Breakthrough Communities Announces 20th Anniversary Edition

Random Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty

with a foreword by

Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Dearest friends and colleagues,

We are thrilled and honored to collaborate with Archbishop Desmond Tutu on the 20th Anniversary edition of Random Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty, dedicated to community resilience and climate justice in the face of global warming. Nobel Laureate and social justice visionary Archbishop Tutu has provided a foreword to our book that connects the message of interdependence in Random Kindness to the South African concept of ubuntu. Ubuntu is the conviction that interconnectedness is the very root of who we are.

As part of our collaboration, we are participating in Desmond and Mpho Tutu's Global Forgiveness Challenge. We invite you all to join us in this remarkable, transformative adventure!

Desmond Tutu's wisdom and leadership in the Truth and Reconciliation process in post-Apartheid South Africa have been a deep inspiration to our work. His profound insight that forgiveness and ubuntu are key to resilience in the face of adversity is a foundation for Breakthrough Communities' current work on community resilience in response to global climate change. We are indebted to Desmond's brilliance and moved by his life of service, and we are honored to be featuring his foreword to our forthcoming book, Random Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty.

With Great-Fullness,

M. Paloma Pavel,

co-author,

Random Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty

Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Reverend Mpho Tutu

Global Forgiveness Challenge

This month, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and his amazing daughter, Reverend Mpho Tutu, are launching a Global Forgiveness Challenge:

"The Forgiveness Challenge will help you discover how the act of forgiving can bring more love and peace to your life. When enough of us forgive - we can change the world! Sign up, and you'll receive a daily inspirational email from the Archbishop and Mpho Tutu, with a link to join their online forgiveness community."

Much is said about external strategies when we talk about our activism. Yet, our inner work is vital to keeping us aligned within ourselves and with one another on the arc towards justice and sustainability. This transformative power is demonstrated by Desmond Tutu's Truth and Reconciliation work in South Africa, where a bloodbath was averted by cultivating forgiveness over cycles of retribution and violence. We believe this work of forgiveness is a vital strategy and creates true community resilience in our increasingly interconnected world.

"The steps we take now make new earth grow beneath our feet. The steps we take now decide what kind of Earth that will be. It's a circle. Start the dance! "

(Anne Herbert and M. Paloma Pavel, Random Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty)

Tutu Global Forgiveness Challenge

Click the book above to learn more!

Forgiveness & Resilience

Connecting regional and global activism

"The quality of ubuntu gives people resilience, enabling them to survive and emerge still human despite all efforts to dehumanize them."

(Desmond Tutu, God Has A Dream)

Our Breakthrough Communities team have been reading Desmond's books to strengthen our grounding for the next level of Community Resilience and Climate Justice work, and it has been a spiritual transformation for us as individuals, and as an organization.

Receiving Desmond and Mpho's wisdom through their books and the Global Forgiveness Challenge has been illuminating and amazing. We want to invite all of you to move with us in this work, as we join Desmond and Mpho Tutu in building global solidarity.

Desmond's writings on ubuntu and forgiveness are also reflected in Carl Anthony's forthcoming book, The Earth, The City, and the Hidden Narrative of Race; and in Breakthrough Communities Team's Climate Justice: Frontline Stories from Groundbreaking Coalitions in California. We see this wisdom embedded in our own back yard, in our ongoing regional equity and community resilience work with the 6 Wins For Social Equity Coalition and the Resilient Communities Initiative (RCI) in the San Francisco Bay Area, as well as reaching across the globe to Fukushima climate survivors in Japan.

Click the book above to learn more!

Paloma Pavel honors her co-author Anne Herbert and artist Mayumi Oda as we launch this groundbreaking work, publication date September 9, 2014. We welcome the opportunity to bring the community resilience workshop and book-signing to your region. Contact us to get involved!

"The gift hidden in the challenge of

ubuntu is that we don't need to walk the corridors of power to build peace. Each of us can create a more peaceful world from wherever in the world we each stand (Desmond Tutu, No Future Without Forgiveness)"

Over the next few months, Breakthrough Communities will continue to share our inspiration and practical Community Resilience tools with you in this newsletter. Stay tuned!

Forthcoming Publications:

Random Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty

(New Village Press 2014)

Dedicated to climate refugees and building resilient communities.

Climate Justice: Frontline Stories from Groundbreaking Coalitions in California.

The Earth The City and The Hidden Narrative of Race, Discovering New Foundations For The Great Work Of Our Time (Carl Anthony)

Breakthrough Communities Project

Earth House Center

5275 Miles Ave.

Oakland, CA 94618

tel: 510.652.2425 / fax: 510.595.7295
breakthroughcommunities@gmail.com

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