
43NEW ACROPOLIS |
BEST PRACTICE REPRESENTATIVE 2019
perseverance, willpower and
creativity. Volunteering helps to
develop these key faculties and forms
part of our philosophical training,
and we encourage our students
to become active and involved in
communityprojects.
Our own volunteering projects
include helping with the planting and
maintenance of the public garden
in front of our school. For the last
nine years we have been helping
to organise a garden volunteering
day every month, which also brings
together neighbours and other
Londoners. This has created a much
stronger community within our
neighbourhood and a good co-
operation with Islington Council.
We also transformed a derelict space at
the back of our premises into a garden
and created a bee sanctuary, as bee
populations are under serious threat
in the UK and elsewhere. Currently
we have two beehives, which are
managed in a bee-centred way, with
the idea of providing a home for bees
rather than obtaining honey. Every
year we open our bee sanctuary to the
public under the auspices of “Open
Garden Squares Weekend”, attracting
hundreds of visitors who are attended
to by our volunteers and receive talks
about thebees.
For several years, we supported a
local homeless project run by the
Union Chapel Margins charity, and
this year we have started to put our
gardening skills to use with another
local charity which works with isolated
elderly people in Islington. Our school
of philosophy itself offers many
volunteering opportunities as it is run
entirely by volunteers.
Philosophy is the foundation
of the future
How can we measure the success of
our work? We think the success of our
work is visible in the changes within
the people who attend our classes. We
further believe that our kind of holistic
and practical philosophical education
awakens a clearer sense of purpose
and a greater sense of responsibility,
initiative, respect, courtesy, generosity
and tolerance of differences. It can
produce a profound transformation
within the individual, which in turn can
lead to new ideas and transformation
in society.
All our activities were achieved with
an annual budget of around £30,000
and no salaried roles. Our work
demonstrates that a shared vision, an
attitude of co-operation and good
will can achieve as much as, or more
than, material resources. Our belief
is that we need to cultivate human
potential and non-material resources
in our society so that we can resolve
the problems we are currently facing
and prepare a better society for the
nextgeneration.
“ Without commonly shared and
widely entrenched moral values
and obligations, neither the law,
nor democratic government,
nor even the market economy
will function properly.”
– Václav Havel
We
understand
culture as the
‘soil’ in which
individuals can
find all the
nutrients they
need to
flourish
“
“
Volunteering day at
Compton Terrace
Gardens, Islington