What is Moving and Awakening in the World: An Online World Café

Earlier this year, our friends from Greece Maria Scordialos and Sarah Whitely, along with their colleagues Anthi Theiopoulou and Odysseas Velentzas called me to see if weDialogue could be of help. Active in their country's social and political unrest, they wanted to extend the positive impact they were making in the streets by initiating conversation and dialogue throughout the region; to connect what was happening in Greece to the movements in Israel, Spain, Egypt, the UK and nascent in the US Occupy movement.

That's exactly the kind of inquiry the Conversation for the 21st Century series is all about and what it was created to support, so of course we said yes. On September 27th 2011 people from around the world gathered virtually to address "What is Moving and Awakening Around the World" and share insights and experiences about the revolt happening all over the world against antiquated systems and structures that no longer serve. 

It was collaboratively hosted by the World Café, weDialogue, SoL Greece and The Living Wholeness Institute and brought together people from Israel, Greece, Syria, Belgium, Canada, Mexico, South America and the U.S. in meaningful dialogue, the harvest of which had many of us in tears. 

The graphic recordings of the harvest will be posted here as soon as we get them - our Greek colleagues have understandably been too busy on the streets responding to the ongoing upheavals in their country to post them - but in the meantime, here is the beautiful poem that Sarah wrote during the event itself and read at the end.

This particular part of the global conversation started on the MaestroConference FaceBook notes forum and continued via many many pages of comments on the event listing in Sarah and Maria's Axladitsa community site and the group we set up here in the World Cafe online community for this ongoing conversation.

The September event is meant to be the first in a series of these conversations, some of which have been taken on by the Occupy Cafes that Ben Roberts of weDialogue is convening, but there is a lot moving and awakening in the world these days and many more are needed. Please join the group if you are interested in this subject.