Oprah Winfrey, who understands more than most about what makes people tick, famously gave us this insight: “What’s important is that you matter. In every argument you’ve ever had, every encounter, that person just wants to know – did you hear me, did you see me, and did I say anything that mattered?” Those are powerful words and outstanding insight. We all are born with one voice but, without expression, our story will go unheard and thus unheeded, our truth to tell will remain forever untold. The VOX Purpose is to promote a collective expression as a Universal Village, retaining our independence of Culture and Language while enabling the freedom to dream for all our people. The VOX Community strives to manifest itself as an Ethical Brand in the retail delivery of authentic, customisable and recognisable global services and products to their Diasporas and other ethically minded Shoppers – through offline, online or via mobile. The Ethical Brands can also use an identifying label called VoxGEM to build a Guaranteed Ethical Marketplace. This is the glue logic that seeks to bond like-minded people in one vision for the development of one Global Irish Community Voice, sharing one sense or spirit of place, interest, action, practice or purpose. The VOX Communities can then collaborate, harness and develop novel, innovative ideas within their Communities to co-create ‘home-grown’ content for global distribution as interactive Community-branded services.
Dee W Hock, the founder of the original VISA credit card and Chaord format, probably the worlds biggest impact brand, wrote in his blog: “The essence of Community, its very heart and soul, is the non-monetary exchange of values. (Those are) The things we do and things we share because we care for others and the good of the place.” While adding “There can be no civil society worthy of the name without true Community” and “When money’s rant is on, we come to believe that life is a right which comes bearing a right which is the right to getting. Life is not a right. Life is a gift that comes bearing a gift which is the art of giving. Community is the place we give our gifts and receive our gifts from others.” The EriuVOX primary goal is to reunite the Irish wherever green is worn under One Global Irish Community banner for the 32 Counties of Ireland with their Global Irish Diasporas as it co-creates one powerful Global Irish Community Voice. EriuVOX is a Community-based Ethical Brand for Ireland, built upon its Old Gaelic origins, Eriu, a country that is otherwise known by its modern Gaelic names of Erin or Eire, where EriuVOX is an integral part of I.O.N.A. (Islands of the North Atlantic), of EuropaVOX and VOXWorld. Also called a social brand, it is a role-model with an evolving story around social inclusion and empowerment for Communities stretching beyond borders. In doing so, it unlocks the potential of the Arts and other creative activities among the Villagers, whether residing in a rural area, towns, cities or Diaspora locations. This is achieved by embracing Community values rather than Corporate value that dominates society today. Dee W. Hock highlights “how Community values, the supply of which are unlimited, such things as empathy, trust, love, respect, generosity of spirit and tolerance are given without stint and never a loss to the giver.” Adding, it requires “no experts…no currency, contracts, laws, courts, economists, lawyers, accountants” to implement, “only requires ordinary caring people.” We are all in this together when Communities come together, “simultaneously independent, interdependent and intradependent.” In true Community, respect and toleration are of paramount importance. Families are at the core, the most powerful building blocks of every Community. We thus avoid the many pitfalls of the present-day Corporate World with its Value extraction model that benefits the few, their Stakeholders, while creating the Inequality Divide. Accordingly, going far beyond the Profit motive that dominated the Celtic Tiger Economy, EriuVOX has four chief concerns in prioritising Caring About as well as Caring For People first- People, Planet, Purpose and Profit.
Essentially, building those concerns into an Ethical Campaign, aiming to put People First as opposed to the current Profit First philosophy that dominates in the corporate World today, EriuVOX focuses on providing people with the option of ‘learning to live the Life they would love to live within their own Communities while simultaneously eliminating the need for Emigration to faraway lands’, the default solution Irish populations had to face in vast numbers over the past two centuries. Onward bound, the focus delves deeper to address those who feel left behind in our Corporate-dominated World among the ranks of our Ageing Populations (The Third Age), Unemployed, Low -Income Earners and the Digitally Disengaged.
Over 70 million People around the World, counted among the Global Irish Diasporas, are entitled to describe themselves of Irish origin even though this small island’s population has numbered less than one-tenth of that number for 150 years. In 2002, Irish author, Tim Pat Coogan, wrote his most insightful and in-depth book (746 pages) on our Irish Diasporas to date, entitled: “Wherever Green is Worn: The Story of the Irish Diaspora” (2002). In it he describes how “every other person of his generation were being forced into unwilling emigration…nobody talked about those people, nobody did anything for them. Theirs was a fate that did not speak its name. Denial was all, where emigrants were concerned,” adding, despite all that “The history of Irish emigration is one of the success stories of the World. Dispossessed and ravaged by war, famine and centuries of economic decline, the Irish nevertheless managed to battle their way to the pinnacles of political and economic success, epitomised by the entry to the White House of John Fitzgerald Kennedy (fondly called JFK), the descendant of a Famine emigrant from County Wexford.” Forever embedded in Ireland’s memory by documentary, museum, books, newspapers and indeed parkland since his hugely celebrated ‘Visit Home’ in 1963, JFK’s story is evocatively retold in the book: “JFK In Ireland: Four days that changed a President”, by RTE’s Late Late Show TV host, Ryan Tubridy. While there were many other Irish American Presidents, JFK’s Roots and memories surpass all the others in Ireland. Indeed, there are almost 1,000 other recorded stories of Great Irish People who were actually born in Ireland and went on to accomplish great global successes in many fields, beyond the political and economic arenas – yet, JFK surpassed all in our minds. The bio of each of those Great Irish People, together with commissioned illustrations, are collected for us and arranged according to their 32 Counties of birth in the book: “Great Irish People”, by Seamus Moran (2013). They include Irish Nobel prize-winners for Literature as well as Victoria Cross winners from almost every County. In his preview, David Norris says “It is about Irish People who made a difference. There is no doubt, based on the evidence of this book, that they certainly did so, affecting change throughout Europe, North & South America and many other parts of the World including their own country…through science, the arts, politics, literature and environment.” Today, the Irish National Library of Ireland hosts an outstanding exhibition of one such Nobel prizewinner for literature: “The Life and Works of William Butler Yeats”, access to which is also available online.
Much of their powerful, collective story of mass Exodus remains untold, and mostly hidden behind a great Wall of Silence. Between 1851 and 1921, an estimated 4.5 million Irish left home and headed mainly to the United States. These are extraordinary population relocation for one small island people. A bestseller book in America, entitled: “How the Irish Saved Civilisation: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe” by Thomas Cahill (1995) was the book that best sought to understand the origins of the Irish, their true role in and contribution to the World. It was promoted as follows: “In this entertaining and compelling narrative, Thomas Cahill tells the story of how Europe evolved from the classical age of Rome to the medieval era. Without Ireland, the transition could not have taken place. Not only did Irish monks and scribes maintain the very record of Western civilisation – copying manuscripts of Greek and Latin writers, both pagan and Christian, while libraries and learning on the continent were being forever lost — they brought their uniquely Irish world-view to that task” with Cahill delightfully adding, “So much of the liveliness we associate with medieval Culture has its roots in Ireland. When the seeds of Culture were replanted on the European continent, it was from Ireland that they were germinated”. Thomas Keneally, the author of Schindler’s List, described Cahill’s book as “A shamelessly engaging, effortlessly scholarly, utterly refreshing history of the origins of the Irish and its huge contribution to Western Culture.”
And so the EriuVOX Story, a social brand for change, reveals how underneath our recently adopted Celtic Tiger Culture lies the social values of an original caring Gaelic Culture, the roots of which are now poised and capable of delivering a Social Innovation Island. The Great Silence has denied the Global Irish the opportunity of expression about centuries of oppression; to talk of their painful Journey to the new lands of opportunity, of how they suffered but yet survived and often prospered; how it denied them a chance to tell of their heroic deeds and the contributions they made as they built their new lives in strange lands, all the while leaving behind the people and land that they loved so well. But as they built America’s greatest cities, they created a contorted fantasy of a homeland they were never likely to see again, images that would later be beamed into households worldwide. Most prominent among these was the leprechaun. But the forty million who claimed to be Irish-Americans were suffering anxiety about money and a loss of roots. The Ireland they imagined was a so-called “safe place, and the benevolent leprechaun was the ideal warning figure for all their concerns about the evils of greed. They constructed our own crock at this time, selling the American vision of ourselves back to the world, with teddies, key rings, clothing and energy drinks emblasoned with the leprechaun, confident they had finally stepped so far away from the archaic vision of ourselves that we could mock it.” That being said by the Leprechaun Museum in Dublin today, it is also the perfect metaphor for what has happened to our little country in the last 20 years, “a monument to illusory wealth that eventually disappears right before our very eyes, having hopefully taught us all a very valuable lesson about ourselves.” Slowly the realisation is dawning of the monumental nature of their Global Irish Diaspora Journey as capture by the Epic Centre in Dublin today. In discovering their Voice, the Irish Diasporas are re-discovering a new depth in their once suppressed original Gaelic Culture, one that even those who remained, or had to remain at home for health or poverty reasons, seldom knew and was supplanted by that mock culture before we adopted more recently a Celtic Tiger culture. Yet! That Exodus Story remains locked away in the Social Memory of our Ageing Population custodians, both home and away, to this day because questions about the past were seldom encouraged, reasons for which we only now have come to understand fully. Yet this is an essential appreciation required if new bridges of connectivity are to be built. And this is very much a two-sided Voyage of Discovery – with distinct Local and Diaspora dimensions.
Finally, in the interests of balance, the true story of Ireland would not be accurate or complete without the inclusion of: “Political Corruption in Ireland 1922-2010: A Crooked Harp” by Dr Elaine A. Byrne (2012 ). It is the only scholarly account of Irish Corruption 1922-2010, leading from its independence in 1922 to its loss of sovereignty in 2010. Dr Byrne delves into the elaborate work of many Tribunals that sought and seeks (much of it in vain) to end these practices. Previewing, Dr Stuart C. Gilman, former head of UN Global Programme on Corruption said “Corruption was seen as a disease of the poor and coloured nations of the World…Dr Elaine Byrne challenges that presumption…Ireland is not an isolated case; it is simply symptomatic of the rest of EU…It has a far deeper impact on the social fabric of society. Dr Byrne’s research compellingly details the corruption problem, why it exists and how it can be dealt with.” This is about winning the argument for Change. Yes, that is one thing we do know for sure –the kind of Capitalism we have and know so well since 2008 has no Principles and what Values it has does possess favour Profit above and beyond all else – People, Planet, Prosperity and Purpose. We all know that to be true. It’s only concrete actions that Communities want to hear about anymore, not mere good intentions and soothing words. But can Communities lead the way themselves, find that Alternative Way, and on the scale that they need to make a big difference in their way of life? As John Fullerton, former Managing Director of JP Morgan who spent 20 years on Wall Street, continues: “The issues we have today are much more profound than I think we have collectively woken up to” he adds “Its (smart) people like us… who think we are so smart, that are the only people who don’t really understand how the world needs to work…we understand what is wrong with the (Financial) System, we just don’t know how to Change it. The will to fix the System begins with the will & curiosity to be open to rethink the way we think the world works. That’s threatening to Academics & those in Power…that’s threatening to their egos and personal desires. We need to realise the path we are on. We need to come together and do the right thing.” For those Communities who want to open up alternative ways to progress, they must first accept the need to change, win the argument for change, set down the conditions for change and then participate in collaborative action to deliver that change. We’ve seen this work in small ways already, such as in Community Cafes, now is the time to scale-up. What better time to explore the idea of a Community Cooperative Chaord and its greatest production, Ethical Retailing delivering their Community-owned Brands? For these compelling reasons, the idea of EriuVOX took root as one Global Irish Community Voice.
Eriuvation: A Village Vista 2020 