First you have to take them into your heart as your own child. Then the strength comes out of you to protect them. Anuradha Koirala, founder of Maiti Nepal.

Preventative activities and initiatives carried out by transit homes are an important apect of the tireless work done by Maiti Nepal. Interception, rescue, counseling, dealing with cases of missing girls, rape and domestic violence are a part of everyday life for workers in these homes. They also provide information on safe migration to individuals.

Maiti Nepal networks extensively with other groups who work actively in the field, often acting as a resource and also helping form important connections with each other. They initiate programs that help with education and prevention, establish and run shelters for survivors and offer programs for healing and rehabilitation. These programs include therapies aimed at mental, spiritual and physical relaxation such as yoga, bead work and other crafts. 

It has helped me to relax my mind and soul which was wandering in my past sufferings and misery. I am able to concentrate more and have become strongly determined now. ( survivor in MN shelter ).

The need to tackle the problems at the source has resulted in the initiation of prevention programs at the grassroots level. Ignorance is one of the biggest problems and so strategies have been developed to combat the issue by disseminating information, involving the communities at risk and educating them. It is vital that the girls, their families, teachers and leaders of community groups learn about trafficking. This way, girls at risk will not be tricked by strangers who come to their villages to lure them away.

Working directly with the public in 10 districts, Maiti Nepal involves young people as educators through plays, talk programs, discussions, songs and real life stories. This gives trafficking a human face and helps reduce stigma and discrimination by providing a forum for community members to discuss the issue and build shared accountability for preventative action. To date 4 safety net programs have been established along the Nepal India border. In this program girls at high risk of being trafficked, and concerned agencies, have become safety net members with the aim of establishing surveillance systems and other preventative measures to protect potential victims. 

Alongside their grassroots work, Maiti Nepal runs many different awareness raising programs, forming women's pressure groups and running workshops. Community outreach programs are established that provide public information campaigns, consultative workshops, development of awareness materials which also ensure increased media coverage of issues and community sensitisation, legislative reform, strengthening of border securities, sharing information, and exposing the perpetrators publicly. 

Since 2004, Maiti Nepal has been exploring new livelihood opportunities for the survivors of  trafficking and children and women at high risk, according to their aptitude, market demands and availability of employment opportunities. They also provide seed money for individuals to start their own enterprises. Maiti Nepal are an organisation that leaves no stone unturned in their efforts to eradicate human sex trafficking and to offer healing and a future to survivors. They have also established hospices to provide holistic care for the women and children who are terminally ill or suffering from HIV/AIDS, Multi Drug Resistance, Tuberculosis, Hepatitis and  other chronic diseases, emphasising palliative rather than curative treatment.

The Emancipation Network.

After volunteering for a year with Maiti Nepal, musician Sarah Symons founded The Emancipation Network. TEN then initiated the project Made by Survivors. Motivated by the movie The Day My God Died, which highlights survivors of trafficking grasping their power, Sarah was moved to take action. She saw survivors taking rescue agencies and police back into the brothels to rescue other kids, or stopping every car at border stations between Nepal and India, and with the help of border police, stopping trafficking situations in progress. These survivors were also particpating in public awarenss progams. Seeing people standing up against slavery and putting their lives on the line to fight it - with limited resources, with emotional and physical scars from years of abuse, Sarah felt that if they could do it she could find a way to help.

While in India as a volunteer for Maiti Nepal she asked founder Anuradha Koirala what kind of help she needed the most. Anuradha suggested working on self sufficiency for the older survivors.

Formal education is not a real option for many survivors because many are over 16 and have never been to school. 44.3% of women enter prostitution as children.

Sarah had seen survivors making beautiful crafts as a part of the informal education and rehabilitation programs run by Maiti Nepal and a vision began to form. She and husband John developed Made By Survivors - selling the products made by the survivors at home parties and other events, which also created the opportunity to raise awareness about human trafficking. Today they partner with 18 anti trafficking shelters in 9 countries including Nepal, Cambodia, Thailand, India, Ukraine, Uganda, the Philippines, Tanzania, and the United States, as well as other abolition groups. TEN visits and communicates with their communities regularly ensuring that ethical standards are met and as the program has developed and grown many people have come on board to help and home awareness parties and community events have continued to grow.

The mission of TEN developed: to improve the lives of survivors through empowerment and education, to assist rescue shelters by offering job programs and funding for rescue and after care, school sponsorship and work training, to improve rehabilitation and reintegration giving survivors tools to rebuild their own safe, slavery free lives, and to prevent trafficking in high risk communities such as red light districts and refugee camps. TEN also works to raise awareness about slavery and engage people to action and their programs are not only supported by donations but also by the efforts of the survivors themselves who design and create their own unique fair trade jewelry, bags and gifts. 100% of profits are donated to survivors and shelters.

TEN supports long term interventions. Many survivors need intensive care in a residential setting for 2 or more years. The youngest children may need shelter care until they reach adulthood.

Survivors in all the TEN programs receive medical care, counseling, education, clothing, recreation, clean and comfortable room and board, vocational training, loving care, respect for privacy and dignity.

TEN focuses their work in the most at risk communities including children born into red light districts. They sponsor children living in red light districts to go to boarding school to keep them safe, as they face grinding poverty, terrible stigma and are at extreme risk of being trafficked into slavery alongside their mothers,

Education is the best means of recovery and reintegration for survivors and TEN endeavors to ensure that it is provided for all children in their programs, including children of their adult survivors, and, where possible, the adults as well. Currently they are sending over 100 children to school through sponsorship programs in India and Nepal and their Freedom School in north India. The Freedom School is for children rescued from slavery in quarries and agricultural work in Firojpur. They have been born into families that have been enslaved - many for decades, to pay off debts often less than $100. Violence and their belief that they are legally required to fulfil their debts through forced labour keeps these families enslaved.

Although many of these children experience a myriad of problems in their first few months, after a time of loving care where they are nurtured and nourished, they begin to blossom. 

One of the biggest problems that shelters face is that the survivors have no where to go. They are often not welcome back in their communities, especially if they were sold into prostitution.Typically they were trafficked at a young age and have never lived independently. Some were so young when they were sold or stolen that they can’t remember where they came from. As a result shelters are faced with the issue of not having good options for survivors which leads to the problem of not having space available for newly rescued survivors.

As a result of the success of the sales of the Made By Survivors project TEN has established The Destiny Centre in Calcutta, with plans to open another centre in Mumbia. The Centre provides equipment, resources and teachers to train the young women in skills such as sewing, block printing, silver and gold smithing. The Centre is a haven where the women experience a safe and dignified working environment. The ability to provide for themselves means these women are able to take a step further in the realisation of the dream of freedom and independence.

Initially their focus was rescuing children from traffickers but they soon realised that they needed to prevent children from entering the sex trade in the first place. As a result, alongside their rescue work they have developed a prevention program which supports projects in the villages where children are at the greatest risk.

Currently the organisation supports three villages in Thailand with various projects which have an emphasis on education and family assistance, linking this assistance to a child’s progress in school. For example, Grey Man provided seed money to build a trekking lodge in one of the Lahu villages of northern Thailand. Two years later the lodge and trekking venture provides a rotating income for 25 of the villagers who assist with the trekking as well as a percentage going to the community fund.

The Grey Man organisation was founded by an ex Australian commando who initially worked undercover, rescuing children from brothels. Now he, along with others who have joined the organisation, pose as pedophiles to infiltrate trafficking rings and rescue children before they are passed into the brothels. The operations also aim to capture the traffickers and hand them over to the authorities. There are now many others who are involved in these undercover campaigns and who work behind the scenes with organising, fund raising, etc.

The work of the organisation is endorsed by several international groups as well as the Thai authorities. The Grey Man adopted the name from the commando/spy world - as the infiltrator, or on ground person, has to blend into the background and is therefor known as the grey man.

It is cutting edge work and as a result over 2,000 children have been rescued to date.

For more information watch The Grey Man Charity or visit their website.

In our over populated world ‘humans are now dirt cheap, use them up and then throw them away,’ Kevin says. In some countries a slave can be bought for around $90, in Nepal and India they can bought for as little as $5. With an estimated 27 million people in bondage Free the Slaves has identified Greenland and Iceland as the only countries in the world where they can find no evidence of slavery.

An economic crime, done to make a profit, it is a multi billion dollar economy that underpins some of the worst industries on Earth, including the destruction of our environment. Around the world slaves are used to cut down forests in the Amazon, in the mining industry in Africa, and in work which is destroying eco systems in south east Asia, etc. Kevin describes what is happening in our environment and human rights as a harrowing lineage.

Major supporting factors for modern slavery include the population explosion, increased extreme vulnerability, and poverty. There are many different contributing dynamics such as civil war, poverty, ethnic conflicts, disease, ethnic cleansing, etc. Today about one billion people live on the edge, in situations where they don’t have any opportunities and are usually destitute and extremely vulnerable. Kevin says ‘the biggest factor against them is the absence of the rule of law. There is no protection for many of these people and thus corruption moves in.

If you can use violence with impunity you can reach out and harvest the vulnerable into slaves.

All too often people step into slavery unwittingly. A truck drives into the village, a man asks who wants a job? Come with me... The children are hungry, medicine is needed, there are many reasons why people go with these men even though they look suspicious. So they leave with them and soon enough they find themselves in dirty, dangerous, demeaning work conditions. They try to leave and the hammer comes down and they discover they are enslaved. Kevin has heard this story all around the world.

Free the Slaves estimates that in third world countries the cost of freedom, including rehabilitation, for one individual could be approximately $400, in countries like the US it is more like $30,000.

Economic well being equals being slave proof.

Sustainable freedom for the 27 million slaves in the world would cost $10.8 billion, the average American expenditure on blue jeans. On a global level this is not a lot of money. It is nothing compared to the liberation and rehabilitation of 27 million lives. This means not just freedom, but building lives of dignity, autonomy, economic independence, and citizenship.
Free the Slaves has a vision of building sustainable freedom where people on the ‘edges’ can become consumers and producers, building their own economy which will begin to thrive. Kevin is emphatic that we cannot repeat what happened in America in 1865 when 4 million people were lifted up out of slavery and dumped without any political participation, decent education or any kind of opportunities in regard to an economic future. Four million individuals sentenced to generations of racism, violence and discrimination.

America, Kevin points out, is still paying the price.

She has discovered that these girls can be trained in numerous trades that were once seen as the domain of men, such as carpentry and welding. In restoring their dignity and gaining confidence, they can thrive in a male dominated world and not be afraid.

As an anti trafficking worker Sunitha has been beaten up 14 times and is herself a survivor of gang rape. She has lost staff who have been murdered. She finds the biggest challenge to helping victims of sexual trafficking is the way society blocks the knowledge of what is happening to these children from as young as 3 years old. Many of the young children she finds have been abandoned, cast aside as useless, their bodies mutilated. Too often these little people, broken beyond repair, die of Aids and horrific injuries.

Of the trafficked survivors she works with she says, they need your compassion, they need your empathy, they need your acceptance. Ply your mind for one way you can break your culture of silence. Accept them as human beings who deserve our support.

The culture of silence is one that haunts all acts of sexual abuse and violence.

The Art2Healing Project is founded by visionary art therapist Lydia Tan. I met Lydia when she participated in programs with me some years ago. In support of her work with trafficked women and children in Asia, I am presenting an overview of her organisation and what they do as the first entry, The Art2Healing Project.

If you are moved by what she does please visit her website  and go to volunteers and donations to learn how you can help, even from home.

The second entry, Breaking the Culture of Silence, is about a courageous Indian woman, Sunitha Krishnan, who has formed prajwalaindia.org and to date she has rescued more than 3,200 girls, some as young as three and four years old. Her stories are some of the most heart wrenching I have ever heard, her message is compelling.

Combating Modern Slavery, entry 3, is about Kevin Bales and the organisation Free the Slaves. Focusing through the economic lens the organisation reveals chilling facts about slavery and globalisation, including the legacy we are creating with our human rights and the destruction of our environment.

What I have written about both Sunitha and Kevin is based on talks presented at the 2009 & 2010 TED conference.

The 4th entry, The Grey Man, is dedicated to an Australian organisation that operates commando style, to rescue children and place traffickers in the hands of the authorities, as well as providing programs of support in villages where children are at a high risk of being trafficked.

Part 5 features Maiti Nepal, an organisation that operates across multi levels, from rescue, to border patrol, to education, after care in shelters, awareness raising programs, political activism and very importantly, seeding ideas for other anti slavery movements to get started with projects that are needed. To highlight the power of how things can happen, how others actions can inform and inspire, I have also included the story of another organisation that came about as a result of Maiti Nepal and the movie, The Day My God Died. The Emancipation Network is a not for profit that has created an amazing business for survivors, providing healing, training and ongoing support, and works in partnership with 18 anti trafficking shelters in 9 countries including Nepal, India and the Ukraine. The way they have structured the organisation also creates ongoing opportunities to continue to raise awareness about the issue of human trafficking.

One of the greatest contributing factors to slavery today is ignorance.

Part 1: The Art2Healing Project

Every year over one million people, mostly women and children, are trafficked around the world. Trafficking is the illegal trade of human beings and is the fastest growing criminal industry in the world. Through abduction, the use of threat or force, deception, fraud or sale, for purposes of sexual exploitation or forced labour, servitude or slavery, the world of trafficking has tendrils everywhere. Australia is listed in the top ten destinations for trafficked people. The total revenue for trafficking in persons is reputedly between US$5 billion and $9 billion. The United Nations estimates that nearly 2.5 million people from 127 different countries are being trafficked around the world (Wikipedia).

Slaverymap.org suggests a chilling 27 million live in bondage today.

Visionary Melbourne art therapist Lydia Tan has created The Art2Healing Project to work with survivors of trafficking and their social workers. At the heart of the project are programs dedicated to assisting and empowering individuals at risk, particularly women and children who are victims of trauma caused through human and sex trafficking. The Project provides psychological support, education and growth through the creative arts therapies and awareness based practices such as yoga and meditation. The main focus is to work with women and children who have been raped and exploited, and are suffering severe trauma, as well as to provide a powerful complimentary training for the trainee social workers.

Sex workers, especially children and women from vulnerable backgrounds, are pushed or lured into the trade by numerous and complex reasons such as poverty, well organised crime rings, inadequate law enforcement and the breakdown in family and community support systems. This is compounded for girls by their low status. In the brothels, victims are subjected to physical, emotional and psychological abuse and torture. After being raped many believe that they have bad karma and that the only way to redemption is by supporting their families through prostitution.

The objectives of The Art2Healing Project aim to empower women and children through creativity and awareness practices and, by providing creative and practical tools, to facilitate change and growth, inspiring and guiding them to honour and reclaim their bodies and their lives.

Lydia and the Art2Healing Project require on going support to continue this vital humanitarian work. There are a small core group of dedicated volunteers and the Project always welcomes new volunteers who can help in various capacities both from home and in the field. Funding is also an on going concern.

Through The Art2Healing Project Lydia has developed The Women's Empowerment Projects in Cambodia, the Thai-Burma Border, Japan, Laos PDR, Nepal, Mongolia and Korea. Forging connections with grass roots local organisations and caregivers in these locations who provide rehabilitation, education and care to the victims of trafficking but who are lacking adequate resources, support and training, Lydia is establishing relationships of trust and hope. The Projects aim is to work with both victims and trainee social workers - often survivors of trafficking themselves, with a focus on the healing and re education of trafficked women and children who suffer from a range of emotional, psychological and behavioural problems due to trauma, grief, loss and sexual abuse. The Projects also have a profound importance in expanding the capacity and support systems for the social workers.

The current focus of the Project is in Laos PDR and Nepal. The Nepal project is in desperate need of funding if it is to continue.

Art2Healing has established a partnership with the Nepalese grass roots anti trafficking organisation Shakti Samuha and has a series of 4 workshops planned for 2010, the first of which was run in March.

Through the training, I have learnt how to understand myself, my body, how
to help myself and how to help other women too.... The training has built up
my capacity, and has also built up my confidence in myself and my abilities...
I also had the opportunity to express my pain and grief. The training will help
me to provide counseling to other women and trafficking survivors.
Nepalese Trafficked Survivor 2008.

Please visit the website to read more, including stories and examples of the artwork produced during the workshops.
 

Please contact us with any questions you may have.
Price, Registration and further details will be provided upon application.

Cath and myself are privileged to present The Art of Celtic Spirituality. During this dynamic session we will share spiritual insights of the Irish and Scottish ancestors through music, story telling, prayer and ritual. We will draw from the Sean Nós tradition of west Ireland and the traditions of the Celtic Church as we weave an experience of the living spiritual pathway of our ancestors. This rich spiritual and cultural legacy is an ancient continuous wisdom that is available, alive and more vitally relevant than ever in our modern day.

Check out the new slideshow on our 2009 pilgrimage page. These wonderful pictures were taken by Bonnie Jenkins, artistic photographer and participant in our October 2008 pilgrimage.

Please don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions you may have!

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change chief Rajendra Pachauri at last weeks climate conference in Copenhagen after new findings were presented. (1)

The notion of global climate change has taken on a new meaning for many people in the state of Victoria after our recent extreme temperatures (day and night) and devastating wildfires where losses far outweigh other catastrophic fires in our history, Ash Wednesday and Black Friday.
I have yet to talk to someone in Victoria who was not touched by these fires last month.

The recent climate meeting in Copenhagen has revealed that key people involved in decision making regarding climate have not been armed with the full picture. They have not taken into account critical facts such as the impact of the melting of the Greenland Glacier, the rapid heating of the poles and the subsequent release of massive amounts of carbon into our atmosphere.

This year during traditional ceremonies on the west coast of Greenland near the ice cap, the elders will hold council on how to bring the message to the world about the spiritual implications of the melting of the big ice. ( Angaangaq, Eskimo-Kalaallit Elder, Icewisdom )

We are facing critical environmental impacts that will change our world far more profoundly than the politicians have thus far let on. Impacts that we have constantly been warned about by environmental scientists and activists such as Vandana Shiva.
The public has constantly been fed misinformation that has lulled many into a false, and very strange sense of security. How many people have been content to continue on as normal with the thought that climate change in all its implications could be 10 or 20 years away. Advocators for the environment have been crying out that this change is much closer.

In Monbiot’s report on the recent IPCC meeting in Copenhagen, he points out that only now are leaders beginning to acknowledge some very grim facts as everything is undeniably accelerating.

Leaders have underplayed the impacts of global warming in three important respects:

The panel took NO account of the impact of meltwater from Greenland glaciers, so the rise in sea levels this century could be 3 times more than forecast.

Two degrees of warming in the Arctic ( which is heating up much more rapidly than the rest of the planet ) could trigger a massive bacterial response in the soils producing billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide and methane which could catalyse one of the worlds most powerful positive feedback loops ( warming causing more warming ).

Four degrees of warming could almost eliminate the Amazon rainforest with appalling implications for biodiversity and regional weather patterns, and with the result that a massive new pulse of carbon will be released into the atmosphere.

The understating of the environmental situation was underlined for me last year when I attended a lecture by activist and physicist Vandana Shiva where she explained how we are being fooled into thinking that we have more time with the greenhouse effects as the information is being manipulated. “We have been told the damage of a 2 degree rise in global temperature but,” she said, “we are gearing toward 6 degrees because nothing is being done and so we are advancing more rapidly.” Vandana Shiva.

We are in crisis. It’s not coming. It is here. Even with the relief that many felt at the release of Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth it was obvious that he was being very conservative. Understandably, as it was so important to get the information out to the public that he couldn’t risk being too forthright or he and the information would have been buried. A sad but true indication of the toxicity of our modern world.

When I read Scott London’s blog posted 15th March and realised that at last leaders were prepared to say we are in crisis - not change, but crisis, and that time is running out, I began to feel a new optimism as the truth is becoming manifest in the world. The sooner we can accept what is happening the sooner we will find solutions.

More and more people I work with and interact with are experiencing different symptoms as a result of the stress caused by what is happening in our world. Feeling scared, overwhelming grief, depressed, powerless, low energy levels, exhaustion, run down immune systems. As more and more respected environmentalists, scientists and writers are shouting out to pay attention there is little recourse but to ask “ what can we do?”

When ever I feel overwhelmed by the facts I do several things:

Try to have the most up to date facts that reveal the real situations we face. I learnt about the power of knowing where I stand at the age of 32 as I faced the death of my first husband when he was diagnosed with cancer and was prescribed a treatment of chemo therapy to ‘help’ him feel better as there was nothing else doctors could do.

Watch a TED talk and feel inspired by some of the great creative thinkers we have in our world and restore my faith that there are people out there with the intelligence and insights to help get us through this time with inspiring and creative solutions. Then, bouncing off this, continue to write for my website and my forthcoming book.

Gather more stories to me - precious jewels of experience and wisdom, and immerse myself in the wisdom of my ancestors. In keeping the stories alive, and in rejuvenating their wisdom, begin the process of co creating new myths for our new world.

I believe that we have the capacity to get through the current crisis that we face globally and as a race. It is our great intelligence, our capacity for spiritual insight, growth and compassion and our creative force, that can see us though - and can create a new and harmonious world.

It is imperative that we seek ecologically harmonious, sustainable and creative solutions. That we share indigenous wisdom to bring about inner peace and greater understanding of each other. It is essential that we create new myths that will light the way.

From my own perspective I see that our ancestors have left so much in place for us - that despite the breakdown of many cultures traditionally, the signs are still there for us - seeds that are contained in the stories and myths, kernels that have been protected for us to take up and grow into new stories that will guide our way forward. This will enable the magic in our lives once more and help to ensure the continuing mystery that ever unfolds and our place in it.

Al Gore was quoted in The Guardian last week, saying that he believes we’ve reached a “political tipping point” regarding global climate change and that “a very impressive consensus is now emerging around the world that the solutions to the economic crisis are also the solutions to the climate crisis.” In short, he said, more and more business leaders now recognize that addressing this global crisis will require “a change in business practices.” (2)

First though we must accept the story that we have helped to co create here and now on the planet.

Now, as we face economic crisis and are being forced to face the truth of our climate crisis, surely, not far behind will follow acknowledgement and solutions for the other impending issues - and electro magnetic pollution is at the forefront. The increase of fake electro magnetics is now blanketing Earth’s natural electro magnetic field. The consequences of this are enormous and are affecting all life on our planet. Just as with our climate, we don’t yet know the outcomes and long term effects. We do have, however, bizarre occurrences in nature that are illustrating the pending disaster caused by the destruction of a process of evolution that has taken Earth billions of years.  Birds falling dead from the sky at the same time in both hemispheres (3), 100s of whales beaching themselves at a time, human auto immune systems failing, and the news that the illnesses being precipitated by fake electro magnetic radiation are altering our genes and that such conditions are becoming hereditary. (4)

While it is great to feel better by being inspired by great minds, like we see on TED talks, we must go further and be motivated by what action is then being taken. There are many such individuals and organisations - and from them I take heart and inspiration. And most importantly I take my own action.

Last year I wrote about the inspirational work of Vandana Shiva and her courage in taking on the Monsanto corporation, establishing an organic gm free seed bank in south India and tirelessly working to raise awareness about the environmental catastrophe we face. I continue to be inspired by her and the organisation she founded, navdanya.org. This organisation has a foundation that can be applied to many areas of life that are jeopardised.

Their mission is to protect nature and people’s rights to knowledge, biodiversity, water and food.

They are committed to creating living economies based on living democracy, with producers and consumers shaping their food culture through participation and partnerships, through cooperation and caring. To promote organic fair trade, based on fairness to the earth and all her species, fairness to producers and fairness to consumers. To foster respect for diversity, local production and food quality. To creating a future of food and agriculture in which small farmers prosper and biodiversity and cultural diversity thrives.

Navdanya is actively involved in the rejuvenation of indigenous knowledge and culture. It has created awareness on the hazards of genetic engineering, defended people’s knowledge from biopiracy and food rights in the face of globalisation.  While avoiding environmental harm, biodiverse organic farming is also an insurance in times of climate change.

Navdanya means nine crops that represent India’s collective source of food security. The main aim of the Navdanya biodiversity conservation program is to support local farmers, rescue and conserve crops and plants that are being pushed to extinction and make them available through direct marketing. It has its 46 seed banks across the country and an organic farm spread over an area of 20 acres in Uttranchal, north India.

Navdanya promotes peace and harmony, justice and sustainability. They strive to achieve these goals through the conservation, renewal and rejuvenation of the gifts of biodiversity we have received from nature and our ancestors, and to defend these gifts as commons. The setting up of community seed banks is central to their mission of regenerating nature’s and peoples wealth. Keeping seeds, biodiversity and traditional knowledge in people’s hands to generate livelihoods and provide basic needs is their core program for removal of poverty.

Their vision of Earth Democracy is translated into a mission of creating biodiversity and seed sovereignty, food sovereignty and water democracy.

From such action we can take heart. From such action we can be inspired - to ask ourselves, how can we make a difference? It is time to follow the calling of our passionate hearts, this means having courage in the face of adversity, taking risks, working to overcome our own fears that hold us back from our creative expression and standing for what we believe in.

Now is the time on Earth to embrace our potential to be more. This is a challenging time and within every challenge there is opportunity. This is, I believe a time of great opportunity. Just as we must embrace the global crisis, we must embrace our own capacity to take up this challenge and find solutions.
If you haven’t already, check out TED. There are hundreds of inspirational talks on making a difference. Here we can share a sense of our future.

Some of my favourite ted talks are: Jill Bolte Taylor, Ken Robinson, Elizabeth Gilbert, Michael Pollan, Isabelle Allende, Barry Schwartz.

There are many, many more.

References

1. George Monbiot, 12/3/09 The Guardian: George Monbiot: Time to Change “Climate Change”
2. The Guardian:World Will Agree New Climate Deal, Says Al Gore by Leo Hickman
3. www.hesse-project.org
4. BEES, BIRDS AND MANKIND