Henrique Arantes, Rita de Cássia dos Santos, Lourenço Andrade e Ronis Cláudio.

Meeting to review the Charter of Principles in January 2009.

VILLAGES FOR A NEW WORLD

Another community is possible

The local counterpart of the World Social Forum

Principles letter

 1 - The crisis. Any citizen feels, understands and realizes the fact that we are now living a profound crisis in the history of humanity. This crisis reaches all aspects of social life.

It is a crisis of transition to a new world, superior in all respects to our current contemporaneous.

It is a crisis not only caused by the current Capitalism, the also named neo liberalism - but also the political parties, governments and the whole structure of the current state, which we received from our past experiences.

2 - The challenges. The Old and the New, Life and Death face each other, more often and strength. The challenges are the biggest ones faced by the humankind. We are on the limit of surviving because of the violence, injustice, corruption, sexism, iniquity have reached levels ever seen before.

3 – The transition for a new world. However, we are struggling for another world and other community. It is perfectly possible because it only depends on us. Therefore, what we need is to start a long process of changes and revolutions, in all areas of life and relations between men and nature. All we desire is passing to another world and community with peace, dignity, justice, human rights, equity, fraternity, solidarity and dialogue, without prejudice, in a world of plurality.

4 - The World Social Forum. The arise of the WSF in Porto Alegre - Brazil, on January 2001 was a historic and notable event. The Forum was an affirmation of the world citizenship, creating a new place for different society organizations exchange ideas and to discuss another possible world, having in mind the crisis and the impossibility to solve it by the traditional forms: the political parties, the governments and all the State structure.

5 - The Forum and the changing. The WSF has a role very important in the process of the historic transformations, even because it has opened a promising debate with the social organizations about decisive themes.  New proposes are being dreamed up about all the human life aspects, in a dialog hasn’t seen before and in a permanent form, by networks that are being made in various themes. The dialog process is making possible the creation of agreements and the knowledge consolidation that are being formed, gradually, in a theoretic-practical relation. New concepts are created, and they work like ideas-force in the changing process.

6 -  The new spirituality. A new universal spirituality arises. It is the result of the recognizing of the man as a creature of love, fraternity and solidarity. Religious values, secular traditions, ancestral wisdom, the proper movements, and the social organizations represented the universal human values. This spirituality translates the relation between men and nature (Pacha Mama – Earth Mother) and the men between themselves.

7 - The world citizenship. Finally, the other important changing signal of our time is the construction of a world citizenship, named “citizenship globalization” and/or “solidarity globalization”. It works in various fronts, like in the progress of the Social World Forum, in the “struggle globalization”, in the network spreading, for the globalization crisis challenging and by the information velocity circulation, widened by the internet. However, the world citizenship will be completely realized if the world questions would be assumed in the daily life, in each place of the World, in a connection with the local social organization.

8 - The purposed villages. We need to boost up the quality in the local ways of organization, in an innovation process, different of everything we have had until now, that can help us to move through this 21st century, that can give us strength and energy, promoting the changing from “the bottom to up”!

The movement “Villages for a New World” is a new communitarian social organization. It basis the concepts of autonomy, auto-administration, freedom, community, solidarity, peace and non-violence, world citizenship, lovely spirituality and web work.

It is the synthesis of the lovely spirituality with the world citizenship of the taking care of everyone and of the whole world. Taking care of everyone is a love exercise with no distinction, but it also means to take care of those who really need. It is a citizenship love and it is not only a social work. It gets back the sense of communitarian, a human essential aspect (the family is our first communitarian space). Taking care of the whole world is to take care of the planet, of the Earth Mother. Taking care of the world is to recognize that we depend from each other.

The first virtue of love, the loveliness, happens in a community that is focused on the common goods, because with that we are taking care in the best way of each one. The citizenship and the spirituality get together to change the world and ourselves.

In the Villages, we can have experiences of human values like solidarity, reciprocally, reception, dialog, human rights, culture of peace, a searching for consensus and citizenship. From the communitarian local scope, the Villages organize themselves horizontally like a web, sharing experiences and knowledge. This web can spread out with no limits, but its basis is the Village.

The Villages have tasks like the research of the local social initiatives of common interests, which exist in a determined locality, in a district, in a city, in a rural village. Therefore, it is necessary to make a detailed registering to clarify which are the demands of that initiative. The purpose is to take part of the city/village administration, collaborating with the authorities, supporting initiatives of common interests, supervising the elected mandates, widening the actions of the citizens and society in the organizations and in the pubic politics.

Performing the world citizenship in the Villages means to articulate the local questions with the global ones and to be present, in several ways, in the world challenges.

The well chain is made when we take care of the public with actions (non-monetary ones), in favor of the common goods, by credits (personal or collective ones) in the Village. Those who help to promote actions in favor of initiatives of common interest start, optionally, to have credits (credits with no monetary value, but they will supply the human needs). There are also some mechanisms of self-help inside each Village and among them, like if everybody were from a same community, a big Village. This interaction is made by meetings in the districts, in the cities and in the villages. New means of integration, communications and exchange, like the internet, are also created.

The Villages - like an autonomous and self-administrated movement - are organized horizontally, in a web. Each Village is free in your actions and its unique obligation is to follow the Principles Letter. It articulates with other Villages to celebrate, to praise, to think and to act about local/regional/national/world questions, using the WSF as a support for your actions, as the local activities are connected with the global ones.

9 - Taking care of the common goods. The social movement “Villages for a New World” is a basis counterpart to the changing movement that is necessary in the modern world and that was expressed in the WSF. Citizenship and spirituality comes together to celebrate the Life and Humanity. “Taking care of the common goods” is the best way to love; it is to take care of our community; it is to take care of all and of the Earth Mother, making a happiness future for all the Humanity.

10 - You can create a Village. You and your group of friends, partners, and neighbors, at school, in your district, in your job or in your city can create a Village. You only need to bring together 10 people that agree with the Principles Letter. After it, you need to get in touch with movement secretary, which works like a catalyst and encouraging, by the site www.aldeas.org. Communities that already exist can take part in it, given that they agree with the Principles Letter and they decide to work with it.

In the Village, there are no differences. Brothers and sisters can share everything, and they are supported mutually to bring the happiness, the well-being and the progress. In a globalized world, we are a world community, from our local community and thus we will be weaving a web and constructing a chain of citizenship and love, breaking the barriers, the official procedures and the prejudices that separate men and women from all over the world!

LOVING AND BEING CITIZENSHIP IS TO TAKE CARE OF EVERYONE AND OF THE WHOLE WORLD!

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