The prodigiously creative Charles Cameron (born 1943 in England; Scottish in name and heart; BA in theology and MA from Oxford University; professional freelance writer, poet, teacher and game designer) has graced the pages of Zenpundit for years with his visually-oriented meditations on the interplay between the religious and warring impulses, and many other profound themes. Now Charles has announced he has a new job as a brainstormer and writer for a solutions-oriented outfit called Urb.Im:
The urb.im network is a global community working for just and inclusive cities. It connects practitioners in six cities and throughout the world to establish an international community of practice and learning, sharing ideas and experiences in order to innovate, replicate, and scale working solutions to the problem of urban poverty. urb.im is a project of Dallant Networks and the Ford Foundation.Here, from the Urb.Im website, are the major categories of issues that the network is engaged with:
CIVIL SOCIETY'S ROLE IN SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE
INTEGRATING COMMUNITY-BASED INITIATIVES INTO URBAN PLANS
CLIMATE, ENVIRONMENT AND INFORMAL SETTLEMENTS
COMMUNITY MAPPING AS A STRATEGIC TOOL
Charles mentions that the six cities the network focuses on are Mumbai, Rio, Lagos, Mexico DF, Nairobi and Jakarta. He's asking for input, via his Twitter page hipbonegamer:
One of my ambitions is to get some significant cross-website conversations going, so that the widest array of bright minds and good hearts gets together to spark new ideas and possibilities, and put existing resources on the map for all interested parties.It will be fun to see how he chews on the problems of mega-cities from his fascinating perspective.
All the best of luck, Charles, in your new venture, and thank you for enriching my life with your contemplations on society and your staunchly positive outlook.
What a delightful surprise, Pundita!
ReplyDeleteI really am very grateful to you, for the very kind words of course, but also for bringing Urb.Im's work to your followers' attention.
We all have such an amazing tool in this here internet, with pockets of admiration and friendship gathering at the blogs and hubs, and with filaments of those friendships reaching across to other hubs in ways we haven't yet "tapped" for their potential to form rich and influential communities! Your blog and Mark's at Zenpundit have befriended each other for some while now, to the enrichment of both, and that to me is one of the most hopeful signs of the times – times that are in need of signs of hope!
So thank you again for your very generous encouragement – and I hope and expect we'll find topics of mutual interest to weave together the conversations here, on Zenpundit, at Urb.Im, and across the web -- all in good time…
"with pockets of admiration and friendship gathering at the blogs and hubs, and with filaments of those friendships reaching across to other hubs in ways we haven't yet 'tapped' for their potential to form rich and influential communities!" -- Well said, Charles, well said! We really are at the dawn of a new paradigm.
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