January 6, 2011

I need to draft some stuff for the Executive Director of the Atkinson Charitable Foundation so I thought I’d start here.

The task is to equip her with enough compelling analysis and evidence in two hours so that she can activate her Board to take action on their Inclusion agenda.

What can the Board actually do to empower Inclusion? Their focus is on policy change. Where would policy change actually make Inclusion more likely to occur?

What would Inclusion look like? According to the BMX model:
- B – easier, more expected, even facilitated access for “targeted” individuals and groups to claim a space with little or no interaction required
- M – person centred and individualized services, citizen and economic development focus replaces welfare, charitable and health approaches
- X – broad recognition that everyone has differences that can foster interaction, relationship and so social and economic opportunity AND that the very characteristics that get turned into symptoms and excuses for labelling are potential for interaction, relationship and so social and economic opportunity

What happened to developing a common literacy about Inclusion.

To make the leap one must understand “Giftedness” – that is that gifts are anything you have, are or do that creates an opportunity for interaction and that interaction is fundamental to relationship and so social and economic opportunity. All differences are gifts.

Anyone who believes that either they themselves or anyone else is not what they should be already is in a trap.

Tell some stories.

Explain my organization bases and my history. Explain that recreating the same sort of organizations as already exist will automatically exclude most people who are labelled.

Excluded people LOOK like they are not contributing. This is a structural limitation.

Hospitality is a powerful stimulation for Basic Inclusion. What happened to revolutionary lunches?

Economics and Inclusion? We already said uneven labour market practices were founded in social exclusion. There is an inseparable link. This is a POLICY issue.

How ACF spends its money, and currently, if ACF spends its money, is a mark of its true values. In terms of X Inclusion, withholding its resources totally indicates no willingness to enter into genuine dialogue with those whose citizenship remains unexpressed.