Co-creating Resilience

My Dreams:
I dream of reaching beyond my own limitations and learning from people and their everyday actions who are creating their own alternate realities by improving their communities. I want to illuminate these people, and their stories and to inspire learning across cultures, disciplines, projects, and communities.

My aim is to build individual and community capacity by fostering resilient local economies that promote a more equitable, prosperous and humane world.

My Challenges?
My generation is facing complex and challenging issues that we need to resolve if we wish to improve the world's overall capacity to sustain itself. To do so in a creative interactive way I see two main stumbling blocks:
1) Working in a system that doesn't place a value of social cultural and natural capitals
and
2) Reinvigorating a sense of hope of what is possible beyond the status quo

My Purpose:

Why I want to take part in Warriors without Weapons?
I knew the moment I heard about Oasis and Warriors without Weapons it was calling me. I've had three recent moments which directed me to WWW:

1 – doing a presentation about the common call and reuniting of the Americas Continent from North to South where I spoke of communities in adversity creating their own solutions and my good friend and collaborator Giuliana spoke of Warriors without Weapons and its cooperative and trust games using indigenous knowledge.

2 – Participating in COP 15 and Survival Academy and having many friends who have participated in Oasis events

3- Being introduced and exchanging moments of light with Edgard. Being connected through a common friend and collaborator Benjamin who suggested Edgard and I should meet and that we would have a lot in common to talk about. Meeting the tall brilliant human in a bustling Barcelona we walked the boulevard where I lead us to a hectic public square where a glass building in a public square where kids had been playing earlier that day redesigning their neighbourhoods with coloured tape, chalk, and Velcro and we sat overlooking the Christmas madness below.

As we talked and shared stories about community invigoration, public space redesign, sustainable development various projects emerged. The poetic steps and powerful impact Oasis and Warriors without Weapons holds moved me deeply to call it inspiring would be an understatement!

I left with a renewed purpose to support Oasis spread throughout the world and have since been hosting conversations between programs in Europe about trainings, and Oasis actions. I am craving some real hands on background and to touch, smell, taste, experience where the methodology came from and how it works.

This opportunity is calling me to participate, activate, and collaborate on a different level. I am ready to play!

My Commitment:
Collective and Transformative Activities:

In Honduras, I worked alongside the grass roots, poverty-reduction organization Honduran Committee for Action and Peace (COHAPAZ) this organization connects 30 urban shantytown communities. In my role as a Sustainability Officer I was responsible for facilitating environmental and health related workshops with community members. Other days I was working in the shantytowns with kitchen gardens, water catchment systems, and solar ovens to build local capacity for improving housing, sewage systems, recycling programs, etc. Having the privilege of working with such powerful and innovative individuals. and communities I become a connector of dots and people and helped enable financial capital and organizational and political resources to make food sovereignty, community-building, self-sufficiency and social and artistic expression more integrated and connected..

What I am doing to make a difference?

Honduras not only exposed me to a multitude of global issues - climate change, food sovereignty, and local economies of scale it also unveiled the firsthand devastating impact they had on local communities. While I have explained my time in Honduras and the hope I saw within communities I also saw great injustice in one particular community I witnessed devastating impacts from destructive mining practices from a Canadian company. Driven by this injustice and inspired by the strength and determination of the Honduran people, I resolved to be part of the solution. Thus upon returning to Canada I felt even more responsible for the change I could foster in my own backyard. I volunteered with community development and action groups, attended workshops, provided information to media and organized and spoke at forums, schools, and libraries. I have remained in contact with the communities I had the pleasure of working with in Central America to continue to learn from them and offer my support.

While Honduras provided me with countless profound experiences, the situation I returned to in Halifax was equally dramatic. With fresh eyes, I was struck by the lack of civic engagement and transparency in planning and development processes at home. Citizens and decision-makers alike were ill prepared and uninspired to affect change. Seeing the need, a group of like-minded community activists collaborated to jump-start the Halifax Planning & Design Centre. Our goal was to work together, and to include citizens earlier on in the planning and design process, to strengthen the overall vitality and health of Halifax. Through creative tools and processes we co-created exercises to vision the city’s potential. We designed projects varying from interactive public art, to public art design competitions, to city forums, neighbourhood design charettes, public cardboard city dreaming and making.

Currently, I have come to Sweden to pursue a Masters program in Sustainability to gain a more strategic approach. While here I have helped organize:

• Art of Hosting training for three innovative programs in Europe
• as part of AoH I hosted open space session and a proaction cafe session on Oasis Mundi for how we could collaborate to support the movement.
• My thesis had been about looking into way to support communities discover how to co-initiate mutual benefit projects that can help move them towards bioregional resilience. We are looking to create a resource for communities to be map their journeys.
• I have been in discussions with Youth Initiatives Program to help them with Sense Festival: Celebrating Community and an Oasis Action.
• I am volunteering for the ReWork the World Conference and will be supporting the Youth Harvesting Team
• I am planning on going to the Secret Garden Party to host conversations about aesthetic resilience and interactive community building (with reused materials)
• I have am in discussions with Energy Crossroads to see how to support an social innovation camp for youth
  
• I have been in discussions with New Earth Institute in Halifax for developing curriculum and a youth program
• Continuing collaborations with community projects such as 4days festival in Halifax
• I have been visiting and finding synergies in interesting cultural centres and Hubs around Europe
  
• I have been in discussions about a writing a book about community projects and innovation

Please enjoy my other venues where I regularly post interesting videos, poems, links, organizations, and questions

Facebook - Sophia Horwitz
Twitter - Sophia Horwitz
Personal Blog - Civic Explorer's Journey (civicexplorer.wordpress.com)
Affiliated Websites:
* Honduras - www.cohapaz.org
* Halifax - www.pdcentre.ca / http://www.newearthinstitute.ca/New_Earth_Institute/Home.html/ http://ceu.architectureandplanning.dal.ca/ http://thehubhalifax.ca/
* Sweden - http://www.bth.se/tmslm

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