Environmental Organizations

Introduction

The Human Predicament
I remember walking into a Romanian orphanage at the age of twenty, a state-run facility with the stark walls of a hospital meant for the sick and dying. When the toddlers – little boys with pink pajamas and girls with shorn heads – weren’t confined to cribs, they played in a small room where the largest child systematically abused the others. He laughed while they cried, and I spent my days protecting instead of playing.

Another little boy – blond haired and blue-eyed – gave hugs as a sign of affection, and always greeted me with a smile before uttering, “Mama.” It was the only word he knew and the only thing he wanted.

Then one afternoon I left the toddlers to help with the babies. The smell assaulted me halfway up the stairs, a putrid stench of old urine mixed with hot air and dirty skin. An eerie silence hung in the air, as if the babies had long ago learned that no one would answer their cries.

As I walked from room to room and past row after row of cribs, a sense of helplessness crushed the sadness. I’d stumbled upon a kind of hell, for the worst kind of torture is feeling useless in the face of suffering.

One little boy – a baby of four or five months – lay on his back with big eyes and an even bigger smile. His happiness was like a light in the darkness, a little candle of hope. I returned to him often, holding him in my arms and answering his gurgles with my soft murmurs.

He’s always so happy, I finally mentioned to an American woman who sometimes volunteered there.
“He’s mentally retarded,” she answered, “He hardly has a brain.”

And later, as I walked along the city streets with my female translator, we passed a teenage boy sitting on the sidewalk with his back against the wall.

“Do not look,” she shuddered. Of course I did. What I saw was a youth wearing the scars of fire across his balding head and wrinkled face.
“They burn them to get more money,” I heard.
Who does?
“The parents. He is a beggar. A gypsy.”

Earlier, I’d been told that many of the orphanage children were gypsies – almost sub-humans in that culture – and that some parents left their children, only to return when the boys and girls were old enough to beg. But mutilated? The discovery was almost surreal, more fantasy than fact.

All Life is Precious
Life is an intricate web of joy and pain, ups and downs, good and bad. Our experiences often shape us, but sometimes we don’t understand the purpose of this process until years later.

I’ve sometimes wondered why I felt compelled to use all my savings, buy a plane ticket and travel to a foreign country alone, then volunteer in an orphanage a friend had visited. I don’t question that I was drawn to that particular place at that exact time, but I left Romania feeling like my work wasn’t done.

While preparing for this course, I began to reminisce about that trip, and then it hit me – perception is directly linked to persecution. The battle to save the forests or the whales or the future isn’t against pollution or corporations or guns that breed civil war and famine. The battle is fought and won within the individual soul. Each of us is our greatest friend and worst enemy. We’re all kind and cruel, right and wrong, responsible and careless with what the world has given us.

Six years ago, I saw a human reduced to just a gypsy, and last week an entire forest (an ecosystem with plants and animals and oxygen-producing life forms) became timber. Words do have power. We use them to stir us into action or apathy. Sometimes they are manipulated, and other times they’re spoken in truth and love.

What is Your Life’s Calling?
If you long to make a difference in your corner of the world or beyond, this is the course for you. I’m excited that you’ve made it this far, and I look forward to meeting many of you online – hearing your concerns, finding out about the issues in your communities, and fielding any questions.

Like much of life this is an adventure, and I think we’ll enjoy feeding off of one another’s enthusiasm for a shared cause.

The goals of this course are varied – knowledge, compassion, critical thinking, activism, preparation, a broader world view – and each concept is crucial to understanding the present and future health of our earth.

This is the perfect opportunity to expand your intellectual horizons. With a comprehensive list of environmental, humanitarian and animal organizations at your fingertips, it will be much easier to make informed decisions and assess your priorities. Add to this an overview of the activities that threaten life on earth, and you’ll see why we’re at war with ourselves.

~Course Syllabus~
Look forward to an overview of the major players:

• Greenpeace
• Sierra Club
• Earth First!
• PETA

Get acquainted with animal defenders:

• the National Wildlife Federation
• Defenders of Wildlife
• Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary (wolf rescue)
• All for Animals

Familiarize yourself with international groups beyond our borders:

• African Wildlife Foundation
• Conservation International
• the British Union for Abolition of Vivisection (animal testing)
• Green Cross International (Mikhail Gorbachev’s organization)

Dig deeper into the heart of America and discover the value of preservation:

• League of Conservation Voters
• National Audubon Society
• the Wilderness Society
• World Wildlife Fund

Closing Thoughts
My hope is that humanity will learn to live in harmony with ourselves and with nature. Environmental organizations across the globe have already paved the way for this spiritual utopia – a peaceful interconnectedness of every living thing.

It’s not a matter of embracing some new-age philosophy but returning to the Original Plan, the one we forgot somewhere along the way. The one that still calls from without and within, making us restless individuals, unsatisfied with life and searching for more. The one that offers peace…that will make our planet whole.

It’s this virtue of Oneness that I hope to harness, in some small respect, within this course. It’s up to you, my friend, to take it to the ends of the earth.

Lessons

Click here to see course syllabus