REVIEW: Living Generously

A good friend of the Cityhippy collective, Joe Turner of the Freedom Clothing Project, emailed me to tell me about these folks but I thought he did such a good job I asked him to turn it into a post and so here it is. Take it away Joe!

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Sometimes our journey towards sustainability and wholeness seems a bit of a struggle.

One time, I was with a small community in a town in the Nilgiris hills of South India. Despite being fairly small in number, they were involved in many things in the wider community. They fed the sick, schooled the street children, cared for the elderly, ran a school for handicapped children, built houses. Yet it was fairly clear that even in the context of their situation, their efforts were barely scratching the surface of the problems. I asked a leader how they kept going, kept doing, kept trying in the midst of all the poverty, when most of us would have given up, if we had bothered starting in the first place. He looked at his shoes and said that they were just doing what they could.

That day, I decided two things. Not to complain about problems unless I was prepared to, at least, make some effort to do something about them. Not to continually beat myself over the head about what I can't do, but to focus on what I can - even if each step forward is tiny.

The Year of Living Generously Project is a self-help group for people like me. We try to support each other as we try to refashion our lives. Looking back over the year and a half we've been involved, my family and I have made quite a few changes to our lifestyle. Each month as a group, we think of a few more ideas that we can challenge ourselves and others to take up. Some are quite small - eg hippos in the cistern - some are larger - eg get rid of the car.

Every journey of a thousand miles eh?

Read more about it at www.generous.org.uk

Joe Turner
Freedom Clothing Project
Dressing for a better world

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Joe is a great guy doing good work to enable people to take control of their lives. Would want nothing less for my own kids...round of webplause for Joe folks...or better yet...go buy one of his t-shirts.

As you all know we here at Casa CityHippy love the 'do what you can' approach. For us it is the only way. Judgemental just does not work. Turns ourselves and others off. Needless to say we have applied to join the Year of Living Generously project. Will keep you posted on our progress.

FREEBIE
Joe kindly gave me two Freedom Clothing Project t-shirts to give away so first person to email me and tell me where their t-shirts are made wins both t-shirts. One is blue with a nice Freedom design on the front and the other is white with the letters F R E E on the front - both Large and both damn cool.

Namaste

Al

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