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• Listening to Global Voices

  j_ling 12:36 am on August 20, 2010 | 0 comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: collaboration (2), Global Voices (2), innovation, journalism (3), TED (2), women, world (5)

  I recently attended a round­table hosted by the Asia Pacific Foun­da­tion of Canada for a 25@25 dis­cus­sion. The dis­cus­sion emerged from the 25@25 video com­pe­ti­tion as a forum for par­tic­i­pants and part­ners to share their expe­ri­ences and exam­ine future ways to engage youth in pro­mot­ing Canada-Asia relations.

  The video com­pe­ti­tion was a huge suc­cess and what I thought to be a really cre­ative way of engag­ing youth to think about issues about Canada-relations. The issues that came out of the con­test, har­ness the col­lec­tive capa­bil­ity and genius that would spur growth and research direc­tion of the foun­da­tion. Some of the themes that emerged included: Peo­ple as a resource, rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the media, self-identity and green tech­nol­ogy exchanges.

  “Capa­bil­i­ties to develop new kinds of rela­tion­ships, sense impor­tant devel­op­ments, add value and turn nascent net­worked knowl­edge into com­pelling value are becom­ing the bread and but­ter of wealth cre­ation and success.”

  - Wiki­nomics, Don Tapscott

  On a another level, it was a great learn­ing oppor­tu­nity for me to step into an area and net­work of which I was not really con­nected to, all because I stepped out of my net­work cir­cle. It reminded me a great TED video by Ethan Zuck­er­man on Lis­ten­ing to Global Voices. He spoke about how even though the web con­nects the whole world, we really end up being stuck in our own web bub­ble rather than lis­ten­ing to what the world has to share.

  So in the spirit of col­lab­o­ra­tion, here are my favourite sites on lis­ten­ing to global voices:

  1) OpenIDEO: An online plat­form where peo­ple col­lab­o­rate to design bet­ter for social good. It’s a won­der­ful dynamic resource on tack­ling global resources and I’m going to sub­mit a solu­tion to one of their prob­lems soon!

  2) World Pulse: A global net­work that broad­casts and unites women’s voices from all over to cre­ate a pow­er­ful voice for change. What I love about this is not only is it a print and web mag­a­zine but it’s also an inter­ac­tive com­mu­nity newswire, PulseWire, where women can col­lab­o­rate and con­nect to solve global problems.

  3) Global Voices: An inter­na­tional com­mu­nity of blog­gers who report on dif­fer­ent global issues with top­ics rang­ing from arts to pol­i­tics. It’s an amaz­ing resource and my fav fea­ture is the dif­fer­ent lan­guages that you can read the web­site in. (I occa­sion­ally flip the switch over to Indone­sian, just cause! And it’s so inter­est­ing to read the same arti­cle both in Eng­lish and in another language!)

  4) paper.li: This is a lit­tle dif­fer­ent than the above three plat­forms as it really is more a snap­shot of the things/links that you tweet about, but I love the cre­ative for­mat and I find it super inter­est­ing the way it picks up on the dif­fer­ent things I’m browse through online. Below is a snap­shot of what it looks like and I thought I’ll share this one just for fun!

  

  So..what global voices have you been lis­ten­ing to?

   

• The F-word

  j_ling 11:28 pm on January 10, 2010 | 0 comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: empowerment, women

  Recent events in Malaysia has been really got me won­der­ing on how words evolve, their usage, and how pow­er­ful the mean­ing of some words, that it can evoke such strong emo­tions in peo­ple. Cur­rently in Malaysia, there has been great dis­putes over the usage of the word “Allah”, the issue being whether or not Chris­tians are allowed to use it. Read the arti­cle here.

  How­ever, I’m not going to get into all of that today, as what it really got me won­der­ing about is: The F-Word.

  No, not the four let­ter one! The other one.

  Fem­i­nism. Feminist.

  It has been a word that has been widely dis­puted, cam­paigned for, ide­olo­gies have been formed around it, move­ments have been cre­ated, con­cepts of anti-;black-;post-;pro-; have been formed, and its mean­ings often con­tested. It’s a word that we don’t hear very often these days. Often replaced with an increas­ingly pop­u­lar­ized term: women empow­er­ment. I don’t blame this trend. It doesn’t have asso­ci­a­tions of a strong ( per­haps even neg­a­tive con­no­ta­tion) past and it has the word “power” in it. Always a good bet But to under­stand why the increas­ing dis-popularity in the word, here’s a brief time­line of fem­i­nism (start­ing from where it really began to pick up):

  Mid-1800s: Used to refer the “qual­i­ties of females”

  1892: First Inter­na­tional Women’s Con­fer­ence, Paris: Start reg­u­lar usage of term for a belief in and advo­cacy of equal rights for women based on the idea of the equal­ity of the sexes.

  Early 20th: Term rooted in the mobi­liza­tion for women suf­frage in Europe and US

  1920s: First Wave of fem­i­nism: To achieve basic polit­i­cal rights

  Late 1960s — Early 1970s: Sec­ond Wave of fem­i­nism: Fight for greater equal­ity across the board — in edu­ca­tion, work­place and home.

  Early 1990s: Third Wave Fem­i­nism: Arose as response to cri­tiques of the 2nd wave. Empha­sized “iden­tity” as a site of gen­der strug­gle with a post-structuralist take on gen­der and sexuality.

  Source: Stan­ford Ency­clo­pe­dia of Philosophy

  

  As his­tory has gra­ciously shown, the con­cept of fem­i­nism itself has evolved from as sim­ple descrip­tion demon­strat­ing fem­i­nine qual­i­ties to a full blown move­ment. The term began to pick up when it tried to cap­ture the com­mit­ment to wom­ens’ equal rights. But is it really suf­fi­cient enough to cap­ture women’s oppression/position that cur­rently extends into the struc­ture of our soci­eties, cul­ture and perceptions?

  I believe that given the con­tro­ver­sies of the term, and con­tro­ver­sial social move­ments, the usage of the word has either taken a very taboo or pow­er­ful con­no­ta­tion. Taboo in a sense that women organization’s do not call them­selves fem­i­nist ( often replac­ing it with empow­er­ment) but pow­er­ful, in a sense that when used, the usage is noticed. For exam­ple, the Dalai Lama in the recent Van­cou­ver Peace Sum­mit call­ing him­self a feminist.

  “I call myself a fem­i­nist. Isn’t that what you call some­one who fights for women’s rights?” — Dalai Lama

  It is tempt­ing to think that in order to avoid the “some­what” neg­a­tive asso­ci­a­tions with the word “fem­i­nist”, we try to best artic­u­late our beliefs in women, with other buzz words like “empow­er­ment” to cap­ture the range of mean­ings fem­i­nism brings.

  The truth is, fem­i­nism has taken on a term to cap­ture views on jus­tice for women, and fem­i­nists are com­mit­ted to bring­ing about social change to end injus­tice against women.

  So, what does fem­i­nism mean to you?

   

• Vancouver Peace Summit

  j_ling 6:00 am on July 4, 2009 | 0 comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: change (10), inspiration (7), motivation (4), peace, Vancouver (2), women

  Some­thing excit­ing is hap­pen­ing in Van­cou­ver on Sep­tem­ber 27th-29th 2009!!! Van­cou­ver is host­ing a Peace Sum­mit: Nobel Lau­re­ates in Dia­logue. The Peace Sum­mit will be hold­ing 5 ses­sions cen­tered around World Peace, Cre­ativ­ity, Well-being and Women & Peace-building.

  The main speak­ers of the event would be World Peace through Per­sonal Peace @ UBC Chan Cen­tre:

  

  1) The Dalai Lama “When we have inner peace, we can be at peace with those around us.”

  2) Desmond Tutu …is a South African cleric and activi­tist who won a Nobel Peace Prize in his fight against apartheid. He also won the Albert Schweitzer prize for Human­i­tar­i­an­ism and the Gandhi Peace Price. Desmond Tutu cam­paigns for human rights, the oppressed, AIDS, homo­pho­bia, poverty and racism. Tutu is widely regarded as “South Africa’s moral con­science” and has been described by Nel­son Man­dela, as ” the voice of the voice­less.”

  3)  Matthieu Ricard — http://www.matthieuricard.org/ …is a Bud­dhist monk, author and pho­tog­ra­pher in Nepal. Dubbed as “the hap­pi­est per­son in the world” by sci­en­tists, Ricard’s books mainly cen­ter around the mean­ing and ful­fill­ment of hap­pi­ness. He is also deeply engaged in the effect of mind train­ing of the brain at Prince­ton and Berke­ley. Ricard received the French National Order of Merit for his human­i­tar­ian work in the East.

  4)  Eck­hart Tolle … is a Canadian-German spir­i­tual teacher, author and moti­va­tional speaker. He is most famous for his book “The Power of Now”, which empha­sizes not being caught up in thoughts of the past and future and being aware of the present moment. It has been a NY Time best­beller, and listed as one of Oprah’s favourite book. Since, he has pub­lished “A New Earth” explor­ing the struc­ture of the human ego and how it acts to dis­tract peo­ple from their present experiences.

  Other notable speak­ers are:

  Co-Recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize Mairead Maguire and Betty Williams for their work in Peace­ful res­o­lu­tions in North­ern Ire­land, Nobel Peace Prize Jody Williams for her work in ban­ning land­mines, Ken Robin­son (Cre­ativ­ity expert), Daniel Siegel, Kim Camp­bell and Ash­ley Judd.

  Tick­ets start at $100 for the main event and $60 for the others.

  The event can be viewed here. Tick­ets can be pur­chased here.

  See YOU there!

  Note: Bios of speak­ers and pic­tures are taken and para­phrased (bios) from Wikipedia