Why Gifts Matter

In this episode, Bruce Anderson from the Core Gift Institute talks with Nicky Wilks, co-founder with Alex Craighead, of the Journeyman Institute. Journeymen has a variety of programs that help young people to discover and claim their natural identity, as well as engage older people in opportunities to learn mentoring and how to create the conditions for young people to thrive.

A hungry learner, Nicky is constantly scouting the landscape for ideas and practices that focus on helping young people. He is a student of ancient indigenous ritual and modern theories of education and neuroscience, and focuses on creating innovative strategies that honor and combine both the old and the new.

In his other vocation as public school teacher, Nicky is acutely aware that schools are mostly about, as he says, filling the cup and creating conformity rather than bringing out the natural identity and gifts in students. He laments this focus on success rather than getting at the core of students identities so they can become who they are meant to be. Journeymen Institute offers what Nicky hopes is a healing alternative to this traditional school system design by helping to re-define what it means to be a “successful” young person in the world today.

Find out more about the Core Gift Institute by visiting our website, www.coregift.org

Thanks to Jeff Hoyt at Hoyt’s Greater Community Radio for vocal additions.

This episode was produced by Laura Byng, with music by Benson.

This episode features special guest host Nick Maisey in conversation with Dr Trish Quinlivan, an experienced general practitioner who blends psychological medicine with spiritual wellbeing.

After many years working in a busy GP setting, Trish’s insomnia and anxiety reached a peak in 2011, prompting her to listen more deeply to her mind and body and forge a new path. She has specialized in psychological medicine, integrating mindfulness, meditation and connection to spirit to help people heal from psychological stress.

Trish helps people tap into their intuitive power to find learning in experiences of trauma and adversity, affirm the gifts of their existence and practice more conscious, connected ways of being. In a world that can feel increasingly chaotic and disconnected, there is no time like the present to find ways of being in the here and now that yield the greatest insights about our gifts.

Check out Trish’s website for more information: https://livingmindfully.com.au/about-dr-trish-quinlivan

Find out more about the Core Gift Institute by visiting our website, www.coregift.org

Thanks to Jeff Hoyt at Hoyt’s Greater Community Radio for vocal additions.

This episode was produced by Laura Byng, with music by Benson.

In this episode, Bruce Anderson from the Core Gift Institute talks with Mary Mojica and Jessica Alvarez from Project Return Peer Support Network in Los Angeles, California.

Project Return is the largest organized mental health peer support network in the Los Angeles area, providing a wide variety of recovery, learning and social groups with names like Path Finders, Financial Strategies for Success, Beautiful Minds, Women Coming Together, and Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff. Several thousand people use their supports each month.

As you will hear, core gift-finding is a common practice in their organization, and both Mary and Jessica are clear about the practical benefits and connections between recovery, knowing your gifts, and finding your place in the world as you progress on your healing path.

Find out more about Project Return: www.prpsn.org

Find out more about the Core Gift Institute by visiting our website, www.coregift.org

Thanks to Jeff Hoyt at Hoyt’s Greater Community Radio for vocal additions.

This episode was produced by Laura Byng, with music by Benson.

In this episode, Bruce Anderson from the Core Gift Institute talks with John McKnight and Peter Block, authors of The Abundant Community.

Peter and John started from different roots in their pursuit of community-building. Peter began his work as one of the pioneers in organizational development, helping organizations create clarity around vision and move forward together. John began his work with a civil-rights focus, working with the ACLU and affirmative action programs. Both of them are elders and anchors in their respective fields, have written extensively, and mentored countless others through their generous commitment to continuous learning and shared knowledge. Fuller biographies are available at the Abundant Community website, peterblock.com, and the Asset-Based Community Development Institute.

More recently, their interests and language are merging around a fundamental question they both share: “How can communities of all kinds see and use the gifts of all community members to create abundance and possibility within.” They joined forces in recent years to author Abundant Community and frequently speak and work together.

Find out more about the Core Gift Institute by visiting our website, www.coregift.org

Thanks to Jeff Hoyt at Hoyt’s Greater Community Radio for vocal additions.

This episode was produced by Laura Byng, with music by Benson.

In this episode, Bruce Anderson from the Core Gift Institute talks with Debbie Everley, the Executive Director of the Kenora Association for Community Living in western Ontario, Canada which provides supports to people with disabilities and, more recently, young First Nations people trying to find their place in the community.

A thought leader amongst her peers, she is working alongside her employees and others in her community to understand more about the “how to” of identifying and bringing gifts of all people into their community.

In this interview, she is particularly interested in the kinds of gifts—she calls them core gifts— that arise out of life struggles. Her interest is to help community members use those kinds of gifts as a way to help heal what she calls the “heartbrokenness” of her community resulting from the devastating effect of the long, long history of colonization and victimization of First Nations peoples in the region.

She speaks forthrightly of her own growth and fears as she learns about her gifts, and how much confidence it takes to approach her community with the message that everyone’s gifts must be known and contributed if her community is to rightly claim itself as a genuine community.

Find out more about the Core Gift Institute by visiting our website, www.coregift.org

Thanks to Jeff Hoyt at Hoyt’s Greater Community Radio for vocal additions.

This episode was produced by Laura Byng, with music by Benson.

In this episode, Bruce Anderson from the Core Gift Institute talks with Jeff Mills, a community organizer in his hometown of Mississippi Mills, Ontario outside of Ottawa, Canada.

Jeff comes from a family legacy that believes strongly in the power of families and communities to work together to get things done. He works out of Mills Community Support, an organization that provides help to folks in his region, particularly people who are aging and people with disabilities. In community organizing terms, he’s a Gap worker…..constantly being in the messy and possibility-filled middle between neighborhoods, people who have asked for help, and the formal helping and government organizations in his community. He is relentless in following the primary principle of Asset-Based Community Development, which says to look first to the abundant relationships and capacity of local people before going elsewhere for help.

In this interview, Jeff tells stories of community change rooted in the gifts of neighbors, the importance of recognizing our blindness to the tremendous untapped abundance all around us, and the healing that’s possible when organizers recognize they, too, are hungry for feeling welcome and finding places to belong.

Find out more about the Core Gift Institute by visiting our website, www.coregift.org

Thanks to Jeff Hoyt at Hoyt’s Greater Community Radio for vocal additions.

This episode was produced by Laura Byng, with music by Benson.

In this episode, Bruce Anderson from the Core Gift Institute talks with Mariel Amador. On a fast track to leadership with a technology company in the Fortune 500, Mariel discovered the idea of gifts while on a guided reflective walk with other young people and made an abrupt U-turn out of that industry. Instead, she made a courageous commitment to find work that was more closely aligned with her gifts. We are talking to her today as she is finishing a year of teaching English in Spain, and on her way to Wales to be a mentor with Trek Epic, and outdoor adventure company helping young people find purpose in their lives.

Find out more about the Core Gift Institute by visiting our website, www.coregift.org

Thanks to Jeff Hoyt at Hoyt’s Greater Community Radio for vocal additions.

This episode was produced by Laura Byng, with music by Benson.

In this first episode of Why Gifts Matter, Bruce Anderson from the Core Gift Institute talks with Rozanne Miller, a licensed clinical social worker in private practice in San Diego. After being in what she describes as “really dark places” in her childhood, she came of age in the sixties and

was heavily involved in the free speech, anti-war, and civil rights

movements. Years later, she has a balcony view on how those

early experiences shaped her path and helped to both discover

and commit to giving her gifts.

With a primary gift of compassion, she now works with veterans,

she says, as a way to make amends for her anger at soldiers

when she was younger. Helping them to discover their core gifts

upon their return to civilian life is one way she can help them

rebuild their identify and find places to belong and heal.

In this wide-ranging interview, Rozanne weaves her story of

learning to show herself compassion, recognizing how gifts create

the opportunity to belong, and making meaning out of the

dramatic twists and turns in a life fully lived.

Find out more about the Core Gift Institute by visiting our website, www.coregift.org

Thanks to Jeff Hoyt at Hoyt’s Greater Community Radio for vocal additions.

This episode was produced by Laura Byng, with music by Benson.