We won't dwell on the discomfort of economy class, maybe 3 hours sleep and the queues that took nearly 2 hours to get through at customs here (thank goodness for Whittakers hokey pokey chocolate!). Instead, we are thinking about the 6 cities and tens of thousands of kilometres that we'll experience over July! Woohoo!!
We are here to have a lot of fun and also to explore community led development and how that is evolving here in various fields, including how it might be changing 'how things are done around here' (thanks to a Winston Churchill Fellowship). We will meet with over 30 different people, starting tomorrow with Dan Homsey here in San Francisco.
Dan is Director of the Neighbourhood Empowerment Network which arose from a dialogue between the San Francisco City Hall and community members about ways for government to better partner with them. The NEN is a coalition of residents, community organisations, NGOs, academic institutions and private and government agencies with a vision that everyone has the right to live in a safe, clean, healthy, inclusive and economically resilient community. Pretty impressive! The NEN mission is not to create these communities for residents, but to work with them as they do so. The NEN has been around for about 5 years now so Dylan and I are going to check out how they have been working, what they have learn and what they think the most significant changes they have contributed to are. More tomorrow...
Today the big excitement has been getting here and staying awake (not very successfully!). Not the most intrepid of days I know but we did negotiate the noise of Chinatown where we were offered the opportunity to buy illegal fireworks - little bangers like the Double Happys and Tom Thumbs of old were being let off in the busy street!
Apart from that encounter, Chinatown is pretty much a tourist mecca these days, although with some interesting Banksy-inspired graffiti...
We are hoping to experience a little bit of the North American heart while we are here, and judging by the conversations I've already had in preparation for the visit we expect to come across some very strong ones! The idea is that Dylan will blog his discoveries here as well as me, so it's reasonable to assume that you will see some quite different interpretations of what 'heart' means...we also welcome your thoughts and questions (and blogging tips too!) :-).
Meantime, I may have to wake Dylan and head out to explore the co-called French quarter of SF at night before I start looking for the Whittakers again!
Denise
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so, what do you think??