Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Partnership – Revitalizing Communities Within and Across Boundaries

The Fetzer Institute is in partnership with the Wilson Center to create a series of three multi-faceted seminars on the revitalization of our communities:

Pathways to Peace: Defining Community in the Age of Globalization
January 10–13, 2010

The Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program (ECSP) is hosting and co-designing a second international seminar with the Fetzer Institute for early 2010.

This seminar will be used to gather the best experience and thinking on current environmental practice, to help advance the issue of water as a resource, and to use environmental work around water as a case study for the lessons and challenges of global community engagement. In convening leading practitioners and thinkers in the field of environmental peace-building and focusing on the ever-present issue of water, we are trying as well to surface the lessons of human resources and how they impact the emerging global community. The 22 participants live and work all over the globe, including in Ethiopia, Israel, Germany, Philippines, Ecuador, Brazil, Switzerland, Kenya, Kathmandu, Mexico City, Canada, and the United States.

Public Seminar: January 13, 2010, 3:00 - 5:00 p.m. - Pathways to Peace: Stories of Environment, Health, and Conflict

Gidon Bromberg, Co-Director, Friends of the Earth Middle East
Joan Regina L. Castro, Executive Vice President, PATH Foundation, Philippines Inc.
Shewaye Deribe, Project Coordinator, Ethio Wetlands and Natural Resources Association
Juan Dumas, Special Adviser, Fundación Futuro Latinoamericano
Aaron Wolf, Professor, Department of Geosciences, Oregon State University

Cross-Cultural Study of Community Resilience
December 7–9, 2008

Twenty-three scholars and practitioners from 11 countries gathered in 2008 representing South America, North America, Africa, Indo-Southern Asia, and Russia. Their experience, insight, and participation have been compelling and exceptional. A publication from this first international seminar is being edited and should be published in 2009.

The questions raised and discussed included

• How do different cultures around the world describe and define resilience?
• In what situations is resilience transformative and in what situations is resilience “a bouncing back” to an untenable life?
• What are successful examples of community resilience and how can such examples shift global consciousness away from fear and violence?
• What key elements must be present for community betterment to take place?
• How do local communities promote urban inclusion and reconciliation?
• What policies will stimulate self-organizing communities to help people become their best?
• What is the role of the individual in community transformation and the role of community in individual transformation? How do they inform each other?
• How can governance structures and policies aimed at promoting democratic civic culture create a common sense of belonging and foster community resilience in an increasingly globalized world?

• Sally Hare*—Professor Emerita at Coastal Carolina University and President of still learning, inc.
• Gidon Bromberg—Friends of the Earth Middle East
• John Barnett—Australian Research Council Fellow, School of Social and Environmental Enquiry, University of Melbourne
• Skip Burkle—Professor and Senior Fellow, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and the Harvard School of Public Health
• Joan Castro – PATH Foundation Philippines, Inc.
• Ken Conca—Associate Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland
• Leona D’Agnes—PATH Philippines, Inc., Consultant
• Juan Dumas—Executive Director of Fundación Futuro Latinoamericano
• Roberto Guimerăes—Professor, School of Public and Business Administration, Getulio Vargas Foundation; Chief of the Social Analysis and Policy Section of the UN Social Perspectives on Development Branch
• Margaret Keck*—Department of Political Science, Johns Hopkins University
• Kuntai Karmushu—Coordinator of the Health and Conservation Programs, Il Ngwesi Group Ranch
• John Paul Lederach*—Professor of International Peacebuilding, the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at University of Notre Dame
• Hanmin Liu*—President and CEO, Wildflowers Institute, San Francisco
• Jennifer Mohamad-Katerere—Environmental law and policy consultant
• Yolanda Kakabadse Navarro—Former Environmental Minister for Colombia; President, the World Conservation Union
• Peggy Shepard—Executive Director & Co-Founder, West Harlem Environmental Action, Inc.
• Richard Stren*—Professor in the Department of Political Science and Centre for Urban and Community Studies, University of Toronto
• Isabel Studer*—Director of the Centro de Diálogo y Análisis sobre América del Norte
• Bishnu Upreti—Regional Coordinator of the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research, Kathmandu
• Stacy VanDeveer—Department of Political Science, University of New Hampshire
• Erika Weinthal—Professor at the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, Duke University
• Aaron T. Wolf—Project Director of the Department of Geosciences at Oregon State University

Essay Series

Deepening the American Dream
Is the American Dream a vision or an illusion? Does social change depend on personal change? What values should the U.S. demonstrate in today’s world? Deepening the American Dream, an essay series on the inner dimensions of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, explores these questions and offers ways to think beyond geographic boundaries toward a common dream for our world.

Exploring a Global Dream
In an effort to surface the psychological and spiritual roots at the heart of the critical issues that face the world today, we are extending this inquiry by creating a parallel series focused on exploring a global dream. But what might a global dream look like, and where might we start? We have been concerned about questions such as “What constitutes the American dream now?” “In what ways does the American dream relate to the global dream?” “In what ways might each inform the other?” and “How might we imagine the essential qualities of the common man and woman—the global citizen—who seeks to live with the authenticity and grace demanded by our times?”

The Institute has convened a number of public forums to examine the questions raised in the essays, and distributes copies for use by individuals and in college classrooms, workplaces, and study circles. Contributing authors include Elaine Pagels, Parker Palmer, Huston Smith, Betty Sue Flowers, and Howard Zinn. To date, we have given close to a 100,000 pamphlets to a wide range of leaders in various fields around the country, including members of Congress.

Recently Published

February 2009—“Maturing the American Dream: Archetypal American Narratives Meet the 21st Century,” by Carol Pearson.

This essay was written out of concern about the great challenges facing the U. S. and the world today. Its purpose is to identify the strengths that can help us tap into what is best about us, and guard against our weaknesses, so we can use our power as wisely as possible and in ways that promote the common global good.

May 2009—“The Power of Partnership,” by Ocean Robbins.

This essay includes stories of youth leaders from around the world. Here is an excerpt from this powerful writing:

We all inherit a legacy that includes the love and the pain, the prayers and the prejudices of countless generations before us. We grow out of soil that has been at one time or another soaked in blood and tilled by slave labor, as well as tended by loving hands. The work to build on the blessings and gifts of our ancestral history, while challenging and transforming the bigotry, fear, and disconnection that we also inherit, is at once collective and deeply personal. In these painful and beautiful times, there may be nothing more important than the journey from isolation to connection. For as we find the power of our diverse communities, and as we come to know ourselves more deeply in relationship to our unique gifts and needs, we not only become more whole. We also take steps towards giving our essential gifts in this world. We begin to learn how we can unleash all that we have, and all that we are, on behalf of all that we love.

Recent Essay Events

On October 1, 2008, The Cambridge Forum in Boston featured Vincent Harding, who spoke from his essay “Is America Possible? A Letter to My Young Companions on the Journey of Hope.”

On February 11, 2009, Faith & Politics hosted a public forum at the Library of Congress that featured two of our authors, Betty Sue Flowers, speaking from her essay “The American Dream and the Economic Myth,” and Rev. Doug Tanner, speaking from his essay “The Truth Can Set Us Free: Toward a Politics of Grace and Healing.”

Bill Moyers Journal joined us to create a special online feature, asking the program’s guests and viewers about their vision for the future of the American Dream – and how we can achieve those visions. Read the dreams from Journal guests and contribute to the Deepening the American Dream blog.