OUR GLOBAL CHALLENGES
And Human Opportunities
Babel is inspired into action by a number of global challenges we see individuals and communities facing around the world.
GLOBAL CHALLENGE #1: HOME IN THE TIME OF COVID
The pandemic is having massive implications on OUR CITIES and OUR SELVES. The entire globe has been figuring our a new order of what community means and while loneliness, health inequalities, and values surrounding work, have been brought into sharp relief.
so·ci·e·ty: the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community.
GLOBAL CHALLENGE #2: SEARCHING FOR CITIZENSHIP IN THE PSYCHE OF THE CITY
The world is on the move, either displaced by wars, economic shocks, climate change, or in search of social and economic development for themselves and their families.
60% of urban populations will be under the age of 18 by 2030. This youth bulge in cities around the world leaves many young people searching for purpose, meaning, and hope while finding agency in their life journey.
While cities around the globe try and manage the complexity of urbanization, the levels of urban poverty continues to confound city systems and often finds its roots in structural inequalities of societies.
As Jane Jacobs explained in The Death and Life of Great American Cities, "lively, diverse, intense cities contain the seeds of their own regeneration, with energy enough to carry over for problems and needs outside themselves.”
With the right tools and support, all communities have the capacity to invest in their development, and establish substantive "citizenship" both in their "inner" cities and material cities.
GLOBAL CHALLENGE #3: HEALING INSIDE OUT IN A PROBLEM SOLVING WORLD
Journeys of healing and personal transformation face contradictions in a fast-paced, industrialized, problem solving world.
Although the medical and pharmaceutical models have provided many benefits, often true healing requires more than a transactional model.
What people often need comes from the benefits of self expression and being heard. Therefore, finding people to listen and places to be heard, without trying to fix, can provide places of deep healing.
We need to integrate and invent languages to talk about our "inner" cities across institutions of care.
All perspectives matter, and none should be discounted.
GLOBAL CHALLENGE #4: HEALING INTERGENERATIONAL TRAUMA
Over 75% of mental health conditions manifesting by age 24. Suicide is the second leading cause of death in 15-29-year-olds.
There is increasing attention on the impacts of social and economic determinants, in addition to biological, on mental health. Take for example, the legacies of "redlining" in the US which has significant generational impacts and is finally being studied and recognized by the US Federal Reserve Bank.
Larger social upheavals also weigh on the collective psyche of our communities, including racism, wars, violence, climate change, even the trauma of some psychiatric care.
Understanding ourselves more deeply, and facilitating methods of community reparation and healing, can enable us to break cycles of abuse, poverty and neglect.
GLOBAL CHALLENGE #5: FINDING YOUR HEART IN A HYPER CEREBRAL WORLD
Our values around independence and interdependence is creating a culture of individualism, which is taking hold around the world as economies globalize and adopt western value systems.
Attention and awareness on matters of the heart, and emotional intelligence, is diminishing in our development pathways. Many of these factors are leading to new levels of stress, anxiety and loneliness.
Barret writes in How Emotions Are Made, “You might think that in everyday life, the things you see and hear influence what you feel, but it’s mostly the other way around: What you feel alters your sight and hearing,”
What if we valued our inner wealth as much as seeking material wealth?
Contact us to learn more.