Monday, April 23, 2012

The Capability Approach

Donna Thomson, author of The Four Walls of My Freedom, speaks about how she adapted Nobel prize-winning economist Amartya Sen's Capability Approach to explore how people can create a life they value in any situation of adversity, including severe disability. Donna was part of our BLOOM speaker series and she wowed our audience. Thanks Donna! Louise

3 comments:

I've got a copy of her book and am so looking forward to reading it -- thanks for posting this!

Note also, taking Sen's ideas and work a bit further out into community, is John McKnights asset-based community development. John has done wonderfully inspiring work in communities linking people to and through their passions. The assumption being that those historically marginalized (i.e., often those with disabilities) have passions and capabilities that are often unrecognized, but WHEN recognized and WHEN then connected to others in the community . . . the assets build and grow. I'll see if I can find a typical J McKnight story of transformation (and with John its always a story and always about transformation and people!) to share. Wonderful to see Donna!!!

Wow okay another book to add to my list. Sounds like I should have attend this speaker series are there more dates planned?