Special News--October 2024Being Global IntegratorsFive Foundational Perspectives to Guide and Goad
Eolia at Harkness--Waterford CT USA
Image © 2023 KODWe think that the time is definitely here for a diversity of colleagues to come together intentionally, visibly, and practically on behalf of global integration (GI). GI put simply is how we skillfully integrate our lives and values on behalf of the issues facing humanity. Likewise we think that the time is definitely here for colleagues to carefully reflect and act on what it means to be good global learners-practitioners--to seriously consider what it means to be what we are calling global integrators (GI-People)." Global Integrators--25, CORE Member Care (31 December 2015)
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Overview
In this Update we are celebrating our 100th issue! We focus on what it means to be global integrators and in the process share some of our favorite and compelling images from the last 10 years. Global integrators are committed to link their skills, values, integrity, and relationships on behalf of the major issues facing humanity--locally through globally. They seek "to be the people we need and to build the world need."
We feature five foundational perspectives for being global Integrators. These perspectives are excerpts from five of the 25 special entries on Global Integrators which Kelly did in the CORE Member Care weblog (see the list below). Specifically,
- Global Disintegration--The Precarious Exploitation of People-Planet
- First Love--Values that Guide and Goad Global Integration
- The Global VaticUN--How Far Should We Go with Global Integration?
- Global Integration Training--Pathways for Preparation
- Global Integration Partnership: At the Global Tables and in the Global Trenches
We conclude the Update as usual with some personal perspectives on being "people of faith-hope-love" in the Christian tradition who embrace "common ground for the common good." It is an inclusive approach which encourages active learning and collaboration with a diversity of colleagues on behalf of wellbeing for all people and the planet.
Important News--Just Released!
Note also the final outcome document from the UN Summit of the Future (20--23 September 2024)--The Pact for the Future. Consider the Applications section below in light of this major document--and vice versa! UN Secretary-General António Guterres opening remarks at the Summit (22 September 2024)--video HERE (12 minutes) and the text HERE. (excerpt below from the beginning of his remarks)
"We are here to bring multilateralism back from the brink. I called for this Summit to consider deep reforms to make global institutions more legitimate, fair and effective, based on the values of the UN Charter. I called for this Summit because 21st century challenges require 21st century solutions: frameworks that are networked and inclusive; and that draw on the expertise of all of humanity. I called for this summit because our world is heading off the rails – and we need tough decisions to get back on track.”
Suggested Applications--Making It Personal
- Review the brief excerpts from the five entries below--and the images in this Update--and reflect on how they apply to your life and work. Check out some of the full versions of these entries in the CORE Member Care weblog.
- Go deeper by reading more of the 25 entries (perhaps over the course of a few days). Some of the links no longer work yet the main points are still apparent.
- Your input. Are there any perspectives that you would adjust or challenge or other perspectives that you would add?
- Share this Update with your friends, colleagues, organization(s), and network(s). Discuss practical applications for your life and work.
See these recent Global Integration Updates:
Warm greetings,
Kelly and Michèle
MCAresources@gmail.com
Featured Resources
Being Global Integrators
Five Foundational Perspectives to Guide and Goad
The broken chair monument in front of (facing) the UN Geneva
“Global Integration (GI) is a framework, embedded within the missio Dei, for actively integrating our lives (connecting and contributing) with global realities (addressing the major issues facing humanity and promoting wellbeing) in light of our core values....Our international work as psychologists is based in Geneva. It includes regular interactions with personnel/events in the United Nations, World Health Organization, and international NGOs—and hence materials, perspectives, and cutting-edge news that we can share with colleagues.” Global Integrators--1 CORE Member Care (16 January 2015)
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PERSPECTIVE ONE: Global Integrators--5 (excerpts)
Global Disintegration--The Precarious Exploitation of People-Planet
Universal Declaration of Human Rights--shattered.
Monument on the border dividing Nicosia, Cyprus.
Image © 2012 KOD
"Global integration is what helps to safeguard us all from global disintegration. Global integrators, as defined in these entries, have crucial roles to play in counteracting disintegration as they “integrate their skills and values on behalf of the major problems facing humanity.”
Here are five realities, among others, that seriously undermine the world community’s efforts to promote wellbeing and sustainable development for all people, including the estimated 1.5 billion “multi-dimensional poor.” Perhaps at the core of all five of these disintegration realities is exploitation at all levels of society: fundamentally, people exploiting people.
1. Complacency—business as usual, denial, oblivion, someone else’s responsibility
2. Conflicts –protracted and new human security threats, interpersonal violence
3. Consumption—consumerism, lifestyle maintenance
4. Corruption—moral sickness at all levels, including cover ups, complicity and cowardice...
5. Climate change—related to the threat to many 'planetary boundaries.' "
PERSPECTIVE TWO: Global Integrators--11 (excerpts)
First Love--Values that Guide and Goad Global Integration
"Love never ceases"
The epigraph from our books in the Global Member Care series
"[Global Integration--GI] at its core involves values. Core values. Not just good actions or recognized codes of practice or even human rights standards. But rather the underlying, deeply held moral convictions that motivate action, foster commitment, and priortize goals. Values that guide us and which goad us as Global Integrators. Values that reflect both desire and duty--and delight! I like to think of the core of the core of these values as our First Love. It is our highest good and our core existential belief which shapes and supports us, our work, and our world. GI would never be the same without core values. And core values would never be the same without our First Love.
Listed [in the online entry] are five of my core of the core values--First Love--that guide me and goad me as a growing Global Integrator who is a committed Christian. It is helpful to make them explicit as they are deeply ingrained with who I am, my identity....Note though that values--my values--often get mixed up with other, well, lesser values (motives/commitments/goals...) which I don't usually like to admit or show to others and which I am sure are often under the radar of my own self-surveillance. Some of these less noble examples: self-interest (what's in it for me?), convenience (could it interfere with my lifestyle?), fear (what would people say or think?), getting attention and getting people to like me (am I really special and important?) etc. "
PERSPECTIVE THREE: Global Integrators—19 (excerpts)
The Global VaticUN--How Far Should We Go with Global Integration?
Pope Francis and the Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon
pose for photographs at the UN in New York, 25 September 2015. Image: AP
"The image above really got me thinking. Ban Ki-moon, the Secretary General of the United Nations, flanked by the flag of the Vatican, standing next to Pope Francis, the head of the Roman Catholic Church, flanked by the United Nations flag. I think I might have welcomed such a photo op in the past, including the recent past. Yet when it finally happened on 25 September 2015, I was not so sure. In fact, the image above, taken shortly before Pope Francis’ speech prior to the opening of the UN General Assembly in New York, left me somewhat disconcerted. And it did so in spite of my appreciating both men and their respective institutions (with their strengths and weaknesses).
So I asked myself, and all of us: How far can and should we go with global integration (GI) and as global integrators? Not just in terms of Personal GI, but also on the other end of the GI continuum, in a more macro way—Global GI?.…And so what about the VaticUN, or the Global VaticUN? The pros and cons? Good, bad, or something in-between? Laud it, loathe it, or leverage it for people and planet? There are many perspectives."
PERSPECTIVE FOUR: Global Integrators--10 (excerpts)
Global Integration Training--Pathways for Preparation
"We were recently asked three questions by a university student about preparation for work in GI. This entry includes the three questions and our answers, with applications mostly in our fields of mental health/member care and mostly in a North American context. We hope this material can be used as a springboard for discussion that could help stimulate and shape GI training in its many emerging forms. To begin...
There are many experiential paths for the foundational and ongoing training needed to do GI well. And since GI and GI related areas are still being developed, there is definitely no definitive word on which path or even paths to take! So think of GI training as involving a great variety or “pathways for preparation” which reflect the great variety of “pathways for practice...Question 1. What academic and experiential recommendations would you have for starting out in GI? Question 2. What are three of the main characteristics needed to be successful in this field?" Question 3. Is there anything about starting and working in Global Integration that you wish you had known at the beginning?"
Note also Global Integrators—21:
7Is for GIs--Seven Indicators for Global Integrators
"This entry identifies seven core indicators--seven I’s--that we think are important to help guide Global Integrators. There are surely more too! The seven indicators are qualitative markers rather than quantitative measures. Indicator 7, Imparting your life (love) links them all....Clarify your Interests, Involvements, and Influences; Cultivate your Interior, Integrity, and Inspirations; and Impart your life."
PERSPECTIVE FIVE: Global Integrators--23 (excerpts)
GI Partnership: At the Global Tables and in the Global Trenches
Image from the UN's Partnership for SDGs website
“One of the main challenges in working internationally [in Global Integration] is how best to convey important perspectives and arrive at consensus given the diversity of people/organizations around the world who are involved or want to be involved in global affairs. This challenge includes how to make room at the global table and in the global trenches for perspectives/agendas that are influenced by one’s own national, sectoral, institutional, and/or personal interests as well as one’s world view (and which may or may not contribute towards the common good). It is often pointed out by people of faith that the [UN Sustainable Development Goals—SDGs--are] highly secularized and do not include God and dependence on God in the picture. While this is true, it can be argued that this “omission” is a necessary reality given humanity’s diversity and the need to find common ground (vs it being humanistic arrogance or anti-religious)....
The [SDGs] in our view [are] a crucial rallying point for the world community to truly make a difference on the horrific conditions in which so many fellow humans live. Two stats in particular come to our minds: one billion urban slum dwellers; 1.5 billion people living in settings exposed to violence and conflict that threaten their physical and mental integrity....Having just come back from a trip that included connecting with urban refuges in the Middle East and the poor in Africa—people in desperate situations—we frankly do not have much patience for armchair criticisms that trivialize or denigrate the work of the humanitarian-development sector. We appreciate and affirm the combined efforts of the UN, governmental, and civil society sectors and its dedicated personnel who take risks and make sacrifices often at great personal cost. We do however appreciate informed critiques (including our own!) and know that there is much room for improvement and, at times, for confrontation within the humanitarian-development sector.”
Global Integrators
Perspectives to Guide and GoadClick HERE to see all 25 entries from CORE Member Care (2015)
Hanging out in the neighborhood--The UN Geneva
"One guiding question stands out as I have endeavored through these entries to help shape and support the emerging corps of Global Integrators. How can colleagues around the world practically apply the [Global Integration--GI] framework in various settings-sectors in order to connect relationally and contribute relevantly? In other words, how can GI People link their skills and values as forces for good in order to make a difference in our world?" Global Integrators--25, CORE Member Care (31 December 2015)
1. Background and Overview--Globalntegtration for Global Integtators
2. Trans-Practitioners—Working in the Trenches, the Towers, and Everything In-Between
3. GI People for the SDGs—Connecting and Contributing for Sustainable Development
4. Sector Connectors—Personal Reflections on Crossing Sectors
5. Global Disintegration—The Precarious Exploitation of People-Planet
6. LTPeople—People Loving People with Truth and Peace
7. Taking the Pulse—Global Reports
8. Global Intercessors—Praying for the World
9. Charting Your Course in the Missio Dei-Missio Mundi
10. GI Training—Pathways for Preparation
11. First Love—Values that Guide and Goad GI
12. Transforming the World—A Call for Personal Transformation
13. Staying Updated—Staying Outdated
14. GI Corelitions—Core Group of Colleagues-Coalition of Organizations
15. Global Innovators—Making Important and Sustainable Differences
16. The Preeminent Pantocrator—Connection vs Contention
17: Global Interns—Common Ground as Learners-Practitioners
18: Global Towers and Global Trenches
19. The Global VaticUN—How Far Should We Go with GI?
20. Globe-Bael and Globe-Babel—New Concepts and Old Cautions for Global Integrators
21. 7Is for GIs—Seven Indicators for Global Integrators
22. Faith-Based Foundations—Christian Worldview
23. GI Partnerships—At the Global Tables and in the Global Trenches
24. Resilience for Global Integrators--Staying the Course
25. Summary and Conclusion--Globalntegtration for Global Integtators
Personal Reflections
Being People of Faith-Hope-Love
As people of faith who practice Christian spirituality, we are committed to responsibly engage with others in the challenges facing our world, locally through globally, while holding firmly to our belief that we are in God's hands. We pray that God's purposes "will be done on earth as they are in heaven;" acknowledge that prayer, repentance, and relationship with God are key to human-planetary wellbeing; and live in hope for the time when God through Jesus Christ will decisively intervene in human history with equity--righteousness and justice--to restore all things. And in the meantime, we seek to embrace lifestyles of integrity that prioritize a deep, practical love for truth, peace, and people--and this includes being willing to acknowledge, resist, and confront evil in its many forms (starting with ourselves, etc.)
We do not want to further problematize our world's plight by focusing primarily on the negative. Rather we want to also promote the many examples of the good going forward, as people of integrity find common ground for the common good.
Finally, we want to highlight that the despair and disillusion that result from seemingly intractable problems like climate, conflicts, poverty, and corruption can also be quite positive. They can embody a crucial existential message about reality that can be "revisited"--explored and heeded--rather than simply "resisted." They can point us to Someone who is bigger than ourselves, the SDGs, humanity, and our world--the knowable, Eternal One who is both in and beyond space-time and who loves us all dearly.
The above thoughts build upon the Personal Reflections in Perils, Paralysis, Hope: Sustainable Development-Sustainable Destruction? (Global Integration Update, October 2022).
Member Care Associates
MCAresources@gmail.com
Member Care Associates Inc. (MCA) is a non-profit, Christian organization working internationally from Geneva and the USA. MCA's involvement in Global Integration focuses on the wellbeing and effectiveness of personnel and their organizations across sectors (e.g., mission, humanitarian, peace, health, and development sectors) as well as global mental health and integrity/anti-corruption, all with a view towards collaboratively supporting sustainable development for all people and the planet. Our services include consultation, training, research, resource development, and publications.
