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Member Care Update -- January 2016
Expanding the global impact of member care
Global Integrators
Characteristics--Commitments--Call
Making Your Mark in Our Troubled Times
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Migrants being helped as they arrive in Europe.
Photo from BBC Year in Pictures 2015
Overview
This Update explores some of the characteristics and commitments of Global Integrators (GIs). GIs are colleagues of integrity who link their skills and values on behalf of the pressing issues facing humanity.
We base the material on the 25 entries on GIs from our CORE Member Care weblog (January-December 2015). These entries reflect our best conceptual thinking, clearest directional sense, and deepest heart-felt yearnings to further equip colleagues around the world who can promote greater wellbeing for all people and the planet.
We encourage you to take the time to carefully review the material below (three parts) and to discuss/apply it with others to your work in member care and other areas. We start the Update with the United Nations Year in Review 2015 (video report) and close with a “Global Call for Global Integrators.“
“…the daunting challenges the United Nations faced in its 70th anniversary year—
and…a glimpse of what can be achieved, when we all work together.”
Global Integration (GI)
GI is a framework for living and working relevantly in our globalizing world.
It involves integrating our lives (connecting and contributing) with global realities
(promoting well-being as we skillfully address the major issues facing humanity)
in light of our core values (e.g., ethical imperatives, commitment to humanity, faith-based).
Part One
Characteristics of Global Integrators
Wise people are like lions:
Crowned in truth they hold their ground.
But lying foxes run around.
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El sabio, con corona, como leon semeja;
La verdad es leona, la mentira es gulpeja.
Sem Tob, Proverbios Morales (14th century, Spain)
What are some of the core and crucial characteristics for being effective as GIs? Here are seven indicators--seven I’s—that can serve as qualitative markers. There are of course many more (e.g., being people of hope, people who love truth and peace etc.). The original entry goes into more detail and also includes links to our Member Care Updates and faith-based perspectives that specifically relate to the indicators. Indicator 7, Imparting your life (love) links together all the indicators.
Summary:
Clarify your Interests, Involvements, Influences; Cultivate your Interior, Integrity, Inspirations; and Impart your life. The excerpts below are from 7Is for GIs: Seven Indicators for Global Integrators, CORE Member Care Weblog (13 November 2015).
1. Issues--Pursue your passions.
What issues matter to you the most? What are you passionate about? What are you naturally motivated to learn more about? In short: explore, expand, engage…Find compatible colleagues with similar interests and key groups and networks in which you can be part and engage together on global issues.
2. Involvements--Till the terrain.
How much do you want to get involved in specific global issues? What is realistic for you given your current commitments and need to make a living? Here is a “continuum of involvement” for clarification:
Informed----------Included----------Immersed
3. Influences--Get a grid.
What has influenced your desire and ability to connect and contribute more globally? The gird below can help you clarify these influences...As you review your past, you will likely get a better sense of what your future course might look like.
--Principles/Beliefs
--Documents/Materials
--Organizations/Groups
--People/Models
--Milestones/Gravestones (important events/experiences, for the better or worse)
-------> Charting a Future Course
4. Interior--Self-Care
How do you cultivate your inner world? What things do you do practically for self-care, personal growth, and resiliency? Grow deeply as you go broadly. Practice the basics of self care, such as good nutrition, sleep, expressing gratitude, prayer/reflection, time with friends, exercise, etc. especially during seasons of stress and times of adversity.
5. Integrity—Being Moral
How do you cultivate your highest standards and values? To what extent do you follow them both privately and publically? In what ways can you be susceptible to corruption—the opposite of integrity--in its many subtle forms? Integrity is moral wholeness…It acknowledges personal weakness and wrongness, including the possibility and likelihood of self deception/justification, and seeks to live/act virtuously with courage and consistency.
6. Inspiration—Sustaining Sources
What gets you going in the morning? What keeps you going through life? Is there a set of beliefs and values, sense of purpose and meaning, to motivate and sustain you? Something transcendent? Humanitarian principles, ethical imperatives, sense of duty, love, faith, God? How do you cultivate these?
7. Imparting your life--Love
How much is…serving others part of your work and life in general? How much do you want to give of yourself to others, being compassionate, maintaining the human quality of your work? Love is not a soft skill. It is tough work. And it is core, in our view, for doing member care well, doing global integration well, and doing life well.
Part Two
Commitments for Global Integrators
Doing good is the greatest treasure.
Better than gold, better than pleasure.
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No hay tan buen tesoro como el bien hacer.
Ni tan precioso oro ni tan dulce placer.
Sem Tob, Proverbios Morales (14th century, Spain)
What are some of the core and crucial commitments for being effective as GIs? Here are seven commitments to help guide GIs. They reflect many of the values, directions, and commitments that we believe are crucial for GIs. There are of course many more commitments that could be added (e.g., staying updated with world events, balancing work-life demands).
Summary:
Commit to personal/professional growth, character/competence/compassion, new areas, duty/difficult settings, ethics/standards, working with others, personal core values/commitments. The excerpts below are from our final weblog entry on Gls, Summary and Conclusion, CORE Member Care Weblog (31 December 2015).
1. We commit to diligently pursue our own journeys of personal and professional growth—to grow deeply as we go broadly.
2. We commit to integrate the inseparable areas of our character (resilient virtue) and competency (relevant skills) with compassion (resonant love).
3. We commit to go into new areas of learning and work: crossing sectors, cultures, disciplines, and comfort zones.
4. We commit to embrace our duty to work in difficult settings, including those permeated by conflict, calamity, corruption, and poverty as those in great need are often in places of great risk.
5. We commit to have clear ethical commitments and standards that guide our work in global integration, respecting the dignity and worth of all people.
6. We commit to working with others to promote wellbeing and sustainable development, building the future we want and being the people we need.
7. Add your core values-commitments here, in relation to global integration. For example: integrity (consistent moral wholeness), agape (sacrificial love for people), Pantocrator (Jesus Christ), and ad majorem Dei gloriam (God’s glory).
Part Three
A Global Call for Global Integrators
Darts hit their mark when carefully thrown.
Words travel far when carefully sown.
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La saeta lanza hasta un cierto sitio.
Y la letra alcanza desde Burgos a Egipto.
Sem Tob, Proverbios Morales (14th century, Spain)
We believe that the time is here for a diversity of colleagues to come together intentionally, visibly, and practically on behalf of global integration (GI). GI put simply is how we skillfully integrate our lives and values on behalf of the issues facing humanity. Likewise we believe that the time is here for colleagues to carefully reflect and act on what it means to be Global Integrators—good global learners-practitioners who live in integrity as they pursue common ground for the common good.
We yearn to see a growing movement of Global Integrators emerge who can make their marks on our wonderful but troubled world. Here are seven suggestions—among many—for helping to realize this yearning, this Global Call.
1. Receive and review the Global Integration Updates. These Updates are sent every two months to nearly 2000 emails around the world. They archived on our MCA website in the GI section. You can sign up easily HERE. The current Update is on Staying Current and Navigating the News (December 2015).
2. Share your comments and ideas on our MCA Facebook page or our GI Updates weblog.
3. Include the term and concept of GI/GIs when you speak, write, and plan.
4. Review more or all of the 25 weblog entries on Global Integrators. One idea is to reflect on one entry per day during the course of a month, considering how to apply the material to your life, work, and settings. You can access all 25 entries and a listing of the topics HERE. Some examples of the entries: GI Training, Values that Guide and Goad, Personal Transformation, Faith-Based Foundations, GI Partnerships, and Resilience for Global Integrators.
5. Participate in a GI Roundtable or GI Consultation, online or in vivo (stay tuned—hopefully to be developed this year). Consider meeting at conferences to discuss GI, include GI as a topic in your academic courses and presentations, and in other settings.
6. Help form a new GI entity or coalition.
7. TBA—your ideas!
Member Care Associates
MCAresources@gmail.com
Member Care Associates is a non-profit organisation working internationally from the USA and Geneva. We provide and develop supportive resources for workers and organizations in mission, humanitarian, and development sectors. Our services include consultation, training, research, and publications.
Global Integration (GI)
GI is a framework for living and working relevantly in our globalizing world.
It involves integrating our lives (connecting and contributing) with global realities
(promoting well-being as we skillfully address the major issues facing humanity)
in light of our core values (e.g., ethical imperatives, commitment to humanity, faith-based).
More MCA Resources
Global Portal for Good Practice (website)
Reflections, Research, and Resources for Good Practice (weblog)
Global Mental Health: A Global Map for a Global Movement (website)
Global Integration: Common Ground-Common Good (updates, materials, webinars)
Global Member Care: (volume one): The Pearls and Perils of Good Practice (2011)
(e-book version is available on Amazon)
Global Member Care (volume two): Crossing Sectors for Serving Humanity (2013)
(e-book version is available on Amazon)
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