What if your whole life had been built around the bit of fate of your birth?  Oops looks like some Tools got broken.

I believe that if you grow up in a plentiful home environment surrounded by beauty and love and music and laughter these things will colour your life until you leave this earth. No matter how bad things might get, if you can hang onto hope you can somehow survive.

I’ve been visiting websites full of pictures of glorious waves of flowers.

There is something to be said for a lovely environment of fresh fields of tulips and lovely biospheres full of colourful exotic plants.
That does not describe my own environment

This does:

An article inspired by Sandy Ackers
is interesting and challenged me to examine the neighbourhood in which I live. I looked for colour and these were so subtle as to be almost not there. It is less than a week since the last patch of dirty snow melted awake. There are no flowers anywhere. Even the crocuses did not appear this year. I used to look forward to tulips at this time of year but these all disappeared a few years back. I guess they must all have been eaten by those cute little squirrels. In any case, thank you for inspiring me to write. I even managed a dismal poem which I shall post on my page.

Peaceful rural life
You must be happy
She remarked
Over the telephone
After months
Free of conversation
No bits of words
No sentences
No tones of language
The only postures
The posturing
Of actors in sitcoms
You watch because
Otherwise
You might cry

Neighbourhood sounds
The odd distant car
The plaintive train whistle
And in the sky
Plumes of fighter jets
Play hide and seek
In artificial couds
They create
In dull wet skies
And here below
Scent of gravel and pave
Glass shard textured path
Colour all shades of grey

Babies all gone
Kids grown into silence
Of compliance
Dog police watching
Waiting, tagging.
You must be very happy
Living a peaceful life
In such a quiet
Environment
Outside the city.

S-it happens as some Uncouthy Grannies might say …
Say your Gramma had been an Irish tool to be used and abused by whatever systems her country allowed? How would you go back three generations to discover the truth?

M & E

And tell me … Again … Does this work?
Take a look. Here is the Canadian system

And … How does it work? Please elaborate …
It uses a mixed method design looking at quantity and quality.

Any more tools we should know about?
Social Accountability