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Find your interests!

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The Integral Process For Working On Complex Issues ^tm

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This page aims to surface the connections between your interests and how ARINA may support them. We use it to link our mission and resources to interests expressed as familiar situations, challenges, and visions. We point to meta-interests, and interests at the scales of individuals, public and government, and organizational and institutional, including philanthropic and international development. Our unique approaches - both existing and developing - fill gaps that often sabotage good efforts.

We also point to ARINA research and other projects below to suggest some of our creative integral approaches to social change and development and the complex issues involved in them. We welcome consulting and partnering opportunities to extend the reach of creative, practical holism that we tailor to accomplish needed change. Contact us about your interests.

Meta-interests. "Meta" indicates that there are common challenges, issues, and patterns that can (and do) show up in any settings or domains of activity. They are common realities or potentials in most human situations. Some of them show up only when certain conditions exist or arise. Those conditions can be understood and often predicted ahead of time. Part of ARINA's educational mission is to increase awareness of "meta issues" and conditions that give rise to them. more...

Individuals' interests. We devote a page to interests that individuals may have in their various personal and work contexts here.

Public and government interests. We devote a separate page to interests that seem to be unique to the public domain of citizens, public issues, civic culture, government, and representative relations here.

Organizational and institutional interests.  Whether public or private, non-profit or for profit, formal or informal, organizations and people responsible in their management will find a page targeting common interests here.

Philanthropic institutions and international development bodies. While such institutions share some interests and concerns with other kinds of organizations and agencies, ARINA targets specific interests related to the unique role of philanthropy and development in our world here.

"Meta" Interests You May Have

Our programs help to equip people to foresee and address meta patterns in diverse settings. Examples of these follow, with related programs. Our ARINA Room is another place to inquire about situations and learn their "meta" elements from other Associates and Board members. It is space to co-develop and disseminate social knowledge about how to investigate and address specific real-world challenges.

Listed below are examples of some areas with meta patterns that we recommend attention to. You may find helpful our discussion of meta-patterns useful to notice in your personal, organizational, and public lives. Perhaps you will consider the roles they play in your interests. Understanding why such patterns show up and providing methods that work with them - as compared to against them (or ignoring them) - are among the qualities that characterize ARINA conversations, projects, consultations, program and curriculum design, and educational opportunities. 

• Decision-making

• "Voices"

• "Undiscussables"

• Visioning

• SWOT Analyses (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats = SWOT)

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 Integral Research & Projects

We have a long list of projects that will be important to our mission. For example, one of the projects on our "future" list will be developing an integral revision of how SWOT analyses processes are conceived and performed, to lay foundations for fully integral planning and analysis. In a similar way, we have our eyes on seamlessly filling the gaps in what happens after visioning efforts. We are currently seeking funding for three projects.

• An "Integral Graduate Community Leadership Program" that includes our systemic issues curriculum and other development-fostering methods, for people who have graduated from traditional community leadership programs.

• A "New Paradigm for Talk Radio" pilot project, that will train and mentor several talk radio hosts in using part of our Integral Decision-Making ^tm process in their call-in shows.

• An international, three-community comparative research project, using participatory action and quasi-experimental research methods, to address complex issues and test hypotheses about how ARINA's public process, FreshAir: (a) affects how people think about and are motivated to work on such issues; (b) how the local political culture changes in the process; and (c) how the issues themselves are affected.

This important Find Your Interests page will be updated on a regular basis to "expand the picture" of how ARINA may support your interests. We will be adding to it progressively; so come back periodically and see what's here. In the meantime, please know your specific questions and suggestions will help us include material relevant to your interests when you tell us about them. Please write to us about them! t no