Thank you Gerry for asking me what I am most interested in right now!

I am interested in learning how to run Youth Helping Youth like an International Humanities Center satellite office -- only our focus being on youth/adult/community projects (Youth Helping Youth). This would also include setting up a Global Youth Fund where youth voice directs the funds to the issues they feel most concerned about.

I’m also very focused on doing a great job to build the Elko Peace Park as I learn how to administer such a project. This experience will let me administer other great works as we will be working with local donors, city, state, federal and foundation funding.

Most importantly to all of this is building the Universal Peace Wheel as this is the heart of my spiritual practice (and all of you/us are part of this effort -- it's a physical representation of what we hope to achieve globally through supporting individual an organizational visions to uplift humanity and heal nature). This includes bringing the Peace Tiles project to our local schools as a lesson plan that leads into writing peace statements that will go into the Universal Peace Wheel.

Are any of you interested in attending our copper embossing workshop this fall? We will be carving the symbols that will be embossed in copper that wrap around the wheel and keep safe the 1000, billion prayers that will be wrapped inside the wheel. We have already raised $18,000 of the $36,000 needed and have a strong group of volunteers working with us.

Of course there is Emerging Futures Network, however, you can see that my time and focus will be mostly on the above work, with some effort going into Emerging Futures Network decision making and some effort towards building connections, especially around Network Weavers Network... which leads into...

I see the above work being the foundation for growing a network of centers of which one of the next steps is building a networking center in Elko. And working to connect technology, networks, existing centers and network weavers to help grow and be part of an interdependent network of centers, knowledge repository and global voice for what we want for our children's children.

Youth Helping Youth (a Nevada, USA non-profit 501c3 charity)

As Picasso said, "Youth has no age."

click here to add this thread to your watchlist.

You are invited to the CONNECTING NETWORKS FOR ACTION Emerging Futures Network - O.NET and beyond meet-up in Blaine, Washington.

This thread was set up to evolve the Emerging Futures Network. Please join us in our mission:

OM HO HO

Happy Holidays. If you'd like to share your holiday on-line goodies, please share them here. Here are a few that I like:

May this holiday season bring you and your family great joy. And, may all of our faiths sing together for peace and justice and hapiness for all.

The Soup Kitchen at Dolma Ling Community Center, Mongolia - Children need your support!

Yesterday as I ate my Thanksgiving dinner, I couldn't stop thinking about the children I met in Mongolia. Some of them, those that live in the city, sleep on the streets, sometime on doorsteps of shops to keep warm. My visit was in the summer but now in sub-below freezing weather, families and children still live in the street, only now, they lower themselves into manholes to stay warm in the sewer.

While I was there I visited a wonderful organization, The Soup Kitchen at Dolma Ling Community Center.

I know many of you helped with soup kitchen's this Thanksgiving in the US... now is your chance to help with provide service this winter to a soup kitchen in Mongolia.

For those of you who know about Mongolia, you understand that Mongolia is one of our last Nomadic cultures with 800,000 people still living the Nomadic live. However, another 1/4 of their population lives in the city due to the Russian takeover of their country a half a century ago. At that time all of their monasteries were destroyed and mass genocide occurred. 10 years ago they became their own democracy, the first social democracy in this region of the world.

They need our help in restoring their culture, with business development, better schools in the 221 villages... but right now, their are children and families that just need a bowl of soup.

Please consider making a holiday donation to the Dolma Ling Community Center.

(Mongolia is located between Russia and China and is under snow 9 months of the year)

Donations go directly to the Dolma Ling Community Center. It would be great to know how many of you have seen and responded to this. So, I've set up a workspace for us to record our collective donations, or you can post a comment here and I'll add it for you.

Thank-you so much and Happy Holidays,

Julie Caldwell

This is a thread to post links you think rock the world and a place for me to post links that someday, when my blog is up and running, I want to interconnect with!

http://recentchangescamp.org/Invitation

http://www.rocketboom.com/vlog/

http://www.stonecircles.org/

http://www.enlightenedcapitalism.blogspot.com

I'm a Grandma!

Pheonix Gardner 3 days old

Pheonix Gardner, my precious grandson entered the world at 5:22 PM PST, July 11, 2005 (Portland, Oregon, USA). He has brown hair, blue eyes, is 21 inches long and weighs 7.9 pounds.

Hope to have a picture to post by Wednesday to share with everybody.

Cogradulations Ted

You're the first O.net member to join the 1,000 club. Of all the folks here at O.net, I can't think of anyone who deserves this more than you. Thank you so much for all of your help ~ in so many ways...

Thought I'd invite some of your favorite O.net friends over to celebrate...

We have some very good news... Monica, one of our precious O.net members, an internet~for~change~agent, from Uganda has received her passport in the hope that she will be able to come to the Chicago conference. Monica works with the Life in Africa Foundation If you visit the Life in Africa Foundation link you'll see pictures of Monica's friends, beautiful artisans building a collaborative to benifit their children and families. Monica has much to offer us at O.net and we invite her with open arms to come to the Chicago Conference.

To join us in Chicago Monica has to overcome 3 obstacles:

1. A passport done
2. A visa
3. Round-Trip Airfare from Uganda to Chicago

Yesterday I received a note in my inbox from Monica sharing her joy and her prayers to join us for Meron's pajama party! To make Peace Tiles! To share her ideas for helping more people discover their potential for making more good things happen! Monica's passport information is now posted for the scholarship team's due diligence process.

Now she needs a visa. Where Monica lives, in Uganda, freedom is not the same as it is in other parts of the world. She can not simply pay a fee and receive a visa. She needs an inviation, from us to come to the conference. If you'd like to be part of Monica's invitation, please join the discussion at Inviting our African members to Chicago. Please consider adding your name to the invitation and your comments to the discussion to decide on a name for a sponsoring group or committee to send this invitation. We need to have the invitation ready to fax by early next week.

Next she'll need airfare. Omidyar Network has made this really easy for us with a generous $1 for $1 match. In fact if we can quickly raise raise the $1,500 needed for Monica's ticket ~ the dollar for dollar match will send several other O.net members as well. Click here to donate.

Finally, it would also be nice if others wish to show her a good time, make connections and expand her education while visiting the United States, please contact Monica and she can set up a dropcash box specifically for your contribution.

In the meantime it's nice to celebrate the little successes along the journey.

WE DID IT!!! 59 O.NET members with the help of the Chicago Conference Scholarship Team and a $ for $ match from O.NET successfully raised the $4,042.50 neccessary to send 7 scholarship applicants to Chicago from 2 continents.

For complete accounting (to date) visit Scholarship Accounting

Ravi Arapurakal offered to talk with me about my initiative and asked me to answer the following questions before our talk:

What (1) is the greatest SINGLE SUSTAINABLE DIFFERENCE in the lives of WHICH PEOPLE (2) HOW MANY YEARS from now (3), that will result from your continuing to work unimpeded and with all cooperation from everyone you ask - which difference would NOT occur if YOU disappeared today? I.e., the specific difference that only YOU can bring about?

To which I answered:

I'm not sure. I don't know how to answer this question! Do I have to answer this question to talk with you?

The following is a letter I wrote him. I post it here, because it shares a bit of who I am, where I've been and what's next. I'm here at O.net to work with myself and others in our discovery to make more and more good things happens.

My letter

Actually, the questions you asked, made me sad. I practice Tibetan Buddism. I've spent a good part of the last 3 years in meditational retreat, receiving instructions from Lama Zopa Rinpoche. For some odd reason the questions took me to a place of nilialism! And, then to extremism! I don't see place or time as perminant. However, I do believe in conceptual reality which operates using time and space.

It is this question that has plagued me with very deep deppresion for a couple of years. Not something I've ever dealt with before. It felt like I was dying. Much of which was true, as I was working with renunciation -- so in a way, a part of me did die.

I've just recently (the last 3-4 months) popped out from this deppression. I think it's because I could finally write down what I want to do on one page. And, then I developed that into a 3 page proposal with a few supporting documents.

If you send me your email - I'll send you the 1 pager I wrote up for my Lama. You can read the capacity support proposal initiative I developed at: http://www.omidyar.net/group/hearts/ws/Initiative/#initiative-proposal

These documents are what I feel are the next steps that would be most missed if I disapeared. Where I can be of most value. The Peace Wheel and Park initiative is one such example of what outcomes can look like. There are other initatives that I'm working with others on. In each case I work with others to come together in ways that they can not do alone to accomplish something that will benifit the greater good.

Most of this work is volunteer because no one seems to write paychecks for people to provide this type of support. And, those I work don't have the means to pay me. And, often this work is behind the scenes. However, in answer to your question, this is my biggest contribution to the world at this time.

Phil Cubeta had me write up a fairytale of what I saw was needed most to make the world a better place. It's a nice story if you'd like to read it. It's posted at: http://www.omidyar.net/group/hearts/ws/GivingCenters/

The only real answers to your question is that:

1. My prayers benifit others.
2. And, working each day to become a better person working to benifit others.

The tangible tasks, the things I wish for -- I'm not sure the world needs me to accomplish them. There are many me's in the world! But, I do feel they would create merrit for myself and others to make the world a better place.

My wishes are to become a true support for and with others to accomplish their passions. Especially youth working in partnership with adults and community. I've spent much of the last 5 years mediating and developing the skills needed to be with others in a supportive way. (Very different from being a motivational speaker, which is what I did for 18 years - www.julie4youth.com ).

It's not easy to move from working in isolation to working in teams. At 40, people expect you to already know how to do this. Which I'm finding out -- is a huge obstacle for many people. Why I want to do the work, I've described.

In regards to my family, I have one child, my daughter, Ruby who is pregnant with my grandson. What I want most for her, my son-in-law and my grandson is to support them in ways they can discover their passion to make more and more good things happen. They bring me great joy.

In regards to my husband, Dave... he's amazing, so wonderful. I couldn't have asked for anything more. He needs me to help us get out of debt. The debt comes from him being laid off for 18 months. (Actually he laid himself off (actually worked for free). He has his own corporation and when funding got difficult, he laid himself off, so his partner who has a wife with cancer could stay on salary). He's back on salary now, works hard and we now have enough money to pay our basic living expenses. Not enough to get out of debt.

As for me, in 1999 I received a learning fellowship from the Annie E. Casey Foundation to undertand what works and how we could sustain and replicate what works to bring positive youth development to scale. After this two year experience, I fell into a deep deppression and used meditation and prayer to guide me to understand how I might make a small difference that might truely impact others. In short, I had a coming apart of my mind.

The expression that makes me most happy is when Dave explains to his friends that, "I might be crazy, but at least she believes in making others happy." He likes it that I'm using what I learned to benifit others. And, he would love to see the non-profit provide a salary for me. My prayer is that I can attract a $40,000 annual salary.

I've been working with others and a team has begun. I really need some solid business coaching. Someone to hold my hand and walk me through all the steps until we can stand on our own two feet. There are some other needs such as developing a council of trustees (like a board of directors)who are supportive of developing a networking commons as our non-profit structure.

My hope for Emerging Futures is for us to become a networking commons, owned, operated and governed by it's members. With our primary role providing "true intermediary" supports that are grounded in guiding principles ( see: www.emergingfuturesfoundation.org ).

Some of the business ideas that I feel we have expertise in and could generate income fairly quickly are:

• A speakers/consultant bureau (I have 18 years of experience as a professional speaker www.julie4youth.com )
• A marketplace that generates a percentage of sales to the networking commons to provide capacity support for working with people to discover their passion to make more and more good things happen.

All comments welcome...