One Curious Cat
Joseph Friel grew up in Rural Ireland in the 1950s, brought up on a Farm which had no electricity, running water, electrical appliances, not a car or a tractor; but had two horses. He was always a very curious cat, who liked to be called Joey by his friends. Born with an innate curiosity, it developed into an all-consuming desire to learn everything he could about whatever caught his fertile imagination. That life experience was, for Joey, always brimming with possibilities; never dull. Such curiosity inevitably led him in and out of trouble just as often as it saved him from some of life’s predators. He recalled that he wasn’t yet six when his eager mind first discovered books. His Dad had stored his Uncle Fr Padraig’s classic collection of books on the top of the large old mahogany wardrobe in his bedroom, while his Uncle lay seriously ill in hospital. It was to leave him the great legacy of a lifelong love of books. Since electricity had not yet reached to their area, Joey was intrigued by the old books that he tried to read under the low light of the Tilley lamp, a versatile paraffin pressure lamp, before discovering the magic of reading by torchlight under the bedclothes at night. His mother warned that it would ruin his eyes, a habit that would cause him to wear spectacles before his teens. His beloved Uncle sadly died young in 1956, aged just 57, after six years of illness. That was when his relatives came to share-out his things, including that book collection which Joey had come to treasure. He remembers crying crocodile tears because his interest was of no importance to anyone; no one thought to ask a six-year-old about such matters. But, that collection whetted his appetite for reading, something that never left him. Seeing his unhappiness, however, his Dad did recover a few of the books that had left their early mark.
Having started school aged four and a half, Joey vividly remembers venturing into that new world of Charles Dickens through books like David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities and Oliver Twist during those early-to-bed torchlight-extended nights. Unable to put the book down, he cherished the added mystery of reading by day in the grove of trees that surrounded his home, skipping farmwork where possible, to the expressed displeasure of his father and his older brothers. Books were to give Joey the freedom to explore and research his endless emerging interests in an ever-increasing depth. He remembers his Uncle Fr Padraig well as his father brought him along for company on his regular Sunday visits to the hospital. He seemed kindly although stern man to young Joey. He later learned that he was an esteemed Professor in their County College, a Gaelic scholar who spoke to the rest of Joey’s siblings As Gaeilge and taught in Ring Gaeltacht, was the family’s best singer and their only piano player. That was a lot for any six-year-old to behold, but now the lure of learning caught his imagination. It was an obsession that would drive him all his life.
Connecting Roots and Branches
With the love of books and learning locked in his young mind, Joey’s curiosity turned to intrigue about family stories, home and away. He wanted to know about his roots, his family’s rich heritage and an apparently enthralling emigrant history. But it was his homeplace that proved to be the most fertile place to learn. Their Parlour always seemed full of the most exciting and entertaining visitors. That was partly because his farming Dad was also a factory Agent who used it to issue Grower contracts in that room. Spoken of in hushed tones by his mother as ‘the good room’, it was mostly a place reserved for visiting relatives and infrequent visitors. There they would gather around a warm fire, where his mother would serve high tea in the good china. Joey’s father never drank, but he always kept a bottle of Irish whiskey under the Parlour cabinet for those who did partake. It was a room where everyone was equal and could speak freely. They would tell their stories or play Uncle Fr Padraig’s old piano. They would listen engagingly to his Uncle’s revered recording of The Arab’s Farewell to his Horse played on a magical old HMV gramophone. His Masters Voice somehow became entwined with that song after that. They inevitably would join in song with his ever willing Dad. Uncle Fr Padraig’s record intrigued Joey so much that for decades he sought out the real recording and lyrics story. Although their farm had two workhorses then, just why would Uncle have chosen that song in particular, he wondered? Eventually, he did discover that the author was Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton (1808-1877). In his research, he found the lyrics and the music sheets together with her captivating story, as encoded in verse. Young ears were not always welcome in that room, but the draw of all those stories was too great to pass up. So Joey freely volunteered to serve as the wheel turner of the vintage cast iron fanners that kept the fire glowing. Noone else wanted that hard work, but the visitors soon forgot he was there, and he even got to stay up late on those nights and listen intently, while his parents were too caught up in the stories to notice. Those stories captivated him, were fuel for his ceaseless learning appetite and fire for his active imagination and daydreaming in the grove.
Embracing Diasporas
One story led to another. Aunt Mai was the acknowledged custodian of social memory in their family and she first opened his mind to what seemed to him be his global as well as extended family. She told of how he had 41 first cousins. He heard about her proud possession a 16 foot Family Tree that came from America with names of all their relations on it. She spoke with passion and insight into those people, their stories, dates and the places in which they lived in equal measure. They talked of their ancestor’s life and times, tracing as far back as 1775, if not beyond. His Grandfather Jamsie loved to emphasise that those were Napoleon Bonaparte times, whom he added had lived 1769-1821. Joey was astonished to hear that their home, where he and his ancestors were born too, was as old as America itself. In fact, as of July 4th, 2020, the United States of America was 244 years old, born in 1776! It was always Aunt Mai who brought his family history to life; he would never think of his ancestors the same way again. With gravity, she told how 60% of their ancestors had emigrated to the New World due to the ravages of famine, deprivation, and poverty; had sailed on cattle ships to that great Land of Opportunity, America, from where most were destined never to return. They never heard from many of them again; they believed some died at sea, while they located others later on in family searches.
But! It was his Uncle Seanie that first blew his mind with endless possibilities. He was President of a National Farming Association, was a global-traveller, a larger than life character, a great storyteller and a keen photographer who edited his slides mercilessly. His stories and photos had magic in them for Joey’s young exploratory mind. Every Summer, his Uncle would arrive with fanfare to their home, proudly presenting a carousel of slides to his captive audience while telling captivating stories, all drawn from the 26 countries of his travels. Crickey, could there possibly be that number of countries in the world, Joey thought, as he tried to grasp the scale and beauty of that vast world? He learned that his Uncle had been to America back in 1934 with the All-Ireland GAA hurling medal winners where he met many of their Family Tree descendants. Relatives were all traced back to his home; no child’s mind could fail to grasp the importance of all that. He had been sheltering in the Underground in London during WWII. That fact never left his inquisitive mind. When aged twelve, in 1962, the Mercy Convent relocated his sister Bridget, a nun, to California, where she reconnected with some of his mother’s first cousins, America suddenly came ever closer to home. Some of those relatives then sent emigrant parcels of things never seen before and amazing photos too. Mostly, he never forgot those important airmail letters with dollars falling out of them. He persuaded his mother to read aloud some of their messages and stories from their New World. It triggered a lifelong fascination with their Family Tree and that mystical world of their Emigrant Ancestors. He had to know more.
The Lure of Learning
One glorious Summer’s day in that same year of ’62, Joey sat in the Pasture field on their farm looking out across the nearby Parish hills and daydreamed. He dreamt of that America about which he heard so much in Parlour stories and airmail letters. He thought of what secrets those Emigrant stories had revealed, of the great Mississippi River bridges, of the fabled Oregon Trail and of their songs which he learned to love. Oh! Shenandoah, I hear you calling, and Mississippi rolling along sprang immediately to mind. But! Answers led to ever more Questions. There were too many questions that still needed answering, yet he had exhausted local supplies. Suddenly wide awake, he realised there only one rational conclusion that any young pre-teen could reach. He must leave the Farm, Parish and Village he loved so much, and right now, to go away to college. That had to be the answer; indeed, that’s where he would find the fountain of knowledge he urgently needed. Yes! He would leave his National School a year early; there was no time to waste. He would follow in the footsteps of his two brothers to their County College. Wait! First, he had the dreaded task of asking his parents if they could afford to pay for yet another sibling at that boarding school. Somehow, he plucked up the courage and acted that day. To his utter delight, seeing it meant so much to him, they volunteered that his older brother has just left that college and gone to the ‘Big Smoke’, the capital city, to find a job; they could afford it they confided, shielding him from their financial struggles.
County College was a Catholic College and was everything Joey dreamt it to be. He studied very hard, topped his exams, steadfastly driven to make his parents very proud of their sacrifices for him, which he knew they had to be making. Soon after, he was thrilled when they opened the first College Library in a prefabricated building. Classmates always knew that’s exactly where to find him after that, rather than on any playing field. He remembers well two books that caught his imagination there, which he read cover to cover- Bluebird and the Dead Lake: The story of Donald Campbell’s land speed record at Lake Eyre in 1964 by John Pearson (1965). He could recall the shock during his final year in college when he heard that Donald had died tragically during a water speed record attempt at Coniston Water in the Lake District, England, while seeking to break the 300 mph water speed barrier in January 1967. Only the death of JFK in November 1963 was a bigger shock during those formative years when he thought the world might end. The other book that had a profound effect on Joey’s young mind was Stand and Give Challenge by Francis MacManus (1964). It was a book that was part history, part biography, part essay but left an indelible mark on his mind, shocked him about the lives of the hidden Irish back when the “nightmare that was on the nation”, the Great Famine (1845-52).
Language holds the Key
And so shy Joey’s world began to open up in ways he had never imagined. Now, cast by his Maths Teacher in a supporting role for their College Play, Arsenic and Old Lace, that went public for the first time and to a sell-out audience of 800 people spanning three nights. It made the front page of his County’s weekly paper, a big moment. Joey was feeling the magic of college life. He volunteered to assist his Latin Teacher in setting up and policing a Non-Smokers Association; students rewarded with a badge and the valued attendance at extra film showings, the stand out one in memory being The Guns of Navarone. He was selected to help run their enterprising college tuckshop which compensated for living within college walls all term long. He loved the responsibility of being asked to do stand-ins for the Dean of Studies to supervise nightly Class Studies. Most of all, he loved studying and brought his sharpest competitiveness edge to that task, to every one of their four exam tests a year over five years, usually topping his class. He never made the college teams though, was never sporty enough like his athletic cousin, John, who came to join him in that college, and who claimed many an accolade on sports days when their families came to watch.
In those college years, Joey also came to love his native Gaelic language, cherished Peig Sayers in particular. It is to the openly volunteered insights of his Irish Teacher that he will forever remain indebted for that gift. That teacher’s pure love for his native language made a big impression on Joey in that one heartfelt conversation. He had stressed how the Gaelic language held a secret key to their Culture, protected and authentically preserved it, and was the only way to understand who they were and discover who they might yet become. Otherwise, they would all be the same; Teacher had volunteered. Finally, he emphasised the fact that while Joey’s beloved Uncle Fr Padraig was a time-honoured tutor on the Ecclesiastical side of that college, the Seminary, he was an acknowledged Gaelic scholar too. Ouch! Joey switched to the higher grade immediately and obtained honours Irish in the Leaving Cert although he did not speak Irish after those heady college days. However, he never thought of Irish as a dead language like Latin ever again. Instead, it stirred in him a lifelong interest in the Gaelic Culture it preserved and revealed to him. He was so shy in that college that his Uncle Seanie once told him, weeks before he died suddenly of a heart attack, that back then in his college days ‘he would rather miss him than meet him’, adding promptly that “those shy days are long gone now”. Joey knew it was because he had been captivated by his Uncle’s strong personality back then, but remained silent. Before leaving college, Joey thought at length about becoming a priest like his brother, Fr Paddy, his Uncle Fr Padraig and Grand Uncle Fr Jamie, and since he had two sisters nuns too. There were so many religious all over his Family Tree but felt that life was not right for him, and not for what he wanted to achieve in life. He never regretted that decision. Forty years later at their College Reunion, tutors still remembered young Joey, but mostly for his incessant Questions.
Retail World Beckons
Leaving Cert success behind him, Joseph left the County College and the farm to follow his older brother to the Big City, drawn by the exciting opportunities and independence it promised to a quiet, ambitious young 17-year-old. He had one immediate dilemma, no money. Finding a Summer job doing a City Survey enabled him to buy a suit and pay his way to the ‘Big Smoke’. He thought about becoming a Pilot, but the glasses ruled that out. He would have loved the idea of becoming a Librarian, be immersed in books all day, but decided that it did not offer enough action to fuel his ambitions. A Journalist now held instant appeal, but the £4 pay reckoned upon qualification killed off that idea. None could compete with the prospect of a job right then at £7.50 a week, the level needed to afford to live in a city apartment. One of his 41 first cousins stepped in to coach him, enabling him to land a job in one month that would by pure chance put him on the path to his ambitious life goal. Joseph’s first Boss was a young, fiercely enthusiastic and ambitious up and coming politico who persuaded Joseph to give up his Librarian & Journalistic musings, learn on the job and study Accountancy instead. His Boss was to become a political icon of national repute soon after. Joseph took up CIMA Accountancy studies, ostensibly to prove to himself that he could attain a Third Level qualification more than being any lure of Accountancy itself. However, being a family-first, it held great appeal, as did the parallel earnings promised from working fulltime. Once again, he chose to take the path less travelled to obtaining a reputable third level qualification like the Certified Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA). He has still to confront another dilemma, no money for distance learning. Thoroughly researched, he opted to study for CIMA via a negotiated, Employer-refundable Correspondence Course from UK. That meant changing jobs, which he did. The Course provided weekly postal lessons and tests from Glasgow and London Colleges. First, though, he studied the psychology of study in the months before, to assist towards earliest qualification. Now, he was able to work by day while studying at nights and weekends, compliments of his free access to National Library and a Study Club, and without the need for University Lectures with one exception, Law. It was his best decision thus far. He was one of the first to qualify by Correspondence Course from those colleges in Ireland, which reconfirmed to himself that sharp competitive edge. By age 24, Joseph was a qualified CIMA Accountant, a year before his University peers, but had also been working as a well-paid Cost Accountant for three years in a global Pharmaceutical company. His Employers were among the country’s first to instal the then-revolutionary IBM Mini Computing systems, ahead of other leading industry organisations. It all augered well. Upon qualification, they offered Joseph a glittering corporate career in Malaysia and London, but again he chose the road less travelled. Money was necessary but never the guiding light to his ambitions. He chose Retailing as the path, a people-fronting industry, a sector he saw to be in great need of modernisation, comprehensive computerisation among them, and where he would be closer to people more than in back-office Accounting world. He left to pursue this new challenge. He met a girl of like mind, marriage and a family happily soon followed. She was born with matching ambition with equal dedication to betterment and family life, and that proved to be the best decision in his life by a country mile. The next chapter of Joseph’s life took them both onto a Retail path that would transform as much as torment their lives. It simultaneously opened the door to a previously invisible world that he had neither read about nor ever heard before, giving him a priceless insight into The Way the World Works!
The Way the World Works
In less than a decade, Joseph advanced from being initially appointed their Retail Group Accountant to Retail Group Financial Controller to Retail Financial Director and Retail Chief Executive. To satisfy his ambitions he was driven to make an Acquisition, a tall order in a trade where he was an outsider. Challenged, he energetically raised the considerable funds to make a successful bid of £1.3 million in a Retail Management Buy-Out against vigorous retailer opposition. This achievement was ranked by Business & Finance magazine as the 13th biggest financial deal in the country of that year. The Acquisition meant employing 156 staff and included 32,000 sq ft of retail floor space, an extensive property portfolio that included a chain of Retail shops, Warehouses and commercial properties. High press coverage followed, promising a whole new standard for retailing, which deeply upset the Department Stores sector which was not ready for such radical change and felt gravely threatened. That opposition overflowed when, shortly after the Acquisition, Joseph remodelled their 12,000 sq ft flagship Store with a further investment of £330,000 to unveil his country’s First Speciality Store, showcasing an extensive range of new exclusive Supplier offerings. The threat was now perceived to be life-changing by traditional retailers and wholesalers alike, who reacted in unison, worried about the future of existing trade structures if that new creation was to be allowed to find its legs.
The resultant opposition was as fierce as it was invisible. Most stayed with the Old School as they stood resolutely together to resist any such dramatic change. Supplier credit faded under pressure; Buyers were undermined and then underpinned in competitive startups. With Staff poaching normalised, and Bankers loans ultimately withdrawn, they became an irresistible force. Joseph’s empire floundered under their sustained onslaught. Receivership immediately followed, and that would impact significantly on Joseph’s life and that of his family. But! They were not alone. Forty other well known retail stores also fell in that same four months, to that same Bank. A Banker’s word was gospel then; Receivership was a black stain, Joseph had no voice to get heard. He suffered their wrath, but in that darkest of hours the mould of the Retail establishment, that last bastion of corporate change did finally break. Without change, there would be no progress; Retailers couldn’t stop it. Dickens’ Tales of Two Cities summed up that venture best: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” His dreamy view of the world faltered and vanished like the morning dew, never to return. It’s the Way the World Works, was it?
The Eye of the Tiger
Joseph’s life experience and training had unknowingly prepared him for the huge hurdles ahead. After Retail Receivership, Joseph’s eyes were now wide open, and his mind sharpened. Everyone does not play by the rules, no Sir! In its aftermath, he read how one leading Irish Banker told the Moriarty Tribunal in 2000 that ‘in the 1970s Tax Havens were a gigantic game played out between Civil Servants and tax firms‘. Shocked to the core, he knew the nation should be on high alert for the dangers when so many were blinded by greed; he just sensed that no one was listening, all caught in the eye of the Tiger. Anglo Irish Bank was the posterchild of that Celtic Tiger decade. It soon crashed from being the self-proclaimed fastest growing Bank in the world into oblivion as unexpectedly as the Fall of the Roman Empire. Joseph felt sure that the Tribunal had exposed a tremendous unpalatable truth; that the unthinkable, a national bankruptcy was becoming a potential reality. And so it did, the Financial Crash of 2008 followed. The consequential IMF bail-out inflicted a decade of Austerity together with decades more in Bond interest payments pain on his people; Surely this would trigger a great Awakening? But it didn’t! When the ICIJ Journalists released the insightful Panama Papers on tax havens in 2016; we must have surely known that tax game was over? When two German reporters shared their Paradise Papers on tax havens with ICIJ for release in 2017; there could be no turning back the clock now. But! In the final analysis, while Financial powerhouses abided by the rule of law, another realisation dawned. Those who wish and can afford to do so make up their own rules and, enabled by best tax consultants, use their limitless resources in framing those rules to avoid breaking any laws in their actions. Joseph saw that all was not fair in love, war, nor indeed in business. He though on how utterly foolish he, as a qualified CIMA of all people, had been in trusting that Banking world and their advisors. Those with the money do have all the power and influence, after all. The rest were mere matchboxes floating on the ocean foam of their greed. The evidence was there. Their tried and trusted fail-safe blame games obscured any honest and insightful conversations after that. Their mantra- Its the Way the World Works, live with it! But no! There has to, ought to be; indeed, there is Another Way, and he would now expose its virtues. That would be Joseph’s life mission from now on, something that would make all his life learning and experience count and be worthwhile. That answer lay in a Third Sector collaboration, far beyond anything he or his people had seen before. In their hearts, the Irish want to live in a society that cares. That’s who we were, and that’s who we will be again. Our current Covid-19 Doctors and Nurses are the proven modern-day saints and scholars; that’s where we must begin, with Community Caring. The shortsighted Public and Private Sectors had let us all down. He knew nothing else could suffice, would suffice, nor ought to suffice. No! We had been living he figured in a parallel economic and social Celtic Tiger universe. He started to work out out what that might be. There had to be a better way, he resolutely believed. But, try as he hid, he could not find anyone who had the answers, a path forward. So he concluded if its to be it’s up to him to persuade Communities of their limitless upside.
An Alternative Way Looms
Joseph’s Receivership experience hurt a lot, yes, much like the Confiscations and the Plantations that he had read so much about during the centuries of Colonisation when Cromwell took his people’s lands and properties, taken without compensation too. He thought a lot about it. What would be learned from the messages revealed within his life experiences, if he read more and different books, asked more and more profound questions – then what more revealing answers might start to emerge ? What else might be possible if he tried? Didn’t Silicon Valley achieve an economic miracle once with their 1970s borderless creation, coming from nowhere, rising to the sky, crashing in 2000, then rising like the phoenix again? So, why not his little Island of Ireland? He first read Selling the Dream by Apple guru, Guy Kawasaki (1992), who captivated the world for a time with his new buzz word, Everyday Evangelism. It lit Joseph’s fuse. However, his reading accelerated in earnest with The Borderless World by Kenichi Ohmae (1990), Managing Director of McKinsey. He showed immense foresight; he saw that we were on the precipice of a New Age. And just how right he proved to be.
Multimedia was the buzz word in 1995. Amazon, founded 1994, had not yet sold a book, Google, founded 1998, had not yet surfaced, Wikipedia, founded 2001, was all of a decade away, Facebook, founded 2004, was just an idea in someone’s head. Social Media was not yet a word. Joseph only had to go there to see for himself. Then, in 2004 he found himself sitting in Steve Job’s chair and in Apple’s fishbowl boardroom, the original launching pad for Steve’s inspiration. He immersed himself in a book he picked up there: The Silicon Boys and Their Valley of Dreams by David A. Kaplan to confirm for himself that it was, in reality, a Valley of Dollars. Such Names! Founded on a platform of Venture Capital money, yes, it was all about the money, equally uncaring he observed about anyone living outside their non-existent walls. The fire within was burning ever brighter in Joseph now – hadn’t Silicon Valley taken 30 years to glow in the way we all love it best today, for its Social Media. He finally got to read the real-life story of Jobs in Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson (2011), Joseph remembered how Job’s office plaque did sum him up well: “The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do– Apple, 1997” The most influential book he read, however, did not emanate from Silicon Valley but Fresno, California but which turned that fire into a furnace: Birth of the Chaordic Age by Dee W. Hock (1999). Joseph was transfixed by the story of Visa Card (originally BankAmericard) since it was founded in 1976 by W. Dee Hock. He had just moved into Retail industry at that time and had upgraded all their retail terminals and computerised the back office when he adopted that Card. He followed Dee W. Hock’s writings religiously since. And so it was one key quote in that book that made him sit bolt upright: “This is a story of the future, of something trying to happen, of a four-hundred-year-old age rattling in its deathbed as another struggles to be born – a transformation of consciousness, culture, society and institutions such as the world has never experienced”. It fitted with everything he had ever learned, everything he knew in life, confirmed by his gut. Yet nobody seemed to him to pay attention, despite the subsequent Global Crash of 2008. Then twenty years later, out of the blue came Covid-19, and the conditions were finally ripe and ready for that Third Sector to be born, time to at last take its place on the podium of life. It took the Coronavirus to create the exact conditions for such a parallel Economy to exist. There it was, a Child of Necessity! The Social Economy of the Third Sector can finally emerge.
Build Better Communities
Now that new horizon that had long beckoned from far away, Ethical Retailing, came into sharp focus. That other path was indeed possible, now as clear to him as the Oregon Trails of yesteryear. A whole century after the creation of Horatio Plunkett’s original Village Creamery Stores and the Cooperative Shops, a new Ethical approach began unfolding of its own accord through the collaboration of, yes, Ireland’s Village Farmers. It was the Villages that collaborated to create Kilkenny’s Avonmore Creameries in 1967, which grew exponentially into today’s nutritional giant and multi-billion € Cooperative, Kilkenny’s Glanbia Plc. And Irish Farmers had also started Kerry Cooperative, who today claim to be able to serve nutritious foods to an incredible two billion people worldwide every day. Thousands of other Cooperatives have since followed in their footsteps, unified under the novel Coop Marque that provides greater awareness, clearer identification and higher brand visibility to users for cooperative produce. Collectively, they have already started to create some of the vast capacity and capability necessary to begin the delivery of a credible Social Economy of the Third Sector, which must occur in parallel to the Public and Private Sectors. Although lured away to no small extent since by the glitter of the lucrative Private Sector, they have, perhaps unknowingly, opened a Trail to a whole new level of Ethical Retail Trade worldwide. The Digital World did the rest in tandem with many other Third Sector organisations that have been flying Under the Radar, to quote the title of a European Report on the Sector which concluded it was “a loose and baggy monster”.
No, focused by the shock but captivated now by the prospect, Joseph saw they were no longer talking about a Third Sector as led by Cooperatives in the Community, not as they know them. He saw that the emerging Alternative Way ought to come through Community-owned Cooperatives instead. After all, his world was becoming immersed in a digital world that could reach out and engage across borders with their Diasporas and contemplate the endless possibilities for delivery worldwide of Online, Community-branded Services too. And they have a very different story to tell. No, he was not talking about Communities as his people knew them either. He was speaking of five very different kinds of connectivity – Communities of Place of course, but also Communities of Interests, Communities of Purpose, Communities of Lifework and Communities of Lifeskills too. Whichever side he came down on, one thing was uber clear to Joseph; the relevance of Communities in the mix had become the Big Issue. They had arrived at the top table of all discussions and were committed to fixing the globally destabilising social problems that they were facing today. They weren’t going away either, not until adequately addressed. Why? Because these were Big Issues that universally threatened and undermined the Spirit of all their Communities. And that included the unmet challenges of widespread and growing Mental Illness, Migration, Emigration, Immigration, Inequality, Instability, Poverty and, Homelessness. Community start from within, Joseph concluded, and only together can they Build Better Communities that opens the gateway to such a long-cherished Social Sector Economy of the Third Sector, designed to function in parallel with Public and Private Economies.
Eriuvation: A Village Vista 2020 