Customer #001

The first person to sign up for a PV system through our Toronto project was this guy - http://www.creativelx.com/

He returned my call from the set of the Much Music video awards where his lighting design company is taking down after yesterday's show.

the murky world of international business ethics

What do I do with Congolese would-be business partners who offer to fly me to Edmonton for a weekend to watch soccer, promise suitcases of money and cash deals, and drive Mercedes SUVs?
"Ted, you don't understand," says the Consular General with a patronizing smile, sitting across from me in a plain little office rented from the Canada Christian College at DVP and Eglinton. "If [the government ministers] like it, your problem won't be clearing customs...or any other bureaucracy, it will be to meet demand."

If there's anything I'm getting out of Out of Poverty, it's that the people you choose as business partners need to have a highly sophisticated ethical framework in order to get positive results on the ground.

Maybe I'm being too critical of the wrong things. I don't know.

tree planting with Claire and an attorney general

I think I'll try a stream of consciousness for this entry. Today's trip to St. Claire West village was so surreal, it seems appropriate. A timeline too, b/c every minute was full of meeting people, having conversations, adventures and fun!

8:45 - pick up bus tickets from the turnkey
9:45 - head to Waterloo Park for Circle of Creation outdoor service
10:14 - check cell phone and realize i still have time to catch 10:30 greyhound to Toronto
10:27 - pull into grt terminal, lock up my bike and board the bus
10:29 - catch the eye of a cute poli sci grad student from Montreal and have a good conversation about society's little "vices" - lawers, alcohol, stuffy post-protestantism, Eastern European politics...
12ish - walk out of the St. Claire West subway into glorious sunshine and call real estate agent Chris Chopik from EvolutionGreen for directions to the Strawberry and Asparagus Festival
losing track of time and finding myself in a utopian children's garden in conversation with Claire - a middle-aged professional gardener who reminds me of Mrs. Whatsit from Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time.
- meeting Chris and being introduced to to Michael Bryant, MPP for Downtown West Village and wearer of awesome brown hemp pants and a snazzy fair-trade cotton shirt he got from BC.
- talking to one of Bryant's aids, an Osgood Hall law student who's into all green social things
- meeting dozens of Torontonian environmentalists and eating Asparagus Dogs with organic strawberry smoothies and certified organic beef stew cooked in a solar oven
4:15 - tour of Chris' awesome green home with dual-flush toilets and bookshelves full of liberalist-envrionmentalist books, like The Everyday Activist, 100-Mile Diet, and The Literary Companion to Sex (I hope I can say that, I mean we're all open-minded here right?)
8:30 - spotting friend from UW Math, and riding home "critical mass" style with only smiles and politeness from passing drivers. except for one strange dude in a pick-up truck who yelled "sexy" at us from across the street. No idea what that was about...(?)

Overall, a very rich and memorable day. (Hopefully Michael's aid sends me the pictures and I'll post them here later)

learning to read Out of Poverty

A friend recently recommended John Stackhouse's Out of Poverty And Into Something More Comfortable to me. Reading it reminds me how tough it is to take real knowledge, not just opinions, from a narrative about global issues. After years in the field as a writer, Stackhouse is of the mindset that big, overly-ambitious, top-level aid is less effective than supporting grassroots micro-initiatives - a mindset that I'm inclined to strongly agree with. Policy-makers, and those who influence them, may control vast flows of a kind of resource, money or food, but no one in a seat of power has more influence over human ingenuity than small people working together in their area of understanding. Small people delivering on good ideas have always had the biggest impact. (Sometimes small people find themselves in big positions.)

And yet at the same time, the statistician in me asks what truth am I finding in these pages? When you read a book like this, you're not just reading the ideas of one person and his friends, editors, and publisher. At least I hope not. I think you're reading this book because hundreds of small but knowledgeable people in the academic and international development field have read this book too and given it their approval to shape the minds of small, less knowledgeable people like me about how development works. I'm reading stories that have been tested in a peer-review process, and then by thousands of readers with whom this book resonates. So I guess I can relax and just enjoy the stories, comfortable with a medium where there are few figures and quantifiable data.

If there's one thing I feel comfortable taking from this book, it's that no matter how small and insignificant a person may be perceived to be, we're still in a position of great power in the world we move.

Public tenders, ashtanga in the park, and music in the street

Today I found an email in my inbox at ARISE from the West Toronto Initiative for Solar Energy (WISE). We've been chosen by the WISE steering committee to deliver between 50 and 100 residential solar power systems to residents of High Park. ARISE is on a hiring spree this week, and my new co-worker Paul had the following response when I told him I was on my way to Yoga in the park after work. "Cycling is my yoga."
This could be the start of a beautiful friendship...

Yoga was fantastic, in the sun with a warm furious breeze shaking the trees around us. We relaxed and stretched on a grassy hill overlooking a game of cricket. Our instructor Andrew had even brought an extra yoga mat for someone who didn't show up, which he sold to me for $15. At the end of the class, Andrew gave us a little more insight into Yoga philosophy than his usual "inhale/exhale, smile at the sun". Something he said about the inside Yoga teacher and the outside Yoga teacher struck a chord with me and I stayed after for a little while to chat. I felt a connection to him and some of the ideas that underly this kind of meditation.

Then on the way home, I recognized Jon Arnold and Matt standing in the back of a red pick-up, each with an elbow on a piano that they were steadying as we rounded the corner onto Erb. Jon sat on the wall of the flatbed and played when we waited for the light to turn. Back at Roslin, Matt's friend helped us set it down by the curb and we played for the neighbours.

Just one of those memorable days when you feel like things are coming together for the better.

Ted