Inspiration

`Who am I to be blind… pretending not to see their needs…´

`If you want to make the world a better place… take a look at yourself and then make a change.´

Bless his soul for having such a caring heart! Bless his heart for having such a sensitive spot! It’s not usually common to find a little person such as himself – carrying that sort of personality and charisma at that tender age. My son has something most adults are lacking of in this modern world. My son has empathy.

I have a strong admiration for such charisma and powerfully drawn to his compassion and kindness toward others. Looking through a child’s lense make me realise how they don’t differ much from us adults apart from our mindset. They might be smaller in size but their capability to feel and love are no different from any of us. It’s miraculously flabbergasting to see how a child thinks even beyond our limited boundaries – pass the wall of segregation and hate, pass the painted coloured skins, pass the diversity in languages. I am, in fact, infatuated by his sense of innocence – wanting to ‘fix’ things if he is given the opportunity – even by means of heavy duty work after a few brainstorming.

I want it done

His passion and dedication drive him to want to give and keep on giving. Knowing how the world is not as perfect as most people portray them to be, his mind has a plan of its own. For him, no is simply not the answer, nor maybe. ‘I want it, and I want it done’ is usually his motto whenever determination kicks in. Stubborn as he is impatient, he longs for speedy results – which his lack of sense of the true picture of reality – being the child as he is, tends to frustrates him sometimes. Having to reassure the little one that sometimes good things come to those who wait and hard work does pay off at the end, seems not to be penetrating much through his skull. He doesn’t want to understand that not everybody feels and thinks the way he does. Such petit personage full of perseverance, he urges and urges if I can lean a hand. Not wanting to disappoint the little fellow, I just follow his instinct instead.

Such powerful drive pushes him to start his first collection of donations to the orphans. I have been participating – by carrying all shipment back to Malaysia on my own – twice (once with my husband!) last year. Our partner Hotel Abadi, Melaka has kindly enough volunteered to distribute this handful of collections to the needy.

Keep on going

This year is a different story. Since this is an on-going project, the little one – with the help of his older sister – keeps piling more stuff.. more toys, more clothing, more enthusiasm..! He wants to send more.. and more to the orphans. “I want them to have what I have, mom…” It’s disgraceful to see how an innocent child is able to open his heart endlessly to share to other children whom he has never seen in his life across the globe, whilst grown ups such as ourselves refuse to even share a half piece of bread with a starving neighbour next door…

Accumulating more than 110kg in the garage and up in the attic, I feel I am rather stuck in the gut – how on earth will I ever bring them all to Malaysia? Having the same determination and enthusiasm as my son, I keep on looking for sponsorships. Somehow along the dotted line, my best friend Norashikin Afifuddin (also the owner of Hotel Abadi Melaka) connects me to a circle of people who, at the end, produce an enormous pleasing result!!

A miracle….

With great honour, I am so pleased to announce that AirAsia Cargo has spread its wings and heart to sponsoring the shipment back to Malaysia this year!! However, their generosity goes beyond that. Not only they are sponsoring the shipment to be sent directly to Malaysia, they also arrange transportation for the donations to be picked up personally from our doorsteps to Schiphol airport for screening and re-packing. All this free of charge!

I am still overwhelmed by their prompt reply! Amazing how amaranthine determination can bring you a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow!

The shipment of donation will be in Malaysia in time for Eidul Fitr 2011

THANK YOU kind individuals who participated in this Project. Without you, this project will not be a success!!!

Now, it is Dr Naif Al-Mutawa himself who is the invited speaker of a new TED talk about his own creation.

In this funny and fascinating conference, Dr Al-Mutawa shows how American superheroes were inspired by biblical myths and values, christian archtypes that resonated with the American society positive values.

He created the 99 with the same kind of idea in mind.  In fact, the superheroes embody the 99 attributes of God, Allah : mercy, generosity and so on.  For instance, Jabbar, The Powerful; Noora, The Light; Darr, The Afflicter; Jami, The Assembler; Widad, The Loving; Fattah, The Opener, etc.  So far, not all of the 99 characters have been unveiled.  Each of the 99 is living in a different country which makes the series a kind of universal story.

Another link with Western culture is the recruits Dr Al-Mutawa brought in his project : these are all aknowledged artists in the comic books industry.  There is Fabian Nicieza, writer of the X-Men and Power Rangers ; Dan Panosian, characters creator for the X-Men ; Stuart Moore, best known as the writer for Iron Man; June Brigman, illustrator for StarWars and Supergirl; Ron Wagner,  illustrator for Batman and DareDevil; and, last but not least, John Mc Crea, who was an inker for the late Spiderman…  No wonder if the drawing looks so familiar to the superheroes series readers !

What is fascinating in this series, is the combination of different cultural elements : the characters are Allah’s attribute, but the Noor Stones (the “Light” Stones, in Arabic) are the ones which chose you and not the opposite, and that’s what Dr Al-Mutawa calls the “King Arthur element of the story line”.  The medium itself, the comic book, is a Western form of art and the chosen artists are mainly of Western origin or background.  If the values conveyed in this series are inspired by Islam, they are actually universal : generosity, knowledge, tolerance, freedom.  Who on earth would deny such a set of values ? (Perhaps some extremists, who are likely to be found everywhere, in whichever society…). 

Amazingly, Dr Al-Mutawa’s the 99 readers include President Obama  who praised the the importance of these characters in spreading tolerance and open-mindedness.  He said about the 99 , as a response of his Cairo Speech to the Muslim World : “I have to say, perhaps the most innovative response was from Dr Naif Al-Mutawa, from Kuwait. [...] His comic books have captured the imagination of so many young people with superheroes that embodied the teaching of tolerance of Islam.”

The 99 are now a 26 episode animated TV series and Kuwait built a theme park called The 99 Village Theme Park.

But for Dr Al-Mutawa, the importance doesn’t lay in publishing success. Being responsible of a training program for the survivors of political torture in Bellevue Hospital (New York), he knows what intolerance means.  And for him, it is the spreading of positive elements about Islam and the understanding between cultures that matters.

You can download your free copy of the first episode, THE 99 Origins, just by cliking here.

During the seminar itself, some participants called the Safety Net Project an Eye-Opener !  We are very honored to be perceived as such !      

But what is it about ? 

Event before we created the Lingua Franca Foundation, we were worried about the fate of some Asian women we saw in dire strait around us, in the Netherland.  Some of them divorced in the most desperate – and more often then not – violent conditions.    We decided to react and to create a specific project to help these women : the Safety Net Project (more details about this project in these pages).      

 This project in multidimensional, we aim to contribute to :      

• prevention
• coaching, training & networking
• aid & empowerment
• information & training of the welcoming countries institutions
• partnership   

We went all the way to Malaysia and organize this seminar in order to reach two of these goals :      

• prevention : by giving the participants information about life in Europe and how to get married, to work or to set up a business there in the best possible conditions
• partnership : we wanted to meet NGO’s, local authorities and companies to agree on common resources and actions 

We coudn’t have done half of it without the patience and invaluable support of our local partner : Hotel Abadi Sdn Bhd (Hotel Abadi Melaka).  So we are deeply thankful to these wonderful people who helped to make this seminar a successful event !      

If you missed this seminar, here are the presentations we made that day :     

First, an introduction to the program of the day.      

Then, Suzi started the real presentation with a Prezi about the Lingua Franca Foundation and the Safety Net Project itself. (Cick on t the presentation).       

Safety Net Project Prezi

I, then, followed with a short (and boring, I warned you, people !) Prezi on Europe and its institutions…      

Europe Prezi

After that, I gave the floor back to Suzi who then presented the first part of this Powerpoint on Moving to Europe : she explained the European rules regarding marriage and relationship.  Everybody needed a pause after such an intense morning work  and we all enjoyed the delicious Malaysian cuisine served in the hotel restaurant before I presented the sequel of this combination of Mind mapping and PowerPoint about working and setting up a business in Europe.      

Frame Game : learning with fun 

After more than a half day of presentations, we all needed to move.   The (in)famous disease ALSS (After Lunch Sleeping Syndrom) was threatening everybody in the seminar room and we started the Frame Game : Let’s Net Together !      

This game is a personal adaptation of a Thiagi’s Frame Game.  We distributed 4 cards to the participants and asked them to write 4 items about the question : What can people expect from a project like Safety Net ?        

The goal was to collect the ideas of the group, to broaden our scope regarding the aims of the project and to validate our assumptions about the needs of people and the actions we started.        

We then collected all the cards.  We mixed them up and gave back two cards to each participant.        

They had to place their cards in order of preference.  If they didn’t like their cards, they could exchange them with the rest of the cards, which laid on a table.      

Then, the participants could exchange their remaining cards with another or several participants.  As much cards they wished, but one for one.        

We then asked them to read other people’s card and to gather with the ones who have the closest statements on their card to form several groups.  Three groups resulted of these exchanges, of very different sizes, between two and ten people !         

We, then, prompted the participants to determine the 3 favorite cards of each group.         

When this has been done, we proposed them to present their choice to the rest of the participants.  But… there were some rules they have to respect :         

• no words, no letters 
• No figures and as few symbols as possible 

• draw
• sing, but without lyrics
• mime
• imitate the noise of object 

After a few minutes of hesitations, all the groups endeavour their work with a great fun and a lot of creativity : we had drawings, mime, song (national anthems) and noise (a plane taking off and landing), etc.         

And we got the answers to our questions : yes, the Safety Net Project is an interesting one, it’s a eye-opener, it can give the right information, it can make life easier for people going abroad.     But it could also help student to move abroad, it could  make more taylored conferences and seminars for targeted audiences, it could give handouts at the end of the day, and so on…

 We

 We ended the day by thanking the participants for their pretty good job and with a warning : you thought you could get rid of us so easily, but actually we could be back at the end of the year, with a new conference…   

  Click to view slideshow.     

it’s time for us to reveal

 The Safety Net Project is a program associated between Lingua  Lingua Franca Foundation and Hotel Abadi Sdn Bhd (Hotel Abadi Melaka) to promote safe and harmonious ‘win-win’ international exchanges as well as diversity between nations. This project aims to deal with domestic violence against women from abroad and to help them to integrate in the welcoming country or to go back safely to their country of origin and to inform local authority, potential partners and contributors of the current situation and what plans for improvement. It is also a discussion platform for future collaboration from both sides to promote and maintain the durability of the project.

 “  Somebody you know may need these information badly. The speakers are people with first hand experience on the subject, and have worked with people with similar predicaments. The lesson from their experience is that some problems can be prevented, and it is best if you are prepared before making that big decision! Read the brochure to find out more! “

REGISTER NOW TO SECURE YOUR SEAT

Click here if you wish to pay with the credit card

To enable you to be from where you are  to where you want to be, you have move. Yes! Move. Move from one side to another, and one place to another. Just, literally…move.

Making contact is like building a bridge. It connects you from one end to the other. Once you cross the bridge, there is no turning back. Along the way, you will encounter little stops that either help you build a bigger picture of what you want to construct or just simply destroy what you hope to build. It’s as simple as that. If your journey helps you to build and contruct, then once you implement all the information, you are able to lay down some structure later. These structures will help you re-build your global-view plans so that you can narrow them down to more concrete measures and whence, you manage to see what you can and cannot accomplish.

Using this concept, I decided to extend the Foundation’s bridge to another continent; initiating new projects so that the Foundation can continue to pursue and develop its goals. Knowing I will find new territories, I packed my bags; along with the toys donated by the kids4kids club for the needy children, off I went to the country with the oldest rain forest in the world. The moment I touched down at the international airport, I realised that this country has a lot of potential. Upholding their slogan, Truly Asia; Malaysia is not only enriched with multinationals and culture, but also considered as one of the well-developed countries in the Asian continent.

During my stay in Kuala Lumpur, I have engaged with several types of crowd; from business to politics, and  journalists to hotel management. Between us, I could see that we have one thing in common: to make contact and to expand our bridges. We share the same vision: to expand our horizons and to globalize our mission. We want to reach out beyond our borders and we want (and hope) to do it together.

One of the main cores of the Foundation is education.  The Foundation wishes to establish an international learning network to connect and get the best out of both worlds. The Foundation strongly believes that education plays an enormous role in stripping the veil of ignorance and naivety, thus assist our evolving mind to be more responsible and productive. Connecting two worlds by creating a bridge and a platform would be a big project for the Foundation – such project can only be achievable through constant networking and getting international partners for full-time involvement.

Another project is to introduce one of our activities to the Asian audience – The Safety Net Project. This special project has been under experimental in the Netherlands since the middle of 2009 and we are hoping to launch it officially somewhere in Kuala Lumpur. The Foundation hopes that the meeting with a few relevant and motivated people will be fruitful and the project will be introduced to the public in the up coming months. The project is targeted mostly for women audience and how to exercise prevention and educating women their rights, responsibilities and capacity. The Foundation is promoting safe international exchanges between the West and East; and by trying to connect both worlds, women from all over are able to participate in a programme to learn to grow out of naivety and being motivated at the same time.  

Besides trying to make proper introduction about the Foundation’s activities, I have taken the opportunity to launch our first international exchange project. Kids4kids club (a club formed by the Foundation) has been active in collecting toys for the needy children since January 2010 and my journey to Malaysia has enable me to deliver the hard work the children have poured into to make this charity project a success. I have brought more than 20 kilos worth of toys to be distributed to several needy children from everywhere in West Malaysia.

Doing charity work is part of the Foundation’s establishment. I wish that this charity project will always exist and continue throughout the existance of Lingua Franca Foundation.

I sincerely hope that after reading this article, many women take serious action in protecting themselves and those who they love and care, and also informing and alerting other women to be more aware of what is truly out there…

Men may say that marriage is a trap. But sometimes it is the woman who is trapped. NOOR AZURA AHMAD (writer for Her World) uncovers the emotional angst of a repressed wife.

heart in chains

Elisa*, 37, snuggles contentedly against Giovanni*, her husband of two months, and declares, “I SO love this man… NOW I understand what love is all about.” Looking up coyly at her husband, she admits to  spritzing on perfume and dolling herself up just before he arrives home. “I’m smitten.” She manages to look sheepish while grinning from ear to ear. Giovanni laughs heartily, evidently pleased with her confession. Squeezing Elisa gently, Giovanni, or Khalid* as he is also known, gives her an affectionate peck before leaving us to this interview. Knowing that we would be delving into a painful period in her life, Elisa braces herself for the inevitable.

“It all began when I was studying in the UK. I met Pieter* through a pen pal programme organised by a student’s association. He was studying in the Netherlands, working on his doctorate. We actually wrote to each other the old fashioned way – using pen, paper and stamps.” Elisa always thought of him as a friend, but Pieter’s writing became increasingly personal. Friends pointed out that Pieter was definitely interested but Elisa played it cool.

Coming from a troubled family, Elisa did not witness much affection between her own parents. After they divorced, Elisa stayed with her mother but she understood her father better. Her mother opposed her relationship with Pieter but Elisa didn’t care. She had no interest in the rich boys her mother kept throwing her way.

Elisa and Pieter finally met in person when a friend dragged her along on a trip to Amsterdam. Pieter put them up in his apartment and accompanied them sightseeing. The very next day, he took Elisa to meet his parents. After that, they visited each other occasionally and kept in touch via telephone. Soon, both of them graduated and started working. Two years later, he asked her to marry him and she accepted.

“The truth is, I never really loved him. But he was there and it was the logical next step, so I said yes. Three days before the wedding, I left town. Somewhere deep inside, I didn’t want to marry him. But when I came back, he begged, and I relented. I think my father saw Pieter’s true nature. After the wedding, he specifically asked Pieter to take care of me.” His promise was just words, however.

Shereen El Feki, half Egyptian, half Welsh, is observing these side effects of globalization. “Her passion lies in the many projects in which she is involved which aim to better understand, and surmount, the social challenges facing Arabs, particularly young people”.

In this video, published by Ted India, she is showing some examples of these borrowings.

But Shereen El Feki is not only talking for TED India, she also publishes a crosscultural website, called Meedan - town square, place of gathering, probably the best Arabic equivalent to the Greek word Agora – where internautes can exchanges texts and opinions both in Arabic and in English.  She is not alone.  Meedan is built by a non profit organization based in California and the texts are produced by a international team of volunteers in places as remote as “Amman, Damascus, Cairo, Casablanca, Bethlehem, Beirut, London, Portland, Pozan, Brussels, Toronto, and Armonk“.

All this is also made possible by a new translation technology called Machine Translation (MT).

“Meedan’s mission is to further global understanding and tolerance through technology. At Meedan, we think the web can play a big part in bringing people together to help heal mutual enmity and distrust.So we aim to increase the number of cross-language interactions on the web between Arabic and English speakers.”

You can see this beautiful project by clicking here.  Don’t miss this new bridge between civilizations… Nowadays, the opportunities to bring Arabic and English talking people together are so scarce…

minaret

The entire world was  abashed when the results of a poll against the construction of new minarets in Switzerland have been published.

The extreme right party – Swiss People’s Party (SVP) – launched such a gross campaign against the minarets, using posters showing a woman with a burqa facing a Swiss flag covered with missile-shaped minarets, that everybody expected a defeat of the populist party.

But inf fact a majority of 57.7 % voted for the ban of minarets construction in Switzerland.

The Swiss People Party clearly exploited the irrational fear of “extensive islamisation” of the country and wanted to stop the Muslim tsunami…

But what tsunami ?  There are 400.000 Muslims in Switzerland, out of a total population of 7.739.000 inhabitants. Most of them work and are perfectly integrated in Swiss social life.  There are about 400 mosques in Switzerland and… 4 minarets!

So, people voted mostly against a fantastical fear, against a thread that merely doesn’t exist.  They attacked the symbol of a ghost, the ghost of winding up in an alien invasion…

But the result is a wider gap between communities and broader misunderstanding.  Muslims are sad and disappointed : they believed their Swiss neighbors trusted them.  They discover that it is so easy to trigger an irrational fear among normal populations…

The Swiss themselves are astonished.  They expected the proposal to be wiped away as a dirty cloth.  And yet, a majority of them heard the poisoned discourse of an extremist party and followed it… Some even said “I am ashamed to be Swiss today”.

Who knows at what extend the trust between the communities has been broken ? Who can tell to what extreme will the next moves be ?

The limits of direct democracy

How was this possible ?

The Swiss 1848 federal constitution defines a system of direct democracy which includes the right to organize a referendum on a topic, as long as they gather 50.000 signatures within 100 days (find more in this Wikipedia article).

That’s what happened with the minarets.  The Swiss People Party gathered the sufficient number of signatures and proposed the ban against the future construction of minarets.

This also shows the limits of a direct democracy.  The results of a referendum are highly dependent of how the question was asked and the topic presented to the voters.  In this case, it was a fearful and hateful  campaign that triggered the all process.  And the results are a shameful blow to the religious freedom of 400.000 people in a country which  has been  boasting about its religious  tolerance for centuries…

But, is a democracy that legally denies freedom of religious practice still a democracy ? When a democratic state denies its fundamental values in such a way, is it still a democratic state ?

Political reactions

In Switzerland itself, politicians are rather annoyed and you can see they don’t feel at ease about this vote (see the reaction of Micheline Calmy-Rey, Swiss Foreign Minister on this Guardian Video).

Abroad, reactions vary : the democrats are astonished and don’t understand why a centuries old democracy such Switzerland came to vote this way.  Populists and extreme right parties , such as the Lega Nord in Italy, are already taking the opportunity to promote such hatred and exclusion at home…

The United Nation warned the Swiss authorities even before the ban was proposed, arguing that it was an obvious discrimination, calling it “an unjustified restriction of religious freedom.  Now, legal expert of the UN are examining the legal issues of this election.

His name is Pranav Mistry and he is the perfect model of new stunningly brilliant Asian students who are busy reshaping our future.  He is currently studying in the Fluid Interfaces Group at MIT’s Media Lab.  Before joining MIT he worked as a UX Researcher with Microsoft. He received his Master in Media Arts and Sciences from MIT and Master of Design from IIT Bombay.

But, above all,  he is the inventor of SixthSense, a wearable device that enables new interactions between the real world and the digital world.

And now, he is developing an unbelievable number of new projects like a programming language for children or sticky notes that are understood by your computer…  You can find all this on his website : www.pranavmistry.com

In this jaw-dropping video, he tells us how we use objects in the real world and how we can create bridges between the real world and objects and/or data from the numeric realms. And how he was led to create his strange but true invention…

The Asian Gold Rush

I wanted to introduce Pranav Mistry to you, not only because he is one of the most brilliant and creative minds of his generation, but because he is the perfect illustration of a interesting phenomenon : Asia is sending more and more students to America.

The three major “sending countries are India, with 103,000 students (up 9 percent from last year); China, with 98,000 students (up 21 percent), and South Korea, with 75,000 students (up 9 percent).” (Source : Miami Herald, 21-11-2009).

From last year, “The total number of Asian students rose more than 9 percent, while the total number of Latin American students rose by 5 percent. The number of European students rose by 4.5 percent, including a 5 percent increase from Spain.”

More and more, highly trained and skilled students are leaving their Asian homeland to study in the US and contribute to the development of science and technology.

But this trend is also good news for the business sector because the most brilliant Asian students who are staying in the US will facilitate future contacts between Asian and American companies and universities.

The other side of this story is that “the gap among developing nations is widening : While Asian countries are sending more students to some of the world’s best colleges, Latin American countries are lagging behind. (…) South Korea, with a population that is less than half that of Mexico, is sending more than five times more students to U.S. colleges than Mexico. And Vietnam, a poor but increasingly globalized Communist-ruled country with a population that is less than half that of Brazil, is sending more than twice more young people to U.S. universities than Brazil.”

Moreover, most of these Asian student graduate in science and technology.

The conclusion is this : Asian countries are investing in very high standards  of education while some other regions of the world are not focusing on the training of their new generation. On the long run, this will make the difference…

]]> http://linguafrancafoundation.org/2009/11/21/the-future-of-science-is-already-here-and-mostly-asian/feed/ 1 marcobertolini graduation http://linguafrancafoundation.org/2009/11/20/east-vs-west-the-myths-that-mystify/ http://linguafrancafoundation.org/2009/11/20/east-vs-west-the-myths-that-mystify/#comments Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:40:54 +0000 Marco Bertolini http://linguafrancafoundation.wordpress.com/?p=454 Continue reading →]]> Devdutt Pattanaik is a self-taught mythologist.  He is currently Chief Belief Officer at Future Group in Mumbai.

In this video of a TED India Conference 2009, he is explaining how myths can shape our vision of THE World and My World and how we can understand each other.  Through the story of Alexander the Great and a gymnosophist, 326 years before Christ, he analyzes how their beliefs about life and death shaped their thoughts and feelings.  This is a great intercultural lesson with loads of humor…

But ancient myths can also provide resources to understand our modern world and the cultural conflicts that prevent business people around the world to work together…

Find more on Devdutt Pattanaik’s home page.