Research for Grassroots Reinvention

Beginning in 1971, the Ecumenical Institute and colleagues engaged in three years of research to create a viable practical vision for ourselves, our communities and our emerging planetary society.We saw ourselves as a Research, Demonstration and Training Group Concerned with the Human Factor in World Development, aimed at providing local people with a practical comprehensive vision of the new social dynamics emerging to enable them to understand the trends of the time, motivate them to engage himself in shaping those trends and to provide them with basic tools to effect that engagement.”  (From a proposal to Rockefeller Foundation).

What Came out of the Research?

• An inclusive and transformative approach to analyzing any social entity:  The “Five Pillars”
• A Practical Vision in the form of 77 practical proposals to “inclusively create the New Social Vehicle” condensed into 5 brief essays (Five Nexus) articulating “the depth longings . . . in our day for a way of inventing authentic society anew . . . a call to a new age of creativity, of civilization, of life itself”
• A tactical framework that transformed the Practical Vision into action in the form of specific programs, projects, methods and philosophy and led to three global campaigns aimed at turning fear and despair to courage and care by catalyzing a global resurgence of human spirit and a practical reconstruction of the social fabric.