Tuesday, September 6, 2011

The biblical custom of gleaning is back – this time as multi-faith community gleaning gardens. Based on sustainable gardening practices, these gardens connect locally grown produce to the needy, thereby offering a path from dependency to self-sufficiency. Explore this resurgent custom and its implications in Barrie Eichhorn's article, "One Path to Better Food Sufficiency," published in the latest transcultural issue of FUTUREtakes in partnership with Children Creating Bridges (CCB), Inc. The article is available at

http://www.futuretakes.org/docs/Volume%2010%20no%201/v10n1_article4.pdf

Children Creating Bridges (CCB), based in West Chester, Pennsylvania, is a 501© 3 nonprofit organization that engages children in cross-cultural and trans-generational experiences. Recognizing that children represent the future and are catalysts for change, CCB sponsors programs that connect children of different socio-economic classes, races, religions, cultures, and nations. The objective is to inspire trans-national and inter-cultural dialogue, mutual respect, and celebration of diversity, which in turn promotes harmony and facilitates expanded consciousness and self-identity.

In addition, the CCB sponsors the Institute of Peace, Justice, and Interfaith Dialog (IPJID), which promotes the sharing of beliefs, traditions, and perspectives among adults and children. This unique institute brings peoples of various faiths and backgrounds together by organizing seminars, symposiums, lectures and workshops on important contemporary issues. It helps churches, synagogues, mosques, schools, and other groups organize presentations on current world affairs and interfaith dialogue, and it offers this service to any organization that wants to promote peace and harmony in its local community.

FUTUREtakes, published by the Washington DC based Center for Transcultural Foresight, Inc., brings professions, disciplines, and cultures together to explore alternative future scenarios and the cross-cutting implications of social trends, technology advances, and policy decisions from a nonpartisan, non-advocacy perspective. Its thematic issue series and annual transcultural roundtables, originally inspired by lifestyle contrasts among Europe, North America, Asia, Native peoples, and others, explore cultural influences on values and lifestyles, cultural "exports" and "imports," deculturation, cultural perspectives on the future, and the rich lessons that various cultures can offer to meet the challenges that the future may present. Past thematic issue authors have included educators, think tank staff, and diplomatic staff.

Both Children Creating Bridges, Inc. and FUTUREtakes share a common goal of helping people identify and transcend hidden culture-based assumptions and thereby develop complementary thinking skills that tomorrow's citizens will need.

Additional information on Children Creating Bridges, Inc. and its programs is available at http://www.childrencreatingbridges.org Further information about the FUTUREtakes transcultural thematic issue series can be found at http://www.futuretakes.org/Transcultural.html

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