Is what you’re doing empowering or disempowering?
A year ago, OECD invited comments on its ‘Good Practice Principles for Deliberative Processes for Public Decision Making’. I replied by highlighting that Empowerment was missing from that list of guiding principles. It’s still missing — it didn’t make it into the final version published in OECD’s ‘Deliberative Wave’ report — and I’ll say more on this later in this piece. But let’s first be clear on why empowerment is so crucial.
One of the key principles underpinning participative democracy, if not the key principle, is empowerment. …
How COVID19 challenged some biases but not others!
I remember the Johari Window from my early coaching training. We all have blind spots. The challenge is to try and become more self-aware and listen to feedback from others to reveal sub-conscious biases and be able to address them, or at least make them conscious.
Throughout 2019, and in the first two months of 2020, I spent a lot of my time highlighting the biases against digital democracy and online engagement, notably those saying that deliberative processes like citizens’ assemblies and citizens’ juries “had to be” face-to-face, in person.
My first published piece of 2020 was a non-directive good…
How one-eyed lobbying for one perceived solution can make people blind to other solutions…and the reasons why we’re NOT advocating for a Citizens’ Assembly on Suicide Prevention!
There are so many ways we can improve our democracy, it’s important not to just get obsessively focused on what we might think is one way or the best way to enhance democracy to the point of stifling discussion and debate around all the alternatives. Indeed, to do so deliberately is anti-democratic!
With the many failures of our democracies — and there seems to be a high degree of agreement that there are problems to be solved here and on many dimensions of what these problems are — it’s important to have width of vision in seeking ways to reform…
Time for some healthy self-deliberation!
Many recent publications about Citizens’ Assemblies and Citizens’ Juries have focused on how to design and implement them, as the ‘Deliberative Wave’ promotion of these deliberative processes has tried to move us quickly on, often discouraging critical analysis — one prominent DelibWave advocate told me, worryingly, “the science is settled on Citizens’ Assemblies”!
Let’s look at some fundamental questions of ‘why’ deploy these tools, and ask the kinds of critical questions a healthy democracy should be asking.
In critical analysis and critical thinking disciplines, we go back to first principles and we also approach the issue from multiple perspectives.
Some…
As promised at the #OTGSP event, on 10 September 2020, the Organising Team has been collating a list of useful sources and resources.
This post brings together resources that:
- the organising team have researched and sourced,
- have been recommended by those in our networks, including by Mental Health First Aiders who joined our breakfast takeover on 19 August, and,
- our contributors and speakers at the World Suicide Prevention Day event have recommended.
We’ve broken the resources into sections to make them easier to find; below you will find:
- General reading and resources
- Crisis services and practical support
- Suicide prevention organisations
- Diversity and inclusion organisations and initiatives
- Practical resources, training and shareable video
- Suicide bereavement services
- Workplace mental health
- Resources from outside the UK
- …
We know enough about how to save lives to say it’s time for action — practical action!
The Global ‘Zero Suicide Community’, collaborative initiatives across the UK, regional & local partnerships, and a dynamic network of people with Lived Experience of suicide loss, have been coming together in 2020 to highlight actions to save lives — inspiring others with their thinking, their passion, their demonstration of ‘what works’, and their belief that most suicides are preventable so we must be more focused on those actions that save lives.
This is an edited version of my longer piece (link immediately below) published just before World Suicide Prevention Day 2020 #WSPD2020 (which featured the amazing OneTeamGov event #OTGSP with…
Routes to a community (your community) without suicide!
I write this piece at a time when three significant events are happening in my life and work. Firstly, after 6 months of engagement with key partners in the global ‘Zero Suicide Community’, we’ve mapped out the ‘desired state’ vision for moving towards zero suicides, and how to achieve this; and just had a graphic designer (thanks Chris!) encapsulate this in a single visual:
I’ll return to this later with more context and explanation of how the transformation model works (and it does work!) and the various Suicide Prevention Transformation Projects (SPTPs) we now have up-and-running or ready-to-launch.
On 10 September One Team Gov will be running an event on the theme of Suicide Prevention, find out about our first set of collaborators here
10 September is World Suicide Prevention Day, designed to raise awareness of the human tragedy of suicide and also raise awareness of (practical) steps we can all take to help save lives.
This blog post showcases the One Team Gov event #OTGSP #WSPD2020 taking place on 10 September 2020 at 2–5pm. It will:
- provide some context for the event,
- highlight some of our excellent Contributors,
- emphasise how everyone can help to ‘make a difference’ in preventing suicides, and,
- explain why you should click through to register for the event…without delay! [Link below]
Some background
Based on recorded deaths by suicide — and…
Have you checked your support network recently? Do you need some support?
It’ll be World Suicide Prevention Day soon, 10 September (#WSPD2020) and there’ll be many events and activities taking place around the world, mostly online of course due to COVID19, which has been another source of stress, uncertainty, anxiety, concern, frustration, anger, fear…on top of all the other factors that adversely affect our wellbeing.
World Suicide Prevention Day is an annual event designed to raise awareness of the problem of suicide (someone takes their own life every 40 seconds, despite most suicides being preventable) and what can be done to save lives (indeed, transform this tragic source of loss and move…
In response to many requests from my government clients and partners, this piece focuses on the history and evolution of deliberative & participative democracy, with key references for further reading or listening (as we go and at the end of the piece). The primary focus is on the UK, where I’m now residing (again) but most of the points, and all of the lessons, are transferable to any country, society or community that aspires to be a democracy.
There are a lot of other ‘histories’ around these days but many are partial, either because they’re pushing a particular barrow (so…
Paul Vittles
Researcher (FMRS), marketer (FAMI), consultant, coach & counsellor who helps people and organisations with transformational change and sustainable success.
