INTERNATIONAL INITIATIVES

Rights and Humanity

Rights and Humanity is an International Charity. Established in 1986 by its current President, Julia Hausermann, its purpose is to address the plight of people living in poverty and social isolation, through the promotion and realisation of, human rights and responsibilities. Its mission is to promote respect for Human Rights and observance of the principles of humanity, and to ensure their realisation as a basis for human development. Thus they advocate the use of human rights principles and legal norms as a coherent framework for poverty elimination, for the realisation of sustainable human development, and the achievement of an equitable international environment.

Its unique power to contribute toward the end of poverty is its ability to fill the gap between intentional government policy and judicial punishment. It is an implementer that asks not ‘how can we feed them?’ but ‘why are they starving?’ It is a better question, which gives rise to a sustainable long term solution.
Society is moving from a state of independence, which is always about being ‘in reaction to’, to a state of interdependence, which is about being ‘in relationship with’.

The desire for independence mirrors the urge of the growing adult on his/her journey to maturity. It is a ‘teenage’ state of testing boundaries to discover ‘who they are’, and then coming to conclusions about where they fit within society. The development of the individual is therefore akin to the development of Nation States. The interdependent state, such as the one we are currently entering as a society, is a more adult state, when we have discovered who we are, realised we can learn from others, and now recognise that our higher purpose is served by working in collaborative goodwill rather than in conflict with others.

Thus the Nation State is thus transcended through a deeper understanding of our common vision. Rights and Humanity will become an ever-more important international initiative in terms of how we relate to each other and to the planet.

Lawrence chairs the development committee.

Foundation for Conscious Evolution

Its current Director Barbara Marx Hubbard created the FCE. It has a profound understanding of cosmogenesis, which is the continuing unfolding of the story of creation through "big bang" 15 billion years ago, through the creation of the solar system and earth 4 billion years ago, and the subsequent growing complexity of life on earth. She explains our current apparent crisis as a birth. Thus as our oceans become more poisoned, our air more polluted, and our earth degraded, denuded of nutrients, deforested and unsustainably exploited , it is easy to become concerned, if not alarmed. The FCE proposes that if that was all you could see you would be blind to the awesome level of breakthrough that society is experiencing contemporaneously with this collapse.

FCE is created for and resolved to, monitor these breakthroughs in all areas of science, business, spirituality, economics, education, health etc. Thus we become able to join up the dots by connecting the breakthroughs, sharing them across the whole system when they happen, and supporting them with resources. We thereby not only become conscious of the direction our evolution is taking, but we get the awesome privilege of being able to catalyse it.

Lawrence was a Trustee of the Foundation for many years, and is now an advisor.

Be The Change

"Be The Change" is currently an annual event held in central London UK. This three day event is regularly attended by about 1,000 people. It is currently encouraging similar events internationally.

It is the brainchild of Sir John Whitmore who created the May Lecture series. It brings together speakers from the worlds of business, medicine, science, economics, sociology, and spirituality. These speakers are always inspirational, having made major differences, not only in their own lives, but also in the lives of others and society in general. In all cases they have become in Ghandi's terms "the change they want to see in the world."

The conference is fully participatory with significant periods of open space and "global café" type dialogue. It attracts people from business and the professions and all those who want to create a world "that works for everyone."

Lawrence is one of the core organisers.