Introduction
Voices of Humanity is an online forum which aims to build a massive sense of human unity at all geographic levels from the local to the global. Both gender equality and respect for diversity are built in to the VoH process, so if the process takes off, as it may well do, it will be a great boost to the women’s and social justice movements as well as peace, disarmament and all the many global efforts that depend on a heartfelt sense of human unity for success.
VoH participants provide their gender (female, male or simply human), generation (young, middle-aged, seniors or simply human) and location. Messages posted in the forum can be rated and the results of the ratings are easily accessible. These results are broken out into the six “voices of humanity”: Voice of Women, Voice of Men, Voice of Youth, Voice of Experience, Voice of Wisdom and Voice of Humanity as One. Moreover, location can be changed from city to metro to state to nation to planet Earth. At each geographic level, the six voices of humanity are immediately available.
But why should we spend our time doing that instead of working on the issues? Well of course we need to work on the issues. But it is clear that as long as there is so much distrust between the nations and the religions, we are unlikely to achieve much and are in danger of the collapse of civilization under the pressure of climate change, environmental degradation, war, and population increase. So if we can create a widespread sense of human unity, we will be in a much better position to cooperate on our pressing problems, local, national and global.
The Difficulty - Civil Society is Broken into Silos
There is growing understanding at the higher levels of civil society that the world needs much stronger integration across the issue silos. As things are, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) each focus on one or a small cluster of related issues without much regard for wider coordination. And that is not even considering the chasms that exist between the NGO world generally and government and business. Not that there is no communication, but that the level of coordination is far from adequate to the challenges that face humanity.
A few recent quotes about integrating across the silos in the work of the United Nations give an idea how the phrase is used.
- The discussions called instead for using the cross-cutting nature of the women, peace and security agenda in New York and in the field to integrate the organization’s work and achieving synergies across the silos of the UN system. link
- Mr. HARRIS said that if everyone was doing the same thing, there would be no need for policy integration. What distinguished the United Nations was that it gathered under one roof specialists from around the world. Its expertise was derived from a certain degree of specialization. Losing that would mean losing its ability to advise and support Member States. "We have to learn how to communicate across the silos — but not destroy the silos per se," he said. link
- ... a “new sustainable infrastructure paradigm”: Environmentally sound and resilient... Integrated: Connects across the silos now isolating different systems to deliver better, more efficient services. ... Affordable ... Rich in co-benefits ... Beneficial to the local economy… link
“Collective impact” is a related notion. A Stanford Social Innovation Review article by that name in 2011 has been influential. The article heading gives the big picture: “Large-scale social change requires broad cross-sector coordination, yet the social sector remains focused on the isolated intervention of individual organizations.” The article helpfully lists five conditions for collective success: 1) common agenda, 2) shared measurement systems, 3) mutually reinforcing activities, 4) continuous communication, 5) backbone support organizations.
Voices of Humanity is designed to be the vehicle of choice to provide continuous communication at every geographic level and across all silos.
Community Tags
Community tags are a critical new VoH feature to be implemented in July, 2016. Message and community tags enable participants to categorize both the items they post and themselves. Thus #UNA will distinguish forum items of interest to the United Nations Association, and #UNA will also distinguish the community of UNA affiliated participants. These tags will enable the participants to find the highly rated items across the silos as well as across the genders, generations and by location from local to global. All this is in the context of human unity, because whatever specialties people are interested in, they will also be interested to see the latest highly rated items overall, i.e., the Voice of Humanity-as-One at the global level.
Here are a few of the communities that we expect will find expression in the flexible Voices of Humanity framework: #UNA, #ClimateChange, #GenderEquality, #DisadvantagedMinorities, #HumanRights, #IndigenousPeoples, #InterfaithCooperation, #NuclearDisarmament, #Peace, #Refugees, #UNGoals, #Veterans, #NonviolentAction. Importantly, silos within silos can be broken out while maintaining the larger integrative community. So for instance, each of the women’s issues that fall under the #GenderEquality umbrella can have its own tags: #ViolenceAgainstWomen, #EconomicJusticeForWomen, #Women’sEducation, #ReproductiveRights and so forth.
An AcrossTheSilos Community will be encouraged to act as pollinators, bringing important and relevant items from one silo to the notice of members of another silo. While issue communities are narrowly focused at the leadership level, the members of those communities often have diverse interests and realize the importance of coordination across the silos. These cross-pollinators will act to recruit new members of the AcrossTheSilos community, expanding the larger Voices of Humanity membership.
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#voh #un_goals
