mph). Their flight is more like soaring than flying. It is majestic to watch.

However this is more than a place to watch these amazing birds fly. It is a nesting area. We stand above the ledge where babies await their parents’ feasts. Grey babies calling, “Feed me feed me feed me” and mamas doing just that. Not just one or two, but scores of babies and scores of parents. We stand in the wind, mesmerized. None of us wants to leave.

We make a quick stop along the way back to Aly’s – a roadside stall that sells ice cream and hot dogs and toasted cheese sandwiches. This will be our last Hokey Pokey Ice Cream for a long time.

Then it’s back to Aly’s for another quick snack – one I am still dreaming about. Olives the size of my thumb. Luscious bread with seeds running through it – bread I am still hoping to encounter at some bakery somewhere, here in the States.

And then we are at the airport, exchanging money, going through customs, buying a shot-glass for Nick (who gets a shot glass from everywhere we travel.) This “last day of relaxing and getting ready to leave” has turned into one of the most breathtaking days of the whole trip, thanks entirely to Aly.

After this full month of glorious adventures, sitting in the Auckland airport as we prepared to head home, Dimitri and I asked each other, “What was the best part of this time for you?”

With all we had seen and done, the answer came to me immediately. It is something we can always count on to be grand – the one piece of New Zealand that lingers delightfully in my mind, making me smile deep inside each time I think of it.

“Just spending time with friends, new and old,” I told my partner.

Yes, New Zealand was wonderful beyond anything we had imagined. But the memories that will linger are of the people who made this month so special. The hospitality for which New Zealand is renowned feels like a beautiful bow, gift wrapping friendships with people we look forward to seeing again. We are already talking about doing another “Community-Driven New Zealand Tour” in 2011 – hoping to do another consultants class, and to spend more time doing workshops in communities across the South Island.

The road leading to this point has been so life-giving, it is hard to imagine what’s next. One thing is certain, though. The road ahead is illuminated by thousands of starfish, born of the brilliant pieces of other starfish, multiplying and making this work their own, and shedding their own light on the future we are all creating together.

Photos: Hildy and Dimitri

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For those who were keeping track, you’re right – we never finished sharing our New Zealand adventures. Some of you know my mom fell just days after we returned from our Down Under Tour.  She’s doing great now – many thanks to all who sent well-wishes, strong energy, white light and overall great juju.  But between staying with Rose to care for her, and then navigating what masquerades as a healthcare system in the US, much of our work at the CDI, including blogging, was sidetracked.

And for those who are REALLY keeping track, yes I am finishing up this series on New Zealand from a hotel suite in Perth, Australia. Which I guess means Perth is next on the blog to-do list!

So without further ado, here is Part 8 of the Community-Driven Tour 2010 to New Zealand.  (To read these posts from the beginning, head here.)

Dunedin
If it weren’t for our friend and colleague, Margy-Jean Malcolm, it is likely we would have skipped Dunedin this trip.  But with very little notice, Margy-Jean managed to assemble a dozen community development people to talk with us about their work, so there we were.

And a good thing it is, because no-one told us that Dunedin is AMAZING.

Dunedin is on the east coast of the South Island, towards the southern end.  The landscape instantly tells why the Scottish settled here to create New Zealand’s first city – rolling green hills folding into dramatic ocean cliffs.  The scenery is breathtakingly achingly calmingly heart-stoppingly beautiful.

We had less than 48 hours to spend in Dunedin.  In that time we met with community leaders to talk about what it really means to do community development work.

We slid down soft deep sand dunes to watch a lone yellow-eyed penguin gather food for his/her baby.  We experienced scenery we’d only before imagined from calendar photos. We stood surrounded by thousands of terns, guarded by seals (or is it vice versa?).

We had dinner and a long evening of conversation with the quietly intriguing Margy-Jean, learning about her art and her life.  We slept in 2 hotels in 2 nights, ate in terrific restaurants (which we came to expect in New Zealand, wherever we were.)

And mostly we vowed to return.

Penguins!
Our community meeting was at 3pm. At 5pm, we quickly changed clothes, and piled into Margy-Jean’s car for the drive to the Yellow-Eyed Penguin Preserve at Sandfly Bay.  We were there with the blessing of Sue Murray, General Manager of the Yellow-Eyed Penguin Trust. Sue had warned that we might not see any penguins, as it was molting season when the penguins spend most of their time pining away on their nests, wishing those new feather would grow in already.

According to Wikipedia, “The current status of this penguin is endangered, with an estimated population of 4000. It is considered one of the world’s rarest penguin species. The main threats include habitat degradation and introduced predators. It may be the most ancient of all living penguins.”  We have been warned that tourists often unwittingly get between mama and baby at feeding time, and that if we do see penguins, we should stay back and let the feeding proceed unimpeded.

The drive to Sandfly Bay is spectacular, with a view of Dunedin that I might not have believed if I’d simply seen it in a painting – the scene at the top of this post. Idyllic, dramatic – simply perfect.  As we head off the main road and up towards the beach, I tell Margy-Jean that if we see no penguins at all, the ride alone will have been thrill enough.

But we do see a penguin. Margy-Jean spotted him swimming almost immediately upon our arrival.  We photograph him briefly, getting out of his (her?) way quickly so as not to interfere with baby being fed.  Watching him/her waddle towards its nest in the grasses, we are 3 giant smiles-on-legs walking along the beach.  Later we see another pair, one laying down and one seemingly standing guard, high on a rock along the cliffs.

The sunset was dramatic against the huge rocks that look as if they had been tossed into the sea just to add “mood” to the scene. (It worked.)  We know it’s not fair to compare, but California’s Route 1 doesn’t hold a candle to the seascapes of Dunedin.

An Evening with Margy-Jean
We head to Margy-Jean’s house for dinner prepared by her chef son, Andrew.  The house has personality built into every room, each with ceramic-tiled fireplaces and intricate woodwork.  We marvel at the textiles Margy-Jean has created by her own hand, learning she has been studying in a masters program that will culminate in certification by a visiting textile master from the UK. A very big deal.

Her textiles are overwhelming.  A meter-long piece crafted from bits of ribbon and fabric to recreate the feeling of seaweed, with bits of actual seaweed sewn in – all of it the rich aquamarine color of the waters we have seen all across New Zealand.

A quilted vest made of tiny 3/4″ squares, each and every one embroidered with a different tiny pattern, some with beads, others with fuzzy threads. These tiny squares of wonder were then assembled into a fabric, then quilted, then turned into a vest.

We learn this overpoweringly beautiful work has been her therapy, the thing that gave her life during some tough emotional times.  We are in awe of the power the creative arts have to heal, to give us strength, to nurture the spirit.  I think of Jeane Vogel’s adamant declaration that Art Saves lives, and I want Jeane to know Margy-Jean.

We talked into the night. Talked about whether social media will mean the death of real conversation. Talked about American politics and how much it hurts our spirts to live there right now.

(Being out of the country for this long has me looking more objectively at what it means to live in America.  One question I am pondering is whether living in America is part of a pact – a commitment to perfecting our country’s being. Are the words “to form a more perfect union” an assignment? And does that mean being a citizen of the US will always be an effort?  Could that help me reconcile what it means to be an American? Could it help me reconcile what it means to form a more perfect world?)

Arriving at the hotel after midnight, we sleep as if dead.

Aramoana Beach
Thursday morning was spent moving hotels and handling other travel logistics.  And so our 2nd official “day off” since our arrival 3 weeks ago started at about 2pm when we drove to Aramoana Beach.

We walked about ½ mile along the beach against fierce wind, the sky changing every minute – sun clouds blue gray wind birds – a moody windy fall sky. The scenery was breathtaking beyond imagination. And we were the only humans around.

That would have been enough to have had this be a most memorable day. But then we walked another ½ mile or so out onto the Mole – a jetty that appears to have been furnished by rail many years ago, now abandoned to the birds and the seals. At the very end of the Mole we found a rookery of White-Fronted Terns, dotted with the occasional seal.

It is hard to explain what it felt like to be surrounded by so much LIFE.  There we were, the lone humans among thousands and thousands of beautiful birds, all facing the same direction against the wind, flying about us.  Seals lazing, sleeping, waking up to cough, going back to sleep.

It was 6:30pm when we left, heading back along the narrow harbour road.  Over dinner we vowed to come back to Dunedin, to take our time to explore.

Fleur’s and the Moeraki Boulders
And that’s all the day-off there was! It’s now Friday and we are driving from Dunedin to Christchurch, normally a 4-5 hour drive, but we make several stops and it takes the whole day.

The drive is the kind of idyllic we have come to expect – rolling green hills meeting other rolling green hills in a patchwork I am looking forward to playing with in fabric and paint when we get home.  Sheep everywhere. Bliss.

Our first stop as we head north along Route 1 is Moeraki, where we have a reservation at Fleur’s Restaurant.  And at 2pm on a Friday afternoon in the middle of nowhere, we absolutely needed that reservation!

An hour outside Dunedin, in a fishing village so tiny and off-the-track you could easily drive by without knowing you had passed a town, Fleur’s is legendary. (Stars like Gweneth Paltrow make a point of stopping at Fleur’s.) We’ve been told that Fleur has commissioned her own fishing boats, to be sure the catch is fresh.

And wow!  Fleur’s is precisely what we have been told it would be. Fleur herself is ever-present, choosing our meal for us after we tell her what we’re looking for.  Dimitri doesn’t know fish in this part of the world, so Fleur chooses. I don’t eat animals, so Fleur designs my meal as well.  And true to the legend, we had a feast fit for a king, sitting outside watching the boats rock and the gulls gather as the catch-of-the-day arrives at Fleur’s back door.  Dimitri’s whole fish is huge and – well – whole.  And my vegetarian meal is so artfully composed I became one of “those” tourists, photographing my food.

After such a lunch, we were pleased that the Moeraki Boulders were close by, as we desperately needed a walk.  The boulders look like they landed there by meteor shower, but actually they grow out of the cliffs that surround this beach. It is a grand sight, fun to walk around, a place we could stay and photograph all day as the sky changed its mood every few minutes.

But we had barely an hour before it was time to get back in the car to drive the rest of the way to Christchurch.  By noon tomorrow we’ll be on a plane to Auckland, and then the next day we fly home.

As happened at every turn during our month in New Zealand, however, even on that very last day in Auckland, we had no idea what was in store for us.

Up Next: Saying Goodbye to New Zealand

Photos and Video: DP and HG

We flew to Christchurch then drove to Queenstown via Lake Tekapo, a lake made mesmerizingly green-blue by mineral deposits.

Dimitri had made reservations at an apartment hotel in Queenstown that seemed online to be luxurious for the $150 NZD (approx. $110 US) per night we would be paying. It ended up being beyond our wildest expectations of what was possible. Kitchen, living room, dining room – the combined area of which was the size of the same rooms in my own home.  And while the bedrooms were spacious, the bathroom had a heated floor. Wow.

Still the most amazing part was the view. Huge bay window plus huge accordion glass doors to the balcony, all overlooking the ever-changing skies above Lake Wakatipu and the surrounding mountains.  We spent five days with that view as the backdrop for writing and catching up on work, skyping conference calls and coaching clients. Every hour or so, one of us would jump up to photograph the same scene under light that seemed to change with the whims of the gods.  Once a day we would walk the ½ hour trail that led along the lake from the hotel to downtown, to get provisions, or just to clear our heads.

And then it was time to pack up again, this time heading to Dunedin, along the east coast of the South Island. Margy-Jean lives in Dunedin, and she had arranged for us to meet with community leaders, all of whom are doing some form of community development work.

The questions we facilitated were the same questions we have been asking everywhere we go, as we work to elevate new conversations throughout this sector.

• What do we mean when we say community development?
• Is community development a specific program or a way of being?
• And if it is a way of being, are we being that in all our work?
• If so, that would mean the community is an integral part of making every program work, that the wisdom of community members – real people – is infused in every aspect of every program. Is that what we mean?
• And with all of it, to what end?
• What results are we hoping to create by doing any or all of our work in that way? And for whom?

We got into a little of the “how.” Governance focused on leadership. Programs built by engaging community members from the inside out. Programs built on a base of shared community resources.

But mostly we talked about empowering community members to find their own wisdom, and more than anything to create the future of their own communities.

From there, we spent a magical evening with Margy-Jean, eating and talking and sharing and sightseeing and visiting the Yellow-Eyed Penguin Preserve, where, despite the caution that molting season made it unlikely that we would see any penguins, we did indeed see a few.  Dimitri and I spent an amazing second day in Dunedin – just the 2nd day out of the entire trip that included no work at all (unless you consider spending ½ day moving hotels and dealing with rental car issues “work”).  I’ll share stories and photos of our entire amazing (really and truly amazing) time in Dunedin in the next – and last – post of this tour.

And so we are on our way along Route 1 from Dunedin to Christchurch, where tomorrow we will catch a plane to Auckland, and where the next day we will catch a plane home.

As always happens when we are teaching, Dimitri and I feel we have learned far more during our time here than we have taught. We have had a glimpse into what lies ahead, both for the Institute, and for each of our personal quests. That glimpse tells us that indeed the whirlwind will continue, that the ride will continue to be incredible, and that the reward is nothing less than transformation for this beautiful bauble that is our planet.

The future is indeed bright. And each and every one of us is creating it every day.

Tomorrow: The final post – a gorgeous travel log with gorgeous photos of the gorgeous places we saw.

(This is Part 6: Community-Driven Tour 2010 New Zealand. To read these posts from the beginning, head here.)

Hamilton: Visiting the Waikato
Blink twice and it’s Tuesday. We’re in Hamilton, an agricultural and university community about an hour south of Auckland. As I noted in the first post in this series, we rarely know we are at the beginning of something amazing until we look back. It is that combination of happenstance that makes me smile to think of what has brought us to Hamilton.

It began last summer, with a post I sent to the listserv for the Association for Research on Nonprofits and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA), offering sample copies of The Pollyanna Principles for professors who might use the book as a text in their nonprofit management classes. Suzanne Grant from the University of Waikato in Hamilton requested one of those sample copies.

When I sent Suzanne’s book, I included a note mentioning that we were actually coming to New Zealand, and that perhaps we could find a way to connect when we were there. And that was about it for our correspondence.

Fast forward 6 months to about a month before our trip. Suzanne sent an email, telling me she would not be able to attend the conference in Auckland. Is there a chance we could come to Hamilton as guest lecturers at the university?  And if we were to stop in Hamilton, is there anything else we might be able to do while we’re there – perhaps a workshop in the community?

Of course our answer was yes, and again yes and YES!

With those possibilities in hand, Suzanne involved Community Waikato, a capacity building provider in Hamilton.  And in barely two weeks, we had arranged for Dimitri and I to do a governance workshop at Community Waikato in the morning, then head to the University to do a lecture on sustainability in the afternoon.

We smiled at the wonderful serendipity, and then felt like we were in a Ronco commercial: But wait, there’s more!

Five days before our departure from the US, we learned that there was a last minute addition to our Consultant Immersion Course.  At the time we’d been too busy in preparations to see any significance in that late addition being Jane Stevens, the lead consultant at Community Waikato.

But here we were, driving on the left-hand side of the road, joyful that we would be teaching at the very facility that is home to our now beloved Jane. Between Suzanne’s finding me through an offer I made for a sample book via a listserv last summer, and our now delightful friendship and connection with Jane, we felt fated to be working in Hamilton.

Community Waikato
Our morning session at Community Waikato began with a blessing from Jane, speaking joyfully and authentically (as Jane does) about her gratitude for the work we had done together in the immersion course.  I had barely been introduced and I was already crying!

The group was as engaged as it always is, talking about Governing for What Matters. You would think I would become jaded to that reaction, but each time it is energizing and new.

Several things about this particular session stand out, though.  The first was Ruby.

Ruby is perhaps six months old, and that day she was accompanying her mom, Lou Belle, to work at Community Waikato.  Before we began, Lou Belle asked if it was ok to keep Ruby with her during the workshop.  “If she gets fussy, I’ll take her out.”  And of course we told her that Ruby was welcome, knowing that moms in these circumstances tend to be overly sensitive to disrupting others, and that Ruby would not be a problem at all.

When little Ruby started to fuss, Lou Belle would take her outside to nurse or just get some air. But for the most part, Ruby remained quietly smiling, absorbing “community” all around her.  When the group would talk about the future we wanted to create, we could point to Ruby as one reason why.

The “future” was not an abstract in that room; it was sitting right there with us.  And by the end of the workshop, as we shared lunch with the staff at Community Waikato, the conversation made it clear that the workshop had resonated profoundly with Lou Belle.

We were reminded in those moments that walking the talk of building community means more than the concepts we teach. It is a matter of seeing every single thing we do as an act of building community. Ruby helped teach us that for 3 hours that morning.

The second memorable part of this particular workshop came at the very end of the session, after the group had taken its last moments to reflect on what they had learned, after I had thanked the group, and after they had applauded.

As the group prepared to disperse, a voice came from the back of the room.  “Can everyone hold on for just a moment?  We’ve asked Jane, and she has said it is appropriate to share this, and so Hildy, we would like to share with you our traditional way of saying thank you.”

As if on cue, the participants all rose and faced me, as they sang Te Aroha – the same traditional Maori blessing our students had sung to Dimitri and me a week before.

Te Aroha
(Let there be Love)
Te whakapono
(Let there be Faith)
Me te rangimarie
(And let there be Peace)
Tatau tatau ae
(For us all – it is agreed.)

Thirty-plus people singing to me. As I stood in awe at the grace that surrounded me, an older gentleman broke the silence.  “You thought you were crying before the class, eh?” And we all laughed, as indeed that is how I ended the session as well.

University of Waikato
We had lunch with the staff at Community Waikato, and then Suzanne herded us over to the university, where a small group of perhaps 20 adult students gathered to talk about moving from sustainability to thriving.

I talked about shared vision for the future of the community; talked about the Diaper Bank model of building programs by engaging existing community resources; talked about community engagement as friendraising; talked about building funds upon assets organizations have laying around waiting to be tapped.

In reflecting at the end of the session, a PhD student summed up what we have been wondering for years now: “I’ve gone through the Nonprofit Management program at several universities, and I’m now on my way to my PhD. Why has no one taught me any of this in any of the classes I’ve attended? Why am I just hearing of this now?”

The question haunted us as we drove back from Hamilton to Auckland, where we would spend the next day preparing to depart for the South Island (including not only laundry and shopping, but 3 hours at the post office to ship stuff back to the U.S.).

Tomorrow would begin a whole new part of the adventure. And despite everyone telling us how amazing it would be, we are soon to discover we have no idea just how amazing “amazing” is.

Part 7 is next: Community Development – To What End?

(This is Part 4: Community-Driven Tour 2010 New Zealand. To read these posts from the beginning, head here.)

Waiheke Island
The conference ended on Friday. As happens during these events, the energy is both exhilarating and exhausting.  After two weeks of nonstop action, though, even exhilarating was exhausting!

We spent Saturday catching up on work and moving back into downtown Auckland from the luxurious resort that was our home during the conference.  Starting Monday I would be teaching another 2 days of workshops – Monday at UNITEC’s campus in Auckland, and then Tuesday in Hamilton, 90 minutes south.

That left Sunday for our first rest in 2 weeks.  To make that day perfect, our friend and colleague Aly McNicholl arranged a day on Waiheke Island. There we would spend time relaxing with Tim McMains – one of the founders of the Not-for-Profit Management program at UNITEC, and one of the reasons the program is the stand-out program it is. And while that makes it sound like a business day, it was anything but that.

Had we had only the ferry ride to the island and returned immediately, it would have been the nicest day. But that ride through a field of racing sailboats was only the beginning.

It was the annual Onetangi Beach Race Day on Waiheke Island – a celebration of pretty much anything you can do to compete on a beach.  In that festival atmosphere, people drank beer, ate festival food (i.e. fried stuff on sticks) and watched horse races, wheelbarrow races, boat races, foot races, sand-castle competitions and truly anything else you might imagine can be done to compete on or around a beach.

After watching the results of the local-folks-in-silly-clothes contest, Tim and his partner, Zach, toured us around the island that is their home.  We learned that Zach received her nickname from her brother when they were just kids, named after the cause of all things bad, enemy agent Dr. Zachary Smith from Lost in Space. The fact that we all knew who that was made us laugh even more than the source of the name itself.

Tim and Zach took us for a short hike in the Onetangi Preserve, along a rainforest trail that appears to be little used – we were the only ones there on a beautiful almost-fall afternoon. Under the protection of New Zealand’s largest independent conservation organization – Forest and Bird - we saw a sign that at first stymied us non-Kiwis:

Onetangi Pest Free Project:
Rat poison is used in this Reserve.

In New Zealand, it is likely this means one thing: Possum.  The havoc caused by invasive species in general, and the possum specifically, is perhaps the most commonly understood local environmental issue across the whole country.

Possums were introduced to New Zealand by European settlers in an attempt to establish a fur industry. With no natural predators, the possum is now one of New Zealand’s most widely acknowledged environmental threats.  With a current population of approximately 70 million, possums, the near-extinction of the famed Kiwi Bird has been tied to the possum, as has the actual extinction of several less famous bird species. And because they eat the new shoots on the trees, the possum is also a serious threat to New Zealand’s rainforests.

While the different approaches to eradicating the possum are argued vociferously in New Zealand, we met no one who was against eliminating them – and we were surrounded by nonprofit people all this time,  environmentalists and animal lovers included!  It took a while for this vegetarian to feel ok about purchasing Merino wool spun with possum hair.  But understanding that it’s either eliminate the possum or continue to see the devastating elimination of native species, I was reminded, as with all things, that life is rarely black and white.

Tim and Zach then drove us to Trig Hill Reserve, to look out over fields and vineyards and kilometers upon kilometers of blue ocean meeting blue sky.  The wind blew strong; a family was flying a kite, and its colorful swooping against the backdrop of that magnificent scene took my breath away.

By the end of the afternoon, we were seated at a table on Zach’s old stone porch under the watchful gaze of a two-faced sculpture and several sheep, surrounded by a cascade of lavender and rosemary.  As we sipped champagne and ate watermelon, Aly and Tim treated us to an impromptu ukelele and harmonica rendition of Never On Sunday.

The day had turned into a dream being dreamed awake. Joyful. Magical. Perfect.

The wind in our faces on the ferry home, a quick dinner, then bed. Tomorrow is a huge day for us.  Yes, we will be doing a workshop at UNITEC.  But more than that, Dimitri will be renting a car tomorrow, to get us to Hamilton for our workshop there on Tuesday.

During rush-hour traffic in Auckland on a Monday morning, Dimitri will learn to drive on the left-hand side of the road.

To see Part 5 – Passion Like a Fire (Alarm) – Click Here

Photo Credits: Hildy and Dimitri
Interpretive Signs: Waitakare Ranges – Arataki Visitor’s Center

(Part 2: Community-Driven Tour 2010 in New Zealand. To read these posts from the beginning, head here.)

The Class
Consultant Class #8 in New Zealand.  Ten brilliant minds, all part of UNITEC’s Graduate Diploma in Not-for-Profit Management, spent 5 days re-training their brains to focus on potential and possibility (vs. problem-solving).  We learned from their brilliance, as we do in every class.

Here, though, we were also learning a new culture. We began and ended each day with a Maori blessing. We learned different expressions, different manners. We were reminded of our early days in Indian Country, where we had to get past our assumptions of sameness to find the uniqueness that might stymie us if we weren’t conscious of it.

New Zealand is known for sheep and wool, and so it was no surprise to find that just about everyone here knits. It was fun, though, to have almost the whole class knitting almost the whole time – beanies for babies living in poverty.  On the wall next to the flip chart sheets about vision and values were the knitting instructions for infant vs. toddler hats.

As happens in every class, the nurturing environment took over from Day 1.  People felt safe to explore together, to not have to be the expert, to be vulnerable. As seasoned consultants, it is rare to find a place where we can experiment, where we can feel safe to try something we haven’t done before while being honest about how insecure we feel “building the plane while we’re flying it.”  This is one of the blessings in each class we teach – the space for that vulnerable exploration. Not feeling the need to be the expert, our classes allow consultants to test things out, to confess their own concerns, their fears.  When you live by your wits and your wisdom, having such a safe place is a gift more precious than gold.

And wow did this group practice. There was barely a day when anyone sat out the opportunity to practice new approaches to facilitating social change. They imagined upcoming planning sessions with foundations and international development organizations and huge faith-based programs. They listed the assets and mapped the degrees of separation of small grassroots disability groups and national healthcare facilities.  At every turn we were in another community, often in another country.

Then they focused inward, reconsidering the content in some of UNITEC’s core classes, working through sticky issues, finding new ways to think about everything.  In each case, the setting allowed for exploration and discovery. In each case, things clicked into place, allowing participants to pre-think together. It was a gift to be part of their learning process, and to simultaneously learn from their wisdom.

At the end of the last day of class, our students returned the gift and then some, handing us a basket filled with goodies.  A book about the poet Rainer Rilke (into which I have been diving every night before bed). A set of coasters shaped to represent the Koru – the unfurling fern frond that is a common cultural symbol around the country, representing rebirth and possibility.

While we shouldn’t have been surprised, we were indeed surprised to find a newly-knitted hat for Dimitri and a newly-knitted cowl for me. It turns out we were among the “babies” they had been knitting for all week long.

And then they sang for us.

Aly had rushed home during lunch to grab her ukelele, and together the group sang to honor us with a traditional Maori blessing, Te Aroha. They then went beyond that tradition, to sing something from our own home – a tune so thoughtfully chosen to represent not just America, but specifically our home in the American West. Yes, the group we had taught all week about busting out of traditional ways of thinking – that group sang us Don’t Fence Me In.

Auckland
All this happened in Auckland, the largest city in New Zealand. Our hotel, the Waldorf St. Martin  (actually a “serviced apartment” that was high on amazing facilities and low-to-the-point-of-surly on service…) was a 5-minute walk from the classroom. Ok, it was 5 minutes downhill to the classroom, and about 15 minutes back up the hill.

The hills are just one of the many facts of life in Auckland. Another is the fact that women are almost more into shoes in Auckland than in NYC. It is one thing to consider walking the flat pavement of NY in gorgeous shoes; it is quite another to see women walking the hills of Auckland in fabulously sexy 4″ heels. But I digress…

Our apartment was on the 17th floor, and we took every opportunity to sit on the balcony and shoot – the full moon, the changing colors of the light on the Auckland Museum, the bay, the clouds, the sunrise.

The coffee shop next door  – Sierra Cafe – became our lifeline.  I confess to filling a buy-10-get-1-free card in the time we were there. New Zealanders drink their coffee strong – espresso is the rule, not the exception. Any attempts to wean myself off caffeine in 2010 went out the window by Day 2.  At Sierra Cafe, though, great coffee was matched by great pastries. I hold their white brownie and their cranberry / white chocolate muffin almost entirely responsible for the 6 pounds I gained on this trip.

Each night after an exhilarating and yet exhausting day of teaching, Dimitri and I would walk up and down the hills in search of dinner. One cannot find better food anywhere, and tons of it.  We ate Thai and Korean and Chinese. We ate wonderful French crepes. We even ate at the Brooklyn Bar – breakfast served any time.

Our class was over on Sunday night. By Wednesday, we had moved to the Waipuna Resort, 15 minutes outside downtown Auckland, where thanks to the persistence of Garth, Margy-Jean and Aly, I was to keynote the National Not-for-Profit Conference.

To read the next post in this series – Learning from Maori Culture - click here.

Photo Credits: HG & DP (fern is from a postcard)

For me, birthdays are about quietly celebrating all I have to be grateful for – every moment of my past, and every moment yet to come.  Yesterday I chose to celebrate on perhaps my favorite drive anywhere – the Sonoita / Patagonia / Nogales / Tubac loop.

It was a day filled with quiet natural beauty, fabulous art, Mexican food and tequila, and one of my favorite bookstores in the world.  It was also one of the rare days I relaxed enough to shoot a bit, so I thought I’d bring you all along for my birthday ride!

Heading south and east of Tucson is the Sonoita Highway, an official State Scenic Route.  Rolling hills dotted with juniper, open range, dipping down into the grasslands town of Sonoita.

On the other side of the hills, beyond Sonoita to the south and west is the tiny town of Patagonia.  Bounded by the Sonoita Creek, Patagonia is delightfully green. Stopped at the Nature Conservancy’s Sonoita Creek Preserve. The sky was turning stormy. Hummingbirds were out in force.  I closed my eyes and let the sound of the breeze through the giant cottonwoods spill over me…

Heading south is Nogales – the border.  I stopped to shoot poppies alongside the road, then looped through Nogales to head north along Interstate 19 – the only road in the whole U.S. that is signed in metric (a reminder of the Carter years…).

I-19 follows the Santa Cruz River, one of the few streams that flows from South to North, starting in Mexico and ending just this side of Phoenix. Towns along the Santa Cruz are layered in history, beginning with native peoples centuries before Columbus blundered into the “new world.” As “New Spain” expanded north, these towns became mission sites. (The sky grew dark, and I was hungry – skipped a visit to the late 1600′s era Tumacacori mission.) These days the towns along the Santa Cruz are primarily tourist towns.

The walled presidio of Tubac is one of those towns – a historic community turned artists colony.  It started sprinkling, a grand birthday gift.  Sat quietly for a Mexican lunch, roamed around fabulous metal art, and then to the last stop, TJ’s Tortuga Bookstore.  (TJ is “Tubac Jack” – the jackrabbit standing guard outside the store. TJ is the handiwork of the store’s owner, an artist whose sculptures have graced museums and universities across the continent and whose sketches of desert scenes include the mountain lion logo of the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum.)

The day ended joyfully as well – little surprises.  Rain, for one – a huge gift here in the desert.  For those of you who don’t live in the desert, rain here is not just rain. It is a sense of being. It is the smell of creosote, coolness in the air, people sitting on porches waving to each other, grinning and quietly watching. It is the inexplicable feeling that everything is just perfect in that moment.  A gift from the gods, birthday or no.

Then a gift I never would have expected. As I went to put away a bottle of wine I had received as a gift, I found an old bottle I’d been saving – a 20 year old port that just about leaped into my hands. And so I spoke with friends and with my daughter, read good wishes on Twitter and Facebook, all while sipping this more-delicious-than-cake gift.

This morning, I got to walk in the mists and the clouds, explore a neighborhood I don’t normally walk, chat with friends. My ex-husband is here right now, repairing the wall where a pipe leaked last week. (Having our relationship be calm after years of turmoil is a gift in and of itself.) Later, I’ll head to the best video store in the whole world (I’m not kidding) to rent a movie, then I’ll pick up Grandma Rose and cook her dinner, to thank her for giving me this amazing life.

My sincerest thanks to all of you, my friends and colleagues around the world, for being part of this amazing journey. May every day of your own life give you reason to celebrate the simple things.

Last fall, as Dimitri and I headed out on the Community-Driven Tour 2008, we had a simple mandate from friends and colleagues: Blog about it. Had I been on Twitter at the time, I would have tweeted about it, too. These days, it is easy to share life as it is happening.

Not so ten years ago, though. The work Dimitri and I were doing in those days was, in some ways, even more of an adventure than it is now, as we would spend a whole year or more working intensively with a client at a time, always in amazing places.

Our year-long effort in a Mexican fishing village. The two years we spent along the Grand Canyon with the Hualapai tribe. Even life at home, in a land where kids have no idea that Presidents’ Day is a holiday, but they get off school for rodeo.

In the late 1990′s, we got the idea to create a kitchen table site, where we could share those adventures over a cup of coffee or a glass of wine with folks who wanted to join us. And with that, At Our Kitchen Table was born.

Like everything on the web back then, At Our Kitchen Table was a static site. Even so, we tried to create a tone where people felt they were part of the journey – that they were sitting there with us. It was a ton of work, but we loved it. We told stories, showed photos, shared recipes – we even sold the photo card sets that we now only give as gifts.

In 2001, when one of our interns headed out to Niger with the Peace Corps, we added a section to the site where Brett could tell his own stories.

This morning, in reading a post by Shawna Coronado at her blog (which I recommend to you), The Casual Gardener, I was reminded of our own kitchen table site. And so I took an hour to roam around the stories and photos and recipes once more. (Yes, Elizabeth, it’s still up and has been all along!)

And while it’s not a Rock Out, I thought it might be a good Happy New Week and Happy New Month gift to get you going.  I invite you,on this great morning, to relax with a cup of coffee At Our Kitchen Table!

So much has changed in the ten years since we created the site. But of all the things that have stayed the same in that ten years, there are two that jump out as being more important than any others: We still love doing what we do. And we still love having our friends and colleagues share the adventure as we go.

Have a great week, all!

(Part 8: Community-Driven Tour 2008. To read these posts from the beginning of this 2+ month tour, click here.)

From our first visit to Lincoln, Nebraska in April of 2006, it was love at first sight. And everyone we tell that to thinks we are insane.

If we were talking about somewhere romantic like San Francisco or Manhattan, they would understand. But falling in love with Lincoln, Nebraska?

Is it the weather? Nebraskans proudly inform visitors, “If you don’t like the weather, wait an hour – it will change.” During the single week we spent in April 2006, we experienced an ice storm, a 70 degree shirt-sleeve day, torrential rains and a tornado warning – all in one week. While our visit this past week was not as extreme – a 60 degree day followed by a 15 degree night – the weather is not why we love Lincoln.

Is it the food? Man do we love Lincoln’s food! Our host for this trip was Rick Carter, Executive Director of Lincoln’s Human Services Federation, Community-Driven Institute Adviser and joyful friend.  Rick ensured we only ate at locally owned restaurants, a mandate he and his wife Jessica (and Super Baby Eloise) live by in their daily lives. We had phenomenal Indian Food at The Oven (an eggplant dish to die for!) and we loved Pho Nguyenn so much, we went back for their authentic Vietnamese food a second time (try the Bun with tofu and mushrooms – heaven!). And while Lincoln’s restaurants rival cities twice its size, that is not why we love Lincoln.

Is our love for Lincoln due to the culture and feel of the downtown / capitol area? Yes, we love the area around the UNL campus, and yes, we spend as much time as possible in the restored Haymarket District with its fabulous restaurants and stores. And yes, Rick treated us to a tour of the art deco marvels of the Nebraska State Capitol building (a building about which Lincoln Food Bank executive director Scott Young insists, “It should be a misdemeanor for people who live in Lincoln not to go inside that building and look around once a year.”).

And even more, we wish we could attend every one of the incredible lectures hosted at UNL’s Lied Performance Center (Former Kennedy speechwriter Ted Sorenson was the attraction while we were there this time – the rumored author of the immortal words, “Ask not what your country can do for you…”). Their surprisingly rich cultural environment certainly makes us want to stay and soak it all in, but that, too, is not why we love Lincoln.

Perhaps it is the natural environment? Unlike the drama of the weather, the subtlety of the landscape in Lincoln continually blows us away. Spring Creek Prairie Audubon Center is just one of the local prairie preserves, nurturing these fragile lands back to their natural state. Even in its winter starkness, the sun pouring through the golden grasses was enough to make me lay down on my back, staring at the blue sky through a sea of tufts. A white-tailed deer leaped into the air, flushing out a pheasant in its path. What magic!

It could be all of that. But it’s not.

The reason we have fallen in love with Lincoln is the sense that Lincoln is ready to leap like that deer, reaching for the next level of what is possible for the community.

During this trip, in conversation after conversation with community leaders, the questions circled back to this:  What would Lincoln’s Community Benefit Sector look like if all systems were aimed at community change? And what would that take?

How could you not fall in love with a place where community leaders are excited to discuss such questions!? And how could you not love a community where the answers included these:

• Everyone would be involved in the discussion – funders, consultants, service providers, elected officials, businesses, individual community members, government departments
• Everyone would be learning from each other, building on their own strengths and each others’ strengths
• There would be tools / systems for measuring community change – meaningful indicators of long-term success
• There would be a sense of trust, a spirit of learning and reflection
• The context of the work would be the small picture within the larger picture, rather than solely the small picture
• There would be cross-pollination across different types of missions
• Community change would be a very present part of the dialogue
• Collaboration would not be seen as a superficial mechanism, but as a way of being
• Organizations would see themselves as catalysts for community change, and would know how to put that into practice
• There would be excitement and energy throughout the sector!

Over the course of our time in Lincoln, these themes crept into all our conversations.  How can we ensure our work is a model for the interconnectedness and strength-based approaches we want to reach for as a community?  How can we be sure to walk our talk? How can our efforts embody what it means to be the change we want to see?

And people wonder why we love Lincoln!

Among those who participated in many of these breathtaking discussions was our friend and colleague, Mari Lane Gewecke. Mari is the one who introduced us to Lincoln originally, and who connected the dots to make our first trip to Lincoln possible almost three years ago. During this current trip, Mari became an integral part of the Community-Driven work the Institute is doing. The ability to work so closely with friends like Rick and Mari has made this even more special.

Topping off our visit was a great morning-full of workshops, attended by an enthusiastic group of 70 representatives of Lincoln’s Community Benefit Organizations. From service providers to funders, and from arts organizations and human services to environmental and animal welfare groups – folks saw that they share a single vision for the future of Lincoln. They learned how to govern towards that vision, and how to engage the community in programs that embody that vision.

We have now packed the car, and have begun the journey home. It was on the way out of town that we stopped to spend a few hours at the Spring Creek Preserve. The woman at the Visitor’s Center asked where we were from, and then asked what had brought us to Lincoln. When we told her we had done some workshops for community organizations, she came alive. “Two of our board members were at that workshop! They were telling the board about it just last night at our board meeting. They said it was the best workshop they had ever attended!”

What a way to wrap up our perfect week in Lincoln! This trip has been remarkable, in every single way, but Lincoln has been the cherry on the sundae.

From there, it is time to set the GPS to Tucson. After 2 ½ months, it is time to go home.

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(Part 7: Community-Driven Tour 2008. To read these posts from the beginning of this 2+ month tour, click here.)

Three full moons have passed since we left Tucson on September 12. We have driven two oil changes worth of miles. We have slept in 2 countries, in 12 US states and 1 Canadian province, visiting 17 communities for workshops and meetings. And we are not done yet.

We have driven as far north as Canada, as far south as North Carolina, as far east as the Atlantic ocean.

We visited Niagara Falls at night. We spent a whole day walking 7+ miles all over Toronto, including a stroll through the multi-ethnic wonders of Kensington Market.

We hiked waterfalls and gorges in gorgeous Ithaca, New York. We rode the metro in Washington DC and picked apples in Danbury, Connecticut.

We attended a reading by a sour New Age philosopher at Malaprop’s – a magnificent independent bookstore in the robust downtown of Asheville, North Carolina, where book after book ultimately leaped into my possession. We spent a misty night at the lakeside home of a friend outside Knoxville, Tennessee, waking up to the quiet beauty of the waterfront wrapped in fog outside the window.

We have photographed stream after stream, barn after barn. We have had home-cooked meals in the homes of old friends, and have spent hours playing with their dogs.

Autumn’s arboreal rainbow has been the backdrop for every moment of the 2+ months of this journey so far, like watching a movie forward, then backward, and then forward again. Leaving Tucson and heading north in late September, we watched the leaves begin turning from green to gold. In early October, heading from Connecticut across western New York to Canada, the leaves peaked in brilliant golds and reds. Driving through Ontario in mid-October, gold and then brown leaves began falling from the trees. Heading south towards Pittsburgh and DC, those leaves were now reattached to the trees. And arriving further south, in Williamsburg, Virginia in early November, we found the season back in the full peak of gold and red with bits of green still hanging in there. This single season circled back twice for us, and we have been filled with awe and gratitude at every step.

There have been traumas – Dimitri’s dad, and then watching from a distance as the mother of a dear friend, Mark Myers, suddenly passed away as well. There have been minor inconveniences like head colds and bug bites. And there have been the highs of an election that brought words like “vision” and “possibility” to the lips of everyone we have met, and whose results left us crying in our hotel suite, receiving and making joyful phone calls to our kids and friends spread across the country.

We have met almost 1,000 people at 27 workshops and meetings. And we are not done yet.

Through all the sights and sounds and tastes of this fabulous tour, the most energizing part has been the work we traveled all this way to do in the first place, and the result of that work. We came to share a singular message, whether we were teaching Governance or Community Engagement:

Visionary community change is not only possible; it is practical and doable.

It is possible because it is not scientifically impossible.  We have seen visionary results occur repeatedly in our work, and in the work of others.

It is practical and doable because there are easy-to-use systems for doing it, which is what our workshops shared – the practical side of creating visionary community change through the day-to-day work of our organizations.

Several people have asked us what we have observed across the diverse communities we have visited. Our response is this: Everywhere we have been, to the workshop, to the sponsor, and to the individuals attending, the desire for leveraging the work organizations are already doing, to create more significant community change, is undeniable. People are craving concrete, practical, doable approaches, aligned behind the intent of creating a more compassionate, vibrant, healthy, resilient world.

The result has been universal enthusiasm for the possibilities inherent in Community-Driven approaches. That enthusiasm energizes us to begin preparing now to do this tour again next year!

It also energizes us to have the Pollyanna Principles available to you by Christmas. It energizes us to begin the Community-Driven Institute’s classes for consultants next year, as the next step in changing how this sector does its work.

But for now, the tour continues, and we are most energized about our next stop – Lincoln, Nebraska. In Lincoln, we will not only do two workshops, but we will begin talking with community leaders about building a Community-Driven management support organization, to provide Community-Driven education and other resources for Lincoln’s community benefit organizations.

We are in St. Louis today, to spend the day with my darling friend, artist Jeane Vogel, who is always pushing me to think think think about the extent to which art is life is art. She has a show opening tonight; what a treat to be here for it!

And so, ten days before it is over, we can declare that the Community-Driven Tour 2008 has been a wild success. We have been honored to have been welcomed into so many communities, by so many incredible people, doing such extraordinary work. Each and every person who has had any part in this tour has our gratitude, beyond anything you can know.

Life is good indeed.

(Read the next installment of our adventures on the Community-Driven tour!)

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