Tech: key to re-empower 42 surviving communities

Dear SOLE Colombia friend,

During the last months we have continued with our conversations all over Colombia, inviting different people to join the great worldwide conversation about the future we want (https://www.un.org/en/un75). At SOLE Colombia we found with this UN initiative for the 75th. Anniversary of the United Nations, a great opportunity to contribute to a long-lasting peace to Colombia. 

We all know that dialogue is vital to build peace, and in a country like Colombia, where many people aren't used to have conversations with people outside their social circle, we find it more important than ever to open different spaces for dialogue with diverse people, from different ages, backrounds, regions, gender, political views and many other characteristics. 

This is what has been happening at SOLE Colombia during this last months. The SOLE methodology is a great fit to begin a conversation basing on Big Questions, and teachers, librarians, community leaders, students, parents, and many other people from diverse profiles have joined the project UN75+SOLE. They all started their own conversation by using their own Big Questions about the future. Excepeting a few people who had the chance to come together in person to talk, all the conversations have been remote, where SOLE Ambassadors (facilitators on SOLEs and conversations), Grannies (from the Granny Cloud in Spanish - Nube de Abuelitas) and participants, did a virtual SOLE using StartSOLE (www.startsole.org) and an asynchronous conversation using Loomio (www.loomio.org). We also had the chance to do a SOLE Radio with the UN, where we reached other people that otherwise couldn't have joined the conversation. 

We have had around 1000 people participating in different conversations about different themes concerning the future, like education, environment, childhood, livelihood, local communities, equity and equality, work and employment and so on. Opening the space for conversations and being in contact with so many different people, has also allowed us to start weaveing a network between diverse communities and people around our country and also other parts of the world. Many of the SOLE Ambassadors and Grannies, have invited new people and facilitaded in many cases more than one conversation. 

Here you can see and listen to the voices, quotes and pictures of different people participating on the conversations all over Colombia and the world: http://www.solecolombia.org/narrando-la-conversacion-mas-grande-del-mundo/ 

Now that we have started this movement, we want to continue. We think this is the right time and place to continue the conversations and taking action towards the future we want. For this, we need support from new people all over the world. We would love many others to have the chance to join, because we believe that together we can change our planet into a world, where we can all enjoy our lives and take care of each other, as human beings and non human living creatures.

We thank you for all your support and hope you will join us on the next steps of this journey that has already started.

Stay tuned and stay healthy.

Sanjay, Catalina and Maryam
The SOLE Colombia Team

Links:

• Infographic of the great conversation in Colombia
• SOLE Radio