Each newly planted tree is a symbol for climate justice.
Children speak directly to our hearts. Their message: it's child's play.
When an entire generation pulls together, practically anything is possible.
Prompted by the resonance that Felix sparked, the Global Marshall Plan Foundation together with various partners launched a learning concept tailored for educators and students, which through 2010 should teach at least 1,000 German and Austrian children around Felix's age to plant tress and bring the vision of climate justice a little closer to home for people.
Their message: We children want to play a role in the shaping of the future.
Prof. Peter Kruse and his team from nextpractice support the participation process and have designed a website for the student initiative. Dr. Maiken Winter, a collaborator on Al Gore’s Climate Project, is responsible for the educational elements. Oliver Strasser coordinates the partners. Timothy Klofski is the liaison for students and children.
Prince Albert and Felix are agreed that each one of their trees should be a symbol for climate justice.
Monday, September 23 in Munich at the invitation of the Foreign Affairs Association Felix described his vision of climate justice to the 200 guests. 
Prince Albert II honored Felix with the 'Needle of Monaco'.
Successful Avina networking meeting in Rio den Janeiro.
In Rio de Janeiro from 29 September to 1 October, 56 leaders from different organizations mainly from Latin America met on invitation of Avina with some European organizations. Among the European organizations were the Bertelsmann Foundation and the Global Marshall Plan Foundation.
It was an excellent networking opportunity. We are positive that from this meeting fruitful cooperations with respect to the Coalition for the Global Commons and the participation platform will stem. An expert from Brazil Augusto de Franco (www.redes.org.br) explained the functioning of civil society networks and netweaving. All participants agreed on the vision of a global network for the civil society.
HRH Prince Hassan Interview on "The Leaders"
In a 32 minute interview, HRH Prince el Hassan bin Talal of Jordan spoke of the necessity of bridging regional commons and global commons and emphasizing an "anthro-centric" rather than "securo- or petro-centric" – in other words a more humanitarian approach. Covering such topics as migration, environment, religion, the heart of his message was "people participation". That it is necessary to have effective citizenship, move away from tribalism and more towards pluralist regionalism.
HRH Prince Hassan was interviewed by Yuli Ismartono last year for "The Leaders" a project implemented by the Sasakawa Peace Foundation (SPF) to bring a in depth perspective from the Asian region.
For the full interview please refer to this link.
Prince Hassan addresses CARE UK on the EUMENA Water and Energy Community
"Humanitarian aid that treats symptoms while ignoring or obscuring causes is worse than no aid at all, for it propagates the idea of inevitability. The public comes to believe that human suffering is inevitable, and so inured, ceases to care about it."
Prince Hassan spoke at a Care UK Conference urging the European Union, the Middle East, and North Africa (or EUMENA) regions to lead the way in non-partisan cooperation on reclaiming the commons as a new approach to fight poverty, ensure human security, etc.
In his analysis on the current world and looking at the effects through globalization, no effective governance on a global scale has developed to handle the issues that we as a world community are facing. Local commons as well as global commons are threatened and it is time to reevaluate how face those challenges.
For the full speech, follow this link.
Global Marshall Plan supporter Zeki Ergas maps out a restructuring of the global economy
In the new issue of Media for Freedom, Zeki Ergas (writer, scholar and social activist) calls our attention to the need to change global economics as usual. The disproportionate dominance of power held by those with ever exceptional levels of wealth is a clear signal that drastic measures need to taken by the rest of the global citizenry. Ergas' article gives a brief explanation of why and how.
"A new political economy is needed to deal with the new challenges faced by the world; in other words, the old political economy has lost its relevance, has done its time and is not working anymore. It must be replaced by a new political economy so that a better world that is sustainable can be built."
"Let us not fool ourselves. Given human nature, selfishness, greed, envy, etc., the powers that be of the rich and developed countries will not adopt policies and strategies that are needed to establish a new political economy. Or, rather, it will be done in small doses, too little too late, and the world and the planet will risk destruction. So, it is up to the people, civil society organizations, non-governmental organizations, to put pressure on the powers that be, the owners and managers of large multinationals and the governments of the rich and powerful countries."
To read the full article, follow this link.
Global Marshall Plan supporter Jane Roberts makes a critical analysis of the world under a McCain administration
Posted September 25, 2008 on the internet newspaper the Huffington Post, Global Marshall Plan supporter Jane Roberts gives a point by point (or rather Millennium Development Goal by Millennium Development Goal) analysis of just where McCain would fail the women of the world should he be elected President this coming November.
To read the full article, use this link.
Deficit spending of our natural resources started.
What is Earth Overshoot Day?
September 23 this year marks an unfortunate milestone: the day humanity will have used all the resources nature will generate this year, according to Global Footprint Network data. Earth Overshoot Day marks the day when humanity beings living beyond its ecological means. Beyond that day, we move into the ecological equivalent of deficit spending, utilizing resources at a rate faster than what the planet can regenerate in a calendar year.
Globally, we now require the equivalent of 1.4 planets to support our lifestyles. But of course, we only have one Earth. The result is that our supply of natural resources -- like trees and fish -- continues to shrink, while our waste, primarily carbon dioxide, accumulates.
Source and more information
Actively engage to support our projects.
We are looking for programmers that would like to volunteer their services to support our work.
Those interested should have the following skills and attributes:
* Drupal: knowledge regarding CMS; module installation and configuration
* PHP, such as Ruby on Rails (RoR), MySQL
* Design: familiarity with graphic programs such as Photoshop and HTML/CSS
* Familiarity with ssh / ftp / etc.
If you are located in Berlin, it would facilitate our collaboration so much the better, but is not required.
For those interested and/or for an individual audience, please get in touch with Matthias Wobben, who is currently manages the Global Marshall Plan IT platform.
10/23/2008 - 10/25/2008
Bregenz
Political and Societal Action in the Interest of Children
Klemens Riegler introduces the Global Marshall Plan in a workshop.
For further information on the event, please visit the organizer's website: Welt der Kinder.
