Borderlands: An Oasis of Progressive Ideas

This was written for a friend of mine who runs Borderlands NGO. He is creating a progressive holistic postgraduate university. A very insightful and progressive thinker. He was very courageous to step outside traditional academia. Often the visionaries are not known until they are no longer here. He was a friend to me and he was one of the only one’s to help me raise money for the Middle East by allowing me to speak at Borderlands. I was hoping to go and teach both Jewish and Muslim kids REAL HOPE, show the adults what peace looks like, anyway the project fell through. The poem below is a tribute to him. First an overview of Borderlands and Jacques Boulet.

http://www.borderlands.org.au/BLpages/aboutus.htm

Borderlands Cooperative is a non-profit organisation involved in community, social and international development, ecological sustainability and social justice. Amongst other things, we provide consultancy to service providers, government and community organisations in the form of program, service and organisational evaluation, social impact research and needs analysis.

Building in sustainability measures and assessment has been a central feature of our social impact research and evaluation of projects and programs. Our work is research-based and favours participatory approaches to research and evaluation. We have an extensive library of current journals, government policy and research literature as well as membership in the Association of Researchers in Voluntary and Community Work (ARVAC – UK), Volunteering Victoria, and Action Research Issues Association, ALARPM, and our consultants have individual membership in several other professional associations and other networks.

This is a short bio about Jacques Boulet.

Dr Jacques Boulet: early inspiration by living with Romani and Kenyan communities shaped lifelong university teaching of social work, social research and community development in Belgium, Germany, USA and Australia. Former Ass Pro RMIT Social Work. PhD dissertation about structure/agency theoretical underpinning for community development. Ongoing networks with Latino, European, Indian Sub Continent and Chinese university research centres. Facilitating social work curriculum development in Hong Kong and India. Vision for a suburban university to continue the mission of transformative education eclipsed by Australia’s neo-liberal cultural revolution.

A poem dedicated to those working towards a better future.

BEYOND BORDERLANDS

Scholarly thought alone reaches the border,
But never crosses the threshold,
For community education is inclusive,
Academia is an exclusive club,
For only those with letters,
Were traditionally mail,
And mostly males,
Have opened doors,
That revolve.

The Oasis in our reason,
Celebrates the new season,
An island without urban settlement,
For community development,
Is not a mirage,
It is the emerging horizon,
Dawning of a golden age,
For the colours of culture,
Are a technicolour dreamcoat,
And the new dreaming floats,
For new ideas imagine the future,
As the next revolution,
Is an evolution toward enlightenment,
As human kind,
Becomes the kind human,
Being the dream.

There are few visionaries,
There are few intellectuals,
For many have learned their lines,
Evoking a role play,
But a few read between the lines,
Can see what is unthinkable,
For they work in the dark,
Yet their light can be seen from outside.

Know your candle gives a ray of hope,
Your dedication is the sunshine,
Shining through a led light window,
No matter the illumination,
The message can be seen in brilliant colours of the impressionist,
For when you can work in the dark alone,
You bring creative possibilities to light.

Know you are a luminary,
A graduate alumni of progressive ideas,
Reaching beyond borders of thoughtlessness.

Know you are on the downhill run,
For you have notched up light markers on the runway of real directions,
And the descent will be a soft landing.

The new aesthetic can see differently,
In the spirit of matters,
Of matters of sustainability and deep ecology,
Providing society with a new context,
An operating paradigm,
With no terms of reference,
Expanding a social order,
That has no order or manufactured consent,
For the chaos and creativity,
Are fields of freedom,
Designing new ways around future shocks,
For reductionist thinking is reducing our ability to think,
For now is the time where one cannot pull a rabbit out of the hat,
And the Jack in the box,
Becomes Jill on the hill,
For she is emerging from her shell,
To take an equal part in venture capitol,
To make visible the invisible hand,
Which divides and conquers,
For equality nurtures the democratic state of wellbeing,
For necessity is the joker,
The wild card,
That speaks truth to power,
For power is the truth,
And this is the natural selection,
Is the new pre-selection,
For only compassion, empathy and vision,
Is the trinity,
Which accords universal rights,
Without discrimination.