The world is in a state of existential crisis which is causing tremendous suffering. A Quaker Earthcare Witness-led coalition of colleagues from throughout the African Diaspora (in the US, Caribbean, Latin America and Africa) is working on the UN International Decade for People of African Descent to encourage people to own, and make full use of the means of food production. A key goal is to reconnect population nodes within the African Diaspora. The the 2017 themes are land retention, agricultural use, and rural-urban connections.

Quaker Earthcare Witness (QEW) is inviting people of African descent to work smart, and work collaboratively toward food sovereignty and access to clean water across the Diaspora. We take our operational cue from the vast, unseen, filigree mycelium webs that work as one united underground system to nourish entire forests. Like mycelium we are working quietly, methodically, steadily, and strategically. We are collaborating across historically instigated divides to ensure food sovereignty and access to water for people of African descent as climate change dials up.

To this end, we will be sponsoring a side event at United Nations Headquarters during the High Level Political Forum in July 2017. The side event is a collaboration between QEW and several partners including the

Africa Platform (Kenya),
Black Belt Justice Center, (DC),
Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU)
Climate Change Consortium (TX and LA),
Bhahma Kumaris World Spiritual University,

and several others. The side event will support the most marginalized populations in the Global South which are disproportionately impacted by accelerating climate change, resource depletion, and income disparity.

Objectives are:

1. Raise public awareness among the 133,940,000 people within the African Diaspora to encourage people of African descent (POAD) to work toward food sovereignty and access to water as climate change accelerates.

2. Spotlight the degree of authentic African Diaspora country-specific progress on Sustainable Development Goals VIII and II.

3. Generate conversation among people of African descent (POAD) throughout the African Diaspora to strengthen our bonds and interconnection, learn from each other, devise Afrocentric food production solutions, and pragmatically contribute to our collective thriving.

4. Build, inform, and prepare diaspora networks for concerted action around food production and water access.

Quaker Earthcare Witness is a network of Friends (Quakers) in North America and other like-minded people who are taking spirit-led action to address the ecological and social crises of the world. While QEW supports reforms in laws, technology, education, and institutions, its primary calling is to facilitate transformation of humans' attitudes, values, identity, and worldview that underlie much of the environmental destruction going on in the world today.

WE ARE CALLED to live in right relationship with the natural world, recognizing that the entire world is interconnected. WE WORK to respect and protect the earth’s ecosystems, with the understanding that human aspirations for peace and justice depend upon restoring the earth's ecological integrity. WE PROMOTE these Truths by being patterns and examples, by communicating our message, and by providing spiritual and material support to those engaged in the compelling task of transforming our relationship to the earth.

click quakerearthcare.org for more info about QEW and our activities.

QUAKER EARTHCARE WITNESS

Seeking emerging insights into right relationship with Earth and unity with nature.

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Water: Reconnecting People of African Descent, 2019

WATER: Reconnecting People of African Descent

Food sovereignty: reconnecting the African Diaspora