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Tom Rowley has been involved with A Rocha USA from its beginnings in 2000 − first as a board member, now as executive director. Prior to coming on staff with A Rocha, Tom had a varied career including stints as a columnist and freelance writer, fellow with the Rural Policy Research Institute, project manager for the TVA Rural Studies Program at the University of Kentucky, editor at Forum for Applied Research and Public Policy, and acting deputy director and social science analyst with the Economic Research Service at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Tom, Maria and their sons Jake and Michael currently live in central Oregon where they revel in learning about and playing in the forests, mountains, rivers and deserts of the region.

15th January 2015 | Tom Rowley | 1 comments

Hopey New Year

The “reality” of the situation is grim. But, like a figure-ground image, what we first see isn’t all there is. Viewed with human eyes, the challenges facing the planet look insurmountable. The eyes of faith, however, see a different picture; they see more.

Categories: Reflections
16th October 2012 | Tom Rowley | 5 comments

Hopeful action

At a recent conference in the USA, author and Professor Kathleen Dean Moore invited the audience to “give up hope” for the environment. At one end of the hope extreme, she said, is “hopelessness”: nothing we do will matter; at the other end is “uninformed hope”: everything will turn out all right. I agree that neither hopelessness nor uninformed hope is of any value. I stop short, however, of discarding hope.

Categories: Reflections
Tags: action hope