Today the Bangladeshi banker and economist Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank founded by him are jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, “for their efforts to create economic and social development from below.” With his idea of giving microcredits to entrepreneurs who are too poor to receive traditional bank loans, he has given a concept that has spread to nearly all areas of the world affected by poverty, over 23 countries by now. According to the German “Spiegel” magazine, over 100 million peole have aready got a microcredit. To ensure repayment, the bank uses a system of “solidarity groups”, which apply together for loans and act as co-guarantors of repayment and mutual support in the effort of economic self-advancement.

(c). www.muhammadyunus.org

Yunus is a fervent opponent to traditional development aid: “Poor people are not asking for charity; charity is not a solution for poverty.” And: “Only thing we need to do soon, redesign our institution and policies. People can change their own life provided they got the right kind of institutional support.” His goal is to free humanity from poverty by self-empowering the people: “Poverty in the world is an artificial creation; it does not belong to human civilization. We can change it.”

Intelligent help is a major quality of good will and of practical spirituality in the service of humanity. Muhammad Yunus is an outstanding example for this.

“On 10 December 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which has become a universal standard for defending and promoting human rights. Every year on 10 December, Human Rights Day marks the adoption of the Universal Declaration. On Human Rights Day it is celebrated around the globe that “All human beings are born with equal and inalienable rights and fundamental freedoms”.” says the Human Rights Education Association.

December 10th, 2004, Secretary General Kofi Annan said: “International Human Rights Day reminds us of persisting human rights problems in our communities and in the world, and of the enormous efforts still required to make human rights a reality for all.” You find more about Human right violations on the site of Human Rights Watch. See also our blogpost on Human Rights Watch.
Accepting the human rights of other people and nations is a sign of maturity. In spirituality you learn to govern yourself and let others govern themselves, without wanting to dominate their way of living and thinking. Imposing one’s own convictions on the others is seen as an aggression. This holds true for individuals as well as for nations.

I yesterday read a press release by the German organisation “Target Human Rights” about a conference they had organized at the Al Azhar University in Cairo about the delicate topic of female genital mutilation (FGM). This is a crime against women practised in many African countries, regardless of religion and nationality.

For two days internationally renowned scholars and doctors discussed the topic and came to the result on November 23rd: “Female genital mutilation is a punishable crime and offends against the highest values of Islam”. Before that scholars had discussed the different theological dimensions and agreed that genital mutilation has no roots in the Islam. Then doctors had presented insights into the horrors of the mutilation practice.
At the end of the conference the Great Mufti of Al Azhar, the highest authority for legal decisions, gave a decision which equals a Fatwa, a binding legal expertise. It says that the lawmakers are asked to declare this cruel deplorable custom as a crime, which has nothing to do with Islam.
This decision is a theological sensation, for every day about 8000 girls especially in the countries of the Sahel influenced by the Islam. Hopefully this decision will help strengthening the fight for eradicating this monstrous habit.

Yesterday evening I participated in the staff information and party of the Swiss Red Cross. At the information session two interesting projects were presented, which expressed creative new ways of dealing with social problems.

One was about the program called RailFair, done together with the Swiss Railways SBB and the SECO, the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs. The idea is to form volunteers – young or jobless people – to become railway assistents accompanying trains or giving their presence on stations to avoid violence and vandalism, without getting involved into violence themselves or becoming “deputy sheriffs”. The Red Cross does conflict training courses (Chili) with them and supports work integration measures with jobless people, and they learn to develop courage. People feel more secure in the trains and the stations where these “Grands frères” (great brothers) as they are called are present. They serve as role models.

The other inspiring project was about basic health promotion in Krygystan, a former Sowjet republic in Central Asia, where the health system has been eroding and the state of health especially in the rural areas had become very delicate after the collapse of the communist system. The project, initiated by the Swiss Red Cross and financed by the Swiss department of foreign affairs EDA is encouraging the village people to form health committees and organise their needs. People are supported with counseling, but they had to realise that they have to take care themselves of the situation. So they started to do sanitary instalments, cultivate herbs or fruits, make preventions against alcoolism, restore hospitals. This project has motivated the government to introduce it now in the whole country.

Both projects are exemplary for empowering people to solve problems.

I yesterday read an interview with Jean-Daniel Gerber, director of the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs in the “NZZ Executive“, which made me heartily laught. Mr. Gerber has a beautiful sense of humour.

Q: Which formation would you make up for if you could? A: Astrology, to give a scientific basis for the economic prognostics.

Q: How many e-mails are you answering per week? A: About 53.4. And in a good mood 2 more.

Q: From which failure did you learn most? A: When I once applied for the role of the donkey in a nativity play and was rejected as unqualified.

Q: Your favorite film? A: Kodak.

And he also shows a good sense of right values in life:

Q: As a citizen, what bothers you most? A: That politics is given priority to expertise.

Q: What is your professional example? A: Jimmy Carter, who after his failed presidentship reached the real height of his career with the Carter Institute for Human Rights.

Q: Which qualities with you collegues do you estimate most? A: When they prevent me from my own stupidity.

Yesterday I was at the extraordinary assembly of the Swiss Red Cross associations for writing the minutes. It was a meeting for the kick-off of the new strategy cycle for the years till 2012. For me it was fascinating to see how in such a complex and heterogeneous organisation is managing diversity and trying to ingegrate most diverse interests. Though the basic values are the same for all the members – humanitarian commitment -, their focus is varying. And when you try to steer such a complex organism into a joint direction for future development, there are quite a lot of anxieties and incertitudes to be solved and taken into account.

I had a few interesting talks in the noon pause, one with a member of the central board, about the importance of getting young people integrated in order to keep the contact with the next generation. This handing-over to the next generation of the enthusiasm for the humanitarian cause and for voluntary work of good will is very important to keep the good work going on.

Yesterday I participated in a workshop of the Swiss federal administration on accessibility and usability for the websites of the Swiss government. Until the end of 2006 all websites of the federal administration have to correspond to accessibility guidelines (see my post on web accessibility – overcoming obstacles).

The workshop was conducted by two persons of the foundation Access for All, one of them being a person who is blind since birth and is a specialist for accessibility testing. He intruduced us into the way handicapped people, especially blind persons, work with the internet as a window to the world. He had a bluetooth Braille keybord and a screenreader software. He gave us several examples of how obstacles for the blind can be overcome by better naming of links or by creating an easy-to-navigate website. He also showed us an extract of a “hearing film” – from a know cinema, where all action was being described, including the scenes. But he also described about the many ways there are created obstructions even by good-meaning people.
Fascinating how with a good will and creative know-how handicapped people can be helped to be partners in the world which is mainly being shaped by the majority having a relatively free command of their senses and bodies. It needs a sensitivity to open up to the world of people with another way of living side by side.

A friend sent me the link to the website of the Global Ethic Foundation, initiated some 16 years ago by Professor Hans Küng’s book “Global Responsibility” (1990), which was first published in English in 1991. “This book developed programmatically the idea that the religions of the world can make a contribution to the peace of humankind only if they reflect on those elements of an ethic which they already have in common: on a fundamental consensus on binding values, irrevocable standards and personal attitudes.”

The ideals sound well, as also do those of the Parliament of World’s Religions (see also Wikipedia): “Embracing Difference, Transforming the World”, or the World Religion Forum, which had met in Kazakhstan on Sept. 13th, 06. Hopefully these initiative contribute to overcome the fanatism all over the world in the name of God and religion.

The Elon University, USA, together with Pew Internet have asked about 742 technology thinkers and analysts to give their opinions about the future of the internet in the year 2020. The site “Imagining the Internet – A History and Forecast” invites people to add their forecasts or to read others’ forecasts. The opinions of the specialists are to be found in a study, which shows the range of hopes and fears about control over technology and being controlled by manipulators, about addiction to virtual realities, where people might lose themselves or about world-wide access to information or about widening gaps and greater social fragmentation and cyber-violence.

There is a sentence in the study of the 20th century visionary and architect R. Buckminster Fuller saying that “We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims.” And Alan Kay commented on this by adding: “The only way you can predict the future is to build it.”

This sentence is very true also from the spiritual standpoint. With every act we shape our destiny – as individuals as well as with society. And this holds true for the internet as well: We decide whether we use it for activities and purposes of good will, constructing better human relations, or by using the interconnection the web offers to expand egotism, despotism and misuse of money, sex and power.

Tuesday I had the visit of an assistant of the Institute of Religious Studies of the University of Berne, who is working on a handbook of religions and spiritual movements in the Canton Berne. His goal is to give a complete overview of the religious situation existing in the canton, describint the socio-graphic data and the main contents of the groups.

We had an interesting exchange, and he wrote an article about our Circle of Good Will, which he sent me for proof-reading. He said that he came into contact with aout 160 groups and movements. An interesting project showing the multitude of ways in search of the One.