December, 2019
Dear Friends and Family,
I have some exciting news to share.
I’m headed to the Vatican in December, honored to have been invited to attend the Laudato Si “Grand Challenge”.
This is a global initiative and urgent call-to-action to address the pressing issue of climate migrants.
The 2019 Grand Challenge is focused on co-creating solutions among public, private and faith-based sectors to prevent forced displacement, empowering one million families to remain in their homes by 2021. It supports a mission of human dignity that leaves no one behind.
I will attend as an emissary on behalf of the International Bateson Institute (IBI) based in Stockholm. The IBI is a social-benefit thinking group specializing in solving complex, global problems through research into living systems that can be understood and positively influenced.
You can learn more about our work reading this article: “The Era of Emergency Relocation – A Transcontextual Perspective”.
At the Vatican conference, my mission is to secure funding for the IBI to conduct critical research that is needed in support of the Laudato Si Grand Challenge goals.
The Laudato Si Grand Challenge is a promising platform and world stage for the IBI research. There are great opportunities for synergy and shared thinking between Pope Francis’ encyclical about caring for “our common home” and the three-generation legacy of Batesonian concepts, theory, and ideas around living systems.
The problems that the world is facing now, including climate migration and its underlying causes (environmental degradation, poverty, persecution, political conflict, and health epidemics) are highly-complex and interrelated.
These issues are wrapped in contextual interdependencies that require an entirely different approach in assessment, and action. The Bateson Research will help solve for patterns that show interconnection and independencies.
Why me, why this, why now?
I have made the decision to apply my time and talents at this point in my life to addressing our global Climate Crisis. The need for urgent action is NOW.
In the photo above I’m standing in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican when I was sponsored by a local philanthropist to attend the Ladauto Si Climate Restoration Meeting in the spring of 2018. This year I have been invited by the Vatican to take up another challenge.
I have been working closely with Nora Bateson over the last two years studying transcontexuality/contextual intelligence, and I have done my due diligence on Bateson and the IBI. I have a strong belief that this wonky stuff will work.
So, here’s the bottom line: The IBI is a fledgling nonprofit that has been bootstrapping its own work. To date, my work has been pro bono, and my family has funded my travel for meetings and trainings in Europe.
Pope Francis is known to be a man of action. And, and as you know, I am a person of action. Think about the Pope and I conspiring to change the world for the better!
I invite you to join me on this mission.
Sincerely,
Ann
“Let us grow in responsibility toward our common home. We must take swift and unified global action” - Pope Francis, Laudato Sì, Second Encyclical on Climate Change and the Environment, 2015