Initiatives of Change USA

Initiatives of Change USA recognizes and engages the world as one, connected relational tissue, flowing out of the basic rights and responsibilities that every person has by virtue of the intrinsic dignity with which they walk this earth. We believe that the extent to which that tissue generates enduring life or decay is determined by the thoughts, decisions and actions of every member of our global human family. While rapid technological advances in the last two decades have ensured that most people are virtually connected with each other and have easy access to any and all information within seconds, IofC does not believe such innovation offers a sufficient depth of “connectedness” to ensure diminished isolation and fear in individuals and communities. On the contrary, it often has great potential to undermine wellbeing and social cohesion as is acutely and alarmingly evidenced today throughout our world. Of course, isolation and polarization are not new phenomena, but they feel particularly sharp-edged at this moment where perpetual conflict cycles and centuries of oppression and colonization feel intractable; where history’s lessons seem forgotten. Initiatives of Change USA is committed to ensuring those lessons, which continue to languish within ourselves, our institutions and our communities, are not dismissed or forgotten. Repairing these conditions is not simply about breaking or disrupting them, nor is it about turning away or moving on from them. We believe that the complexity of these conflicts within and amongst ourselves requires integrated perspectives, spirit and skill sets, whereby people, communities, dynamics and resources conventionally understood as oppositional to one another, instead are incubated together so as to transform those same relationships, conditions and social systems.