Describe your nonprofit’s mission.
We organize engaging, informative “in real life” gatherings and provide online resources to help communities, community leaders, and educators learn more about the key international issues of our time. Our current focus points are Middle East issues and war-and-peace issues.
What need in our community brought about the creation of your nonprofit?
We’ve been deeply saddened by the ease with which, in the present century, our leaders have dragged our country into unnecessary and very costly wars and have worked to block the attainment by the Palestinians and other Middle Eastern peoples of their rights. We strongly believe that better community education can help build effective constituencies for policies that focus on peace, justice, and equality– worldwide and at home.
How has your nonprofit made a difference in our community?
Though we’re a young organization, our Charlottesville forums have already brought to the city talented communicators who have a deep understanding of life and society in countries like Syria and Yemen, where our country is deeply enmeshed in wars that are poorly understood by most Americans. We have many more plans for 2018, including bringing to the city experts on the UN, on the relationship between war and environmental harm, and on Palestinian rights. Very exciting!
How can community members help you achieve your mission?
We are eager to partner with community groups, congregations, and educators in our home community– and worldwide– to work with us in hosting our community-based events and maximizing their effectiveness. We’d love to meet dedicated volunteers with skills in writing or web design! And of course, we would very much appreciate any and all financial support you can provide, to help us achieve a mission of building a US public much more knowledgeable about the vital international issues of our day.
Tell us a story that has come out of your work.
In summer 2017, we organized two groundbreaking “tweetchats” to try to engage people from around the world in unified, globe-girdling discussions of the dire situation in the Gaza Strip and what can be done about it. Tweetchats, which seek to harness and organize the often chaotic power of the twitter platform, haven’t previously been much used in the worlds of social-justice organizing, though they are used in the corporate world, and the scientific community. We ran two one-hour “episodes” of our “#GazaChat”, that brought two great, featured experts on Gaza– and other concerned people from all around the world– to address a structured series of questions related to Gaza. Altogether, the two #GazaChat’s attracted more than 240 active participants, several of whom we know came from Charlottesville. The sense of global connectedness was palpable!
Learn more about Just World Educational.
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