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A Compassionate World

The vision of Vesper Society is of a compassionate world that protects human dignity and enhances human potential. Yearning and acting to bring about a compassionate world takes on added urgency in these new times. Vesper again affirms its commitment to creating opportunities for people and organizations to reach this vision.

In the last six weeks, Vesper projects have created opportunities for dialog and learning around the globe. Early in September, just before the September 11 tragedy, we hosted a conference of 22 Young Leaders from the European Union and the United States. This conference was a follow-up to the earlier conference on the Transatlantic Partnership: The Responsibility of the US and the EU for Stability, Security and Peace in the World, held at Loccum Academy in Germany. The young leaders, experts in policy analysis, foreign affairs, military planning, and justice and peace, gathered to prepare a declaration for designing a common future. Little did anyone know how significant the purposes of this gathering would be, or how important their continuing work is to the hope for a compassionate world.
While the young leaders were meeting in California, in Chicago Vesper convened the final session of Year One of our project supporting Faith-based Health Leadership. Sixteen persons from health care institutions in the United States completed the program and moved to implement newly learned skills in local health care institutions. Three weeks later a second cohort of 15 health leaders met for the first time to start another round of training in leadership skills incorporating faith-based values.

Far to the South, Vesper's convening was occurring in Montevideo, Uruguay. As part of our Network 21 project, leaders from 15 grass-roots human service organizations in South America gathered to learn how to use electronic communication to plan programs and learn from one another. Training staff encourage cross-regional communication, in their case especially with Central American organizations, to facilitate global awareness.

Next week Vesper will convene eight young people from around the world to begin working on creating online communities of young people. The eight people will work together to create a toolkit designed specifically for young people communicating via the Internet. The young people will then return to their own countries and try out the toolkit by forming an online community appropriate for their particular region and needs.

We trust that our efforts to put our vision statement into action will help lead all of us to the compassionate world we desire.

Vesper Society is a private operating foundation with programs in leadership, health, and Central America. Our mission is to create opportunities for individuals, groups, and organizations to apply moral and ethical values in decision making on social and economic issues.