Place Corps Friday Digest: Economy
Final Presentations are coming up!
It's Friday! Happy May!
And it's our last week of programming! Can you believe it? We've spent a summer, fall, winter, and spring together; look how deep we've grown rooted in knowing, loving, serving.
This past week, we came together for a virtual Just Transition Primer with Good Work Institute followed by a wonderful Place Corps debrief. Then, we closed the week with a final conversation with Connor Stedman and moving forward with the planting of 300 trees for Sophia Hampton's practicum.
We are so thrilled to be celebrating this year of learning on May 8th with a ceremony for members who have completed the program and all requirements. Our intentions to have a hike have shifted to a completion ceremony on campus; educators will be present and will be diligently practicing physical distancing. The ceremony will be followed by pizza gifted by Place Corps for the Schnack House.
Our word for the week is ECONOMY, defined as the management of the home. Our pilot year is nearing the end. We are reflecting on the learning that took place in the home at Place Corps while simultaneously looking at the worldwide pandemic that has most everyone confronting a failing financial economy and challenges of home management. We are examining language and ideas related to the economy and we have been using the phrase New Economy, but we wonder if what we are discussing is really new or is it something we are remembering? Thomas R. Slicer writes in 1910 in The Study of History as Corrective of Economic Eccentricity that "Economics is that science which matches human resources against human needs. If that be so, then history is the record of the success or failure of this undertaking".
We are interested how this definition only cites human resources against human needs--what is perhaps most interesting is that, if this is true, then could we recognize the need to end extractive practices and replace them with regenerative ones? Couldn’t we also extend our understanding of needs to include more than material, such as social and spiritual? Despite ideas of progress with continued advances in technology, we’ve become deskilled as a species. We have created machines that extract earth's natural resources beyond our needs, creating consumption that lays waste and is unsustainable. We’ve forgotten how to care for ourselves, our communities, and the earth with a labor of love. What we have been learning at Place Corps is a re-skilling and a re-membering what it means to be in right relationship with life starting at home. This is a moment in time for us all to reimagine a regenerative economy and re-member the management of the home to be equitable.
🌻 Note From An Educator 🌻
Excerpt from Reflections by Steffen Schneider:
"What do you see as the value of education:
It is my humble opinion that in order to maintain value, “education” needs to move towards “transformational co-learning” in dialogic, truly generative groups/communities. Away from a “one-way delivery system of knowledge” towards a collaborative discovery of the world and our evolving consciousness. Implicit in this picture is the engagement of the next generations - our future in other words."
“ It is in collectivities that we find reservoirs of hope and optimism."
― Angela Davis