Top of the morning
Denying that poverty is all around us is a shame.
But deciding in yourself that there is nothing that can be done about it is a really sad state of affairs.
Play your part - it's the only way to exist


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@dare2flourish
Top of the morning
Denying that poverty is all around us is a shame.
But deciding in yourself that there is nothing that can be done about it is a really sad state of affairs.
Play your part - it's the only way to exist

Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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Wellbeing and happiness should be a human right. Looking forward to reading the 3rd edition of Positive Psychology. In the mean time... Thank you Leeds University for these useful tips.
As I find myself close to wrapping up what has taken me 3 years to write.
I really want to go for a stroll with Arne Dekke Eide NĂŚss.
Wikipedia describes him as an inspirational figure within the environmental movement of the late 20th century...a prolific writer on philosophical issues.
As of the late, with COVID and all. I really would love to share a cup of hot chocolate with Arne and just say these things.
Firstly thank you.
Secondly sorry.
I've been a bit angry with your ideas on deep ecology.
I just....
Anyway let me try and explain my thoughts.
Because
To be honest
I wish I could be speaking to you right now.
Really...
Wish I could read your facial expressions when I try to argue
That
Deep ecology is a bit flawed.
Nature is in fact all around us. If we were to trace our heritage as a species...as our geography and physics and other science books teach us...
Then we as an animal species are made of
Stardust (fun fact).
Just as all material, objects or subjects are on our planet earth.
We are all interconnected,
Plant, animal or microbiotic...kingdoms if you will.
Deep ecology is an interesting philosophy none the less
But similarly to all colonial philosophies.
It may have missed an important point.
The question of love. Which the Greeks describe so eloquently.
In English Love is an emotion, right.
Without love as humans we whould live insignificant and complicated lives.
So it is not the laws of physics or biology or chemistry that feed our human need to nurture...our drive our curiosity to explore...
To learn better...
To understand more.
What drives every species or natural organism is quite basic.
Survival.
And I don't mean a Darwinian "nightmare" version of survival.
I mean our abilities as animals, plants and microorganisms to adapt,
To cooperate to depend on each other
To compensate for our weaknesses
Or our lack thereof.
So there is no such thing as deep-ecology
Without Human-ecology.
The idea of fresh-air
The freedom to ramble
To walk
To explore
Is a privilege.
It is not a freedom...
Because fresh air is not free.
Humans are in fact not free.
We have never been free since we started counting the years as BC and AD.
Borders.
Countries.
Are all constructs of territories that belong to no one.
No one deserves to own an army.
No one should need to pay money towards war.
Towards weaponry and defense against...
The fellow human.
So if we believed in the real value of freedom to roam
To walk
To actually guarantee all human beings a sense of
Feeling free...
Of freedom.
Well...
Then we as a human race
we would not consciously agree to funding (collectively) research, knowledge etc in the name of war.
In my view that would be the most honest version of your theory of deep (human) ecology.
One where all public money would be used to fund health care,
Human honest and legal technology.
Free public libraries (thank you Einstein - Alexandria and Timbuktu etc...)
Shelter and housing for all human beings
First.
Then nature...
Then I believe we would all take better care of eachother at a neighbourhood level.
So tusen takk for being the one who left his window open.
I wonder if you ever walked along the plateau of the mountains in Ethiopia.
If so...
Happy Timket from all the Habesha folk out there praying for peace and hoping to return home some day without the pains and aches from decades of forced displacement.
It's testing times so I pray that those with decision making powers are doing the right thing to ensure we don't all have to suffer the effect of social control, physical distancing and the continued spread of COVID.
A pandemic that experts had predicted decades before it happened.
So today is not about science fiction
Today our every day is really
About deep HUMAN ecology.
Surviving and staying in the present.
Not letting fear turn us into animals with no heart.
I really hope the future for my son is brighter than the nightmare that millennials and generations after have had to endure so far.
Takk from Oslo.
In some schools Africans were not taught in any detail the pre-colonial history of the continent. Ayu Kwei Armah 2014
Why is that so?
Hierarchy is like building sandcastles in the mind
Bricks and mortar are the pebbles of love that endure the test of time
We don't live (love) today to die another Day
We live today to built on wisdoms of the past
Endurance is the growth of our hearts
Circulation in both directions helps to sieve out the pain
To dust off the old and improve our performance
Rebirth is such a powerful concept of redemption and creativity
The courage to believe in ones ability to flourish
Not be ashamed of mistakes or wrong turns
But to know
As Papa said
Every experience is a good experience
Evil is our doing...our own fear of shortcomings
Things of the past
Memories are made
Promises can be broken
But the heart pumps deepest
When we remember the emotions and
Less the details
Details are for the now
So as the great Dizzy said "fix up look sharp"
Growing pains come at all stages of life
But pain does not mean love
Love is our constant self acceptance and our inner beauty and ability to find joy
Don't worry,
Be happy....then the tweeting of birds đŚ
That's what today is about
Tweeting (whistling) away the details and focusing on what matters
The present day
Our ability to stay focused
Our ability to find flow
Our ability to say no
Our ability to laugh as loud as our bellies can handle.
Big love is where the heart is!

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A Search for some New Images for the New Year
I feel very ambivalent towards New Year. My mother hates it. When I was little she always made a point of going to bed early on Dec 31st in order to miss it. She is a historian, specialising in early Medieval Christianity - Christmas does it for her, a midwinter celebration centred around a mythic story of hope. Or - she would argue - if you prefer to be more pagan in your approach, then Dec 21st, the solstice, will do very well - the point at which the sun reaches its lowest point in the sky and stands still before starting its ascent, to bring longer, lighter days back to the world. By contrast Dec 31st, as a threshold date of seminal importance, seems to my mother, not only distinctly arbitrary and un-mystical but unnecessary - basically just an excuse for noisy midnight parties, with booze and firework bangs. So whatâs the point?
I understand her perspective. Christmas and the solstice are cyclical - they come round again, and again, like rings within a tree, and the imagery surrounding them is potent, colourful: stars, a baby in a manger, animals, angels, holly, ivy, red, gold and green. New Year, meanwhile, is all about the numbers. Counting the seconds down to midnight, counting the years up - 2020, â21, â22. There is no grand myth attached to it except, in the UK, the image of Big Ben, a huge clock face. It brings into sharp focus the units we have invented to mark and measure time: the seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, some counted in sets of twelve, others in tens. It is an utterly human festival. The sun doesnât care about the numbers. Nor does the earth - it isnât wearing a new Apple watch that counts up its miles and pings every time it completes another lap. Itâs our days that are numbered, not its. This is true of our individual lives and, as many climate activists point out, of our collective life as well - the earth will carry on. We probably wonât.
It is this strict focus on our human-centred constructs, on our little Gregorian calendar, and the ignoring of a greater story, that my mother dislikes. I share her sentiments and yet I also understand our need for numbers, this year more than ever.
For a start the pandemic has muddled up the count - I spent some time the other morning, with my husband, trying to figure out whether this was the second or third Christmas since the virus started. Neither of us knew. We worked it out in the end (answers at the bottom*) - but it was disconcerting how hard it was and how much this bothered me.
Secondly, this new Year, â21-22 is particularly significant for me because I know exactly where I was, and what I was wearing on Dec 31st â11-12. I was at the Met Opera in New York, in a stretchy black number, in high heels, also black, with a gold criss-cross pattern threaded through the leather. Shoes that would make Cinderella jealous. I have not worn them since, or any other heels so high, because on January 2nd â12, I went into labour, and on the 6th (yes, it took that long), my son was born. This year we are coming up to his 10th birthday. Ten years of his life. Ten years of mine as a mother. The years pass and often pass me by, but the decades bring me up short. Make me stop. Like the sun at solstice. It is only numbers but it feels mythic, momentous, and at his age, the numbers are totemic, like talismans, carried for a whole year, until exchanged magically overnight for the next.
So, I think the numbers matter. We need them to help us keep track of where weâve been and where weâre headed, both day to day and year to year. But the numeric, linear version of time which we celebrate at New Year also tends to get us in a mess, because the image of the clock so often makes us measure not only the seconds, but what we have achieved in them, to obsess over the outcomes.
This year, when doing my Christmas shopping, I stood for a while in front of the rack of packaged experiences, looking like new release DVDs, on sale in WHSmiths. My daughter selected a âHigh Street Dining for Twoâ experience for Daddy (I am pretty sure, this was intended as a gift to him and her, not him and me). Above the rack there was a quote about giving âthe gift of treasured memories.â Our pasts are meant to be comprised of richly stocked memory banks. Our futures are meant to involve progress - that is what New Yearâs resolutions are all about, and they depress me, rather than giving me hope, since the idea that the higher the numbers scroll up, the better things get, that this year things will improve, has been so manifestly undermined. I receive emails every week now, detailing how little time we have left to save ourselves from the worst version of climate catastrophe. It is a difficult time to be a mother, to wonder what will have become of the world in another ten, twenty, thirty years. But neither the count down to the apocalypse, nor a count up to a yet better time, seem very helpful. The numbers in these narratives make me feel frightened, more lost than found.
This year, then, as I move through the ten year mark in my mothering, which coincides with a significant year for my making- I have been working on my novel for ten years too and am now redrafting it for, I hope, the final time - I am in search of some other images for the New Year, beside the clock face of Big Ben. I have been looking out for images that honour the numbers, but not in order to measure my success or lack of it, images of time-travel that are directional, not cyclical, but that take me to places that I want to be. So far, I have found two.
One from a childrenâs fairy tale. The other from a rocket.
The fairy tale is Hansel and Gretel. In the version I know, the children collect first white pebbles, and then breadcrumbs, to drop on their way through the woods so that, in the moonlight, they can trace the way back home. The pebbles work, the breadcrumbs donât - they get eaten by the birds - but either way, I think what matters for my purposes is the act of dropping something as they walk. Pebble by pebble, crumb by crumb, they mark their passage.
The other image is one from the papers: a photo of the rocket which launched on Christmas Day, containing the James Webb telescope, which, it is hoped, will orbit the earth and see far enough out into space to tell us about the beginning of the universe. Forget treasured memories from WHSmiths- letâs go looking for the start of time.
Taken together, I like these images. One so simple - just drop a pebble on a path - and the other so epically far-reaching, a million miles up in space, to search for 13 billion years ago in time. Drop stones. Send up telescopes. These feel like helpful ambitions for me, for both my mothering and my making, in the year ahead.
The pebbles are an ongoing practice, set down not only on special birthdays - they are the meals, baths, bedtime stories of every single day. Together they make a pathway through the woods. Some of them may be remembered, many of them wonât - the point is to keep dropping them. This blog is another pebble, left along the way.
And the telescopes?
What I like about the telescope is that a phenomenal amount of time, energy, effort and money went in to making it. They started work on it in 1996, which makes 10 years on my novel seems like peanuts. The launch went well but there are also, apparently, three hundred points, as the telescope unfolds, at which it could still all go horribly wrong. And, even if it works, they have no idea what they will find. Sounds like a fairly accurate metaphor for parenting to me, or indeed making anything - a show, a book - itâs one grand gamble with our time. I also like that it is intensely directionalâ you couldnât get something much more directional than a telescope inside a rocket â but so far forward-looking that, through it, the hope is we will see the past. If you pursue the linear version of time right to its limit, it turns a corner, and starts to form a circle.
And New Year, figured like this, makes sense. A pebble dropped on a moonlit path at midnight, one in a sequence. A firework-telescope, sent up into space - a meticulously planned and yet reckless and preposterous attempt to search for meaning, with zero certainty as to its outcome. That is something I can celebrate.
And you?
How do you feel about New Year?
What are your pebbles? What are your telescopes? What images might best support you, in your time-travel, while the world circles on around the sun?
Image credit:Â The back cover of Zoe Gardnerâs mother record book, an object/project for keeping track and navigation of time. To join in, for mutual peer support, do get in touch @limberdoodle on Instagram.
*(3 since it began, 2 since it came to the UK)
Reflecting on being safe at home
It's fast approaching the end of the calendar year in 2020, the Gregorian calendar that is.
Who is Greg anyway?
In Ethiopia we have 13 months of sunshine and 13 months in a full rotation of our little planet making it around the sun just one time. But really I think it's just 12 months of sunshine plus the month of August...which is the month of the heavy rains...a magical part of the year. Actually my favourite because I love mud! And because most rooftops of houses in Addis Ababa are made with corrugated iron....so you can imagine the sound of hail and rain during the month of August đ
August is my favourite month anywhere in the world I have lived. It is the real month of changing seasons. Ok it's just because it's really hot in Europe in August and I love the rainy season on the equator. So it's all good in the hood in August.
Now I live in the really far North....way too far for my body to enjoy living here. Norway is closer to the land of Mr Claus and his elves - or the fairies and trolls depending on which fairytales you read as a child. In my case I pretended to read so it doesn't really matter...Claus, elves, fairies, prairies, jack and Jill on the hill...they are all really far North for me. Ok sorry what I want to focus on is the positive...so I live closer to the Northern Lights, closer to ice...like prehistoric ice, the serious stuff and so much snow.
So at this time of year I truly feel hibernated. I feel like digging a hole in the ground deep enough for my whole family to just sit and keep warm. It's time to find a cave and rest and store heat. But luckily for me it's 2020 and I live in a land that made good use of all their exploitations....you know oil and shipping and trading other people's stuff.
Now I live in Oslo which is at the end of a fjord in the south of the country. Staying safe in this part of the world is easy.
1. You keep away from large crowds (easy just do whatever you want but don't go to the post office too many people there at the moment).
2. You wear a mask even if they don't tell you...you have to...just do it because it makes sense.
3. Don't hangout with old people unless you really really have to...if you have to then don't be a fool and follow steps 1 & 2.
Oh yes and wash your hands...I mean your mother or aunty or grandmother someone...should have taught you that already.
There you have it the public health guidelines of Norway in a nutshell. If you want to send me a Christmas present then I will also accept branded merchandise. My family could do with presents this year.... it's been a tough year for us all!
Ok jokes aside.
Staying at home is hard when home is not just the house you live in. When the bed you sleep on is not enough to keep you warm at night. I see you....all those who like me need to feel a connection to feel alive, to feel loved and needed and cared for.
I miss my family. Luckily for me I have a loving family. Unfortunately because of work and life in general my family lives all over the world. We are nomads. We lost our home too many times to belong to one single home. We live by the grace of the wind and the economy. We move in order to stay alive to stay relevant to make enough money to feed our family. I know I am not alone because I see you. I see people like me. I see vagabonds and the homeless. I see my fellow East Africans in all corners of the world.
Some of us believe in one god, some in a spiritual word, some in the power of money, and others just exist.
So I'd like to try and pray - quietly to myself this season of festivities. For some right now is the best time of the year. The sun is shinning, crops are doing well and for others it's dark and cold and hard to keep a light burning long enough to make it through the night.
So here goes. My prayer tonight before I go back to sleep.
I pray with you
That we can be alive
Thank you once again for your attention
May we flourish and grow.
Bless our nutrition our homes our loved ones
May we all rest in peace
May we all find light in the darkness
May we all find strength in eachother
May we all remember our ancestors
May we all be better, stronger and wiser than those that came before us
May our future be shared, bountiful and colourful
Thank you for friends and sisters.
Thank you for my husband and child.
Thank you for books and wisdom.
Thank you for my mother and father may he rest in peace.
Amen.
Lala salama from Oslo.
_________
NB my interests are currently research and the power social enterprise. So if you want to chat in person and want to share your thoughts and inspiration with me and my friends then I invite you....
On Thursday (lunch time for me) my friend Nelmo in Nairobi and my sister Anna in Maryland, and I...we are hosting an open discussion about this theme: staying safe at home. It's a little creative so please bring your open mind and be respectful of others.
Takk, grazie, asante, amasegenlaow, mahad sanid, merci
Word!
The problem with patriarchy? Is that we forget that matriarchy is the same evil. Maybe the answer is in getting rid of the "archy". Let's call it [Equal]ity.
Laura G. Marano (today)
Conveniently forgotten
Why are some places, people and stories conveniently forgotten?
I think it's because we have conveniently chosen not to grow up.
One of my oldest friends came to spend a Sunday with me before corona hit hard. Ne has always turned up for me reminding me that some things never change. Which is reassuring in times when life takes a pivotal shift. As I am sure many feel is happening today.Â
To pass the time we went to see the current exhibition at the Nobel Peace Centre in Oslo. What a delight. All that Ethiopian pride and optimism, displayed with such creativity. It filled my ego with ambition to be a better ambassador of where I come from and my beautifully diverse family.
But upstairs was the exhibition for the previous yearsâ Nobel laureates: Denis Mukwege and Nadia Murad - for their efforts in ending the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war.Â
This was a stark reminder that the world has been in crisis mode for centuries. But we have just become so numb to our collective pain. Why do we conveniently forget injustices. Why do we just accept the pain faced by the majority of people all over the world?Â
The pain of victims of domestic violence. The pain of living in a so called âfailed-stateâ. The pain of conflict. The pain of institutional corruption (cronyism, embezzlement, white collar crime). The pain of small scale farmers. The pain of sweat shop labour.Â
Why do we continue to feed our current industrial food system or support the fast fashion industry by blindly driving up demand?
Why do we forget or choose not to ask about nomadic people forced to flee their country because of decades of conflict - Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Syria, South-Sudan...
At the Nobel Peace Prize exhibition there was a map depicting areas in the world where sexual violence has been used as a weapon of war. Isnât it curious that Somalia was not on that map? Actually none of the countries named above. Why? We know Somalia has been at war since the early 1990s.Â
Why donât we ask that question? There must be different interests at play - right!?#
Instead of comparing Syrian refugees to Somali refugees, as if one pain is worth comforting whilst the other is just dismissed as storytelling or dumb down as economic opportunism. Donât we know that trauma is inherited. Traumas from war, traumas from slavery, traumas from broken homes.Â
What is it that makes us so selective to who and what we are willing to show empathy towards?
Why is it that we fail to understand we are one human race. We might have different ethnicities but really...we all feel pain and joy in the same way.Â
Interesting this. Puzzling really.Â
Health is wealth right? So take care of number one so you can take better care of your neighbours. Watch yourself before you wreck yourself!
xxx peace xxx

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Domenica
Social distancing in Tøyen
ABOUT HOW I BECAME A LOCAL
It has been just over 4 years since I moved to Tøyen in Oslo. Four years is long enough to go through all the feelings and challenges of building a new home, a bit like the stages of grief.Â
The first six months start off with a shallow sense of optimism. Telling yourself itâs only going to be temporary, if you donât like it you can move on...right?! You take barriers to practical things like opening a bank account or finding a part-time job as little bumps on the road to new beginnings. Basically you have a touch of denial.Â
Autumn is over and the winter starts getting really dark and so do your thoughts. Your new self-made job (because no one will hire you) is not going to plan. Things really get in the way like the fact that Norway is not in the EU...which small business can afford an extra 20% VAT on anything ordered from outside Norway? EEA haaahhhaaa.... Schengen hahhahaha as if I have the spare cash to go see my family in Italy and I obviously have a passport anyway. So you start resenting things you have totally no control over. Like racists. Especially the do-gooder white people who think they know what itâs like to be out of a job, stuck in a housing block with drug addicts, the mentally down-trodden and the old and senile with no one it look after them. As if. Structural racism is real man! So unless you are black (and not aristocratic) or muslim (and not caucasian)...you just donât know!Â
But they say anger only leads you head first towards the dumps. In fact by the middle of year two youâre a diminished, dimmed down version of yourself. Depression comes knocking so you try not to stand out too much. You try not to take up too much room at social events because your bloody Norwegian sucks. But you keep trying to fit in. Ultimately you want to be liked, right?1?!
In year three it's the bargaining phase. You start dedicating way too much energy to half-baked ideas and promises of opportunity by those that gave you a tiny bitzy witzy job. You work for a bit less money or terms that normally youâd be like ...
âheeelllllll no!â
You know the kind of job that in normal circumstances youâd be like...
â...can't you see what I'm capable of!âÂ
You start listing in your head all the experiences or sacrifices youâve made. Two degrees, dead end admin jobs, that time you worked in a call centre, that waitressing job that gave you a bad ankle and that scar on your elbow. That summer you stank of fish and cleaned toilets to save enough money to pay student debts and to visit your sick grandfather. The list goes on and you keep playing that old broken record again and again.
But spring comes along....and suddenly you remember the jobs you actually enjoyed. Like that time you had awesome colleagues and worked for the largest humanitarian organisation in the world. How against all odds (a rubbish boss and cuts in funding) you made work count. Like that time when Jen, Paula, Karen and you started a community interest company after the NHS stopped funding community advocacy workers. When the white tide of conservative public policy cuts started hitting all social justice initiatives - and you bounced back with more grit and fire then before. These thoughts finally remind you of your old self and you start to apply your long lost identity to whatâs in front of you. You realise you are surrounded by people like you. You start loving your job and hanging out with your neighbours and really cherishing your new friends.Â
âYOU ARE ONE OF USâ
Finally by the end of year three your are like...
âwhy do I always fall for the trap of the grass being greener on the other side?â
You remember why you really made the move in the first place. You start to look around this place you now call home. You realise for practical reasons you might as well change your address on the old bank account. Officially make this your new home and cut the emotional ties to your old home.Â
And major events such as a mortgage (you can barely afford), your first baby (joy and exhaustion), and oh a bloody global pandemic (total panic)...force you to face the fact that this place...Tøyen - Oslo - Norway...is in fact home. So no matter what the haters say...we are all migrants except for the very few. Iâll call these few, the privileged or the uncultured elite or the down right self obsessed with fail to look beyond their noses to understand that the majority of the human race have to move around to survive. The lucky ones can afford to stay in the same place all of their lives and still flourish. The rest of us we move to where we can access stuff. You know kind of essential things like an education, like an affordable house, like a job, shelter from persecution and violent prejudice.
In this time of crisis I hope we all take one big-long-deep breath and accept that we are just human beings. None of us belong. We are all on borrowed time.Â
I can only speak for myself and my immediate loved ones when I say the time is now. It is in these moments of profound change that âweâ the people (everyday people that need jobs to pay our bills) need to really put our values first. So donât just go to the supermarket but support your local bakery, the florist (you always mean to get flowers from but think itâs too indulgent), get a takeaway from the new Italian restaurant up the road, order a burger and encourage your friends to do the same and just have a âhousepartyâ (I obviously mean on the app).Â
SHOW UP
Show up for the kind of jobs you hope will still be around when this crisis is over. Show up for the daring entrepreneur who risked his house, or her savings, and definitely their family holidays...to start up something for themselves. I for one will be going to Gallery Bastian later for a takeaway because they make lasagna as good as my mammaâs. On Monday if the sun shines again Iâll have a delicious pizza, in a box, on the bench, in front of the church where the sun shines the brightest and sip on a homemade ginger and carrot smoothie....in the hope that Noah keeps sleeping long enough to eat at least three slices. When he wakes up I will pop down to Nordby Bakery on Tøyen Torg get a coffee and a yummy bolle. Then I'll buy myself flowers because Iâm worth it. When Noah goes to bed tonight Iâll continue working on that business plan for my mum who is starting a new chapter in her life. Her new chapter is called âretirement without a pensionâ - because who knows if BJ will have any money left after Brexit is done.Â
As my papa always said:Â
chi va piano va sano e lontanoÂ
Loosely translated: those who go slow, go safe and go far!
Love from a peaceful block of apartments in Tøyen.
Taking it slow
It has been a long time since I wrote a blog post. But now that my pregnancy is over, all the exams for my masters out of the way, and breastfeeding my baby is finally done...oh and the forced social isolation because of the corona virus...I finally have time to write.
Taking time to read and write for academic conversations has been a refreshing awakening. But actually the most learning I have done has been from having time to stop and reflect. The absence of having to turn up to work and having to work through an impossible reading lists - has given me a much needed break. My baby is soon 9 months and after 9 months of pregnancy...I am starting to feel like a butterfly breaking out of her cocoon. Itâs been so important to just take the time for long walks with my âhoyoâ and since baby was born taking long strolls with the pram.Â
Now that we are being asked to stay socially isolated I hope we can all find some space to learn something valuable. I hope that no matter our living situation and employment status we all find the space to move slow and have the time to feel things.Â
Here are my top 2 reminders to stay healthy.
For the physical - I find the Slow Food movement to be a great resource for nutritional, gastronomic and human rights based approaches on what to eat. Here is a link to tips for a climate friendly or better a âvirtuousâ diet.
For the more wholistic sense of staying healthy...I love to be reminded of the 5 ways to wellbeing by the New Economics Foundation (2007/8).Â
The woman who does not require validation from anyone is the most feared individual on the planet.
Mohadesa Najumi
Women are 50% of the population yet less than 1/3 of global businesses are owned by women. 80% of purchasing decisions are made by women yet only 1% of the suppliers to the global market are women owned companies.
CARE Norge, #NewConnections2017 Conference, Oslo, Norway

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Oslo leading on circular solutions?
If you happened to be in Oslo and along the harbour in a massive triangular sauna -SALT...on Wednesday 22nd November...you were in for a treat of circular inspiration.
It was an afternoon of learning from the best circular economy solutions in Oslo. Starting all the way from the top with a presentation on the Oslo City Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Consumption and Siri Karlsen explaining Norwayâs lead on the Urban Agenda for the EU on Circular Economy. And weaving in more grassroots initiatives such as Matsentralen (a charity distributing surplus food to non-profits and food banks around the city), Fjong (a new shop for leasing high-fashion clothing) and mending movements such as Restarters Oslo.
So what is a CIRCULAR ECONOMY?
It is an alternative economic model to the linear economy of âMAKE - USE -DISPOSEâ.
Quite straight forward but incredibly complex when you try and apply it to your day-to-day consumption habits, to your city, at a national level and to the global economy.
Letâs not get too overwhelmed. In essence is about encouraging innovation in how we reduce waste, how we share products, services and knowledge and how we replace inefficient products with low-carbon alternatives.
The Circular Economy approach includes some of the most disruptive innovations of our time for example: spotify, rent smart, big data, robotics, Hello Tractor, NCC the list goes on. Technology optimists would say that this is where the future lies.
Technology alone wonât save us from the challenges of climate change, the depletion of natural resources and the unmanageable processing of all the waste we generate. But in order to change our behaviour and habits it is helpful to understand the scale of the challenge and how we can make changes in our day to day.
Take a mobile phone for example - it needs to be common knowledge of what it takes to make a mobile phone and to know where all the parts come from.
All these materials are extracted from the ground. Manufacturing an iPhone does not just involve the cool-hip-minimalist design teams in California and the assembling factories in China and the chip factories in Taiwan...it also involves mining in central Africa. Â As Neil Harris the Green Technology and Innovation Manager at Cisco put it...
âAs we see smarter technology, faster technology, more connected technology, our dependency on materials grows and our dependency on more exotic materials grows as well.â
Hence, the importance of understanding how we can all adjust our consumption habits and look for labelling on products that gives us an indication of the âlife-cycleâ of our purchase.
We have to believe that as individuals we can make a difference and it starts with informing ourselves, talking about solutions and getting involved at any level.
We can all learn to repair things, do more lending, swapping or borrowing instead of owning.
Here is some inspiration:
Visit Greenpeace Norwayâs website and take part in the Nordic Swap Day on 14th April 2018. And challenge your lifestyle it really is just a piece of cake....
If you are want to learn more about circular economy models for your business then check out findings from The Great Recovery Project.
If you love fashion inform yourself about the Higg Index and look out for labelling that matters (organic, fair-trade, Made-By).
Collaborate for social good. This is an invitation to work together more creatively and there is guidance on how to do this constructively check out IDEO.
Purchase Power - if you work in procurement or do most of the purchasing for your home...think about inclusive sourcing and supplier diversity.
Inspiration from Copenhagen
KPH is a not just a co-working space...
I turned up relatively unannounced and was offered a much needed cookie by Freja and a perfectly brewed cortado by the buildingâs Project Manager Paula. As Olivier walked me around the 3 floors and the old tram workshop outside...it became clear that KPH has hit the nail on the head. As far as co-working spaces go KPH has understood the journey and needs of people wanting to grow a business in the creative industries.Â
The principles of co-habiting and DIY seem to be built in every layer of the organisation. Polaroid pictures of all the members are postes on the wall as you walk in - with a simple bio of their company and highlighting 3 core skills they are good at. The cost of hot-desking, or renting a semi-perminant office are reasonable and come with a commitment to share 3 hours per month of your time/skills to other members.
The interiors are designed with growth in mind. New start ups have the physical ambition of moving up a floor to the airy bright âcorporateâ vibe of the higher-fee paying established businesses. There are other pull factors like the podcast room all kitted up and ready for use.Â
To get the vibe of the place, size and range of facilities enjoy a little virtual tour from the comfort of wherever you are now.
KPH is not entirely self-sufficient financially - it still relies on support from the local government culture department for itâs rent. Nonetheless, KPH is a shining example of how a committed group of people can build a creative, enterprising space in a derelict council property and regenerate an area as a result. It would be awesome to see a space like this being owned by itâs members to ensure the future of the space is not affected by changes in political leadership.Â
The festival/photoshoot venue outside is a testament to how social entrepreneurship can revitalise at the same time as it can harbour the next generation of creative movements. Â
Iâll be looking out for their first annual report and keen to see how they quantify their wider social impact.Â