Apart and Together
Voices of Humanity uses a “both/and” strategy to overcome the us-vs-them mindset that makes international cooperation on global issues so difficult.
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Imagine a collective discussion between the Democrats and the Republicans in America. A simple back-and-forth dialog would just widen the divide. But if we alternate between red & blue together and red & blue apart then we give voice both to America-as-one and to each of the country’s two major parties separately. In this way we build a sense of American unity that respects American political differences.
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How does it work? Voices of Humanity uses crowd-source technology (voting on messages) to give each participating community a collective voice of its own. For every A&T conversation, there will be a monthly Together phase followed by an Apart phase. Winning messages for both phases will be available online and emailed to the participants. In the Together phase, messages from all participating communities are mixed together and voted on by everyone. In the Apart phase, messages are elected separately by each community.
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Across the Silos. In the together phase of a A&T conversation, a heartfelt sense of collective unity is established. The power of a heartfelt sense of collective unity cannot be overestimated. Apart and Together conversations are a potential game changer when diverse partners are working towards a common goal, aka “cooperating across the silos”. For the San Francisco UN Goals project, the silos are the diverse goals of the United Nations. We will use our Apart and Together technology to build the coalition, and then after the San Francisco UN Goals Advisory Committee has been established, we expect the Committee will continue using A&T.
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