By Kendall Worth
This post was suggested by several people from my community of blog readers. Recently a lot of my blog readers remembered this post from last year and suggested that, close to Christmas, this year, I should do an update. When I asked Why do you feel that I should update the blog post Jangling around with ideas? I got a variety of responses.
Different readers gave me different answers, however, principally, they said, because it provides an opportunity for me to revisit old ideas and promote new ones. Everyone I have been in touch with believes that, Christmas is an ideal time to be writing about this topic. The holidays is the time of year we need to be thinking about clearing the air, and as I talked about in a previous post examining what the Christmas wish list really is, this year.
This link (as above) includes wishes that would benefit society at Christmas, however, these should be wishes for all year around. I say this especially considering that the housing crisis, for example, is not going to disappear with the end of the holiday season; though the concept of brand new, safe, affordable, housing becoming available in the new year would make a nice Christmas for the homeless population in Halifax! Jing-Jangling around with ideas could mean bringing the homeless and welfare recipients together to celebrate Christmas. We do have to think about how many of the homeless population will be affected this year, with many of them, unlikely to spend time with family, for Christmas.
Christmas is the time of year we should be thinking about creating a better and more inclusive Society! The ideas of generosity and kindness, we should be putting into practice at Christmas time, are ideas and practices we should be following all year. These days when the homeless population is getting bigger and bigger, society has got to be inclusive of all income levels. Christmas is the time of year for forgiveness which means there is no better time than Christmas to be thinking about these things.
One example of jing-Jangling around with ideas that became concrete during 2023, is that a project to mitigate social isolation, that I wrote about extensively, got implemented. When you think about this, last year when I was writing on the topic Social Prescriptions, I never thought it would someday be a project like the current Mitigating Social Isolation Project. Also known as All Together Link.
There are lots of examples of jing-Jangling around with ideas in those links.
By the way readers do not Forget!
This is an example of jing-Jangling around with ideas in itself.
We must not forget that the Jing-Jangling around with ideas is not limited to solutions to social isolation. We also have to think about:
If affordable housing, especially for those currently homeless, never gets created, the housing crisis will never end.
We must never give up the fight for Basic Guaranteed Income and for something better to live on, than our ESIA current system.. Here is a News Release that came out recently giving hope to 60% of Income Assistance recipients in Nova Scotia. I plan to keep my eye on this and may further report on this on my blog at a later date. In the meantime, lets keep our fingers crossed.
Do not forget I also report, on the Federal Government working on the Disability Benefit. We must keep fighting for that.
And I believe another lesson readers of my BLOG have learned in 2023, is able-ism and the importance of supporting Disability Inclusion. The Carrie Ann Bugden Story taught us a lot of lessons around the need to support both.
And if we were to piece together everything in the above bullet points as a puzzle, we could create a better society and get rid of the stigma and discrimination.
For more on Lessons learned in 2023 see https://worthmatters.blogspot.com/2023/11/to-clear-things-up-regarding-my-blog.html There is a lot in this link related to. how over the years, Jing-Jangling around with ideas has lead to me having my current BLOG and win some awards.
So for anyone advocating, organizing and making demands, lets keep doing what we are doing!
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Kendall Worth is an award-winning anti-poverty activist who lives with disabilities and tries to make ends meet on income assistance. He speaks up to help those facing similar obstacles, including homelessness, in the province of Nova Scotia and beyond.
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