If you are ready to explore and implement a unique approach to engage historically excluded rural voices in community development efforts, this toolkit is required reading. Through the valuable tools, best practices, processes, resources, and stories contained here, you will advance your efforts to mobilize community members and agency partners to address deeply rooted inequities in rural communities.This toolkit is for any nonprofit, funder, government agency, community organizer, or volunteer who wants to catalyze rural communities to action by tapping into and honoring the history, wisdom, knowledge, experience, and ideas of local leaders.We invite you to learn from, and adapt, this toolkit to fit within your own context. Our ultimate hope for you is that, with this toolkit in hand, you are able to uncover, empower, and ignite the rich history and legacy of rural community organizing that has taken place all over the world.

When you change your life, your life changes! Two caterpillars were crawling along a tree branch one day when a butterfly flew overhead. One caterpillar said to the other, "You will never get me up in one of those things." Shift Happens! is about personal alchemy and inner transformation. Some people "go" through life; and other people "grow" through life. Shift Happens! ­celebrates your unlimited potential to grow, blossom, and evolve-in spite of everything. It is a book of hope. The term personal alchemy describes the ability to take a piece of dirt, roll it around a few times, and fashion it into a pearl. This is what an oyster does. Personal alchemy is what your grandmother called turning lemons into lemonade. It is what old wizards described as turning straw into gold. Shift Happens! is about staying open all hours for miracles. Success, love, and happiness are only ever one thought away at most. One new perception, one fresh thought, one act of surrender, one change of heart, one leap of faith, can change your life forever. Discover: - How to choose happiness and allow yourself to relax - The route to forgiveness and releasing yourself from past traumas - Harness stress to take you to new heights of success - How to develop trust and let go of your fear Kickstart change in your life today!

"This seminal book introduces revivalistics, a new trans-disciplinary field of enquiry surrounding language reclamation, revitalization and reinvigoration. The book is divided into two main parts that represent Zuckermann's fascinating and multifaceted journey into language revival, from the 'Promised Land' (Israel) to the 'Lucky Country' (Australia) and beyond. Part 1: language revival and cross-fertilization. The aim of this part is to suggest that due to the ubiquitous multiple causation, the reclamation of a no-longer spoken language is unlikely without cross-fertilization from the revivalists' mother tongue(s). Thus, one should expect revival efforts to result in a language with a hybridic genetic and typological character. The book highlights salient morphological, phonological, phonetic, syntactic, semantic and lexical features, illustrating the difficulty in determining a single source for the grammar of 'Israeli', the language resulting from the Hebrew revival. The European impact in these features is apparent inter alia in structure, semantics or productivity. Multiple causation is manifested in the Congruence Principle, according to which the more contributing languages a feature exists in, the more likely it is to persist in the emerging language. Consequently, the reality of linguistic genesis is far more complex than a simple family tree system allows. 'Revived' languages are unlikely to have a single parent. Part 2: language revival and wellbeing. The book then applies practical lessons (rather than clichés) from the critical analysis of the Hebrew reclamation to other revival movements globally, and goes on to describe the why and how of language revival. The how includes practical, nitty-gritty methods for reclaiming 'sleeping beauties' such as the Barngarla Aboriginal language of Eyre Peninsula, South Australia, e.g. using what Zuckermann calls talknology (talk technology). The why includes ethical, aesthetic, and utilitarian reasons such as improving wellbeing and mental health"--

My name is Dima and I'm a Dragon. I'm also going to die soon. It's a battle I've waged most of my life, but now the odds are looking crappy. Before I go up flames, I have to find a way to save my hoard and make sure my secret treasure is safe. There is one way I could stick around a bit longer, but the men I've met aren't exactly lining up to save me. What in hell does a Dragon Princess have to do to find a mate? Offing my father, the reviled Dragon King, would be one way to go. He has a penchant for eliminating any male who shows interest-not to mention he's been trying to kill me for almost 500 years. So my brilliant plan is to take out my father in a blaze of glory-pun intended. However, I have to suck it up and do some stuff I don't want to do. For example, getting along with Dragons who don't trust me is a horrific challenge even though we share the same goal. That's why I aligned myself with the rag tag pack of shifters who accepted me and my secret treasure unconditionally. They're my friends now and I'm keeping them. I'll fry anyone who dares to speak against my Werewolves, Werecows and the fabulous gay Vampyre named Dwayne. Unfortunately the Weres who love me don't have the kind of fire power I need to take out my father. To get that I have allied myself with a dangerous Dragon weyr known as The Resistance. Staying away from the sexy, pompous, fire-breathing, blow hard of a leader is turning out to be a full time job. And no... he's not even in the running for the mate. Mutual incineration would be inevitable. You see... Dragons aren't the easiest of the Were species to get along with. You can dress us up and take us out, but at the end of the day we're still the idiots who like a little friendly blood shed and sex-make that lots of sex. My life keeps getting more and more complicated, but I've run out of options. I'm about to run out of time too. I'm learning there's no where to run and no where to hide from destiny.

This collection of papers fills a gap in current research on both metapragmatics and pragmatics in that it combines data-based pragmatic analysis with metapragmatic theory and focuses on the ways in which metadiscourse is actually used. The 12 contributions investigate speech acts and verbal (as well as non-verbal) expressions which highlight (meta-)linguistic aspects of ongoing discourse and thus provoke a deviation from the latter s original direction and purpose. All case studies discuss ways and means which interactants employ to resolve diverging pragmatic expectations in communication. The papers analyze authentic examples from English and other languages (and cultures), including Thai, Chinese and Japanese, and center around three principal domains of communication: ordinary everyday interaction, interaction in educational contexts and in specialized discourse. The introductory chapter locates the various contributions within a systematically broader theoretical framework. The wide scope of the collection, its empirical orientation and the reader-friendly form of presentation should appeal to anyone interested in pragmatics, whether scholar or student.

If You Cannot See A Strong Future For Your Children, Who Will? The number one weakness for every child is a mother's worry. Every single thought you have about your children has the potential to strengthen or weaken them! Mothers are taught and encouraged to worry about their children as a badge of honor, instead of honoring their intuition to create a better future for every child. Many people who shift out of limiting beliefs and expectations break into peals of laughter as they recognize how they have participated in what just might be a giant cosmic joke... The truth is funny! Often, stranger than fiction! A word of caution... If you prefer the status quo and you are not interested in improving every aspect of your life... This book will trigger the shift out of you!

Nautilus Book Award Winner: An “engagingly written” behavioral science-based guide to tackling our urgent environmental problems (Robert B. Cialdini, author of Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion). To create a sustainable future and achieve positive, durable change, we must design solutions based directly on how people think, make decisions, and act. From hotels that save water (and money) using simple signage to energy suppliers that boost participation in renewable energy programs through mere enrollment-form tweaks, it’s clear that shifting the behavior of millions for the better is possible. Based on decades of research into what drives behavior change, Making Shift Happen provides a suite of powerful tools to transform the world. It features A-to-Z guidance on how to design a behavior change initiative—from choosing the right audience and uncovering what drives their behavior to designing, prototyping, testing, and implementation. Clear instructions and real-world examples empower you to apply hundreds of behavioral science solutions including: Using social norms to spread positive environmental behaviors Selecting and testing stories, metaphors, and values to frame information for each audience Catalyzing action by aligning your initiative with your audience’s personal and social motivators Breaking bad habits and building positive ones Capturing your audience’s attention and reducing barriers to action Connecting people with nature and building empathy for the environment and its inhabitants Making Shift Happen is a must-have guide for practitioners in non-profits, governments, and businesses looking to design successful campaigns and initiatives that shift behaviors and mindsets toward positive environmental outcomes and a better future for all. “Completely fascinating—we’ve learned a lot about the ways minds work in the last decades and that may help us figure out how to appeal to our better angels more effectively than in the past. Rest assured that people who want to sell us junk are paying attention to these insights—the rest of us better do so too!” —Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature