Good Intentions Are Not Good Enough

Book geared to young adults and adults on why Social Thinking/social skills are important in the workplace, community, and in relationships.

Disaster strikes, transforming cities and towns into graveyards and wastelands in a matter of minutes. But help is on its way: news channels and social media relay the information to all corners of the globe in real-time, mobilising hundreds of people and organisations to aid. Yet, with standard relief packages regardless of the location, and a lack of effort taken to match volunteers' skills with tasks, just how effective are we at helping others?Many people want to do good, but they like to do it at their convenience. These attempts at helping often fail, and the blame invariably falls on the disaster victims, rather than looking at the suitability of aid provided. Such help, offered without a thorough understanding of the context or the impact of actions, can create situations that leave the victims worse off than before.So how can we create real sustainable impact?Most communities have a lot of unused human capacity. When offering help, many aid providers fail to engage the local communities, thus excluding a critical group of people with the knowledge of local ways and needs.This book elaborates on a simple principle essential to effective aid — Never Help: Engage, Enable, Empower and Connect.It is important that we fully understand the problem before we try to solve it, and who better to help us with solutions than the local community?

A manual designed to raise the awareness of all concerned citizens about how to develop schools with diverse populations. There are stories about practitioners and schools across the USA, Canada and the South Pacific, along with theories and practical ideas for both teachers and administrators.

We often struggle to answer the question: What is the right thing to do here? Good Intentions suggests that it is possible to do good in economic matters if we begin with the right assumptions (and begins to ask the right questions): —Is greed ever good? —How can we give poor kids a million bucks? —How did Ben and Jerry get so rich? —Is capitalism ruining the environment? —Do immigrants take American jobs? Our actions can produce outcomes that reflect what we value.

"Absorbing, compelling, and beautifully written. Its ending brought me close to tears." —Beth O'Leary, bestselling author of The Flatshare For fans of The Big Sick and Nick Hornby—a magnetic debut novel about a young man who has hidden a romance from his parents, unable to choose between familial obligation and the future he truly wants. If love really is a choice, how do you decide where your loyalties lie? It’s the countdown to the New Year, and Nur is steeling himself to tell his parents that he’s seeing someone. A young British Pakistani man, Nur has spent years omitting details about his personal life to maintain his image as the golden child. And it’s come at a cost. Once, Nur was a restless college student, struggling to fit in. At a party, he meets Yasmina, a beautiful and self-possessed aspiring journalist. They start a conversation—first awkward, then absorbing. And as their relationship develops, so too does Nur’s self-destruction. He falls deeper into traps of his own making, attempting to please both Yasmina and his family until he must finally reveal the truth: Yasmina is Black, and he loves her. Deftly transporting readers between that first night and the years beyond, Kasim Ali's Good Intentions exposes with unblinking authenticity the complexities of immigrant families and racial prejudice. It is a crackling, wryly clever depiction of standing on the precipice of adulthood, piecing together who it is you’re meant to be.

What are the keys to success in life? Simply trying hard and having great goals are not enough, says veteran corporate trainer Steve White. "Our best intentions can become our worst enemy when we are blind to why they are not working." White learned this the hard way. As a teen he vowed he'd avoid his parents' mistakes and become the best husband and father. But he failed to see that his efforts to control people and circumstances only condemned him to cycles of anger, misunderstandings, judgment and life failure. Surrounded by the pieces of his broken dreams, he opened himself to learn how God wanted to work through even these things for good. In this collection of personal stories and reflections, White shows how--if we believe and remember how deeply we are loved by God and what He wants for our lives--deep personal change to the good is truly experienced. Our new life in Him can then touch the people around us.

A collection of stories set in the Pacific Northwest. The story, In Spain, One Thousand and Three, describes the sexual reawakening of a mourning widower, while in Settled on the Cranberry Coast, a man meets a girl he once pined for, now a grandmother.