Scilla Elworthy: 15 Things You Can Do as Women to Answer the Challenges of Today and after all women´s marches

Fotocredit: Darshana Borges

We at THE LOVERS stand for engaging ourselves and our community by conscious activism and with the purpose of rising peace, love, community. If you want to participate and engage yourself in Berlin, please join our Open Club Meeting on March 20th at The Lovers Space. Please find more details here.

We are presenting you here some ways, collected from Scilla Elworthy (who has been guest of The Lovers in February twice 1. Salon Mondaine with Prof. Tania Singer und 2. Conscious Leadership Workshop):
How you can engage yourself to answer the challenges of today:

This is the time to step into the next lev­el of our pow­er. “This may turn out to be a pow­er­ful cat­a­lyst for humanity’s evo­lu­tion to a high­er lev­el — but it will only hap­pen if we’re able to address the sit­u­a­tion con­scious­ly, with­out hatred, and take clear-eyed, open-heart­ed actions like Gandhi’s satya­gra­has or King’s civ­il rights marchers. My sense is that it’s par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant for women to lead the way on this, as we saw with the inspir­ing Women’s March. Much of what we are wit­ness­ing are the most neg­a­tive dimen­sions of the patri­ar­chal pow­er struc­tures, and thus it’s a call for women to stand in their “fierce fem­i­nine” and meet this ris­ing tide with love and pow­er. So here are some things we can do. Yes, lots. These are choic­es so you can select those that appeal to your own sense of how you want to be in action:

1. Get to know and embody Feminine Intelligence

To shape the future that is need­ed in our world today we must bring into bal­ance the mas­cu­line and the fem­i­nine. Indis­pens­able fem­i­nine wis­dom and qual­i­ties are need­ed now more than ever: the poten­cy of COMPASSION, the gift of DEEP LISTENING, the bril­liance of INTUITION, the essen­tial under­stand­ing of INTERCONNECTEDNESS and the warmth of INCLUSIVITY. Mar­gin­alised for cen­turies, these qual­i­ties are emerg­ing strong­ly again. Fem­meQ invite you to join women and men around the world who are awak­en­ing these qual­i­ties and reclaim­ing their author­i­ty and pow­er to serve the greater good, to pro­tect and hon­our life and shape a world which serves human flour­ish­ing and plan­e­tary regen­er­a­tion. All over the world, in all sys­tems, we see the dev­as­ta­tion caused by the old patri­ar­chal sys­tem, and the glob­al con­se­quences that cut across soci­eties, geo­gra­phies and gen­er­a­tions. The fem­i­nine intel­li­gence that exists in both women and men is now need­ed to face the cur­rent crises and bring a rad­i­cal shift in the way we live and lead. www.femmeq.org

2. Join one of the Constellations in Rising Women Rising World (RWRW)

Through our Con­stel­la­tions RWRW are build­ing a vibrant com­mu­ni­ty of women on all con­ti­nents who take respon­si­bil­i­ty for pio­neer­ing a pos­si­ble future. The cus­to­di­ans of this mis­sion are a com­mit­ted group of pro­fes­sion­als, who over the past 30 years have been shap­ing their respec­tive fields. We call these women Pio­neers. Each forms the nucle­us of a Con­stel­la­tion — a fur­ther 12 women and men spe­cial­is­ing in a par­tic­u­lar field, be it edu­ca­tion, envi­ron­ment, busi­ness, com­mu­ni­ty, food & water, etc. They in turn train and men­tor younger women and men to devel­op ini­tia­tives and projects that demon­strate how this kind of future world is not only pos­si­ble, but is already hap­pen­ing.
www.risingwomenrisingworld.com

3. Support non violence in schools and at home

Many schools are now find­ing that the sim­ple steps of Non Vio­lent Com­mu­ni­ca­tion (NVC) work extreme­ly well to min­i­mize bul­ly­ing and teach chil­dren skills that will be invalu­able through­out their lives. So if you as par­ent or grand-par­ent want to pro­pose NVC to your local school, you can find out how this works on the CNVC web­site. You can also break any cycle of vio­lence in your own fam­i­ly or com­mu­ni­ty, by open­ing dia­logue and using Non Vio­lent Com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Take a two-day foun­da­tion train­ing in NVC, it will change your life. It changed mine. It’s com­mon sense real­ly, and not dif­fi­cult. www.cnvc.org

The Lovers e.V. is offering an evening Workshop on NVC on April 26th from 19.00 to 21:30 at the Lovers Space.

4. Ensure full implementation of UN Sustainable Development Goal 5 (gender equality)

and the main­stream­ing of gen­der through­out all 17 goals. iCRW (www.icrw.org) con­vened a group of lead­ing women who artic­u­lat­ed an agen­da for Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Guter­res, if he tru­ly means to lead the Unit­ed Nations to gen­der equal­i­ty, includ­ing: Ensure fem­i­nist imple­men­ta­tion and account­abil­i­ty for the Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Goals (SDG). The SDGs rep­re­sent the sin­gle largest oppor­tu­ni­ty to focus con­cert­ed effort on achiev­ing gen­der equal­i­ty and to main­stream a focus on gen­der across glob­al, sus­tain­able devel­op­ment efforts, but they lack a mean­ing­ful account­abil­i­ty frame­work. You can urge Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Guter­res to express his sup­port for the full imple­men­ta­tion of Goal 5 (gen­der equal­i­ty) and the main­stream­ing of gen­der through­out all 17 goals. You can write to him at Unit­ed Nations Head­quar­ters 405 East 42nd Street, New York, NY, 10017, USA. Tel: (+ 1) (212) 963‑9999. Or lis­ten to him here

How to imple­ment the SDGs in schools, organ­i­sa­tions and in our soci­ety you can learn from this Ger­man orga­ni­za­tion: Glob­al Goals cur­ricu­lum. www.ggc2030.org

Engage your­self in your coun­try to imple­ment the SDGs on any lev­el.

5. In your school, community or workplace, make known the facts:

• Pro­duc­ing 1kg of beef requires about 15,000 litres of water.
• 65 mil­lion peo­ple are now refugees world­wide and rapid­ly grow­ing — the high­est ever.
• Tur­bo-con­sumerism burns the plan­et. Reject: things you didn’t know you need­ed, bought with mon­ey you don’t have, to impress peo­ple you don’t know

6. Support alliances of cities standing for peace values

If you live in a city, ask if your city is one of the Unit­ed Nations Peace Mes­sen­ger Cities. These are cities around the world that have vol­un­teered for an ini­tia­tive spon­sored by the Unit­ed Nations to pro­mote peace and under­stand­ing between nations.
Look up your city on www.iapmc.org/member-cities

7. Help shift military activity away from preparations for war towards crisis response

The main secu­ri­ty issues of con­cern in the future are like­ly to arise from cli­mate change, eco­nom­ic inequal­i­ty, migra­tion and com­pe­ti­tion over resources, and none of these is suit­ed to a con­ven­tion­al armed response. For young peo­ple con­cerned about the future secu­ri­ty of their coun­try, it there­fore makes more sense to direct their ener­gies to work­ing in NGOs, inter­na­tion­al organ­i­sa­tions or min­istries that seri­ous­ly address glob­al warm­ing, envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion, the rich-poor gap, refugee and migrant issues and exploita­tion of nat­ur­al resources. The real­i­ty of sol­dier­ing, as return­ing vet­er­ans will attest, is very dif­fer­ent from the glam­orous adver­tise­ments. In the US, more vet­er­ans suc­cumbed to sui­cide than were killed in Iraq.

8. Address the persistent and long-term influence and effects of trauma

by mak­ing friends with refugees, with vet­er­ans suf­fer­ing from PTSD (Post­trau­mat­ic Stress dis­or­der), with war orphans. Cities and activists across Europe are fight­ing their nation­al gov­ern­ments to bet­ter wel­come refugees. If you enquire, you’ll find there will be a cen­tre for refugees and migrants some­where not far away from where you live. They will direct you to chil­dren and adults who would wel­come a friend. Help for Heroes will also be able to inform about how to con­tact war vet­er­ans who might wel­come a lis­ten­ing ear, and your respect for their expe­ri­ences. There are at least 16 ways you can sup­port Syr­i­an refugees now, not just by donat­ing your mon­ey, but your spare time. Fear that refugees will take jobs and lack of eco­nom­ic oppor­tu­ni­ties make it hard for them to gen­er­ate income. Com­bine this with the lengthy time it takes to process work visas for refugees and some can­not feed their fam­i­lies. This is part of what inspired #Work­for­Refugees.

9. Organise massive global online support for politicians who take a stand

Lead­ers who take a stand on an issue often find them­selves crit­i­cised and some­times vil­i­fied. Oppo­nents are usu­al­ly nois­i­er than sup­port­ers, and often per­son­al­ly unkind. If you sup­port some­one, make sure you let them know; write to them and ask what you can do to show your sup­port. Why not help set up a glob­al “Best List” for lead­ers like Angela Merkel (read­ers please add names) who stand up for inno­v­a­tive pro¬grammes that may be unpop­u­lar with con­ser­v­a­tive fac­tions. Mar­got Wall­ström, the Swedish Min­is­ter for For­eign Affairs who pro­hib­it­ed Swedish arms exports to Sau­di Ara­bia, was sub­ject­ed to an organ­ised cam­paign of vil­i­fi­ca­tion; she need­ed mas­sive, open, loud sup­port. Don’t sit still when some­thing you care about hap­pens; it’s so easy now to find out how best to show your sup­port.

10. Point out to editors of your local and national media

how fre­quent­ly they car­ry sto­ries about war and ter­ror, com­pared to how rarely they fea­ture the bril­liant sto­ries of peace builders. For such sto­ries have a look at www.peacedirect.org/where-we-work/

11. Contact and support indigenous groups

learn from their wis­dom: The insights of indige­nous peo­ples are based on very ancient beliefs and prac­tices that can help to over­come our inher­it­ed bel­liger­ence and our apa­thy, to devel­op a dif­fer­ent atti­tude to our role on this plan­et. Their val­ues based on love and respect for the plan­et and all liv­ing ele­ments on it have been clear­ly artic­u­lat­ed recent­ly by indige­nous lead­ers in the US. There are a mul­ti­tude of exam­ples. The Eagle and the Con­dor sto­ry of the Ama­zon peo­ple is an ancient proph­esy in which human soci­ety splits into two paths: The path of the Eagle, based in log­ic, the indus­tri­al, and the sacred mas­cu­line; and the path of the Con­dor, based in heart, intu­ition, and the sacred fem­i­nine. The sto­ry says that after a 500-year peri­od in which the Eagle peo­ple dom­i­nate the Earth, the Eagle and the Con­dor peo­ple will come togeth­er to cre­ate a new lev­el of con­scious­ness for human­i­ty.

12. Build a ring of iron around PMs and advisers

Today’s lead­ers are besieged by lob­by­ists who put enor­mous pres­sure on them to act in ways that favour com­mer­cial inter­ests. Some of the pres­sures they exert are actu­al­ly threats. So when new lead­ers come into office after elec­tion, help pull togeth­er a group of tough, trust¬worthy advis­ers who can pro­tect them from unnec­es­sary inter­views with pres­sure groups and cor­po­rate lead­ers. This think­ing is sim­i­lar to what inspired the for­ma­tion of The Elders. www.theelders.org

13. Engage with PEACE IS LOUD

who spot­light women lead­ers on the front­line of peace-build­ing world­wide. They “har­ness the pow­er of film and oth­er media to bring to life the lead­er­ship of every­day peo­ple who are stand­ing up to vio­lence and build­ing peace from the ground up”. They orga­nize speak­ing engage­ments and oth­er live events spot­light­ing women peace-builders from Afghanistan to Zim­bab­we whose courage and activism are alter­ing the his­to­ry of nations. They cre­ate social action cam­paigns that encour­age and empow­er peo­ple to build peace in their day-to-day lives — in their own com­mu­ni­ties and as cit­i­zens of the world. www.peaceisloud.org

14. Ensure that the company you work for becomes a B Corp

B Corps are for-prof­it com­pa­nies cer­ti­fied by the non­prof­it B Lab to meet rig­or­ous stan­dards of social and envi­ron­men­tal per­for­mance, account­abil­i­ty, and trans­paren­cy. Today there is a grow­ing com¬munity of more than 1,600 Cer­ti­fied B Corps from 42 coun­tries and over 120 indus­tries work­ing togeth­er toward one uni­fy­ing goal: to rede­fine suc­cess in busi­ness. If your employ­er is not yet part of this net­work, gath­er a group of employ­ees to pro­pose it to your Board.
www.bcorporation.net/what-are-b-corps

15. Help divest from the Dakota Access Pipeline

Trump has signed orders smooth­ing the con­struc­tion for the destruc­tive Dako­ta Access Pipeline which would endan­ger the water and sacred bur­ial grounds of the Stand­ing Rock Sioux Tribe. 250,000 SumO­fUs mem­bers have already signed the peti­tion ask­ing banks to pull their invest­ments from the pipeline. Can you help us get as many sig­na­tures as pos­si­ble strong before the next inter­na­tion­al day of action by shar­ing this cam­paign on Face­book? We know tar­get­ing banks to stop finan­cial­ly sup­port­ing this dan­ger­ous pipeline works — we’ve already made some progress last Novem­ber. Two days after we deliv­ered hun­dreds of thou­sands of SumO­fUs mem­bers’ sig­na­tures to Nor­way-based Bank DNB’s head­quar­ters, it pulled its invest­ment in the pipeline. If we get more banks to pull out we can stop this pipeline from being built.

Desmond Tutu: “If you want peace, don’t talk to your friends. Talk to your ene­mies.”

With love and loads of courage to you,

Scil­la Elwor­thy