Dear Friends of the Wallenberg Institute,
The Gender Crosstalk Initiative uses InterMix, which is also the technology for this Wallenberg listserve. Back in 2005 a precursor of InterMix gave very exciting results when The Wallenberg used it for a collective dialogue between Jews and Muslims called Finding our Common Humanity.
The current version of InterMix is free open source at github written with Ruby on Rails, and is fashioned to give collective expression to six Voices of Humanity: Women, Men, Youth, Middle-age (billed as "Voice of Experience"), Seniors ("Voice of Wisdom"), and Humanity as One.
Using InterMix, the Gender Crosstalk Initiative will create a welcome sense of human unity to underpin a Global Citizens Movement. Sure it is a long-shot, but considering that humanity is careening out of control towards ecological disaster and civilizational breakdown, I do think we should give it a try as a promising idea. Here is my latest overview, Crowdsourcing the Genders or How Gender Equality can Save the Planet.
One very promising development in the last few years is that more and more people are coming to the conclusion that we need a Global Citizens Movement if we are to rescue ourselves. It is not at all out of the question that we can pull things together. On the one hand population and technology are overshooting the natural boundaries of Mother Earth. On the other, because of higher standards of living and better communication, we are seeing a growing sense of empathy and compassion. It is like a race between these two trends.
Please consider participating in the Gender Crosstalk. For our first round of the Crosstalk we will choose two messages to send to Dr Mlambo-Ngcuka, Exec Dir of UN Women. One message will be from the participating women and one from the men. So far there are 20 "candidate" messages and we are aiming to have 100 by the new moon on February 18. Click the following link and then follow the simple instructions at the top of the page: http://ugc.wallenberg.intermix.org/dialogs/7/forum.
The UNA San Francisco Chapter is applying for a UN Democracy Fund (UNDEF) grant to have a three day Human Unity conference in San Francisco for the International Day of Peace, 2016. The Gender Crosstalk will be used to build interest and participation in the conference. Here is what we have so far of the grant application, which is due Dec 31: http://voicesofhumanity.org/una-sf-application-for-undef-grant-for-gender-crosstalk-human-unity.
Would the Wallenberg be interested to partner on the grant application? It would mean promising to participate in the Crosstalk as we go forward lunar month by lunar month leading up to IDP 2016.
Thanks so much,
Roger Eaton
rogerweaton@gmail.com
415 933 0153
