The core mission of Idealist.org/Action Without Borders is to connect people, organizations, and resources to help build a world where all people can live free, dignified lives and no opportunities for action or collaboration are missed or wasted. For the past twelve years, our organization has worked towards this mission by facilitating spaces for individuals and organizations to connect across issues both offline through our events and online through our website – Idealist.org. Over the past few months alone, thousands of our members have attended over 400 meetings in 90 countries around the worlds to help launch a global network of people who want to change their communities and the world by connecting people, ideas, and resources in every possible way.

The goal of this session is to provide a culminating workspace for participants who recognize that society’s issues speak to each other – hunger speaks to homelessness, homelessness speaks to healthcare, healthcare speaks to poverty, poverty speaks to education, education speaks to racism, racism speaks to homophobia, and on and on – and so too must advocates acknowledge these intersections in the work we do to address these issues.

Through open discussion and a series of interactive visioning and action-planning exercises, participants will have the opportunity to…
…articulate key factors surrounding particular issues of interest
…identify barriers to collaborating across these issues
…develop concrete strategies for overcoming these barriers and make short-, medium-, and long-term plans for dismantling these barriers

Participants will also have the opportunity to hear from individuals and organization representatives currently working collaboratively across issues, the challenges they’ve faced along the way and the approaches they have developed to address these challenges.

Language Considerations: This session will be facilitated in English but handouts will be provided in both English and Spanish.

Special needs: Internet access and an LCD projector (if possible)