more on homelessness

[Harrison Owen]

This is good work, Raffi! Your mention of action planning, I think is
important. Afflicted by a linear view of the world, as most of us are --
everything is supposed to happen in a straight line. We talk, plan and then
act. But I have never seen it work that way, and certainly not in Open
Space. From the moment the first word is spoken, or maybe even breath taken,
there is action. That action may or may not go anywhere, but it is
happening. Viewing Open Space as a linear sequence is a sure way of missing
most, if not all of what is actually going on. For "straight ahead folks"
this bends the mind a bit, but that could be useful. 

ho

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-----Original Message-----
From: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU] On Behalf Of Raffi
Aftandelian
Sent: Wednesday, October 19, 2005 5:57 AM
To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Subject: more on homelessness

Dear colleagues,
I just wanted to share a few thoughts from a second 4 hour OST meeting
on homelessness simply titled: "Government services, nonprofit
organizations, and homeless people."

We had worked carefully with the City of Moscow Social Welfare
Department's Homeless people services division to come up with a good
title. But they changed it at the last moment.

Fine enough. We had some 50 people: from nonprofits, heads of
municipal shelters, from local press, a TV station shooting a
homelessness documentary, and, uh 3-4 homeless people.

That's just where we are in the dialog right now that homeless people
choose not to come to planning meetings, seeing little point. It's a
slow process.

All the usual miracles happened: wonderful contacts, great
conversation, new ideas.

Homeless shelter heads publicly said that they now would take in *any*
homeless person, not just one who is originally from Moscow. This rule
essentially meant the city had/has been not dealing with the problem
head-on because Moscow as the most resource-rich city in Russia has a
huge number of non-Muscovite homeless people.

Time will tell if this public announcement will come to fruition.

Marina Perminova, of the Catholic charity Caritas, co-led it with me.
She highlighted how we are first of all humans, not civil servants,
homeless people, etc. It was a simple, fundamental way of setting the
tone.

Watch this space for more about Marina! I am really excited about
working with her.

At the closing, several people spoke about how they'd had enough talk,
they wanted action. And I remembered how I think it was you, Harrison,
you talked about how OS is action planning all the time. Funny how we
don't always see that.

Participants saw value in the conversation and they saw that something
happened there-- again-- that is different from what they usually do.

It is good that the head of homeless services for Moscow is someone
who seems really open and receptive. This is in large part thanks to
Marina's efforts in bringing Moscow social welfare department people
to Paris through Caritas. To see and experience firsthand how
homelessness is worked with elsewhere opened their eyes.

The bureaucrats shifted into the realm of the possible?

Some people were moved just to see that there are people who actually
*care* about the issue of homelessness. They had no idea that the
compassion radius was that big!

And much work lies ahead: most of the homeless people in the closing
circle chose to stand outside the circle nor say anything. I struggled
with asking them to join the circle. Would that be too much of an
intervention as a faciliator?

What's important, though, that in contrast to the previous meeting they
stayed until the end.

warmly,
raffi



                          mailto:raffi at bk.ru

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