Integral Without Borders Sangha Call

Integral Nepal - Integrating Tradition, Globalization and Sustainability.

The next Integral Without Borders Community Call will be on May 31st, 2014 on Integral Nepal - Integrating Tradition, Globalization, and Sustainability.

As you may know, our intention with these IWB sangha calls is to co-create the kind of 'integral community' we want, one that is deep and wise in its content, supportive in its interpersonal connections, and world-centric (even kosmo-centric!) in it's moral embrace. Each call will focus on an aspect of integral practice in development with certain practitioners leading on these topics and with participants contributing examples from their integral projects.

Saturday, May 31st, 2014, 9-10:30am Pacific Time. (Find your time zone here).

Register: If you intend to attend, please be sure to drop us an email, so that we know you're intending to be on the call and also so that we can send you the audio clip afterwards.

How: The conference call line is a North American number, but it can be accessed by calling the number via skype.
Conference Dial-in Number: (605) 475-4810
Participant Access Code: 988715#

Price: For now, while we fine-tune these sangha calls, they will be by donation.

Thank you! We appreciate your support.

Topic: The call will be on Integral Nepal - Integrating Tradition, Globalization, and Sustainability, and will be lead by Sushant Shrestha. Sushant is a native of Kathmandu, Nepal and an integral researcher with a background in strategy consulting with degrees in Management and Finance. He has trained with Susanne Cook-Greuter, Ed. D. on Leadership Maturity Framework and its organizational application, and with Monica Sharma, MD and Vernice Solimar, Ph.D. in whole systems transformation and leadership development. He has a M.A. in Integral Psychology from JFK University, and is an active member of Integral Without Borders.

Sushant has been visioning an integral development for Nepal for a long time. His on-going inquiry for Nepal is around how to honour and integrate the cultural uniqueness and traditions of the country, with the emergence of modernity. Rather that globalization running amok and obliterating Nepal's rich culture and history, how could the benefits of modernity be integrated and it's drawbacks reigned in?

This question is actually one that rises in practically all developing nations. Globalization does bring education, improved hygiene and sanitation, medicine, transportation systems, income generation, and more. However globalization also ends up manifesting in ways that are out of sync with the culture and consciousness of a people, erodes the integrity of the local and bioregional environment, and literally becomes more a long-term problem than a solution. How to navigate this path to and through modernity -- including it's positive aspects but limiting it's negative ones -- is truly THE question in many nations around the world.

And it is usually civil society who really ponders this question and advocates for a more adequate response. Which means that NGOs -- as the main heralds of civil society -- play an enormously important role in how a country transitions through this tricky terrain. Many primarily green (postmodern) NGOs simply vilify modernity, seeing only the negative impacts of globalization. And yet they often do so having actually benefited from it (through education, greater income levels, gender equality, improved health, etc.). And so not only is their stance a performative contradiction, but it is also not ultimately useful for the country's development. We need pathways to and through globalization, towards greater sustainability, not a complete denial of it as a stage of development.

Sushant has been considering this for so long, and has an integral approach sketched out for how to address this, primarily through building the capacity of Nepali NGOs. He and Gail Hochachka submitted a proposal to MetaIntegral Foundation a few months ago for a small grant of $10,000 for implementing integral research and capacity building work in Nepal, towards a integral sustainable development of the country. They heard yesterday that it was approved (read more in the document below).

Nepal is among the poorest and least developed countries in the world, with almost one-quarter of its population living below the poverty line. Several development projects are underway with a Eurocentric worldview, which radically imbalances the cultural stability and social system of Nepal and contributes to environmental degradation. It is proposed that an integral approach would contribute to a more sustainable development, due to its unique ability to integrate insights and methods from the whole spectrum of consciousness, including traditional, modern, and pluralistic worldviews.
 
The objective of the Integral Nepal Project (iNepal) is to develop a sustainable organizational and leadership approach using integral action research, contributing to the transformation of NGOs in Nepal. The Integral Nepal team will work with their partner NGO, Sagarmatha Asahaya Sewa Sangh (SASS), an organization that empowers women and children as young as one year old who are rejected by their family because of socio-economic reasons and hence are deprived of basic needs for survival. They intend to 1) assess the Action Logics of the team and the strengths and weakness in each quadrant-dimension of the organization, then 2) engage the most significant of these flow-points or gaps in integral capacity building workshops, and finally 3) design an evaluation framework to assess changes in all quadrants across time. In their brief contact with SASS over the past two years, they have seen some improvement in leadership skills and cultural awareness using Cook-Greuter’s developmental model and trainings based on AQAL model, and are confident in a more in-depth engagement will contribute to the overall effectiveness of this NGO, as a role model for other Nepali NGOs in the future.

Please join us on May 31st to explore the nuances of this universal question, in the context of this particular project in Nepal!
 

Up-Coming IWB Events

Integral Yoga and Social Change
IWB Retreat with Sally Kempton
Vancouver area
Sept 26-27, 2014
Save-the-date; details to come soon.