Temple of Understanding 
Generation Equality
March 8, 2020 marked International Women's Day. Check out this impactful video statement from UN Women's Executive Director,  Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka.

#WomensDay 2020: UN Women Executive Director's message
#WomensDay 2020: UN Women Executive Director's message

"The Generation Equality Forum is taking place in the context of the  25th Anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the most comprehensive blueprint for achieving gender equality and women's rights, adopted by 189 countries in 1995. Despite some progress, real change has been slow, and no country has achieved gender equality. As the world faces unprecedented challenges, including climate crisis, rising inequality and threat to multilateralism, progress on girls' and women's rights is at risk."

UN Women has announced six catalytic Action Coalition themes that will be launched during Generation Equality Forum:

1. Gender-Based Violence
2. Economic justice and rights 
3. Bodily autonomy and sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR)
4. Feminist action for climate justice 
5. Technology and innovation for gender equality
6. Feminist movements and leadership 

Ahead of International Women's Day, UN Women shared remarks by United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Women and Power recently given at the New School in New York. We highly recommend this statement and leadership from the Secretary General.

This year's UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) has been suspended in light of the Coronavirus disease. For now the work has been moved forward through a brief procedural meeting. The NGO community pressed for rescheduling, for full participation of women from around the globe, rather than a localized meeting.
 
All parallel events have been canceled. The Temple of Understanding is looking for other ways to feature "Voices of Youth on How Far We Need to Go"  towards full gender equality.
 
For now, we of course recommend rigorous hand-washing and extra care for the health of all during this challenging time.

UN Commission for Social Development 
TOU Presents at the UN Commission for  Social Development  


TOU United Nations Representative Grove Harris recently prese nted at a side event for the United Nations 58th session of the Commission for Social Development on homelessness.   She used a minute of silence to remember those fleeing violence, those fleeing climate change and weather disruptions, as well as those living on city streets.  Her remarks addressed ecology as part of our human home, as well as the economy as management of our households.  She highlighted the work of Isabel Ortiz on alternatives to austerity, looking at the debt crisis in the larger economic picture of homelessness. 

New Report on Gender and Climate Change in  the  US
WEDO and the Sierra Club release new report 

Our colleagues at WEDO, working with the Sierra Club, have just published a report for free download:


" As the climate crisis accelerates, so does the need to understand its effects and how best to address them. We know that climate change is exacerbating already existing inequalities all across the world -  around race, gender and class   - and we know that these differentiated experiences with climate change are rarely addressed in policy. The Women's Environment and Development Organization and the Sierra Club just released a first-of-its kind report that reviews existing academic and scientific literature to further explore the gender-specific climate dynamics in the United States."

Bioneers Release New Reader


Our colleagues at Bioneers have just released a new reader on Intelligence in Nature.

"While Indigenous cultures all over the globe viewed (and often still view) the entire natural world as imbued with consciousness, it's only very recently that contemporary science has finally begun to question the dualist, Cartesian worldview that for the last few centuries has seen humans as our planet's only conscious agents, radically separate from nature."
 
The author Robin Kimmerer (Braiding Sweetgrass) is  included along with Paul Stamets and many more.
Call for Radical Revolution of Values 
Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival

"Drawing on the unfinished work of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1967/68 Poor People's Campaign, which called for a "revolution of values," Repairers of the Breach is working in partnership with the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice, the Popular Education Project, and hundreds of local and national partners, to lead the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. This multi-state movement has emerged from more than a decade of work by grassroots community and religious leaders, organizations, and movements fighting to end systemic racism, poverty, the war economy, environmental destruction, and other injustices."

   

World Health Organization 
Updates on the Coronovirus (Covid-19) pandemic


2020 is a pivotal year for equality, for women, for the climate, for justice, and most immediately for health.  

The World Health Organization offers rolling updates on the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic and calls for:

"Prevention. Preparedness. Public health. Political leadership. And most of all, people.  We're in this together, to do the right things with calm and protect the citizens of the world. It's doable."

Connect

Like us on Facebook  Follow us on Twitter  View our videos on YouTube  Visit our blog

Support

undefined

Visit us on the Web