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Important Little Experiments
Shop of the Open Heart Oaxaca opened last Sunday afternoon on a bright pink bookshelf. Fifteen gifts were made: Kyrgyzstani coins and handmade dashboard alters, upcycled beer bottle glasses and tales from Carlos Fuentes,a graphic novel signed by the artist and a horse from Germany. Each gift came with a story, a giver and a receiver. The Shop of the Open Heart lasted just 90 minutes. In that short time I noticed something shift for many of us. […]
Shaking the world with a new dream
I am pacing the sidewalk in front of a two-story brick building, inhaling and exhaling deeply, slowly as the cold autumn wind blows the dry leaves all around me. There is a stark contradiction between the abandoned houses that I see across the street and the intimate community gathering I just stepped out of. This is a place of contradictions and what I am feeling inside perfectly reflects that. My tears are coming down my cold cheeks but I am not sure whether I am crying because of immense love and possibility I’ve been immersed in, or the undeniable decay [...]
More Evidence That We Walk Outs Need Each Other
Last week, I participated in my first Tweet Chat. This was a four-hour, pre-arranged Twitter session using the hashtag #wowochat to link tweets together in a virtual conversation. Fellow Walk Out Walk On-er Aerin Dunford and I decided to co-host an inquiry among Walk Outs involved in learning and education. Our invitation was this: Many educators unsatisfied with our current school systems are walking out of institutions and limiting beliefs about what’s possible. These brave folks are walking on to create new learning spaces outside of formal educational infrastructure; to challenge attachment to grades, diplomas and degrees; and to convene breakthrough conversations. During this [...]
Lights in the Darkness
Last night we closed our youth programme. After three months and two days at Kufunda their journey will be taking them back home to their communities. 21 beautiful young people from across Zimbabwe (Central, South and East). Last night I saw their tears, and felt their tremors, their sadness and their fear at returning home. Their love for each other and the time they have spent together. […]
Finding a New Path Forward
Author: Jose Luis Esparza I worked at Procter & Gamble for 22 years, in Mexico for 9 years and almost 13 in Cincinnati. I was happy in my work and was working very hard, around 12 hours per day. I was doing something that I love, which is sustainability and renewable energy. However, one night, around 2.5 years ago I realized that this was not what I really want to do. It was not my life mission. So I decided to look for my life mission. […]
Never Really Took Part
Author: Floris Koot I never felt I really fit in, though I tried. I really did. I never succeeded, but I can play the part like I fit in. This led me to a discovery. I feel there’s so much grey between walking out and staying in. I lived in that grey for years and will continue to. I am a bridge builder and man of many worlds. I am at the edge of everything, therefore also a Walk Out. For years I struggled with this, until I bought a book about the fool. When I saw the book, I [...]
Walking On to Localism
I am starting a new project. It is another learning journey, one that I’ve been poking around the edges of for a few years now. This time, I’ll be exploring the U.S. and Canada, instead of the Global South. But it’s still about Walk Outs who Walk On. Let me start with a preview and explain the rest after. Here is a photo-film that I created with my dear friend and colleague, photographer Dan Séguin. The narrator is Paul Saginaw, the iconoclastic co-founder of Zingerman’s, a popular deli and community of food-related businesses in Ann Arbor, Michigan. […]
The Inspiring Flipside of Bureaucracy
Author: Liam Barrington-Bush When I was told I was being made redundant from a national charity in England two-and-a-half years ago, I was upset for about an hour. Then I was relieved. Then I started applying for jobs. And then something shifted. More accurately, it shifted when I was offered a new job; also at a national charity, but moving into the ranks of management. A positive career step, by any traditional measure, but when I thought about the seamless transition from one organisation I felt had long outlived its passion and usefulness, to another, I felt physically ill. [...]
Flexing Our Muscles of Discernment
It’s been one year and two weeks since Walk Out Walk On was launched into the world. I just returned home from Denver and Boulder, Colorado, the final two stops on the book tour, and now is a good time to reflect on what I’ve learned over these last twelve months. And here it is: The United States has lost its sense of subtlety. […]
Letting Go of the Ledge
Author: Yasmina Alpargatas My name is Yasmina Alpargatas, I am a mixed woman of the diaspora, of East African/Gujarati Indian and Uruguayan/Italian/Spanish/Guarani ancestry, born and raised in Toronto, Canada. I can’t stop thinking about it. I’ve got to walk out of my job. Every day, it feels less and less right, being there. Every day I’m capable of taking less shit. I’m opening my mouth and speaking out. I just can’t hold it in any longer. The culture of my work is soul crushing, and she is crying out to be released. The irony is that she sits in a [...]
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