Some have given up on them, but others are obsessed with them. Many resolutions relate to regret over the past: the diet or exercise program that failed, the relationships that needed to be mended―but were not, or that project that was never finished. But for nearly everyone, the New Year is an opportunity for a new beginning.
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After spending four meaningful days together July 5-8 at the Sundance Mountain Lodge in Monument, Colorado, the first-ever REI Global Forum is now history! The conference was a continuation of conversation that began in December 2010 during REI’s Strategic Thinkers’ Forum.
From July 5-8 more than fifty people from most of our REI countries will gather in Colorado Springs to attend the REI Global Forum to continue the conversation and complete the work that began during the 2010 Strategic Thinkers’ Forum.
Engaging, encouraging, equiping, and empowering local people in developing nations.
Update about Justice Phomsouvanh’s visit to the United States to partake in REI’s Fellows Program
On one trip to Laos, a friend from one of the hospitals where REI serves told Roderick Beidler, “I want you to meet someone. He may be an important contact someday.” They sat down to lunch with Mr. Phomsouvanh Philachanh (that’s “Pom-suh-vaun Fill-uh-chaun”)—a Supreme Court Justice in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic. They enjoyed their meal and conversation and struck up a friendship because of their common background in political science and international relations.
Now Justice Phomsouvanh is coming to the U.S. to study constitutional law through REI’s Fellows program.
In the past two weeks, it would have been hard to avoid hearing of the unrest that is currently occurring in Egypt. The protests calling for President Hosni Mubarak’s resignation began on January 25. Cairo’s poverty was one of the main instigators for the protests, along with complaints about rising food prices, social exclusion, anger over corruption within the President’s National Democratic Party, and difficulty in finding jobs for many young people.
Question: When you put a lot of gifted and experienced people in the same room for nearly three days straight, what comes out at the end?
Answer: A lot of great ideas!
That is what happened on December 1-3, 2010, at REI’s Strategic Thinker’s Forum. REI’s President and CEO, Roderick Beidler, called together twenty “strategic” REI and non-REI staff to discuss and think through the identity of Resource Exchange International.
A World Water Crisis
The United Nations Development Report from 2006 sets out this disturbing truth: “Throughout human history, [economic, social and political] progress has depended on access to clean water and on the ability of societies to harness the potential of water as a productive resource. Water for life in the household and water for livelihoods through production are two of the foundations for human development. Yet for a large section of humanity these foundations are not in place.”
The report goes on to explain that not only is access to water “a basic human need and a fundamental human right,” but also that “more than 1 billion people are denied the right to clean water and 2.6 billion people lack access to adequate sanitation.”
In fact, the report states that “unclean water is the world’s second biggest killer of children.”
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