Building a Better World- 20th Anniversary Edition

Book excerpt: Building A Better World is a classic resource manual for anyone who wants to work for change in our world. Dave Andrews urges us to act on our growing sense of distress about the way the world is and to take simple, radical-yet-practical steps to explore the possibility of building a new world out of the ruins of the old - creating safe sustainable spaces, where everyone is accepted as person in their own right, where people are respected for both their similarities and their differences, where there is sense of responsibility for welfare of each person, where every person has the right to participate in the decisions that impact on their lives, and where communities are committed to doing justice to the most marginalised and disadvantaged in society. As you would expect from a landmark do-it-yourself handbook written by a practitioner for practitioners, Building A Better World is filled from cover to cover with personal stories, professional tips, inspiring quotes, empowering anecdotes and lots of practice wisdom about what works and what doesn’t work in overcoming apathy, mobilising activity, subverting bureaucracies, and utilizing first order and second order strategies in the struggle to bring about a truly “PEACE”ful world - characterised by “P”articipatory politics and “E”quitable economics with “A”ppropriate technologies in “C”onscientized communities, exercising “E”nvironmental responsibilities.