For World Savvy’s inaugural Changemakers Series event on July 28, 2021, CEO Dana Mortenson sat down with award-winning journalist and author Amanda Ripley to discuss her latest book, High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out. It was a dynamic and thought-provoking discussion exploring the causes and impacts of high conflict on interpersonal, community, and national levels, and what we all – young and old – can do as responsible community members and citizens to shift from high conflict to healthy conflict.
Over the course of an hour that flew by, Amanda walked us through her journey of understanding high conflict. She met with conflict experts such as mediators, gang violence interrupters, religious leaders, ex-guerilla fighters, and more, and analyzed toxic and violent conflicts in Chicago neighborhoods, the Colombian jungle, and even within US politics. What she found was that most high conflict shared two key characteristics:
Through the stories of individuals shared in the pages of High Conflict – Gary, a conflict expert who finds himself embroiled in a local political feud, Curtis, a former gang leader turned violence interrupter who now works alongside the man who killed his childhood idol, and Sandra, one of many ex-guerilla fighters in Colombia – Amanda painted a picture not just of what high conflict looks like, but also how we might extract ourselves and instead pivot to good conflict.
These characteristics of good conflict reminded us of something else: World Savvy’s Global Competence Matrix, which outlines the relevant behaviors, attitudes, and skills World Savvy works to instill: valuing multiple perspectives, comfort with complexity and ambiguity, empathy, questioning prevailing assumptions, engaging in inclusive dialogue and collaborative problem solving. It is our hope that, by approaching conflict with these skills and dispositions, today’s youth will be equipped to engage in healthy conflict that moves us all forward and addresses some of our world’s biggest challenges.
Imagine for a moment a world where healthy discourse and good conflict takes place. Where statehouses, neighborhoods, and dinner tables are filled with rich dialogue where multiple perspectives are valued and welcomed. This important work begins when schools are equipped with the tools to transform their learning environments, and where students develop essential skills like critical thinking, problem solving and communication. These skills are foundational to fostering good conflict over high conflict.
World Savvy envisions a future where all people, young and old, are empathetic, civic-minded, engaged global citizens. Where they can collaborate across cultures, communicate across difference, and solve complex problems. And we believe this vision starts with education – with preparing a generation of empathetic and engaged young leaders ready to address complex, real-world challenges.
This year, in an engaging series of online conversations, we’re highlighting changemakers and thought leaders across sectors who share this vision. Just like Amanda Ripley did, they will inspire us all to know more, care more, and do more for a more sustainable, equitable, and peaceful world. In this six-part series, we’ll learn from journalists, activists, civic and nonprofit leaders, young changemakers, and more.
We have some fantastic news to share with you! The Enlight Foundation, a critical World Savvy partner for the last five years, has made a generous $5 million investment in World Savvy’s continued national growth. This donation kick-starts World Savvy’s Vision 2035 Campaign to raise $26.5 million over the next five years toward national expansion at a crucial time in our nation to reimagine an education system grounded in the skills and dispositions young people need to navigate our complex, diverse, and interconnected world.
And, even more exciting – this gift is a challenge grant! Over the next year – July 2021 to June 2022 – all funds raised to support World Savvy’s 2035 Vision will be matched 3-to-1 by Enlight, up to the first $3 million installment of this $5 million pledge. This means, if you support World Savvy in the coming year, your gift will be tripled!
The Enlight Foundation employs an innovative funding strategy to promote community, nurture collaboration and build resilience among an ‘ecosystem’ of vibrant organizations empowering youth as changemakers for a better world.
Since 2002, World Savvy has been building a movement for a future-ready, inclusive education system that builds global competence. By 2035, our goal is to engage a network of 10,000 middle and high schools in diverse geographies across the U.S., reaching an estimated 5 million students. We will leverage the learning and impact in this network of schools to change the discourse nationally on what constitutes a ‘quality’ education. World Savvy is creating a future-ready K-12 system that deeply and equitably prepares young people for life as engaged citizens, thriving professionals, and global problem solvers.
We are so grateful to the Enlight Foundation for helping to accelerate the momentum for this movement. It will take all of us to reimagine the future of education. Will you join us and support a generation of engaged global citizens, preparing them to thrive today and shape tomorrow’s world—a more just, equitable and sustainable world, where all youth can leverage their agency as changemakers.
Our Twin Cities community is grieving again, as Daunte Wright, another unarmed Black man, was killed by police on Sunday, April 11th. Daunte Wright was a father. A son. A brother. A partner. A friend. A valued member of the community. He was 20 years old with a full life ahead of him. Less than one year after the murder of George Floyd, we again confront the institutional and systemic racism that continues to violently cut short the lives of our Black neighbors.
To our BIPOC colleagues, partners, friends, and loved ones: we see you. We are here to support you and to ensure that you have the space to express your grief, anger, frustration – whatever you are feeling in the wake of this new but all too familiar trauma. We are committed to allowing our staff – and especially BIPOC team members – to take time for rest and self-care, and to be in community.
We are also committed to showing up for and supporting the family of Daunte Wright and his community that has been so impacted – and retraumatized – by his murder. Brooklyn Center is a diverse community broken up by several major highways. In the best of times, huge swaths of it are considered a food desert; with businesses closed, many are struggling to access basic necessities. The Sahan Journalhas shared a great list, updated frequently, of places where individuals can donate goods, volunteer their time, or contribute to mutual aid funds to support those most impacted: https://sahanjournal.com/helping-out/how-to-help-brooklyn-center-daunte-wright/.
As we work toward the systemic change so desperately needed to cultivate an inclusive and equitable society, we’re here to listen and learn alongside our community, and stand in solidarity with our Black neighbors and community members who bear the brunt of this injustice, time and time again.
As the Asian American community deals with Tuesday’s mass shootings in Atlanta that left eight dead, including six Asian women, World Savvy issued the following statement:
“World Savvy stands in solidarity with the Asian American and Pacific Islander community during this painful time. In the last year, compounding the challenges facing immigrant and BIPOC community members during COVID, we have seen a dramatic escalation of targeted violence toward our Asian neighbors. We’ve seen COVID-19 referred to repeatedly by those in power with racial slurs, stoking these xenophobic fears and hatred and contributing to a climate of fear for Asian community members. This week, a gunman opened fire at three Asian-operated spas in Georgia, killing 8 people, six of whom were Asian women.
This unspeakable act is emblematic of the larger systemic issues we face as a nation struggling to build an inclusive society in our multi-ethnic democracy. We all must come together not only to condemn these acts, but to act swiftly to combat this rise in racial violence. The first step toward healing must be acknowledgement: both of the long history of discrimination against Asians and Asian Americans – and specifically the stereotyping and dehumanization of Asian women – in this country, as well as the underlying foundation of white supremacy that has allowed this to persist through generations.
Our hearts are with the families and friends of those who lost their lives this week in Georgia. At World Savvy, we remain committed to moving forward with a mission to expand learning and understanding across cultures, build our collective capacity for inclusive dialogue and changemaking, and engage in deep reflection – and action – rooted in our understanding of how we unknowingly contribute to the systemic issues underlying these events. We stand with our neighbors, and remain hopeful for change.”
Art by Andres Guzman (Instagram: @andresitoguzman)
This week, we grieve for America. For the familiar refrain of black bodies killed by structural violence rooted in white supremacy and the legacy of slavery. And as a consequence of the modern-day weaponization of whiteness that causes harm – and death – a straight line can be drawn from Amy Cooper in Central Park to George Floyd in South Minneapolis.
The week began with the viral video of a woman in central park, calling 911 on a black man birdwatching, who asked her to leash her dog who was disrupting the habitat (and was off-leash against the stated rules). Then on Monday came the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, who crushed his neck for at least 7 minutes, ignoring cries of “I can’t breathe. Everything hurts. They are going to kill me.” And on Tuesday, in the WeWork in Minneapolis where World Savvy offices, a white CEO called 911 on a group of young Somali entrepreneurs who share the same space, using the office gym, assuming they were there illegally. Though this kind of institutionalized racism has been in the air we all breathe for hundreds of years, social media offers us all a window into its particular cruelty and violence. It is a reckoning that we cannot choose any longer to pretend is overblown or overstated. And yet, videos of murder sometimes offer fodder for debate, rather than a unified outcry for accountability and change.
The weight of this, and what comes next – the healing and the repair – must begin and end with reflection and accountability for how we can all do better. Why does this matter, must it matter, to me? To our organization?
Reflection
I am a white woman living in Minneapolis, by way of New York City, where these most recent incidents occurred. I’m the mother of two daughters, and the co-founder of an organization that for 18 years has been committed to engaging youth in the pursuit of radical empathy, relentless curiosity about the world around them, critical thinking about the root causes of injustice, and deep understanding of the people who shape our communities–however different from ourselves and our own experiences. I founded World Savvy with my dear friend, Madiha Murshed; a Bangladeshi Muslim who endured the xenophobic backlash in post 9/11 America and believed a different future was possible, and that education was the most powerful platform to strive for that. But the calculus for my decisions – every choice I make as a parent and a professional and a citizen – are shaped and privileged by my lived experience as a white person. An advantage I did nothing to earn except be born in the skin I am in.
When I talk with my children about the history of slavery and criminal justice reform, and systemic racism, it’s a choice; to ensure my children grow up awake and aware. But for a black or immigrant mother or father, these are not choices; these conversations are blueprints for survival for themselves and their children. They are the acknowledgment that this is a Tuesday morning in America, in 2020. I shudder to reconcile a world in which I would pray for the graphic video of my child’s violent murder to go viral, in search of an audience who can muster outrage; a world in which I would require that evidence to prove the injustice. And even then, to endure the inevitable debate of its merits – of the delayed and all too often unattainable justice for the atrocity.
Accountability
In the face of this, and in the spirit of accountability, we are sharing the actions we are taking – actions you can take also – to call for justice for George Floyd, and to do your own work toward anti-racism:
Learn: we are recommitting ourselves to our own internal anti-racist work – to learning, listening, and working toward Ijeoma Oluo’s call to “fight racism wherever you find it, including in yourself.” No matter where you are on your own anti-racism journey, the following resources offer chances for deep learning:
These podcast episodes with Ricardo Lopez, a senior reporter for the Minnesota Reformer: Politico Dispatch and Today, Explained covering the history of the police violence in the city and how we got here today.
This interview by Christiane Amanpour with Deray McKesson, civil rights activist and former Minneapolis Public Schools staff member, and Martin Luther King III, human rights advocate.
Listen: here are people of color in our community who are speaking up on behalf of justice, and provide additional ways to advocate for justice and supporting your neighbors of color.
Many individuals listed here offer additional resources they have created themselves for your own anti-racist journey. Please keep these things in mind when you interact with the resources they have created: 1) Most will have a welcome or “read first” section in their bio or website that includes instructions for how to utilize the resources and/or interact in the community they have created. Please read these first and honor them. 2) Many also have a Patreon page. If you utilize resources they have created, recognize the creative, intellectual, and emotional labor involved in this, and please support them however generously you are able.
Reverend Jacqui Lewis, PhD, Anti-racist Activist and Minister, @RevJacquiLewis
Advocate: we are taking action and calling for justice for George Floyd and wider reforms to policing and policy.
This Google Doc, Taking Action for George Floyd, courtesy of the Coven in Minneapolis, is “a collaborative resource list of ideas to help white people show up for racial justice” and includes many concrete actions we can all take right now.
Give: we are supporting organizations working for racial justice and criminal justice reform, local media, and those most impacted by George Floyd’s death.
At World Savvy we stand in solidarity and support of the many colleagues and organizations working toward this vision of a different future, a more just and equitable reality. We are here in support of the students, teachers, and families we work alongside who are adversely affected – every single day – by this structural violence. And we are committed to doing our own work that advances learning, discourse and truth-telling in the service of that vision for our future.
And on behalf of our team, our Board, and the amazing network of colleagues and collaborators impacted by events like these that have become all too common in America, we grieve. And we will keep striving for a different reality, with relentless hope for a day when this is not a Tuesday morning in America.
Dana Mortenson is the Co-Founder and CEO of World Savvy. Dana is an Ashoka Fellow, was named one of The New Leaders Council’s 40 under 40 Progressive American Leaders, and was winner of the Tides Foundation’s Jane Bagley Lehman award for excellence in public advocacy in 2014. She is a frequent speaker on global education and social entrepreneurship at high profile convenings nationally and internationally, and World Savvy’s work has been featured on PBS, the The New York Times, Edutopia and a range of local and national media outlets covering education and innovation.
