We are proud to share information about Cultural Workers and Organizational Resources from around the Global Village. They serve as a great example not only of the great traditions and cultural genius of the world's Ancestors, but of the amazing healing skills and talents and organizational strengths available to our communities.
♦ Langston Kahn - Occupy Your Heart
New York, New York USA
"Langston Kahn is a New York City based shamanic practitioner specializing in emotional clearing and radical transformation. He stands firmly at the crossroads, his practice informed by the western modality of Inner Relationship Focusing, initiations into traditions of the African Diaspora, the contemporary shamanic tradition of The Last Mask Center and the guidance of his helping spirits and ancestors weaving it all together.
Langston has studied and facilitated Inner Relationship Focusing, developed by Ann Weiser Cornell for the last 8 years. He has completed 5 years of training with Christina Pratt in the Cycle of Transformation and also serves on the leadership council for the Last Mask Community, a community of contemporary people striving to live in alignment with ancient shamanic beliefs and principles in a way that answers the unique challenges of our time.
He joyfully endeavors to bring spirituality out of the dark dusty recesses of esotericism and into our daily existence, where it can aid us in re-aligning with the ecstatic energy of our soul’s purpose and opening our hearts to create real lasting change. He firmly believes that no emotional wounds or trauma is beyond healing and is devoted to guiding adventurous souls in transmuting what has been poison in their lives into medicine for themselves and the world."
♦ New Orleans Healing Center
New Orleans, Louisiana USA
"The New Orleans Healing Center is a community center like no other. That’s because its purpose and operating principles are based on United Nations guidelines for sustainability. Consequently, it is uniquely structured to be able to simultaneously help, heal, and empower individuals and surrounding neighborhoods at the economic, social, environmental, physical/mental, and spiritual levels.
It does this by providing a base for small businesses and organizations to cater to the community, on the corner of St Claude and St Roch, bringing together the Riverside and Lakeside communities along the St Claude corridor. The New Orleans Healing Center is not just a base for other organizations: it really is about healing. That’s why all of the businesses that are part of the healing center must agree to and sign onto a Credo that mandates a strong element of social responsibility and entrepreneurship....
In effect, the healing center becomes a hub of diverse individuals and groups, who are all focused on the positive well-being of the community, so that anyone coming through the door can find a healing approach that works on all those five levels: a credit union, a grocery cooperative, street university, physical therapy center, yoga studio, healing arts collective, interfaith center, and others. But more importantly, these and other carefully selected community-focused programs, services, and activities are designed to help revitalize and restore neighborhoods and bring them together under our five pillars of sustainability."
https://www.neworleanshealingcenter.org/
♦ Quanita Roberson
Cincinnati, Ohio USA
"She specializes in trauma healing, leadership development, equity education, and African American Spirit Coaching. She is a results oriented individual with experience in convening community conversations, healing internal and external conflict, and blending ancient wisdom with contemporary practices. She presented at the NAACP National Convention 2016 on Community/Police Relations. She also served as the keynote speaker for the National Diversity Conference 2016 in Brazil. Quanita has designed and facilitated coaching training program for non-for-profit organizations and has provided one on one coaching and group coaching in 6 different countries over the past 15 years." - from our WAC/moja Team page
♦ Odlum (House of Grass) Cultural Skills Institute
Yala, Kenya
"Odlum Cultural Skills Institute – the “House of Grass”, a centre of learning, growth, and change for so-called street children from across Africa.
Odlum (“House of Grass”) is a global village in a rural part of western Kenya. In response to the groaning of an ailing world we are looking to create a place of peace, healing, sharing, and connection in Yala. We want to take the village to the world and bring the world to our village. It is also the intention to show that meaningful contributions to change do not only have to happen in the major cities of the world. It is only through a single sense of humanity that we will be able to make dent in those things that face us as the human family.
What is Odlum?
The Vision - Respect, love, true health, spirituality, partnership and kinship.
To:
- Bring diverse people together in the spirit of connection.
- Bridge the local and global.
- Create a healing space.
- Break down borders.
- Provide a platform for street children to learn and grow.
- To work with the local community so that they buy into and own this project and its benefits.
- Make Odlum a home for people of the world that believe in the idea of a human family.
- Working with the local community so that they also understand the vision and come to see that they have a role to play in it.
- When we unsettle the walls that separate we will begin to see that there is far more that unites us than divides.
The Odlum Village
In the native societies people look , physical and spiritual, their connection to their kin and community, things not materially measured, as being the key factors to the wealth of a person. Odlum is located in Yala between Kisumu, Kenya in the West, and Kampala, Uganda in the East.
Our belief is that every person has something to offer in this world. Now we are making a call to those willing hearts and hands to join us by bringing their creative abilities. We welcome any opportunity to engage, partner, and share in the hope of growing a human conversation where we are all teachers and students.
“It takes a GLOBAL village to raise a child…”
In order to raise a child, one needs to nurture a village. Living in the “global village”, we need to look beyond space and place to find solutions to shared challenges. Odlum hopes to partner with the global village to realise its aims. Together, in partnership, anything is possible." [content edited from Facebook profile]
https://www.facebook.com/odlum.odlum?fref=ts (Facebook)
♦ Lea Akosua Jones
[information coming soon...please check back soon!]
♦ Duane De Four
Boston, Massachusetts USA
"Duane de Four is an educator, media critic and activist with more than twenty years of experience facilitating violence prevention, masculinity and sexual health focused discussions.
As a speaker and educator, Duane has led such discussions with middle school, high school and incarcerated youth, and with adults in colleges and universities across the United States, as well as the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB and NASCAR, all branches of the U.S. Military, and rape prevention programs in Nairobi, Kenya. He has also provided expert witness testimony in legislative hearings and domestic violence related cases. In 2011, Duane was one of only six Subject Matter Experts selected to train Air Force SARCs (Sexual Assault Response Coordinators) to deliver a groundbreaking bystander intervention curriculum that reached over 600,000 Air Force personnel serving around the world."- from our WAC/moja Team page
♦ Green Cross Sweden
Göteborg, Sweden
"Green Cross International arbetar för att främja miljösäkerhet genom ett nytänkande inom försvars-, utrikes- och miljöpolitik samt säkerhetsfrågor. Green Cross är verksamt i praktiska program genom ett internationellt expertnätverk med syfte att skapa globalt samarbete och förhindra miljökatastrofer. Green Cross verkar för ett globalt paradigmskifte gällande värderingar och etik. Earth Charter-deklarationen är en etisk vägledning och grunden för all verksamhet inom Green Cross.
Alla mänskliga aktiviteter är resultatet av människans värderingar och livsperspektiv. Green Cross är ett verktyg för att förändra rättsliga, etiska och beteendemässiga normer inom regeringar, den privata sektorn och det civila samhället. Green Cross är verksamt för att förebygga och lösa konflikter i samband med miljöförstöring. Vi ger stöd till människor som drabbats av miljökonsekvenser relaterade till krig, konflikter och miljökatastrofer orsakade av människan. Green Cross ämnar förmildra konflikter genom dialog, samarbete och försoning."
► Click for Green Cross Sweden Translation to English
♦ The Warriors Organization; Fighting for Culture
Tanzania, Africa/Massachusetts, USA
"The Warriors Organization believes that survival of indigenous people is more likely if they work together to solve their common problems and that creating an educational resource center will facilitate this greater collaboration.
Warriors also believes that addressing the most immediate common problem of indigenous people – the historical lack of gender equality – should be a first step on the road to long-term survival.
To help accomplish this, Warriors will seek to enable these people to:
EMPOWER WOMEN
We will provide opportunities for Maasai women to earn income and to start small businesses
EDUCATE GIRLS
We will save young girls from forced child marriages by providing secondary school and college educations
BUILD RESOURCES
We will create an educational center for the indigenous people to share knowledge and solve common problems."
https://www.warriorsorganization.org/
♦ Sierra Leone Foundation for New Democracy
Minneapolis, Minnesota USA on behalf of Sierra Leone, Africa
MISSION
Sierra Leone Foundation for New Democracy works in partnership with communities to build the foundation for citizens of all ages to deliberate and enact new, non-adversarial alternatives that nurture democratic relationships and decision making among and across individuals, families, institutions, and the environment.
VISION
Connectedness among people and the earth, wounds healing, creativity flowing
THE SLFND MODEL
The Sierra Leone Foundation for New Democracy is actively establishing the country’s first rural early childhood education program on its first rural permaculture farm. SLFND's Dovalema Early Childhood Center and Ta-Valema Permaculture Farm & Learning Lab will serve together as a laboratory for children (age two to five), adults, and elders to cultivate non-adversarial ways of interacting with each other, with institutions, and with the environment.
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Please support their GiveMN Fundraising Campaign:
"For grassroots, constituent-led organizations like SLFND, individual donations are the only source of revenue until we get enough capital to start our social enterprises. At that time, we plan to rely nearly exclusively on earned income and individual donations to pay an exclusively Sierra Leonean staff and conduct our work. No paid staff live outside Sierra Leone and most live in the village we are working in. This is unique in the NGO world. You've no doubt seen me rant about how foreign nationals are the primary beneficiaries of NGOs in that they generate income for themselves and displace local knowledge and decision-making, ensuring them job security.
In addition to the completed school building, smoke free kitchen, biofil digester toilet, and a semi-completed retreat facility, your GIVE TO THE MAX DAY donation will meaningfully contribute to the lives of 215 children, and it will make it possible to build a solar-powered community library that will serve as the hub for other programming designed to protect and nurture children.
Please donate today! Our GOAL is $10,000."
https://www.givemn.org/organization/Sierra-Leone-Foundation-For-New-Democracy
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♦ Human Unity Movement
"Our world is clearly in trouble. We are facing mass extinction and global warming on an unprecedented scale. Our social systems are based largely in old patterns of racism and misogyny. World governments continue to spend billions on bombs, while claiming that they do not have the resources to end hunger and poverty.
The Human Unity Movement was founded on the idea that change is not difficult when we act together, in unity. The changes that we want to see in the world can largely be made by us, the people. The power lies in our hands. We no longer have the time or the need to wait for world leadership to act in sane or proactive ways. When we act together, we can solve the real problems of the world, through direct action and movement in our daily lives."
