Midway through Finding Home’s launch dialogue in 2007, where over 155 participants from diverse backgrounds explored the concept of Finding Home in our current global and local contexts, a participant asked, “How do we make sense of all these individual interpretations of what creates home and arrive at a sense of ‘collective home’ where we can all belong?”
In response to this question, Dianne Shiner from Whidbey Institute relayed a story about working in a foster care project for unaccompanied refugee children. The staff, one day discussed what they felt was the one indicator that cut across diverse cultures and indicated when a child felt a sense of belonging. After many discussions they identified what became known as the “refrigerator factor”. When a child feels comfortable enough to go to the
refrigerator on their own, open the door and help themselves to the food knowing it belonged equally to them – this indicated that a child felt at home – that they truly belonged.!
In reflecting on her story, the challenge was put to the group “How do we create a world, a town, a home, where people feel they belong and can come to the refrigerator and help themselves?”
During Finding Home’s launch dialogue, Senator Roméo Dallaire explained we live in an era of globalization and technological development where we have the ability to communicate around the world, with the whole of humanity, in the space of hours; where global issues like the environment have stark consequences for all of humanity. We live in “an era of massive rapid revolutionary change that is hitting us at constant pressure”. Our times, he says, “call for consciousness of the future, for pro-activeness and long-term planning.” From Rwanda, to Oka, Darfur to Iraq, Senator Dallaire illustrated the multiple frictions that exist around the world today. Humanity, he explained, is now recognizing it is in conflict with the Earth and in conflict with itself. He urged us to see that we live in a complex era where there are no simple or easy answers.