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Thank you for reviewing site content. This page is just a jumble of notes for now. When it is ready for review, I will be in touch ~ Myriem
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It’s time to weave a new story!
I took a short summer break on an organic farm which turned into four years! Then, I joined with the natural building movement, lived in New Mexico and traveled to the northwest. These experiences greatly inform my work today! Over the past two years, the Board of Directors and I have retooled outreach focusing our efforts to online learning. Education and outreach come first!
I’m delighted to launch the Guild for Social Fieldwork and its website for Earth Day 2017.
The Guild emerges as the brainchild of attendees of the Institute’s US Forest Service funded Participatory Research Workshop in Portland in 2009! Since then, online technologies have greatly evolved along with my understanding of them!
Not only that, but the tides of political awakening compel a new framework for our democratic decision making! Before, I worked primarily with professionals and academics. Today, I can open the doors on a wider audience ready to join in our quest!
By next Earth Day, I expect the Guild to generate momentum towards deepening democracy and a sense of hope with real local input! We are not opening the gate to encourage anyone to join in and start gathering local insights with rigorous and unbiased social fieldwork!
I’m eager to receive your feedback! To make it possible to start again and build this website, I am grateful to a small circle of friends and family. Please join them now in supporting the econ4peace vision and mission!
Follow the stories of practitioners in Social Fieldwork by subscribing to our newsletter. With your funding support, I hope to start writing the monthly newsletter in June.
Check out the econ4peace workplan to learn about the sequence of projects to be funded by your contributions!
Your generosity is very appreciated!
Myriem Le Ferrand, founder
WHY START ANEW NOW?
There is a particular inexplicable synchronicity in the air.
We’ll not solve the social and ecological crisis unless we all start doing any and all of the array of practices involved in social fieldwork. The solution is in OUR hands, as in you and me – all of us together!
Technology allows us to put together this website as an invitation to support our work and join up with us!
The tech savvy next generation has matured. Millenials are more engaged while being less engaged. The paradox has value. They are more informed while also being less rooted. The timing of our work couldn’t be more perfect! Young adults are ready to take up the wave of change and most of them understand the political trompe l’oeil like their parents could not. It is time to move ahead. The last ten years have been significant game changers.
Protests do not make a fundamental difference in the political economic allocation of resources. We hear catch phrases used to legitimize a political candidate or public policy. With grave consequences, we trust the “science” of numbers to direct our actions rather than the wisdom of people collectively skilled in listening to each other. We continue to use poor information to direct planning and economic development. We continue to set course with the wrong navigation tools.
The Institute is primed to conduct research, educate and demonstrate through economic development a systemic solution. We encourage real local input that everyone can understand and to which everyone is welcomed to contribute. The gathering of real local input is critical for many reasons including reforming the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) process and Environmental Impact Statements (EIS). The NEPA process created an easily exploitable separation between local people and environmentalists with no one gaining but mega corporate interests. It is time to take back the reins.
With the politics of change palpable, let’s refer to a new restorative economics that supports local people as “econ4peace.”
Be creative. Dream up what might work. Let’s talk and share ideas. But definitely, start focusing on what is good. When unhappiness is not the center of attention, good prevails. Start now.