Boa Foundation

We work in alliance with indigenous communities to preserve and protect sacred land, culture, and ancient wisdom. We support projects including strategic land buybacks, restoration of native ecosystems, cultural exchange, and sustainable living solutions.

Our planet is a miracle. Life has evolved for millions of years, creating a rich and diverse ecosystem, an intricate web where all life can thrive. The climate crisis is the result of a deep man-made imbalance on the Earth. Our species has been extracting, producing, and polluting without much consideration for other forms of life, even our own. This imbalance is a symptom of our alienation from natural rhythms, cycles, and systems, and our lack of a caring relationship to our world. This also manifests in ever-increasing crises in mental health, breakdown of communities, and auto-immune diseases being diagnosed at alarming rates. The Boa Foundation works together with indigenous communities worldwide to address these issues holistically, ​supporting both cultural and natural diversity, and the healing of our selves and the planet.

Little Treehouse

Little Treehouse is a non-profit organization founded in 2013 to support initiatives focused on human rights, environment protection and communities in need with a primary focus on youth and future generations.

Our lean structure and committed team provide us with no additional costs, allowing us to allocate approx. 100% of funds directly to our projects.

Little Treehouse’s goal is to provide continuous support to our projects, not limited to financial relief. We believe that hands on means of support such as regenerative work, personal commitment and emotional care create strong connections, and lasting and self-sustaining change for good.

Fackenthal, Jeremy

Jeremy Fackenthal is an independent filmmaker and NGO director. After completing a PhD in Philosophy of Religion and Theology from Claremont Graduate University, he began using his philosophical background beyond the academy to raise questions and craft narratives. In recent years, Jeremy’s work has included video content produced for clients and shorter independent documentary projects. Jeremy most recently served as Managing Director of the Institute for Ecological Civilization, and he is currently exploring new nonprofit possibilities that wed sustainability and storytelling.

Beyers, Felix

Felix is working as a research associate in the TranS-Mind Research group at RIFS after finalising his PhD at Leuphana University on “Political challenges of a textile transformation”. He focussed on interaction and learning spaces in collaborative governance initiatives between market, civil society and industry actors. Today he …

Schroeder, Heike

Heike Schroeder is Professor of Environmental Governance at the School of International Development, University of East Anglia. Her work focuses on global environmental politics, forest governance and REDD+, the international climate negotiations, non-state actors, urban climate governance, indigenous peoples/knowledge and sustainable development, transformative learning, trust and sustainable food governance. She is PI of the Indigenous-International Interactions for Sustainable Development (INDIS) project. She is also a member of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and a lead faculty member of the Earth System Governance project. Heike was a senior fellow at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) in Potsdam in 2019.

From 2007 to 2011, Heike was a Tyndall senior research fellow and an Oxford Martin senior fellow in forest governance at the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford. From 2003 to 2007, she was a researcher at the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California, Santa Barbara, as well as the Executive Officer of a 10-year international research project on the Institutional Dimensions of Global Environmental Change (IDGEC), a core project of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP).

Key Research Interests

Heike’s research interests include global environmental politics, forest governance and REDD+, the international climate negotiations, indigenous peoples/knowledge and sustainable development, transformative learning, trust, sustainable food governance and planetary health.

Center, Athena

We are a center bridging science, business, and “ancient wisdom” from different traditions to bring sustainability and equality to the (business) world.

Chimère Diaw, Mariteuw

Chimère Diaw is the Director General of the African Model Forest Network (AMFN) and a member of the International Networking Committee of the IMFN (International Model Forest Network). He is one of the Coordinating Lead Authors of the ongoing Africa Regional Assessment of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services for IPBES, the Intergovernmental Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. A member of the Board of Directors of Ecoagriculture Partners, and of the LDC Independent Expert Group (IEG) on the UN Post-2015 agenda, he also is the convener in Cameroon of the Forest Governance Learning Group (FGLG), a network coordinated by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and active in 11 countries.

Chimère holds a PhD in Economic anthropology from Laval University, an MA in Rural Sociology from Michigan State University and a Master in Philosophy and Sociology from the University of Dakar. He has been a researcher and programs manager for 35 years, 20 of which as international scientist with the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), and the AMFN. Chimère has led or contributed to several international programs on Adaptive Collaborative Management, Governance, Verification, Environmental Services and Rural Livelihoods, Alternative to Slash and Burn, Environmental Decentralizations and Criteria and Indicators of sustainable forest management. His research interests and publications include African history, migrations, and modeling of the share system in fisheries, tenure regimes and property rights, climate change mitigation and REDD, governance of biodiversity and multi-stakeholder landscapes, Model Forests, participatory action research and interactive social methodologies. Chimère has lived and worked in Senegal, the United States, Canada, Indonesia and Cameroon.

The International Model Forest Network (IMFN) is a voluntary global community of practice whose members and supporters work toward the sustainable management of forest‐based landscapes and natural resources through the Model Forest approach.

Lanying, Zhang

Lanying is currently the Executive Deputy Dean, Institute of Rural Reconstruction of China in Southwest University at Chongqing. Here she has developed and implemented projects, training/workshops and study programs in the area of sustainable agriculture, environmental education, health education and participatory development approach for poverty reduction. Her own field of interests includes participation for better governance, rural education for individual development and collectivism as well as sustainable development for the poor and marginalized people to be out of poverty and inequality.

Doran, Peter

Drawing on over 25 years of experience in the reporting and analysis of UN negotiations on sustainable development, including consultancy roles with UN Secretariats, I combine research and policy interests in the fields of sustainable development, the commons, and the attention economy.

My collaborative work with John Woods and the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust led to the creation of Northern Ireland’s first high-level roundtable on wellbeing, and to the re-design of the NI Programme for Government (2015) incorporating an outcomes and indicators based framework to measure and achieve societal wellbeing.

In 2020, in collaboration with Dr Ciara Brennan, Newcastle University, Dean Blackwood, QUB, and James Orr, Friends of the Earth, I founded the Environmental Justice Network Ireland. This is a collaborative platform or ‘community of practice’ engaging the environmental legal profession, activists and policy makers committed to advancing environmental justice and the SDGs on the island of Ireland. See www.ejni.net

Please visit my blog at www.mindfulcommons.org

taken from https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/peter-doran

Paulo Freire Zentrum

Das Paulo Freire Zentrum bietet Akteur:innen und Institutionen unterschiedlicher Disziplinen an, ihre Arbeit kritisch zu reflektieren und setzt sich für kritische Entwicklungsforschung ein. In dialogischer Bildungsarbeit werden hier Weltprobleme im Zusammenhang mit lokalen Problemen bearbeitet. Das Zentrum bildet einen Knotenpunkt, in dem an Projekten zu entwicklungspolitischer Bildung, globalem Lernen, Friedenspädagogik etc. gearbeitet wird.
Das Lebensziel des Namensgebers Paulo Freire war der Versuch, die Unterdrückten durch Volksbildung zu befreien, indem er in den 1960er und 1970er Jahren für Solidarität und Gerechtigkeit kämpfte. Seiner Ansicht nach ging die Befreiung der Unterdrückten mit einer Befreiung vom Kapitalismus, welcher auf Egoismus und Gewinn beruht, einher.

 

Dunetz, David

The Heschel Center for Sustainability develops and implements the vision of sustainability: a just and cohesive society, a robust and democratic economy, and a healthy and productive environment to all of its residents. The center bridges theoretical knowledge and practical methods, and creatively spreads the message of sustainability, assisting change makers from every sector of society to promote significant change in Israel.

Hoppmann, Janna

Janna Hoppmann isthe founder of Climate Mind. She suports people and organizations in developing psychologically strategies for dealing with challenges related to climate change.

Andreotti, Vanessa

In her work as Canada Research Chair, Dr. Vanessa Andreotti focuses on analyses of historical and systemic patterns of reproduction of inequalities and how these limit or enable possibilities for collective existence and global change (especially in educational contexts). Dr. Andreotti conceptualizes education as an expansion of frames of reference and fields of signification.

Heschel Center for Sustainability

Who we are

The Heschel Center is Israel’s leading advocate for a sustainable Israel: a just society with a robust democratic economy and a healthy environment, now and for future generations. Founded in 1998, we are based in Tel Aviv, and have a national reach and presence, with a network of change-makers spread all over Israeli society that are committed to integrate sustainability practices and values among their communities.

Poisoned air, climate disruption, growing gaps between rich and poor, isolation and discrimination against the other, despair and violence, are all examples of how unsustainable policies and practices are rife and deeply imbedded in Israeli society. Our vision is a healthy world, where people and planet flourish with dignity.

The twin challenges of climate change and social justice lie at the heart of the human agenda in this century. The Heschel Center provides the inspiration and ideas while building collaborative platforms to empower effective leadership for transition to a sustainable Israeli society that can rise to those challenges.

What we do

Through creating a home for leaders and developing and disseminating ideas and skills, the Heschel Center:

  • Creates frameworks through which potential change agents can become sustainability leaders, and support the implementation of their initiatives.
  • Connects theoretical knowledge with practical skills, and spreads the vision of broad sustainability in creative ways.

Heschel’s flagship initiative, The Sustainability Leaders Fellows Program, now concluded its 19th cohort of 14 new Fellows, continues to be the leading training program for social-environmental leaders in Israel. With 340 alumni, the Fellowship represents leadership in diversity. The program targets potential change makers in positions of influence – business, politics (including several MKs), media, free professions, social change; Jews and Arabs, religious and secular, Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jews, center and periphery—providing them an in-depth learning process along with the tools to develop joint projects that have a real and lasting impact. The successful alumni network implements our vision of promoting sustainability through a widening interlinked community, whose work we catalyze and nurture

The Center for Local Sustainability works directly with municipalities, regional councils, and their leadership and professional staffs in national and local training programs tailor made for their realities and needs, and has created 20 Local Sustainability Centers in the social and geographic periphery of Israel.

The Center for Sustainability Studies provides intensive transformative learning courses for leaders, professionals and change agents from all over Israel, currently including: Strategic Planning for Sustainability, Community-Based Sustainable Education, Regional Fellows programs, and tailor-made programs for different organizations and institutions such as the Israeli Scouts, Israel Nature and Parks Authority, and the Society of Nature Protection in Israel.

The Center is focusing its efforts on developing a new online platform to engage a more massive amount of people and bring them to the world of sustainability.

The Israel 2050 Project (The Heschel Climate Project) 

Probably our most ambitious wide-scale collaboration yet is the multi-sectoral participatory process for the Israel 2050 plan, which Heschel has spearheaded as part of the climate initiative. Inspired by the Paris Climate Accords, Heschel headed the 2016 Maof Seminar, which led to our recruiting relevant officials in the Israeli government and convincing them to champion the Israeli Climate Plan 2050, which includes a complete transition to renewable energies. After engaging with various stakeholders to join the process, we organized the largest climate convention in Israel’s history, with a separate event that included 11 roundtables, and that has laid the foundation for the 2050 plan.

The Heschel Center has succeeded in recruiting leading strategic partners in government, civil society and industry: five central government ministries (Energy, Transportation, Industry, Treasury, Environment), the OECD, the IDI (Israel Democracy Institute), and the Manufacturers Association of Israel. Through our work with key people in the government, we have convinced the government to be the lead partner, and to adopt the program as a government initiative, with all that entails. As part of our plan for a broad-based process, we have enlisted a wide range of supporters from civil society, academia and the commercial-industrial sector. Additionally, we have prepared a professional knowledge base and relevant materials that will serve the working groups in the multi-sectoral participatory process of fulfilling the Israel 2050 plan. We have also developed a methodology for locating and successfully utilizing experts from abroad who can share their experience and best practices from processes similar to those we are trying to promote.

Today, the Heschel Center is focusing on bringing the voices of the underserved – people with disabilities, youth at risk, the elderly, etc – to the 2050 planning process and ensuring that the plans are bettering their conditions.

In addition, the Heschel Center has launched its Renewable Energy Project, aiming to develop a plan for Israel to transform to a 100% renewable energy economy. The plan includes an important component of proving the economic case for a weak municipality to earn income by providing renewable energy for its residents.

Where we’ve been:

We have trained hundreds of entrepreneurial leaders and created effective networks of change agents amongst all Israelis (Jews and Arabs, secular and religious, center and periphery) in a broad range of fields. We have incubated and launched dozens of innovative social ventures in areas as diverse as renewable energy, local sustainability, and environmental justice.

After a period of challenge and transition, Heschel Center 2019 has an inspired new leadership, and an energetic staff made up of some of our veteran visionaries, along with new blood, who come with innovative skills and ideas to take the organization forward, and ensure our place as the premier institution promoting a broad based social, environmental and economic vision for Israel.

Where we’re going:

We seek to create alliances and financial support, both inside Israel and abroad, to put this vision of sustainability which we believe is the key to Israel’s future, squarely on the agenda of Israeli society and the Jewish people.

Sustainability represents the call for the “triple bottom line” of profits, people, and planet, which has been adopted in the realm of corporate social responsibility (CSR) worldwide. For too long, the environment has been a narrowly-defined niche issue, and the focus of much work has been reactive and confrontational in nature. We represent a broad, proactive agenda, integrating economic, political and social change, and training and partnering with key players in all those realms.

While there are any number of organizations in Israel devoted to advancing specific aspects of sustainability—environmental NGOs, social change organizations, economic institutions—only Heschel is doing the big-picture conceptualization of what defines sustainability in Israel and how to achieve it.

The Heschel Center is a registered non-profit (“amuta”) that depends on contributions to do the work that is so critical for Israel’s future. To donate click here.

Join us to help improve Israel’s present and ensure Israel’s future as a healthy, prosperous, just and democratic society for all.

Relational Uprising

The inspiration for Relational Uprising was born from our 20 years of learning at the intersection of deep social justice organizing work and somatic healing and education.

Before launching as Relational Uprising, the core curriculum for the Relational Culture framework was incubated, developed and launched in collaboration with Mark Fairfield, Relational Gestalt scholar and social worker with published groundwork being laid since 2000 in group development, harm reduction and shared leadership, and founder of the Leadership Institute at the Relational Center, an innovative Los Angeles-based non-profit dedicated to building capacity for psychotherapists to shift culture toward one that values empathy, diversity, and interdependency, and that sponsored in 2012 our inaugural project called the Culture of Radical Engagement. Since then, we have had direct experience working with over 1,200 activist leaders from over 200 movement-building organizations and communities.

In the Fall of 2016, the Relational Uprising training project was launched in the east coast with the sponsorship of  The Watershed Center in Millerton New York, a social justice retreat center for changemakers, where we currently hold our foundational residential training series.

Fackenthal , Jeremy

The Institute for Ecological Civilization works internationally to support systemic approaches to long-term sustainability by developing collaborations among government, business, and religious leaders and among scholars, activists, and policy makers. We build effective partnerships across social sectors through consultations, think-tank gatherings, and policy engagement.

International Network of Engaged Buddhists

In 1989, the International Network of Engaged Buddhists (INEB) was established in Siam (Thailand) by Sulak Sivaraksa and a group of Buddhist and non-Buddhist thinkers and social activists. INEB operates as an autonomous organization under the Bangkok-based Sathirakoses-Nagapradeepa Foundation. Over the years the network has expanded to include members, both individuals and organizations, from more than 25 countries across Asia, Europe, North America and Australia. From this diversity, an understanding of socially engaged Buddhism has emerged which integrates the practice of Buddhism with social action for a healthy, just, and peaceful world.

Vision and Objectives

  1. Promotes understanding, cooperation, and networking among inter-Buddhist and inter-religious social action groups
  2. Acts as an information resource related to areas of social concern
  3. Facilitates conferences, education, and training based on Buddhist values and practices that support and strengthen socially active individuals and groups

Social Issues of Concern and Engagement

INEB’s philosophy and practice is based on compassion, social justice, non-violence, and co-existence as put forth by Gautama the Buddha. The core mission is to confront and end suffering using analysis and action guided by the Four Noble Truths.

Activities focus on the following areas:

  • General conferences
  • Peacebuilding and reconciliation
  • Human rights and social justice
  • Alternative education
  • Gender and womens’ empowerment
  • Buddhist economics
  • Alternative development
  • Environment and climate change
  • Reform and revival of Buddhist institutions
  • Youth and spiritual leadership development
  • Buddhist art
  • Inter-religious/faith dialogue and collaboration