Those who can find a place, and those who can make a place, will survive. And if they are displaced by a change in environment, the ones who can find and create a new location for themselves will survive.
Reflection
Not that I have forgotten about blogging, but it is become a lower priority. It is been a long-standing desire to stretch my day out to “at least” 54 hours or so.
The opening words are a topic that came up the other day at a meeting of my volunteer organization. I think the conclusion to be drawn from this is: “What we need to provide in our communities is not a place for everyone, but a mechanism and structure that makes it easier to create a place.”
When I began my activities, the organization was in a period of turmoil. Five years had passed since it was established, and we were unable to carry out our routine activities on a stable basis. I was a student at the time, so I committed myself to the organization and worked with the warm people around me to build a foundation for its activities.
The reason why a young person like me joined the core team was because we happened to be in an environment where no one raised their hand, and we were able to do whatever we wanted to do, which I think was a significant factor.
Bottom-up Approach to Management
In the three years or so since I joined, I have spent the maximum amount of time I have been allowed to spend on myself to force my way through some difficulties. Among other things, I have tried to make sure that I spend as much time as possible, interacting with as many members as possible to bring together the various voices from the field to drive the organization. I put this “bottom-up approach to management” into practice intuitively, without knowing any particular management know-how, and I think it has paid off. Perhaps the principle that the essential starting point for guiding organisms is to observe them with our own eyes has led me to realize this fact naturally.
Nevertheless, in retrospect, it is almost as if we have used our youth to “screw it up” (even though we were still young) and if we were to start over, we had confront it with a smarter and more sophisticated approach. Because the heavy-handed approach we once pushed through has only recently brought the distortions to the surface.
There were other core members of the organization, but my commitment time was the only thing that stood out as extraordinary. This has led to some positive results, but I am guilty of accelerating the process of “genus of know-how.” In other words, there were a lot of things that I could not handle except for me. However, most of us have at least one stage of life. As I said, I am no longer able to find the time to devote to groups. To be more precise, I am only choosing to reduce my commitment to the activities of the organization itself after thinking through “what is most effective for the development of the organization.”
And to the advisor
So, last year, I was forced again to ask two members to join as my sole replacement. Since I had initially taken on the responsibility of taking over three or so of the members, we were finally able to aim for a “proper” division of duties at this point. I decided to provide thorough “logistical support” as a black person. Of course, I cannot change the system in an instant, so I am still taking the time to find a sustainable strategy.
The reality here is that the minimum level of activity and the minimum level of management is now so well established that the organization can barely continue without someone else’s help. In many cases, once a community has been established for more than ten years and is mature, there is no need to create a new position on its own, as a comfortable place for newcomers to enter is already in place. If left unchecked, however, activities will quickly become stale and, as society changes, it will become more difficult to retain people in the long term, and thus to sustain the organization.
I have not found a clear breakthrough to overcome this situation. But I daringly chose to entrust it to a new member. It would be irresponsible on its own, so I am planning to enter a more down-to-earth field as a logistical support person, with a minimum of monitoring.
Even if public aquariums were to ask for citizen participation in the form of volunteerism, there is little or no community management know-how accumulated in this area. In the first place, it is important for each volunteer to ask themselves why the aquarium needs volunteers, how to recruit them, and how to collaborate with them, before the aquarium presents them with the question: “Why do we volunteers do what we do, how do we work, what do we want to achieve?” When we are able to articulate this philosophy for ourselves, we will inevitably find the “place” we need to belong.
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