The Maholian Way - Part Two: The Maholian Way in the lives of two

Next to Frank are Declan, Emily and their 12-month-old baby Isabella. Declan taught in schools for several years, and now he and Emily have a business in which they visit school to help students with website and video projects. Emily is also a freelance journalist and documentary film-maker. Next to them is Noella, who was the Tree Frog Café’s business mentor and is now a very good friend of Tracey, and her partner Liz. And finally, there is Tracey’s campaign manager and best friend since her early Social Vision days, Jo, and her husband Will.

The conversation ranges far and wide. Peggy talks about the renovations to the neighbourhood centre where she plays bridge. This leads on to a discussion about the many groups and activities accommodated by this centre, or started by it and now based elsewhere, plus the number of activities and groups spawned by the local Social Vision group. Will has returned to university and is doing a Masters thesis on people’s involvement in such groups in three suburbs of Fensham. It’s more a qualitative study than a large survey, and so his sample isn’t big, but it’s suggesting that people are now involved in two to three times as many community groups as they were twenty years ago. He has also discovered that there’s a high correlation between working locally, shopping locally and being very involved in local community groups.  George is strongly of the opinion, based on his own experience, that if you commute for two hours each day and you’re physically and mentally drained by your job, then you have little time and energy for your own family, let alone the community. Thus, for him, working locally was a critical step in allowing him to get to know – and enjoy – his local community.

This mention of George’s previous work leads Liz to ask him if he knows what happened to his old employer, Gold Crown Carpets, because it was looking pretty shaky when he left. He reports that, after a number of years during which it was on the verge of either closing down or shifting production overseas, it eventually turned itself around. Its management heard about what an American carpet manufacturer, Interface Carpets, was doing, and decided to follow its example. Interface had transformed itself into a floor covering service, renting carpet tiles to customers and replacing only those that had worn out – not the whole carpet as with broadloom. This meant an eighty percent reduction in the amount of carpet replaced and very little disruption to homes and businesses in the process. What’s more, the new tiles were made entirely with material recycled from the old ones, which meant there was no waste to go to landfill, and there were many other changes that saved money and made the process more sustainable.

When Gold Crown Carpets decided to adopt these same processes – a decision partly driven by rising fuel prices and landfill charges – it was able to turn the savings generated into cheaper prices for customers and better pay and conditions for staff. George was very pleased to hear about these changes at Gold Crown, but he is not sorry he left, because this allowed him to help businesses in his own locality and regain a family and community life.

This leads George and Noella to share work stories about supporting local enterprises, and to note how interesting, self-reliant and prosperous the local economy has become. There’s a thriving agricultural sector, and the processing of agricultural products into foods and some high-end textiles and clothing. There’s manufacturing and construction, specifically adapted to the needs of an emerging green economy. There are independent financial and retail sectors, as well as the normal range of business, educational, health, governmental and other services. Most people work locally and most of the products and services they buy are local. Not that the area’s economy couldn’t improve. Enterprises still fail, the quality of goods and services sometimes leaves room for improvement, and there could be more competition in some sectors. It’s an evolving process, but the trend is clearly in a positive direction.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

• Page 39