Heidenreich, Marie

Marie Heidenreich is heading the SynCom Office. SynCom is the synthesis and communication platform for the Helmholtz research field ‘Earth and Environment’.
SynCom aims to synthesize research results and to build bridges across various disciplines in a cross-center and interdisciplinary manner.
Functioning as an interface between science and society, SynCom supports evidence-based climate and environmental politics by delivering practical know-how to stakeholders and politicians.

Center, Athena

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

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.

Hosang, Maik

MAIK HOSANG researches interdisciplinary relationships between people,
Nature and culture. He has a
Professorship for cultural philosophy, social and cultural change at the Zittau / Görlitz University of Applied Sciences. He
is co-creator of the interactive philosophy-experience world »Sophia im
Spiegel «and author of several books.

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.

Hope is a​n embrace of the unknown

We may be living through times of unprecedented change, but in uncertainty lies the power to influence the future. Now is not the time to despair, but to act […]

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

Reclaiming Our Lives, Reclaiming Our Earth – A WORKSHOP FOR WOMEN WORKING TOWARDS CONSCIOUSNESS

In these deeply polarized times, we feel the wounds on the body politic, the body of the earth, and our own bodies, all at once.  It is ever more important that we come together as women, allow all these wounds to breathe, and, finding their beauty as well as their pain, let them germinate into something entirely new, born to us and to our communities.

Every year we work with a myth or fairy tale, because tapping into archetypal wisdom deepens our understanding of ourselves and our world.  This year we will be examining the Norwegian tale Prince Lindworm, the tale of a queen who gives birth to boy twins, one human and one a serpent.  She conveniently puts the birth of the serpent twin out of her mind, and when he comes of age he challenges her entire kingdom to examine its “forgetfulness.”  The results are dramatic, and transformative.

Please join us at Menla Retreat Center (http://menla.us), Phoenicia, New York, April 3-8, 2018 where, through body work, dreamwork, meditation and the expressive arts, we will investigate what remains hidden in our unconscious and bring it to light, in the warm embrace of our women’s circle.  Please register at www.reclaimingourlives.com.  Scholarships are available for first-time attendees.

April 3-8, 2018

White Awake

White Awake combats white supremacy by focusing on educational resources and spiritual practices designed to facilitate white people’s engagement in the creation of a just and sustainable society.

Our goal is the end of white supremacy. To this end White Awake supports people who’ve been socialized as “white” with the kind of intellectual and spiritual development necessary to:

  1. reject the toxic social conditioning that comes with membership in a dominant group and connect with life affirming cultural expressions
  2. see through the use of racism as a manipulative device that materially benefits a small number of powerful elites
  3. sustain our engagement in cross-racial coalitions to resist current abuses of power and create a truly equitable, life sustaining society.

White Awake emphasizes mindful awareness, spiritual practice, respect for individual experience and wisdom, and the reality that we are all learning. The country of origin of the work is the United States, and the materials in this site deal primarily with the historcal and current conditions of racism and colonization this country.

Global Peace Initiative of Women

The basis of GPIW’s work is the dynamic expression of unity, emerging from the heart of wisdom of the world’s spiritual traditions, and our own hearts, into a community. We believe this narrative can help animate social and economic structures and systems that better reflect humanity’s natural evolution toward greater wholeness. An essential part of this shift is the coming into a balanced and sacred relationship with the earth and all living beings. Feminine wisdom and the power of love can serve as the fulcrum for this inner and outer transformation.