Happy New Year

Lately I have been catching myself making greetings like, 'Have a Merry Christmas!' and then remembering that I live in one of the most diverse cities in the World - with a rich woven myriad of creeds. I have come to the understanding that a lovely, and universal greeting to recall is the New Year. Although the calenders of some cultures vary in its time, all people understand and celebrate renewal each year. Here is Happy New Year greetings in a few languages from around the world.

Happy New Year!

سنة سعيدة - Kul 'am wa antum bikhair
Arabic

Shana Tova ראש השנה
Rosh Hashanah, the 'head of the Year' is Jewish New Year.

Bonne année
French

Feliz año nuevo
Spanish

'С Новым Годом! - s Novym godom
Russian

新年快乐

Mandarin
Chinese Lunar New Year/Spring Festival -


Heri za Mwaka Mpya
Swahili

Our Most Untapped Resource

"Educate a boy, and your educate and individual.
Educate a girl, and you educate a community. "
- African proverb via Greg Mortensen


"When women thrive, all of society benefits, and succeeding generations are given a better start in life. "
- Kofi Annan


"Women hold up half the sky."
- Mao Tse-Tung via 'Half the Sky' by Nicholas D. Kristof


*All photos by me, Rebecca Thom (Tanzania, Togo and Ghana)

Give a Little, It Will Mean A Lot

Emilie from Chad lives in the Bronx with her husband Bour

Another organization I can wholly support this holiday season is the work and efforts of the IRC. The International Rescue Committee works with refugees who have fled violence and persecution in their home countries. A fortunate few are granted sanctuary in the United States, where the IRC helps families resettle in a world very different from their own.

• We prepare adults to become self-sufficient by offering job skills training, English classes, job placement assistance, cultural orientation to life in America and practical advice including help negotiating public transportation and navigating financial systems.

• We invest in children by making sure they enroll in school and have access to tutoring, mentoring and recreational activities.

• We strengthen families through parenting classes and counseling. And we ensure every refugee has access to health services.

• We provide emergency housing assistance while refugees work to secure employment so that homelessness is never an option.

Give a holiday gift that helps refugees in your local community:

Your donation will support these efforts and will help newly resettled refugees in your community move beyond surviving and start thriving. And, when you choose one of the following gifts in honor of friends and loved ones by December 15, IRC will send them a personalized holiday card in your name.

A $25 gift can provide a backpack full of supplies for a refugee child starting school in the U.S.

A $75 gift can provide essential household supplies for a newly resettled refugee family including blankets, sheets and cooking utensils.

A $150 gift can provide emergency housing assistance to a refugee family.

A $300 gift can provide job training to help a refugee woman become a certified home daycare provider.

Conscious Christmas Shopping

I live in New York City - Where the month of November is but a gearing up for Black Friday, in a country where people leave their homes before digesting their turkey in order to get in line for the grand sales of the next day.

Yet, our country is edging towards a 10% unemployment rate. Couldn't we be doing more this season than just dashing for the next sale?

Here are just a few sustainable initiatives which have sparked my attention this Holiday Season, among others:

- Heifer International - You can give a Heifer, sheep or flock of ducks along with many other livestock, which provides someone in a developing nation with means to a sustainable living.

- Kate Spade and Women for Women International have created a partnership in Afghanistan and Bosnia, making quality goods while providing high wage jobs.

Both of these Afghan-made knitwear products can be bought in Kate Spade Boutiques in New York.

Ten-Thousand Villages also has goods from all over the world using Fair Trade Practices.

The World in 2011

This week I had the utmost pleasure of volunteering for The Economist's Annual Conference: The World in 2011 in New York City. In attendance were great thinkers and architects from disciplines across the board, and viewpoints voiced from around the world. Between speakers the two screens on either side of the stage played videos from citizens in Moscow, Shanghai, Jerusalem and Antarctica giving their predictions for the world in 2036.

Although some of the talks were dismal in news, a few speakers really caught my attention. Here I will only name two.

The first was a panel of remarkable women,

Mu Sochua, Member of Parliament, Cambodia,
Zainab Salbi, Founder and CEO, Women for Women International
and Kah Walla, Director, Strategies S.A.

This talk made up the 'Women's Economy,' the most untapped, and fastest growing sector. The resounding message was clear; Women are taking the helm. Marcia Reynolds recently blogged a similar mantra in the Huffington Post titled, The Decade of the Woman is Upon us. She writes;

"In addition to the powerful worldwide consumer force that women represent today, factors such as urban migration, increased access to education, mobile technologies, micro-credit and low-market entry costs will create a global "she-conomy" where over one billion women will enter the workforce or start businesses by 2020."

Mu Sochua started her predictions naming women, the "she-economy" as the way forward in 2011. " As she as in economy, and she as in business," she said. Zainab reiterated, marking the need for inclusion for women not only in the micro- but also the macro- levels. Women need markets that are provided by the private sector. For example, Kate Spade, who has started outsourcing to a community of Afghan women, creating jobs while also responding to the consumer's demand to information and fair production. This is the way forward.

Girls in Kigoma, Tanzania, 2010.

Click here for more about the Women for Women and Kate Spade Partnership in Afghanistan.

Another deeply interesting speaker was Nick Shore, Senior Vice President of Strategic Consumer Insights and Research at MTV. His research of late has consisted of deep inquiry into the Millenial generation. The Y-gens are the single largest generational cohort in the history of the US, he started. They're rather narcissistic, he described, and yet they are the most powerful influencing factor propelling change. And research suggests that change is already here.

Take the nuclear family for example. In the past the configuration was the children radiating from the parents at the nucleus. Now he said, the children are designated the nucleus of the family. The children have become the main focus, and the family now operated more like a democracy, or 'peer-ocracy' than traditional family structures of the past.

Kids are living in an era of 'peer-ticipation' and 'peer-iarchy,' where everything is broadcast to friends and family. Youth have a voice more than ever, Shore said.

As social interface holds no boundaries this also means that increasingly youth do not find the time or space to reflect or spend time alone. I believe this new social paradigm will require changes in schools, to provide students with opportunities to quieten their brains from all of the information and chatter. Learning meditation or some other mind-body conditioning seems a healthy way for students to have the opportunity to check in with themselves, not to mention their bodies.

Another fantastic conference from The Economist community.

Why I'm loving 'Stones into Schools'

"Haji Ali spoke. ‘If you want to thrive in Baltistan, you must respect our ways. The first time you share tea with a Balti, you are a stranger. The second time you take tea, you are an honored guest. The third time you share a cup of tea, you become family, and for our family, we are prepared to do anything, even die. Doctor Greg, you must take time to share three cups of tea. We may be uneducated but we are not stupid. We have lived and survived here for a long time.’ That day, Haji Ali taught me the most important lesson I’ve ever learned in my life. We Americans think you have to accomplish everything quickly…Haji Ali taught me to share three cups of tea, to slow down and make building relationships as important as building projects. He taught me that I had more to learn from the people I work with than I could ever hope to teach them."

— Greg Mortenson 'Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace... One School at a Time'

Photo from 'Three Cups of Tea'

Haji Ali was the Pakistani village elder that found and hosted Mortenson when he became lost after a failed attempt at climbing K2. The respect and integrity of this first relationship became the foundation for Greg's vision to help build schools in the far reaches of Pakistan, and eventually Afghanistan. Greg understood that in order to work with the communities he would have to build deep relationships, understand the complex tribal customs and languages and employ local members of the community. His team in Pakistan, the dirty dozen, he calls them, is made up of numerous different tribes and professional backgrounds. Some are educated, others are former Taliban members. Their common goal is to help build schools for children.

Greg Mortenson's NGO, the Asia Institute has built schools, and community-led projects throughout deeply rural areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan. His story, told in both adult and children's versions of 'Three Cups of Tea' and the more recent, 'Stones into Schools,' accounts how balanced education is actually a mode of peace building, reducing the occurrence of students getting recruited into extremist Madrassas.

Mortenson understands the importance of working respectfully with local custom. His contracts with new projects always commence with the Islamic prelude,

'Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim'

(In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the beneficial)

Then, he underlines why they must build a school (i.e. Usually because the government has not provided one). 'The Central Asia Institute will provide building materials, skilled labor, school supplies, and help with teachers' salary and training,' he writes,
while, 'the local community, under local governance agrees to provide free land, subsidized manual labor and support for teachers.'

Then, they promise that the exact terms will be worked out after a jirga is convened. A jirga is a traditional council session, a formal gathering of elders sitting in a circle on a carpet, or under a tree, and as a rule the participants are forbidden from adjourning until consensus has been achieved around a decision. This means that it is only with the full support of a community that a project will get underway.
,
Other than his adept character, ceaseless work and courage, Mortenson understands the importance of sitting with the village elders, of taking the time to do it right. His approach has allowed him to build hundreds of schools in one of the most removed and dangerous regions of the world.

It is a lesson in Peace.