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Tangible Ireland’s first of 2012’s eight Leadership Seminars focused our attention on a shared vision for the island of Ireland: “proud, peaceful & prosperous”. Ray Sexton said we were “Plotting the Evolution” in Howth; “Revolution” was the slip of an eight year old! We’ve elevated it to our 2012 mission.
As usual, in venues from Dublin to New York, Belfast to London, Limerick to South Armagh, the agenda begins with what is happening locally.
- Volunteers at the Howth Phoenix Project are leading the way in proposing a property redevelopment scheme
- Friends of Balscadden Bay have a focus on renewing local interest in and use of the beach and bay. Perfectly suited to dovetail with the promotion of regional travel and tourism.
- The privately run Healthpro organization has evolved their corporate vision to include a community effort. They run triathlons and activities which showcase the beauty and amenities of the area.
- The forward thinking folks at Howth Castle’s Cookery highlighted the modern use of an historic venue as a magnet for locals and tourists to gather.
Our professional moderator, Carol Conway, kept our passions reined in to the allotted time and all this was delivered in the first hour!
Grounded in the beauty of the land and sea we moved to cyberspace!
- A review of the entrepreneurial evolution of the Irish island’s economy at Emerald-Valley.com. This initiative pairs an incubation centre on the Newry border between Dublin & Belfast with a private inward investment effort, education and engagement with the global Irish village.
- “Plotting the Digital Future” was an update on a private effort to write a meaningful National Digital Policy for the Republic. Finally, joined up thinking from the ground up!
- Insights, evolutionary and revolutionary of a serial tech entrepreneur closed the Technology Evolution hour. An overview of business start-up successes with an optimistic review of the benefit of living and working abroad and returning the wiser.
Closing the day with an overview of the Global Evolution we heard two of the most powerful presentations:
What do a college president and professional fundraiser have in common? Passion and commitment to prosperity achieved by harnessing the energy of the Irish at home and abroad.
“It takes community to form people” in the words of the educator. “Moving our minds from getting to giving” in the words of our expert on networking with the Diaspora.
Redefining our community, leading by example and creating alliances with like minded people around the world will involve committed ambassadors trained to network and lead.
The remittances of a century ago, the investment we sought in past decades were a hand up. These relationships allowed us to engage in the global economy and we learned.
Now our technologies, our businesses and our children are able, willing and ready to fully participate in global markets. We are able to provide opportunities here and create them for ourselves abroad.
We have established networks to share in a global economy. Our 21st century task is to leverage them.
This is the message of Tangible Ireland. I and Empowering Change are always grateful to be recharged by them!
For details of the agenda and future meetings:
http://tangibleireland.com/tangible-blog/blog/plotting-the-evolution.html
You are not your story…. Geneen Roth
Words are powerful. Particularly words we choose tell our truth. When we mince words we are telling a truth as well. Typically here, but not where our American cousins grew up, we politely condone poor customer service going as far as to tell waitstaff that everything is fine. They have specifically asked, and it is not. We are saying we are not worthy of or entitled to speak, the truth.
How do I know? I have lived a thirty year process of “finding my voice”. I accepted silently that 7 year olds were meant to prepare meals, care for a sibling and never tell that it was done because mommy was drunk. I accepted silence about the abuse and neglect suffered by my brother and me, because I was strong, I could do it and I should “offer it up” We are silenced at home and in school until it becomes a habit. Years later, I minimised the experience because, if I could do it, do it well and survive: “It must not have been that bad”.
The unacceptable behaviours from which I am recovering are identical to the experience of life on the island of Ireland today. We have done what needed doing, been compliant with the secrets of the church, the government and the regulators and are “offering it up” because collectively we believe as I did: “We can’t change it anyway”.
It can be changed. It involves only a commitment to change one thing in you. If you wake tomorrow and tell yourself that you will refuse to be silent in the face of the unacceptable, your life will change. More importantly as is the case with families and communities of folks in recovery, the people around you will change. You also begin to attract people to your world who have already changed.
How we express things matters. A friend relabelled, reframed, re-worded my experience. “Why I was so compliant with the way a coworker was treating me?” she asked. I shrugged my shoulders. She asked if I would let someone treat my oldest daughter (7 at the time) that way? I cringed with pain – “of course not!”
And I no longer accept the unacceptable for myself.
Join me in exploring together the recovery of our sense of self, of wonder, of your potential – before life circumstances required conforming to the insanity of accepting life in unacceptable circumstances. Together we will reframe our experience and reclaim the life we might have known. We will develop a language to empower ourselves and our children.
Groups to begin in February are forming now; day and evening sessions are available. Email eve@eveearley.com
It has been a long time between blog posts and it was not for want of something to say, but rather time to say it.
Welcome to the Emerald-Valley. The metaphor of giving birth applies, though elephantine. Conception to delivery has been two years, the baby is not particularly attractive. It still needs care. The world has changed significantly in the process, not all for the better. So it is with some trepidation that we bring this vulnerable and still dependent infant into the world.
There have been midwives and godparents along the way. I have thanked many personally, and have more to acknowledge. Most significant have been the communities who have supported us. It all began with the Dundalk-Newry Business Club, the Carlingford Forum Salon, the folks at BookBuzz.biz, the generous on-line community who later morphed into the Social Media Association for Business in Northern Ireland and our former neighbors at Greenshoots. We were guided and supported by the Tangible Ireland Community and Common Purpose.
Who are we and what’s in it for us?
Nichola Bates, originally from Belfast came to Newry to settle and rear two young children for whom she wants a better future on this island. She wants nothing less than a local educational and technology ecosystem that is world class.
Kevin Parker, US based, needed to emigrate from Bracknell, UK to Redwood City, CA to achieve professionally; emigration for survival in a historic context is an unfortunate reality; emigration for career advancement should not be necessary in a global village with a level playing field. This is about a game changing legacy.
Eve emmigrated to Ireland in 2008. She grew up and reared three daughters of her own between NY & Philadelphia. Returning 100 years following her grandparents’ emigration, she wants nothing less than a world of opportunity on par with the one they and their children helped to create “When New York was Irish” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcI_X3aF4FA. “They started with nothing and wound up with it all”. The children of this island deserve “it all”.
Where is it?
The Emerald-Valley. It is a state of mind as much as it is a geographical region. The M1 corridor from the Lagan to the Liffey, connects Dublin and Belfast. This highway offers three airports and two capital city centres – vibrant for their academic, cultural, business & political communities. Between them small city, village & rural life thrives. Living and working on the sea or in the mountains that inspired Narnia is anything but life in an anonymous suburban megalopolis.
Preserved in the small cities of Newry & Dundalk is the cultural advantage that gives this small island its edge on the world stage. Everyone knows everyone, small specialty businesses with a focus on quality are the norm, and the legacy of border life is an independent, innovative and creative community responsible for the highest number of startups on the island of Ireland.
What do we do?
We inspire people, promote the region and incubate small businesses. We are a social enterprise designed to create an ecosystem that supports the infrastructure needed to fill the jobs of the 21st century. We want to begin a legacy of exporting our intellectual property and not our children. Job creation here is dependent on fluency in the language of the day. It is binary. A workforce competent to design and execute the software that now powers the world’s economy has limitless potential.
How will we do it?
One day and one job at a time. Our offices are located at 17 Canal Street, Newry BT35 6PH and our event space faces Canal Quay right behind. We currently house 5 small businesses with more to come. Events in the pipeline include educational programming, skill sharing seminars, open coffees, industry specific salons and much more.
Lastly, special thanks to Julie Collins, Sarah Meaney, Rebecca Phillips who have volunteered tirelessly on our behalf. Before year’s end we expect to have created jobs to reward their commitment!
More information is available at Emerald-Valley.com; respond here or write to: info@Emerald-Valley.com
I believe the citizens of Ireland in the Republic and in Northern Ireland – if empowered to witness a mature belief that we deserve governments and institutional authorities that are competent, responsive and respectful of the citizenry, will finally elect worthy representatives.
When my adolescent children were rebelling, I would assert my authority by saying “this is not a democracy”, well my fellow Irish men and women – this is a democracy – on both sides of the border. We get the representation we deserve.
I believe that culturally and anthropologically, Ireland is in that same adolescent place. Seen in this light, we can collectively rebel against the parents, the government and the authorities to whom we had relinquished our power. We were dependent on institutions charged with our care and security and they have failed us. We believed and behaved as told. We didn’t question, we believed the financial institutions would hold, the church would educate and protect our children, our pensions would be secure. In failing us they have abused us. Would I expect a child who I had bankrupted, lied to and left homeless to respect and obey me? No.
What I am asking you to do is to join me in becoming empowered citizens. Seizing this moment for Ireland would be to require institutions to serve and protect us. Representatives would be forced to answer to the citizenry. Citizens would have to let go of “I am powerless to change it” and go to the polls to choose competent, respectful and responsive leadership.
Who is she, why does she care, and where does she come from with this? “Myth lets you know where you are across the ages of life “ *
When I emigrated to Ireland, my Jewish friends in the states would say “She is making Aliyah! But to Ireland…”
It was said with an understanding that people who seek a new homeland are in fact following the commandment given to Abraham in Genesis “Go forth from your land,your birthplace,your father’s house, to the land that I will show you”. What was understood by these friends was the psychological, mythological understanding of Aliyah – not a literal read of the text.
What I believe is that this is the metaphor for the heroic journey we are all called upon to make at some point in our lives when we live authentically and leave behind our dependencies on an old way of being that may not be working for us anymore.
Personally, I thought I had to live the way my parents had prescribed, where they had chosen and to please their vision of who I should be. When I came into being as my own person, an authority for my own life, responsible for my own happiness I grew up. In my forties. Adolescence seems about right for this ancient land with millennia ahead….
Join me, at the polls and in the public spaces, on our collective heroic journey to require competent, responsive and respectful leadership.
* Joseph Campbell illustrates this developmental truth in his own words:
Five minutes, too dear? Start at 3!
This evening Jews all over the world began the celebration of Chanukah. Not a celebration of rebellion or the overthrow of the Greeks – we celebrate the re-dedication of the temple. The miracle celebrated is one of faith and light - the oil found when the temple was reclaimed was only enough to light the ritual lamp for one day; it lasted eight. We recall this by lighting candles every night for eight nights. On the first night one, the second two and so on. The holiday – at this darkest time of the year reminds us that with faith and a commitment to re-dedication every night brings an ever increasing amount of light.
Perhaps that is a lesson for all of us in Ireland in this the bleakest of times. We are required only to reclaim our power. To re-dedicate ourselves to the work of living this one day. Our energy – our light is likely to last another day and another, and my guess is it will miraculously last as long as need be. It was true of our forbearers let it also be true of us. We needn’t be invested in the outcome, we need to be invested in the process.
In another bit of ancient wisdom: Ours is not to complete the task, but neither may we desist from the labour.
As with every Jewish holiday it is begun with a prayer of thanksgiving. Thank you to the creator, for giving us life, for sustaining us and for helping us to reach this moment. I do not know why this had to be our moment in history, but I have every confidence that as long as we are choosing life we will be able to sustain each other in reaching the next moment.
While we’ve never met I felt compelled to write. I read your letter in the Irish News and I am sorry it was a problem for you to have your children participate in Remembrance Day activities at school.
First let me offer that what I say is coloured by a the fact that while Irish and living here, I was reared in America. It was a gift that my grandparents left in 1908, I knew nothing of the troubles. I am sorry for the trauma that characterised your upbringing and sadly continues into the present lives of your children. I mean to neither minimize that pain or deny its legacy. For you personally and for us all.
That said, as an American I witnessed the horror of having my peers return from service in Vietnam, wounded if not physcially then spiritually by the horrors they experienced. They witnessed the destruction of entire villages – napalmed out of existence – and some barren to this day. Children raped and murdered, comrades killed and captured. Those who returned met with having their experience ignored at best and villified at worst. Many were called baby killers by protesters meeting planes.
We did, however, learn an important lesson. While a majority of us did not support the imperialism to which you refer – by the time of the Kuwait and Iraq invasions we collectivley responded with “I support the soldiers not the war”.
And this is my point. These young men and women are every woman’s sons and daughters. No woman experiences labour and delivery and sleepless nights for two decades to think of her child as mere cannon fodder.
So I would ask for you to let go of your hatred of the British for long enough to love for a moment the children of heartbroken mothers lost on the fields of Europe – 50,000 of them Irish in WWI alone. I would ask you to remember the Irish soldiers who served in the liberation of Italy – Ireland was neutral, but many served with allied forces, US and British. I would ask you to remember the Irish messenger, a former war chaplain, who brought Churchill the news that in the name of those fallen in WWI, Ireland had no more sons to give. Young Englishmen died in their places.
I proudly have a poppy and pray for peace. I wear my poppy in solidarity with the mothers who paid for my freedom with the blood of their sons and daughters. Because before I am a citizen of Ireland or America, before I am a Jew reared Roman Catholic, before all other things I am a mother. Blessed to never have had to sacrifice a child.
For an earlier blog post on Remembrance, Poppies & Homelands: http://www.eveearley.ie/?p=255
I recently heard two successful entrepreneurs talk about philanthropy. Interestingly, both said they didn’t realize they were “entrepreneurs” or “philanthropists” until they read it in the paper.
Both were uncomfortable with the terms. There is wisdom gleaned in the precise use of language. What made them uncomfortable about the labels? We are all uncomfortable with labels and in the matter of giving they and most would probably prefer to remain anonymous. Perhaps neither wanted attention for simply doing the right thing. Unspoken was “it’s not about the money”.
Maimonides, a twelfth century philosopher and biblical scholar spoke at great length about the ethics and moral imperatives of charity. He described what we intuitively understand. There are levels of charity – the lowest is the donation you make, unwillingly. Higher is when you give and the recipient knows you. Higher still is when the giver and the recipient are unknown to each other.
I am sure that these and most donors would like to count themselves among this group.
But these people come to the table and identify themselves as philanthropists, uncomfortably – because they know that their gifts and actions will spur others on; if not to actually give in the moment than to think and rethink their relationship to giving. I hope they come to be more comfortable with the term; they serve us well in the role.
Entrepreneur, however, is a label I would like to encourage them – and all of us to embrace. They seemed uncomfortable being cited for simply doing the work of their lives, going to the job of their choosing –they happened to be their own bosses. And decades ago – it was an alternative workstyle.
Today, it is a career choice for many. That choice – to do what they love, and to do it well, empowered them to be the generous donors they are.
No matter that they can no longer remain anonymous. Maimonides goes on to describe the highest level of charity. It is a gift, loan, or partnership that results in the recipient supporting himself instead of depending upon others.
So, thank you to all entrepreneurs, not for the donations, but for creating jobs and partnerships. These two men have empowered families and revitalized communities throughout the UK and beyond. Most of the recipients have never considered that they have received a gift and in the end it is I and my fellow citizens who have benefited.
The word for charity as written biblically in Hebrew is rooted in the word justice. Giving is just.
Living in Northern Ireland on the eve of BizCampBelfast.com – a free conference where 400 people are registered to talk about how to rethink business, how to support emerging businesses, how to become entrepreneurs. No money will change hands but, I am seeing charity and philanthropy being practiced in its highest form.
I think it no accident that Maimonides defined this measure of charity and justice about 800 years ago; how better to ensure this peace than with people committed to this kind of giving.
November. Conscious of and indebted to the efforts of veterans worldwide – I remember. An American expat living in Ireland, in matters of politics I have pacifist leanings. I am, however, untroubled by my passion for honouring the military and sacrifices made on my behalf. Generations of sacrifices.
American veterans, British veterans, Canadian, German, Italian, Japanese, Israeli and Arab veterans, I make no distinction. Every one was called upon by his or her motherland to serve.
Service. Few of those who served or died had a say in the arguments, feuds and passions that led to the conflicts. Some followed reprehensible orders, all faced circumstances I have not. I, therefore, respect their service, even when not in service to my ideals.
On the eleventh day of the eleventh month at the eleventh hour every year, I am proud to say that I have thought of, prayed and cried for the sacrifices of all veterans. Perhaps due to my age or the fact that I am an American of Irish and Italian descent who is Jewish, my mind goes first to the soldiers who liberated the concentration camps. Beyond the dangers they faced in their war efforts until that day – most took to their graves the horror of what they witnessed, and only in its aftermath.
My uncle was an Italian soldier who spent most of WWII in a Russian POW camp. Was his sacrifice less noble or costly because the leadership of his homeland chose the “other” side? I have a dear friend, an Israeli veteran whose service in the Lebanon war haunts him to this day. You get my point. Veteran’s day is complicated.
I never thought that before, it was driven home by an effort to obtain a small red poppy for a British expat friend in the states. I live in Carlingford, on the border with Northern Ireland, the UK. I assumed that in my travels I would be able to make a donation and pick up this token of remembrance known all over the British Isles.
Not so. “Ah sure, but you wouldn’t want to be trying to find that.” “No lass, we wouldn’t be wearing that around here.” “You’re brave to be asking for one of those.”
I have learned to challenge that response. 50,000 Irish soldiers died in WWI and many now serve with UN peacekeepers. I am sorry for the legacy of the British occupation. I try to be sensitive to both sides.
That said I am outraged by the intolerance and disrespect of the young men and women who serve their homelands, anywhere. Especially here.
August (2009) marked the 30th anniversary of the massacre of 18 British soldiers in Northern Ireland. I can see it from my home. There is now an uneasy peace in that conflict. Those 18 mothers and their sons deserved to have their memories honoured. We in the Republic were largely silent.
We should not celebrate the wars – victory or defeat – but we must celebrate the gift of the young lives they and their families have given. Their gift is literally our present.
I have a US homeland, the gift of brave grandparents who emigrated. Ireland is now home. My Irish forbearers were driven out by the policies of the British. Can I hold that against a British soldier? The Irish government generously regards this grandchild still a citizen, their soldiers serve bravely with UN peacekeeping troops worldwide. Can I blame an Irish soldier for the Republic’s neutrality in the face of genocide? The genocide that left my Jewish children deprived of extended families that exist no longer? Here as a Jew I am pilloried as an extension of the Israeli occupation. I have no connection to Israel, should I disdain the service of her young?
Jews trapped in European homelands 70 years ago were citizens of countries and dependent upon the protection of soldiers in whose armies many served. Later they were grateful to soldiers of other homelands who liberated them.
Whose soldiers and what sacrifices would you have me forget?
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