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Worldconnector Awraham Soetendorp calls for action and compassion

The newly renamed Jacob Soetendorp Institute for Human Values (former the Jewish Institute for Human Values), now in its eight year, recently launched its new website, which can be visited at www.soetendorpinstitute.org.

The website not only describes the wide range of activities in which the Institute engages both on its own and through a variety of partnerships, but also offers individuals and organizations information about how they too can engage in the process of creating a better future for all.

“Our website is a call to all of humanity. Compassion and hope propel us to action,” said Rabbi Awraham Soetendorp, President of the Institute, which is named in honor of his late father. “We are truly ‘one earth community with one common destiny.’ We are all called upon, every hour, every day, to mend and repair the world, to heed the cry of every single child, every human being, who suffers and to meet their basic needs, to make the world more just, sustainable and peaceful.”

The website is structured around the Institute’s five focal areas: Fostering Social and Economic Justice, Peace and Reconciliation, Interfaith/Inter-spiritual Dialogue, Protecting the Environment and Realizing the Rights of Children, particularly to education. Interwoven throughout is a commitment to forging inter-generational partnerships which engage the next generations in realizing a just and fulfilling future.

The Institute and its work are also rooted in the promise of the Millennium Development Goals, which are the commitment of 191 nations “to make the right to development a reality for everyone, and freeing the entire human race from want.” And the vision of the Earth Charter which invites us all “to form a global partnership to care for the Earth and one another,” via its holistic ethical framework that includes respect and care for the community of life, universal human rights, respect for diversity, social and economic justice, democracy, ecological integrity, and a culture of peace.