TF Leaders Leading

Leaders Leading Listen as the 2024 prize winners discuss their leadership journeys, lessons from failure, and future challenges. When leaders fail, democracy fails—and too many leaders in too many places are failing. That’s exactly why the Tällberg Foundation has sought out and honored great global leaders over the past decade. Leaders who are innovative, courageous, dynamic, with global worldviews, and whose leadership is rooted in universal values. The three winners of the 2024 Tällberg-SNF-Eliasson Global Leadership Prize recently came together at a seminar on leadership at the Collegio Cairoli, University of Pavia in Italy. Kristian Olson (medical innovator and educator developing global healthcare solutions), María Teresa Ronderos (champion of press freedom and collaborative journalism across the Americas), and Fernando Trujillo (marine biologist and conservationist working to protect Amazonian ecosystems) discussed how they evolved as leaders, learned from failure, and imagine their future challenges. Listen to how successful leaders cope with some of the great issues confronting our societies today. Then tell us what you think. https://tallbergfoundation.org/podcasts/leaders-leading/

Time To Rise 2025

Time to Rise Summit Day 1: 

Break Through in 2025 

Time to Rise Summit Day 2: 

The Power of Identity

 

 Time to Rise Summit Day 3: 

Your Path to an Extraordinary Life

SI Leader Lab

SI Leader Lab

SI Leader Lab is designed to strengthen the capacity of civil society organisations to drive successful advocacy work linked to Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16: promoting just, peaceful and inclusive societies. The programme brings together influential civil society leaders who are open to new digital solutions and innovative methods. The network consists of peers from across various sub-sectors in civil society and provides the participants with broad input from different spheres in the field. SI Leader Lab invites 100 participants from the Middle East, North Africa and Eastern Europe. 

The programme combines online workshops, in both regional and cross-regional learning groups, with regular coaching support. In October, all 100 programme participants will come together in Stockholm for an intensive week of onsite learning that deepens the experience and enhances collaboration.  

https://si.se/en/apply/si-leadership-programmes/leaderlab/

https://si.se/en/apply/si-leadership-programmes/leaderlab/#steps-1

https://apply-leadership-programmes.si.se/

SI Leader Lab 2019

Great to learn of another promising initiative of SI outreaching from Scandinavia 😉

 #Gender_Equality 

Kindly do check details below, within links and may good forces be on your side.

Consider applying before May 7th/2019

The programme will bring together young leaders from the MENA region, South Asia and Sweden who are working with civil society organizations or networks in the field of gender equality. 

Applicants should be between 22 and 32 years old and have a good command of English. Citizens of the following countries can apply: Algeria, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, India, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Nepal, Pakistan, Palestine, Sri Lanka, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen.

https://si.se/en/

https://sweden.se/society/gender-equality-in-sweden/

https://sweden.se/

The Art of Listening

The Art of Listening - Music Documentary (2017)

Published on Feb 21, 2017

The Art of Listening is a documentary film about the journey music takes to reach a listener’s ear, from the intent of an instrument maker and composer, to the producers and engineers who capture and preserve an artist’s voice. This journey is narrated by intimate conversations with artists, engineers and producers about the philosophy of their work and the intent behind each musical note they create.

This film is an invitation for music fans to rediscover the intricacies and details available in the sounds of their favorite recordings. The Art of Listening is the beginning of a conversation of how the quality of our listening experiences define the medium.

Find out more and listen to the soundtrack at www.theartoflisteningfilm.com
Directed by:
Michael Coleman
www.colemanfilm.com
Emmanuel Moran
www.emmanuelmoran.com
Produced by:
Sebastian Weinberg
www.sebastianweinberg.com
Music Composed by:
Christopher Willits
www.christopherwillits.com
For licensing and screening opportunities:
screening@theartoflisteningfilm.com

Athens Democracy Forum 2015

Athens Democracy Forum 2015 http://athensdemocracyforum.com/ ENHANCING SOCIETY THROUGH BETTER GOVERNANCE

As the world lurches from crisis to crisis, democracy is under extreme pressure. From the rise of Islamist extremism and regimes in states that reject liberal democracy, to growing inequality and the rapid expansion of new technologies, democratic foundations are being threatened in a world where profound changes happen almost overnight. In this era of global uncertainty, these issues and more will frame the debate at the third, expanded Athens Democracy Forum (September 13-15). The event, hosted by the International New York Times and the United Nations Democracy Fund, takes place in Athens, Greece - a living showcase of democracy under extreme challenge as the nation once again goes to the polls on September 20.

Greece may be the birthplace of democracy but, in recent years, the nation has had its foundations shaken by a political, economic and social crisis that has threatened, at times, to tear Europe apart. And in other parts of the world, the Arab Spring, the Maidan protests in Ukraine, the political paralysis in the U.S. Congress, are testament to democracy under threat. 

Held to coincide with the UN International Day of Democracy, our annual forum brings together diplomats, scholars, corporate executives, politicians, thought-leaders, and journalists from around the world to discuss at the foot of the Acropolis the state of liberal democracies and the major challenges they face in the world today. 

In addition to the main conference on September 15, a rich program of affiliated events - including an international student debate at the Old Parliament; a Google Hangout featuring political activists under house arrest; and a symphonic visual concert by Rufus Wainwright at the awe-inspiring Odeon of Herodes Atticus - will also take place throughout the city.

Democracy Under Pressure

Compiled by SERGE SCHMEMANNDEC. 4, 2014

The 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in November brought back memories of the optimism that accompanied the collapse of the Soviet empire. Today, however, liberal democracy appears to be in retreat. The politics of the world’s premier democracy, the United States, are plagued by polarization and paralysis; in Europe, economic tensions have brought fringe parties to the forefront. Russia has returned to an autocratic model of governance; China is still ruled by a Communist Party that limits freedoms; the hopes of the Arab Spring have largely been dashed; the Islamic State group’s rise testifies to the dangerous spread of religious absolutism.

“Democracy Under Pressure” was the subject of Athens Forum 2014, which was organized by the International New York Times with the participation of the newspaper Kathimerini and the governments of Athens and Greece. Following are excerpts from several of the participants.

Dmitri Trenin, director of the Moscow Center of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Twenty-five years ago, when people started undermining and eventually overthrew the communist system in Russia, the vast majority of Russians identified with democracy. An 11th-hour attempt at reversing the tide in August 1991 collapsed because it seemed that everyone — even within the ranks of those who wanted to stop the process of reform — had been imbued with a bacillus of democracy and the things it represented.

But democracy in Russia transformed very quickly into a project for liberal reform that gave most of its benefits to the oligarchical few while disempowering and pauperizing the large majority of the Russian people. Those who called themselves “democrats” focused on reform, but not enough on gaining popular support for the process. Democracy came to be associated in people’s minds with chaos, poverty and weakness; the failure of the state to protect ordinary people; and humiliation on the international scene.

Vladimir Putin has been able to crack the code of stable power in Russia, which basically has two elements. One is that you have to be genuinely popular with the bulk of your people. There’s authoritarianism in Russia, no question, but it’s authoritarianism with the consent of the governed, or the majority of the governed, which makes it more stable.

The second element is control over the elites. From the oligarchs to the dissidents, they’re all very much under the control of Mr. Putin and the apparatus that he has built to ensure that there’s a strong state in Russia. (...)

I think that this fretting about democracy is misguided. It is based on the assumption, which I think is wrong, that the model of liberal democracy is something that is ready for the rest of the world to embrace, but for a couple of dictators.

I think we need to recognize that the world is diverse, and there will be diverse models of governance around the world. Some of them will be more liberal and more democratic. Some of them will be more illiberal. Some of them may be authoritarian for a period of time. What caused the collapse of the Soviet Union was the idea that socialism was built on “scientific foundations” laid down by Marx and Engels and was ready to be used by everyone around this world. And when this didn’t happen, people started having doubts.

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Chrystia Freeland, journalist and Liberal Party member of the Canadian Parliament

We (I still consider myself half a journalist) are sometimes better at covering the exciting moment of revolutionary breakthrough than thinking carefully about the day after. The past 25 years haven’t been a defeat of the democratic idea — in fact, I think we’re seeing sustained and rather astonishing demand for democracy all over the world. What we’re seeing is that it’s really hard to follow through. We see that with Russia. We see that with the Arab Spring. We see that with Ukraine, which is now on its third democratic revolution in 25 years. But the demand is still there.

I think the threat to Western liberal democracy in the industrialized, wealthy West right now is figuring out an economic model that will deliver to the middle class. When the economic problem isn’t solved, it becomes a political problem.

The danger, I think, is that the people at the very top are not feeling economic pressure. Our economic model today is delivering to the very top more than ever, but if you don’t happen to live in that 0.1 percent world, things can be pretty dismal. If we don’t solve that problem pretty quickly, our democracy will get into trouble.

Eleni Tsakopoulos Kounalakis, former United States Ambassador to Hungary. Senior adviser, Albright Stonebridge Group

I’m the only panelist from the United States, so let me say a few words about what’s happened in the United States with our recession, the greatest economic downturn in the United States since the Great Depression in 1929. My sense is that the question of income inequality is going to be very much front and center in the next elections in 2016.

Yet I think that it’s important to recognize that around the world, entrepreneurs who have the opportunity to start their business in the United States will still, more than likely, prefer to be there than anywhere else, because of our system of rule of law. They don’t have some of the problems that plague newer democracies, with corruption and unpredictability.

I really liked what Chrystia Freeland said, that we should be thinking of democracy not as a noun but as a verb. Because it is. We cannot take democracy for granted. The people have to be involved and have to work vigilantly in order to ensure that it does deliver for people and continues to be perceived in the world as the best system to provide the most, for the biggest number of people.

Nikos Konstandaras, managing editor and columnist, Kathimerini

There was a lot of momentum in Greece in the post-dictatorship years, in 1974, and especially after the Socialist Party, Pasok, came to power. It had all the goodwill and momentum, to the point that it became extremely complacent. That complacency is, I think, is the greatest threat to democracy, in Greece and in Africa and in Europe and in America and everywhere else. A state has to find a way to deal with complacency, otherwise it becomes corrupt and accountable to nobody.

We have to remember that in ancient Athens democracy was not an idea thought up by people scratching their heads and wondering what to do to pass the time. Democracy came about because society was threatened, from without and from within, and the best way to deal with it was to enfranchise as many citizens as possible and make them equal. It was necessary to break down the barriers between rich and the poor.

Democracy thrives on pressure, because that puts an end to complacency. The populism that we are witnessing today is an expression of what people are: they will pursue their own interests at the expense of others if you let them, and they will pursue the interests of their group at the expense of other groups. They are an expression of what has not been dealt with, and, right or wrong, these are things that have to be dealt with.

Dora Bakoyannis, former foreign minister of Greece

The fear that the economic crisis is contributing to the rise of extremist forces slowly undermining both the legitimacy and the functioning of our political systems is, unfortunately, strong and solid. The 20th century is a frightful reminder that two large totalitarian regimes grew out of the humiliation of war and the unemployment and destitution of large sections of the population.

The more static and “clientelistic” the state, the more fragile and eroded it becomes in times of crisis. By “clientelism” I mean the state’s propensity to borrow in order to buy the sympathies of large sections of the population through state appointments or economic benefits. When the crisis erupts, such favors stop and the favored classes get angry.

This favors a country’s undemocratic sources. Why? Because a crisis needs an explanation. And when the crisis is acute, many people are satisfied only with the harshest of explanations.

The collapse is always blamed on one’s historical enemy. In Greece, the right accuses the left of paralyzing society with its anti-business approach, while the left blames the right for blind servility to the creditors, and so on.

When this antagonism becomes a blame game, with conspiratorial theories cultivated by the media and political forces, the ground is fertile for extreme political forces to profit.

Mathias Müller von Blumencron, online editor of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

I’ve been working in this Internet medium since 1994, and I take a position that I would describe as “disillusioned illusionist.” In the ’90s, we thought, “This is a great new medium, a revolutionary medium. It’s not controllable by the existing powers. It’s not controlled by majorities.” Since then my mood has changed considerably. I think the Internet is facing its largest crisis in its short history.

Three key figures define, in my opinion, why we are in a crisis.

The first is the former president of China, Jiang Zemin. He initiated the “Great Firewall.” We all thought in the ’90s that this wonderful Internet was not controllable. The Great Firewall, with its increasing perfections, with its tens of thousands of censors, with its enormous energy, proved the opposite. The Internet is controlled in China, and other states are copying the mechanisms and trying to learn from the Chinese, to block opinions that they don’t like and to foster opinions that they do like.

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Second, Edward Snowden. Snowden showed us the extent of surveillance now, and what happens if a state decides to put billions into a public/private partnership with the aim of controlling and surveilling the Internet.

The third person is Mark Zuckerberg. We all thought that the “swarm” will, sooner or later, identify what’s propaganda and what’s the truth, what’s public relations and what is reporting.

The perfect organizer of the swarm is Facebook. And as long as we look and watch Facebook — with over a billion users now, more than 20 million in Germany alone — we see that there is not only one swarm, but that there are hundreds of swarms, thousands of swarms, probably millions of swarms. And the people who are part of a swarm like to feel comfortable. They don’t like to fight, they don’t like to debate. What’s evolving is myriad swarms that make their own positions stronger, but which are not communicating with the other swarms.

So the judgment is still out on whether our wonderful new medium is fostering democracy and freedom, or autocratic power, or simply madness.

Nicklas Lundblad, director for public policy and government relations in Europe, Google

We’re caught between our hopes and our fears when it comes to technology. Our hope is this new technology will be “Socratic,” that it will allow us to deepen dialogue, that it will allow us to really become more engaged in democracy, that it will provide more voices to more people.

Our fear is that it will be a sophistic technology, providing only the tools of rhetoric to a small, powerful elite.

New media really gives us three different capacities. The first is to give speech to many more people. The number of people who can actually engage in speech now is a hundred times greater than it was before. Second, new media gives us the ability to organize around party politics and other political causes that we’re interested in. And the third is that it gives us an entirely new means of education.

Now, if you’re a pessimist, you say, “This speech is drowned in noise. So many people speak that nobody is really heard.” As for organization, you say it’s been reduced to simple “clicktivism,” where we lazily just click on something to support a cause, and education is reduced to online quizzes.

To optimists, this speech can really change society and bring a new level of engagement outside the established democratic procedures, and reinvigorate them. And education can be brought to a worldwide audience.

What decides if we end up with Socratic or sophistic technology? The answer is actually fundamental to democratic theory and fundamental also to the way that we have been discussing this today. It has to do with the institutions that need to evolve alongside the technologies and carry them.

And there we have a really interesting mismatch, because the pace of the institutional revolution is radically different from that of the pace of technological process. Bridging that gap is going to determine whether or not we end up in the world of our hopes or our fears. Institutions need to evolve, and they need to figure out how technology can be used in a way that will actually make it a boon to democracy.

Carl Bildt, former prime minister and foreign minister of Sweden (speaking on the day after his party lost general elections in Sweden)

It has been said that democracy never survives a five-minute encounter with the average voter. I’ve had more than five minutes through the last few weeks, and I’m still a fervent believer in democracy. I think what happens, and that’s a good thing in democracies, is that people sometimes want change.

Lord Acton said power tends to corrupt, and I know for certain that power corrupts in our democracies. I do think that regular changes now and then are rather healthy. Any government that has been around for too long, successful or failed, must face the feeling that perhaps some other people should be allowed to try governing the country.

In the long term, however painful it is to lose an election, you know that it is good for the health or the vitality of the political system. I’m coming from a country where in the past we had one party governing for nearly four decades. That was exceedingly bad for the country, and it was exceedingly bad for that party. Since then we’ve changed back and forth, and we are now a more vital, dynamic democracy than we were. So you win some, you lose some, that’s democracy, but the vitality of the country is most important. (...)

It was a fairly bizarre election result, in the sense that we lost and the parliamentary opposition, the leftists, didn’t win. It was this far right, nationalist, populist party, the Swedish Democrats, who more than doubled their seats.

Democracy is demanding, and sometimes people feel that demands of change are too great. That creates what Karl Popper called the strain of civilization, and the risk of people falling back to what he called tribalism. That, I think, is what we’re seeing throughout Europe — too many changes, globalization. They feel left behind, they see foreign faces on the streets that they’re not used to, and then the strain of civilization creates the breeding ground for the populism and the extremism, and that is expressed in these particular political parties.

I’m still optimistic. We’ve seen this before. We can deal with it in a democratic way.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/04/opinion/democracy-under-pressure.html

Across the Globe, a Growing Disillusionment With Democracy?

"Signs of democratic dysfunction are everywhere, from Athens to Ankara, Brussels to Brasília. In the United States, the federal government has shut down 12 times in the last 35 years. According to the political scientists Christopher Hare and Keith T. Poole, the two main American political parties are more polarized now than they have been at any time since the Civil War. Meanwhile, a Gallup tracking poll shows that trust in the presidency and in the Supreme Court stands at historic lows — while faith in Congress has plummeted so far that it is now in the single digits.

Some citizens of democracies have become so unhappy with their institutions that — according to disturbing new studies of public opinion around the world — they may be tempted to dispense with partisan politics altogether. Would it not be better to let the president make decisions without having to worry about Congress — or to entrust key decisions to unelected experts like the Federal Reserve and the Pentagon?

According to a growing share of Americans, the answer is yes. Back in 1995, the well-respected World Values Survey, which studies representative samples of citizens in almost 100 countries, asked Americans for the first time whether they approved of the idea of “having the army rule.” One in 15 agreed. Since then, that number has steadily grown, to one in six.

To be sure, that still leaves five out of six Americans who would rather not have a military coup. And of course, not every American who tells a pollster that he would rather have the army in charge would actually support a coup. But the willingness to countenance alternative forms of government, if only by a small minority, reveals a deep disillusionment with democracy, one that should concern everyone living in an advanced democracy, including those in Europe and Asia.

The generational differences are striking. When the World Values Survey asked Americans how important it was for them to live in a democracy, citizens born before World War II were the most adamant. On a scale of one to ten, 72 percent assigned living in a democracy a ten, the highest possible value. Among many of their children and grandchildren, however, democracy no longer commands the same devotion. A little over half of Americans born in the postwar boom gave maximum importance to living in a democracy. Among those born since the 1980s, less than 30 percent did.

Political scientists are well aware that poll after poll shows citizens to be more dissatisfied than in the past. Yet they resist the most straightforward conclusion: that people may be less supportive of democracy than they once were.

Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris, for example, argue that expectations of citizens have grown rapidly in recent decades, leading to disappointment with the performance of individual politicians and particular governments. But while government legitimacy may have taken a hit, regime legitimacy — that is to say, faith in democracy as such — is as strong as ever, they say.

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Worryingly, though, questions in the World Values Survey that directly speak to regime legitimacy no longer support that optimistic interpretation. In countries from the United States to Sweden, and from the Netherlands to Japan, citizens over the last three decades have become less likely to endorse the importance of democracy; less likely to express trust in democratic institutions; and less likely to reject nondemocratic alternatives.

This raises a question that would have seemed strange, even preposterous, to us until we started to embark on our current research: Could the political system in seemingly stable democracies like the United States be less imperturbable than meets the eye?

Scholars have long believed that democracies are stable once they have, in the words of Juan J. Linz and Alfred C. Stepan, become “the only game in town.” In such “consolidated” democracies, where an alternative system of government no longer seems like a possibility, an overwhelming majority of the citizens believes that the only legitimate form of government is democratic. Mainstream political actors refrain from subverting the rules of the democratic game for partisan advantage. And political forces that seek to dismantle the main aspects of the democratic system, like an independent judiciary, are weak or nonexistent.

Until recently, all of these statements described countries like the United States. Today, it is far from obvious that they still do.

It is not just that citizens like democracy less than they once did: Respect for the rules of the democratic game is also eroding. While most Americans still have a deep emotional attachment to the Constitution, the informal norms that have kept the system stable in the past are increasingly disregarded in political practice. Parliamentary procedures long reserved for extraordinary circumstances, for example, are used with stunning regularity. It is not uncommon to threaten impeachment, or to use the filibuster to block legislation — not because the bill is especially transformative, but simply because a legislative minority disagrees with it.

The rise of parties that are critical of key aspects of liberal democracy, like freedom of the press or minority rights, is even more disconcerting. Since the early 1990s, votes for populists have soared in most major Western democracies, whether the National Front in France or the People’s Party in Denmark.

It is no foregone conclusion that such parties will one day take over the government, nor that they would dismantle liberal democracy if they did. And most citizens say they still want to live in a democracy. But the democratic consensus is more brittle than it was. Scholars who long ago concluded that postwar Western democracies have “consolidated” must reckon with the possibility that a process of what we call “democratic deconsolidation” may be underway.

In our view, there are three main explanations for this development."

>> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/15/opinion/across-the-globe-a-growing-disillusionment-with-democracy.html

http://athensdemocracyforum.com/gallery/athens-democracy-forum-0/2014-videos/1006



















https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLi-CMaS2NmYsEgpnfKNETb0DeJtXYx564

Published on Jul 20, 2015

(ITA subtitles.) After months of negotiations Greece reaches a bad agreement with Eurozone partners. What will happen now? Can Greece be a catalyst for a wider European mobilisation? With Costas Douzinas, Margarita Tsomou, Srecko Horvat, Jerome Roos. Hosts Lorenzo Marsili, artistic direction Berardo Carboni.

Uploaded on Nov 20, 2008

Introduction to Ancient Greek History (CLCV 205)

In this lecture, Professor Kagan describes the mechanics of the Delian League and its transformation into the Athenian empire. This transformation caused Athens to rival Sparta as an equal in power and prestige. He also argues that this process took place rather smoothly due to the good relations between Sparta and Athens. Professor Kagan argues that Cimon the Athenian generally played an important part in this development. Finally, Professor Kagan begins to describe the workings of Athenian democracy by comparing it with modern American democracy.

00:00 - Chapter 1. The Rise of the Athenian Empire (Cont.)
10:25 - Chapter 2. Competition for Power between Sparta and Athens
15:51 - Chapter 3. Cimon, His Popularity and Rise to Power
30:29 - Chapter 4. The Thasian Rebellion and the Eventual Removal of Cimon
42:59 - Chapter 5. A Fuller Athenian Democracy
55:12 - Chapter 6. Organization of Athenian Democracy: The Legislative
01:04:42 - Chapter 7. Organization of Athenian Democracy: The Executive

Complete course materials are available at the Open Yale Courses website: http://open.yale.edu/courses

This course was recorded in Fall 2007.

Published on Nov 28, 2014

The government of the United States borrowed ideals from democratic rule in ancient Athens, Greece.

Published on Oct 3, 2014

Athenian democracy developed around the fifth century BC in the Greek city-state (known as a polis) of Athens, comprising the city of Athens and the surrounding territory of Attica. Athens is one of the first known democracies. Other Greek cities set up democracies, most following the Athenian model, but none are as well-documented as Athens.
It was a system of direct democracy, in which participating citizens voted directly on legislation and executive bills. Participation was not open to all residents: to vote one had to be an adult, male citizen, and the number of these "varied between 30,000 and 50,000 out of a total population of around 250,000 to 300,000." At times, the opinion of voters could be strongly influenced by the political satire of the comic poets at the theatres.


This video is targeted to blind users.

Attribution:
Article text available under CC-BY-SA
Creative Commons image source in video

Picks from the 99U

Selected Talks from Behance event 99U
Tina Seelig: The 6 Characteristics of Truly Creative People from 99U on Vimeo.

Gretchen Rubin: The 4 Ways to Successfully Adopt New Habits from 99U on Vimeo.
Original at https://vimeo.com/99u/videos
Josh Reich: Design Is Not a Department from 99U on Vimeo.

Joe Gebbia: Executing Your Idea Starts With a Single Step from 99U on Vimeo.

Brené Brown: Why Your Critics Aren’t The Ones Who Count from 99U on Vimeo.

Simon Sinek: Why Leaders Eat Last from 99U on Vimeo.

Value & Quality Recognition

The profession of Architecture (science & Art of building) is definitively changing in the Arab World.


Besides the two renowned awards of architecture (Pritizker & the Aga Khan's) another award is coming into shape; The Rafik Hariri UN-Habitat Memorial award.

http://www.rhunhmemorialaward.org/

Copied Via http://www.unhabitat.org/content.asp?typeid=19&catid=34&cid=7612




Call for submissions opens: 1 December 2011


The Rafik Hariri UN-Habitat Memorial Award Steering Committee assembled 25 and 26 October in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia to launch the second cycle of the Award. The Award's Steering Committee confirmed a successful completion of the first cycle and called for continued and active engagement of all stakeholders this coming cycle, in the pursuit of a fitting winner 2012.


The Rafik Hariri Award is a joint initiative of the Rafik Hariri Foundation and UN-Habitat that seeks to reward individuals and organizations continuing in the spirit of the late Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. In 2004, Mr. Hariri was awarded the Habitat Award Scroll of Honour, the highest possible award in the UN system in human settlements development, for his creativity, visionary leadership and statesmanship in the reconstruction of Lebanon and the City of Beirut.


Under the theme "Leadership, statesmanship and good governance", the inaugural award was presented at the Opening Ceremony at the 5th session of the World Urban Forum in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in March 2010. The Award Lecture series was launched in conjunction with the Award dinner by a former news anchor from CNN with direct exposure to the works of the late Rafik Hariri.
The award is given to individuals or organizations/institutions anywhere in the world for significant accomplishments in the areas of: Leadership, statesmanship, and good governance; Construction and reconstruction of settlements and communities; Human resources development and benevolent activities in fighting urban poverty and the implementation of the Habitat Agenda.
The Award is presented biennially and the prize consists of: a cash award of USD 200,000 (which can be split between two winners), a trophy and a certificate.


The second Rafik Hariri UN-Habitat Memorial Award Conference, including the Award Ceremony and Dinner, will take place in September 2012 in conjunction with the UN General Assembly in New York, USA. An award seminar will also be organized during the 6th session of the World Urban Forum in Naples, Italy, in September 2012.




Submissions must be made using the prescribed forms in the 2012 Submission Guide
Deadline for receipt of submissions: 30 April 2012




Submission Guidelines
http://www.unhabitat.org/downloads/docs/SubmissionGuidelinesHaririAward.pdf
http://www.unhabitat.org/content.asp?typeid=19&catid=34&cid=11031


Submission Format 
http://www.unhabitat.org/downloads/docs/RafikHaririUNHABITATMemorialAward.pdf

Plat:Form

DSS @stirling 2011

This post been shared on #Facebook by a good friend
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2414296583/
I would like to repost it here believing in the importance of the subjects mentioned besides it's all my favorite topics in one place/space!

Isn't that great!

http://www.ads.org.uk/urbanism/features/design-skills-symposium-2011-presentations

  Presentations from this year's Design Skills Symposium which was held in Stirling.




Sarah Longlands - The Role of Place and Diversity

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Steven Tolson - Investment Inputs: Citizens, Developers and the State

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Max Hislop - Liveable Places: Green Networks

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Tom Steele - Making the most out of Property and Assets

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Ben Hamilton-Baillie - Streets, Networks and Public Space

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Stephen Hill - How to live more sustainably: Aligning Personal and Professional Values

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David Sim - People Oriented Development

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