Global Integrators—21

7Is for GIs

Seven Indicators for Global Integrators

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Member Care Updates and Global Integration Updates.

 

We think that the time is coming for a diversity of colleagues to join together intentionally, visibly, and practically on behalf of global integration (GI). GI put simply is how we skillfully integrate our lives and values on behalf of the issues facing humanity. Likewise we think that the time is coming for colleagues to carefully reflect and act on what it means to be good global learners-practitioners--to seriously consider what it means to be what we are calling global integrators (GI-People).

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This entry identifies seven core indicators--seven I’s--that we think are important to help guide Global Integrators. There are surely more too! The seven indicators are qualitative markers rather than quantitative measures. The descriptions below also include Member Care Updates which provide resources that specifically relate to the indicators. Indicator 7, Imparting your life (love) links them all.

Clarify your:

Interests
Involvements
Influences

Cultivate your:

Interior
Integrity
Inspirations

Impart your life

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1. Issues--Pursue your passions.

What issues matter to you the most? What are you passionate about? What are you naturally motivated to learn more about? In short: explore, expand, engage.

Clarify your interests further as you explore what other sectors, organizations, countries etc. are doing with regards to these issues. Be prepared to expand your “experiential boundaries,” knowing that it can be a bit uncomfortable but also rewarding. It may take time and effort to significantly connect and contribute. Don’t go alone but get involved with others. Find compatible colleagues with similar interests and key groups and networks in which you can be part and engage together on global issues.

2. Involvements--Till the terrain.

How much do you want to get involved in specific global issues?  With whom? What is realistic for you given your current commitments and need to make a living? Here is a “continuum of involvement” for clarification.

Informed----------Included----------Immersed

The continuum begins with more minor involvement in a global area, such as reading the reports, a journal, or a UN publication about things like human trafficking, climate change, or the sustainable development goals (informed). It then proceeds to a midpoint and the inclusion of a global area in one’s work such as road traffic accidents, child disabilities in a specific region, or non-communicable diseases (included).The end of the continuum could involve becoming a recognized participant in a global area or part of a group (organization, sector) such as working part-time in a human rights advocate in a non-governmental organization, developing culturally relevant psychosocial support for victims of gender violence, or setting up elementary schools for refugee children in a country (immersed).

 3. Influences--Get a grid.

What has influenced your desire and ability to connect and contribute more globally? The gird below can help you clarify these influences.

List 3-5 items for each of the six categories below. As you review your past, you will likely get a better sense of what your future course might look like.

•      Principles/Beliefs
•      Documents/Materials
•      Organizations/Groups
•      People/Models
•      Milestones/Gravestones (important events/experiences, for the better or worse)

 à Charting a Future Course

Applications for Member Care—Interests, Involvements, and Influences

Strategies for Crossing Sectors: February 2014. “How do we practically connect and contribute across sectors in order to stay in touch with our globalizing world and to further develop our member care skills? The first resource links you to core suggestions for Charting Your Course through the Sectors (from chapter two in the new Global Member Care book) [interests, involvements, influences, as per above in this entry]. This chapter also updates the international member care model (five spheres, 2002, O’Donnell and Pollock) to help guide us into the next developmental phase of member care. The second resource provides suggestions for how you and your colleagues can effectively use the multi-sectoral materials in the new Global Member Care book (from the Application section on the Global MCA website). Crossing sectors is a crucial direction that supports and shapes good global practice in member care.”

4. Interior--Self-Care 

How do you cultivate your inner world? What things do you do practically for self-care, personal growth, and resiliency?

Grow deeply as you go broadly. Practice the basics of self care, such as good nutrition, sleep, expressing gratitude, prayer/reflection, time with friends, exercise, etc. especially during seasons of stress and times of adversity.

Member Care Application—Interior

Resiliency Toolkit–Strengthening Ourselves and Others: November 2015. “This Update focuses on developing resiliency. It provides practical resources to  promote well-being and effectiveness (WE) for workers in mission, aid, and development as well as for member care workers themselves. The resources include brief assessments and articles–core items in a versatile toolkit to strengthen yourself and others. Periodically we do special Updates that feature items to put in such a member care toolkit. Five past examples are archived HERE: 12/2009 Resiliency, 8/2010 Self-Care, 3/2012 Work-Life Balance, 1/2013 Cool Tools, and 10/2014 Creative Healing. We finish the Update with a reflection on resilience from Pearls and Perils of Good Practice (available now as an ebook) as well as one of our favorite resiliency songs, Ready for the Storm.”

5. Integrity—Being Moral

How do you cultivate your highest standards and values? To what extent do you follow them both privately and publically? In what ways can you be susceptible to corruption—the opposite of integrity--in its many subtle forms?

Integrity is moral wholeness. It is living consistently in light of your highest virtues and values (moral wholeness). It acknowledges personal weakness and wrongness, including the possibility and likelihood of self deception/justification, and seeks to live act virtuously with courage and consistency.

Member Care Applications—Integrity

Counting the Cost–Living with Integrity and Courage: January 2015. “This month’s Update is a summons to act with integrity and courage in our lives–to support us as we “count the cost” of doing what is right and helping vulnerable people. The first set of resources features three thought-provoking items: a) a TEDx presentation by a humanitarian journalist on her experiences covering war and the courage of ordinary people; b) a compelling exegesis on Christ’s parable of the sheep and goats in Matthew 25; and c) the millennial homily by John Paul II honoring Christian martyrs in the 20^thcentury. The second set of resources feature three items that point us towards the personal qualities needed to do member care and mission/aid well: a) the recent Global Integration webinar on healing/mental health in our violent world; b) the compilation of articles in b) Sorrow and Blood and c) Serving Jesus with Integrity. We finish this Update by taking the call for integrity and courage to the macro level: the final video lecture from Jeffery Sach’s online course on The Age of Sustainable Development (safeguarding the world’s future—people and the planet).”

Member Character: July 2012. “This issue focuses on the development of character for all those in mission/aid, especially member care workers. We see character as the core qualities of a person. These qualities are consistent over time and also reflect one’s moral goodness. Character is shaped by our life experiences, including hardship and role models. We include two set of resources from a Christian Perspective and a Social Psychology Perspective, in order to stimulate your own character growth and to support you in your work.”

6. Inspiration—Sustaining Sources

What gets you going in the morning? And what keeps you going through life? Is there a set of beliefs and values, sense of purpose and meaning, to motivate and sustain you? Something transcendent? Humanitarian principles, ethical imperatives, sense of duty, love, faith, God? How do you cultivate these?

Member Care Applications—Inspiration

Jesus Christ—The Lord of Member Care: September 2015. “This month we feature the main person in the Member Care field, Jesus Christ. We have lovingly referred to Him in our member care writings over the years by many different names: the Master Carer, the Good Practitioner, the Heart of Member Care, the Multilingual Messiah, the Pearl of Great Price, the Precious Pantocrator (The Almighty), and the Pierced-One. These names are actually titles of great honor and they are the focus of this Update: Jesus Christ the Lord of Member Care (a new title!), the One whom we all seek to know, love, and serve with all our being.“

 7. Imparting your life--Love

How much is laying down your life and serving others part of your work and life in general? How much do you want to give of yourself to others, being compassionate, maintaining the human quality of your work--doing to others as you want them to do to you?

Love is not a soft skill. It is tough work. And it is core, in our view, for doing member care well, and doing global integration well, for doing life well.

 Member Care Applications—Imparting your Life.

Ordinary Heroes: March 2013. “This month we focus on ordinary heroes, especially those whose ongoing, sacrificial and often unrecognised acts of goodness truly help others. Member care workers, and the mission/aid workers whom they support, and the people with whom mission/aid workers support, can often fit into this definition of ordinary hero. The first set of resources focus mostly on understanding ordinary heroism. The second set of resources focus on supporting ordinary heroes, emphasizing women whose lives are ransacked by exploitation, poverty, and degradation.”

Member Care and Resiliency—Part 1

High Salinity Humans

Molecular structure for NaCl compound—Sodium Chloride—Salt (Wikipedia)

Human resiliency refers to the ability face reality: 
to deal with and to grow through life’s challenges.

How resilient are you?

You may never know until you are salted with fire.

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Resiliency is like salt. Salt flavors and preserves the quality of food and helps disinfect harmful materials. In a similar way resiliency enhances and protects the quality of life and helps detoxify harmful matters.

Resiliency is developed by working through the difficult and at times "fiery" experiences of life. Indeed, "everyone will be salted with fire," as Christ says in Mark 9:49. The path to developing resiliency is usually circuitous, marked by pain and uncertainty.

Resiliency includes three core parts which can be described in terms of the New Testament metaphor of salt.

1. Perseverance—inner strength to not give up and to benefit from hardship. Having salt in yourselves—Mark 9:50

2. People—social support from/as encouraging role models and true friends. Relating graciously with salt—Colossians 4:6

3. Purpose—strong sense of meaning in life and/or strong belief in God’s goodness. Being the salt of the earth—Matthew 5:13

Resilient people are characterized by salt.

They are high salinity humans.

 Notes, Quotes, and More

1. Conference. Resiliency was the theme of this year’s annual Mental Health and Mission Conference in the USA (19-22 November 2009). To see some summaries of the presentations, check out the November entries on “The Encouragers” weblog from Dr. Vance and Dr. Bethyl Shepperson. Here is a notation from 20 November 2009 about the presentation given by Duncan Westwood.

“Ultimately the resiliency of another human being remains beyond the abilities of scholars to describe or define. Just as each symphony creates a particular and a special sound, so too is the marvelous, complex interweaving of each person’s bounded resources and limitations.”

2. Book. Here is a quote on celebrating life and challenging cynicism. It is from Stress and Trauma Handbook: Strategies for Flourishing in Demanding Environments, 2003, by John Fawcett, published by World Vision. (for book review click here)

“In the context of complex humanitarian emergencies and the rigours of life in developing nations, aid workers arrive on the scene expecting to enhance life, not just to neutralise pain. Humanitarian work is, afterall, a celebration of life, not homage to death and despair. …International aid is a challenge to the power not only of hunger, war, and poverty, but to cynicism. Faith-driven or secular, the workers who bring aid…are the living embodiment of a human conviction that wrongs not only must be righted, but that they can be righted.” (p.1)

3. Video. The BBC is one of many media services that provide incredible video reports and stories about real life and international issues. On relevant example related to heroic resiliency is described below. Click on the link for the six and a half minute video story. Other examples are listed on the Media that Matters section of our Member Caravan website.

“Mariatu Kamara a 23 year old woman from Sierra Leone, had her hands cut off by rebel soldiers when she was a child. With no parents or living adult to support her in the aftermath, and living in a refugee camp, she turned to begging in the streets of Freetown. 'Biting the Mango' is her story of survival against all odds in which she shares the details of her attack, her road to recovery and her eventual move to Toronto where she now lives.” (Source: BBC)

4. Tool. The Authentic Happiness website offers a variety of self-assessment tools for free. Many of these tools are directly related to resiliency. For example, the Brief Character Test measures 24 character strengths. The GRIT Survey measures perseverance. You will need to register on the site (one minute process) in order to access the tools and other resources online.

These tools are available in different languages. They are easy to use although note that their applicability to international settings/populations is not established. We use such tools to help workers get a general sense of how they are doing and to discuss strengths, weaknesses, and coping strategies.

5. Music. Iona. Strength

Iona began recording in 1990. Their music is a progressive and distinctive mix of Celtic, rock, folk, and jazz with Christian themes. The song above, Strength, is on video from their live performance in November 2004 at the University of London. It is also included on their CD,  The Circling Hour, which is available from the Iona web site. The song begins with a lyrical description of the strength found in nature and proceeds to describe the strength of people and finally the strength of love--or more than likely, the Author of Love.

Courage.
Trust God.
Stay the course.
May your salinity soar!
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Reflection and Discussion

1. In the BBC video, what types of “salt” have helped Mariatu Kamara to recover from the traumatic injustice she experienced and to productively re-engage in life?

2. List a few experiences in which you have been “salted with fire” and through which you have developed resiliency.

3. Respond to Fawcett’s assertion in the above quote that “Humanitarian work is, after all, a celebration of life…”

4. Define resiliency in your heart language, and in your own words, in one sentence.

5. Recall a tiime this past year when a friend's strength (as mentioned in the Iona song above) has helped you when you were weak.

Member Care and Organisational Health

Signs of Organisational Health

I am back at Ards Friary, Donegal Ireland. In my mind. In my heart. I come here often. Thinking about healthy organisations. Thinking especially about healthy faith-based organisations. Orwell has been so helpful. But what are the positive examples? How did the Franciscan monks for example, such as here at Ards Friary, maintain a healthy organisational life--and a healthy community?

How rewarding it is to work in an organisation, a community, a team, a network, with these features:

1. Mutual respect among staff
2. Fair pay/compensation
3. Opportunities to make contributions
4. Opportunities for advancement and personal growth
5. Sense of purpose and meaning
6. Management with competence and integrity
7. Safeguards to protect individuals (staff and customers) from injustice
8. Responsibility for actions: owning mistakes, not blaming others or covering up
9. Honesty in communication and public disclosures: not slanting the truth or exagerating
10. Accountability for personal/work life: seeking out feedback and ways to improve, not ignoring or pretending
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Reflection and Discussion
1. How would you add to or adjust the above list?
2. What are the three core characteristics in an organisation that would make you want to be part of it and really contribute?