The values articulation continues
It’s Sunday afternoon and I’m sitting on the floor surrounded by sheets of paper covered in scribbled sentences:
“We know caring is not enough, and thoughtfulness is not enough (though both are necessary), therefore we take decisions and move to action.”
“We recognize the intrinsic worth of others and invest in them.”
“We are intense! The time together we have is too valuable to use on sleep!”
“We are persistent and relentless with the work that we do. This often involves a lot of sacrifice.”
“We are mindful of our depiction of Africans and of our role as Westerners”
“We know we can’t do everything all by ourselves, all at once.”
“We enjoy the process of coming up with new ways of looking at things, of new solutions and new activities. ”
These are some of the fifty or sixty inspirational sentences that have emerged from ewb’s discussion on our values. Robin lead a process that involved a few hundred people from across ewb, from experienced overseas volunteers who have been around for years to brand new members. She and a team of volunteers have drawn together the ideas that were expressed in discussion and posted to vision.ewb.ca into themes and poignant sentences. And I volunteered to narrow this down to and attempt to draw them together where possible into a smaller set of values that are core to who we are and the change we want to created.
And I’m feeling both elated and challenged. It’s pretty inspirational to read the expressions of what matters to so many ewbers – but also pretty hard to imagine how we can identify the overlaps, pick out the level of specificity vs. generalness that allows for a thoughtful statement, and boil it town to a few key values – because with too many, we’d lose the essence, the core. An EWBer, Mike Spendlove, related to me a quote from an artist that is, roughly paraphrased, “what you leave out is as important as what you leave in.” It rings true. A laundry list isn’t memorable.