Imagine…carrots in concert

And some interviews in German:

Source: Ode Magazine Article

News from Stiftung Welt:Klasse

Hi imaginers,

as promised at our conference in February I’d like to give you some news about me and Stiftung Welt:Klasse project which I presented. It’s not a annoying obligation to do this: I’m happy to tell you, that the idea of Stiftung Welt:Klasse has become reality within the last year and we have really great feedback from the high school students which participated so far at our program in China and Thailand!! I’m happy that we’ve got sponsors, media reports and first awards…. but the most important is that the first students which went abroad came back with a lot of enthusiasm and positive energy!! It’s this feedback which motivates me enormously to go on with the project…

And also Imagine 2007 has it’s concrete impact on Stiftung Welt:Klasse: Ursel did a great job during summer to get started a partnership with a school in Bielefeld!! Thu Phong did amazing work preparing the 12 high school students for China! And finally Eva did the same for the students starting to Thailand

For detailed information you can have a look on www.stiftung-weltklasse.de (for the moment just in German)…  Or just contact me That’s it for the moment…

I wish you all merry christmas and an great and inspiring year 2008!!!

Best,
Matti

Resolving the Past – Creating the Future

In October, I have been invited by Young SIETAR to host a World Café at their global meeting. This year’s meeting took place in the youth hostel Ravensbrück situated in the former women’s concentration camp near Berlin.

Inspired by the Peace Café at the European World Café Gathering in Dresden, Allison and me designed a World Café “Resolving the Past – Creating the Future” to debrief the group visit to the former concentration camp site.

The questions that we used were linked to the theme of the conference “Redefining Interculturalism: Past Approaches, Current Needs, Future Directions”:

1. Past – remembering: What purpose does remembering serve?
2. Present – responsibility: What responsibility do I have to address the inequality of my society? And how do I take action?
3. Future – forgiveness: How does forgiveness allow me to move forward?

In the harvest we asked “What is the big question that you avoided asking in this conversation?

Participants captured those questions on post-it notes:
• What can I personally do to address and really act against inequalities in my surroundings?
• Why is there forgiveness with conditions?
• What exactly changes as soon as you forgive (in behaviour, emotions, etc.)?
• What is the power and danger of memorials?
• Are there things you can forgive yourself?
• What did you have to forgive?
• How “majorities” talk about “minorities”, if they are really minority in the world? How to forget or forgive this?
• How to reformulate forgiveness?
• Where am I victim and where am I a victimizer?
• Can we talk about something else, please?
• How do you forgive without God?
• Forgive me for asking, but…?
• With all of this (questions, trainings, etc.) are we (individually) really willing to change (learn, evolve, grow, shift paradigm) or are we trying to feel good and convince ourselves we are good people doing something good?
• When will we be brave enough to face/say what we need to?
• Is there a difference between forgiving people and forgiving “situations”?
• The questions were not answered in such a short time – where are the boundaries of my capacity to forgive?
• Is everything forgivable?
• Is it ever collective? Or always individual?
• How do you forgive?
• How are owning and learning connected in order to move forward?
• How will all the knowledge of this meeting lead me in the future?
• Collective just running from responsibility?
• Why do we pretend to communicate knowing that it is not possible because, thank God, we are different?
• How can we make sure that this event has lasting effects and benefits?
• Why “42” again?
• Do victims who don’t forgive become perpetrators one day?
• Why are we stuck in the same paradigm?
• Will forgiveness and remembering really help?
• Can Palestinians learn from Holocaust remembrance culture?
• understand – accept – feel => forgive?
• Where do we get the love from to embrace our stories, the present, and to forgive?
• Can I influence the process of forgiving cognitively?
• Have I done anything for which I am not yet forgiven?

Personally, this visit to a former concentration camp has been the most moving and touching visit for me. I have visited sites like that before, but when the guide asked the question “How is this history connected to your family” and told stories of how the local people of Ravensbrück where relating their family stories to the site, I realized that I had not asked the question to my grandparents – especially not to my grandfather who was fighting cancer in the last stage, aged 85. I had to leave the presentation room – crying. I have been told war stories by my grandfather but never dared to question things that were told me. What made him a victim (entering the army aged 17, his father being killed by the Russians, his mother committing suicide afterwards, him being a refugee in his own country – moving to Hamburg after the war)? And what made him a victimiser? Was he a bystander not taking responsibility for what was happening in the country?
I was crying that day because dialogue was impossible and my questions were never formulated while he was still alive - which is extremely frustrating for a dialogue facilitator. Exactly, a week later my grandfather died…

Conversations for Change

Through the online Presencing classroom, I have “met” Deborah Goldblatt who is the initiator and director of the Youth Dialogue Project. I have just watched the 16min video about this inspiring project and would like to share it with you:

A child imagines…

“Dead long enough”..I’m strong enough. Music with a conscience

Dear people that dare to I M A G I N E

It’s great to hear the kind of words we believe in being rolled out in rhythm and song….

Deeply connected to the Imagine Community are the Pioneers of Change.. Tim Merry is a pioneer who has made some exciting music…

You get to hear it early! these songs at this link are all available for download.. (the album will come out later on this year).

Download the songs here:

I love “dead long enough…”.. it really strikes a chord..

ENJOY !!!

hugs from London,

Sofia

Bringing The World Home: From Study Abroad to Social Action

A very suitable topic for AIESEC

Young people today are studying and volunteering abroad in record numbers and learning firsthand about the opportunities and challenges of an interconnected world. These young people return home from their experiences abroad with a keen understanding of other cultures and an awareness of how to find common ground across differences. But when they return to their home community, they often find themselves plagued by the questions: What am I going to do with this understanding? How can I turn my experience into positive change?

The need for young Americans and Europeans who have traveled abroad to “bring the world home” could not be more urgent. Global challenges from terrorism to climate change dominate the U.S. and European political discourse and these challenges require global solutions. Yet, most Americans have little chance to connect with the world out there.

Moreover, the local television news, which is where six in ten Americans get most of their news about international affairs, does not offer Americans a vision of a world in which the United States can play a productive role. Rather, it presents a vision of “global mayhem,” in which the world’s problems appear intractable despite the best efforts of the U.S. This leads Americans to sometimes be skeptical of supporting international institutions despite recognizing the importance of cooperative solutions to global problems.

But if Americans can step beyond the “global mayhem” mindset and see the world differently, as an interconnected globe, research documented by the U.S. in the World guide indicates that they become more supportive of a cooperative U.S. engagement with the world. Young people who have been abroad and have a vocabulary of interconnectedness would seem an ideal group to “bring the world home” and showcase the positive opportunities for the U.S. to contribute to the world.

The question is how to effectively channel the insights and energy of young people with international experiences into awareness-raising and social change events here at home.

This Thursday, World Learning’s School for International Training, Americans for Informed Democracy, and LaGuardia Community College will be hosting a special conference on transforming international experience into social change. We hope you’ll participate in this online discussion which is taking place in concert with the conference.

• How has walking across differences made you more open to addressing the world’s problems?

• Why is international experience such a motivating factor in working towards global change?

Contribute to the discussion at: http://www.socialedge.org/discussions/philanthropy/bringing-the-world-home

From the Clash to Confluence of Civilizations

Spiral Dynamics at the UN Security Council:

“Getting rid of what we don’t want is not the same as getting what we do want.”

New Ideas for Africa

Sofia participated in this event…

Hello folks,

I know you haven’t heard from us in a while and I have gotten numerous individual messages wondering what’s happening with the group.

Well, we are still ALIVE AND KICKING!!!!!

May New Ideas for Africa Output

Since that event and following the positive feedback we got from attendees, we have been trying to put modalities in place so we can continue to run the events sustainably but also so we can create a proper framework for us to be more than a talk-shop, but an active practical player in Africa’s development.

To this end, we now have an extended team of 7 people all working on the project now. The extended team met to work out our strategy for moving forward on Tuesday 3rd of July and will keep you updated as we progress.

We have also gotten a number of invites to partner with existing organisations working on development of the continent.

All in all, things are looking good and we will be sending details for the next New Ideas for Africa session in London as well as plans for a picnic in August.

We have also gotten requests from different people who want to run similar sessions in their own cities outside London. We are trying to put together a format on how this will operate and will send through once we have it. If you would also like to host the conversations in your city, let us know.

Take care and keen to see more activity on the group.

Cheers,

Femi & Lesley
For Africa++ Core Team

AIESEC Alumni who IMAGINEd: Henrique Vedana

A SPECIAL TRIP
A creative project involving Danish and Brazilian students

Amalie Villesen, Fridda Flensted-Jensen, Nana Dall and Henrique Vedana are young students planting seeds in the rural communities of Porto Seguro, in the state of Bahia, Brazil, hoping that an alternative way of managing tourism emerges in those lands, considering revenue generation for the poor, preservation and valorization of the local culture, and conservation of the great cultural, natural and historical heritage that those localities have.

The concept is called Community-Based Tourism, where the communities are the ones responsible for receiving visitors and managing attractions and activities, by themselves or in partnership with the private sector with equitable community participation, as a means of using natural resources in a sustainable manner to improve their standard of living in an economic and viable way. The tourists become active participants in the process, and the community’s way of living is the main attraction.

The chosen region in the Northeast coast of Brazil, is the location where the Europeans first arrived in South America, exactly 507 years ago. Besides the unique historical importance, this region is known as the Discovery Coast, an area of great environmental relevance, recognized by UNESCO as a HotSpot and World Natural Heritage, given the highest level of biodiversity of fauna and flora found here, including a number of species only found in this region.

As a first step, the group is spending the month of May in Porto Seguro to identify the potential of the rural area of Vale Verde and Coqueiro Alto, to receive tourists and offer cultural and natural activities, and to start the community organization to take over this initiative.

Immersion inside the community life, experiences in similar projects, and community meetings were already executed in the first two weeks of the project, which will be concluded with audio-visual material about the life and history of Vale Verde, and the creation of a local network of supporters of the initiative, including public and private sectors.

The KaosPilots is an international school of Entrepreneurship and Social Innovation located in Åarhus, Denmark’s second largest city. This project is the conclusion of the first year of studies, of a total of three years, and the young students are expected to practice their ability of designing and running a project, articulate partnerships and finding innovative solutions for different problems in society.

This initiative is being executed in cooperation with IBAMA (Brazilian National Agency of National Parks and Environment), Municipality of Porto Seguro, and has technical support from Projeto Bagagem, organization with experience creating a network of community-based tourism destinations in Brazil. This has all made possible thanks to the financial support from Harris Pye (UK), Høeg Hagen & Co A/S and Scandivision (Denmark).

Contact for further information and interviews:

Henrique Vedana (henrique@kaospilot.dk)
(+55 73) 8818-6008 (in Brazil, until June 4th 2007)
(+45) 2653-4487 (in Denmark, from June 6th 2007)

Links:
Project “The Park Pilots”
The KaosPilots
Projeto Bagagem
Municipality of Porto Seguro’s Tourism Board