Thank you for your generosity in considering a donation towards the work of Active Hope.
We operate a ‘pay-it-forward’ model, whereby the funds we receive are invested in creating further opportunities for others to undertake Active Hope trainings.
“Gratitude pulls us out of this rat race. It shifts our focus from what’s missing to what’s there. If we were to design a cultural therapy that protected us from depression and, at the same time, helped reduce consumerism, it would surely include cultivating our ability to experience gratitude. Training ourselves in the skill of gratitude is part of the Great Turning.”
— Active Hope, p.48
Our Pay It Forward Philosophy
The concept of ‘pay it forward’ is a central theme in Active Hope. It plays a role not only in fundraising to develop free Active Hope Training resources but also in supporting a shift in perspective that contributes to positive change in the world.
The starting point for ‘paying it forward’ is gratitude – where we experience appreciation for something given and want to express our thanks. Only rather than giving back to whoever or whatever we received from, instead, we ‘give forward’ to someone or something else. This way, sequences of giving and receiving can extend through time, and spread from one place to another.
Paying forward is where we express our gratitude by passing on to someone or something else, rather than paying back to whatever or whoever we received from.
Here’s an example:
The oxygen we breath is freely available, i.e., at no cost to us. It has been donated to the atmosphere mostly by plants and plankton. However, we can’t pay back those plants or plankton for the benefits we’ve received, because most of them died millions of years ago.
If we experience gratitude for what has been freely given to us, we’re more likely to want to pass on the favour in some way to others. So experiencing gratitude for our oxygen rich atmosphere can increase our desire to protect the plants and plankton living now, so that those in the future can continue to receive this benefit at no cost.
It is interesting that both Mars and Venus, our two neighbouring planets, have hardly any oxygen in their atmospheres, which are mostly carbon dioxide. It isn’t widely known that plant-life and plankton has changed our atmosphere on Earth in ways that make it possible for us humans to live.
When we really understand how much our lives depend on benefits freely given by other life-forms, it increases our desire to play a role in reciprocal generosity and mutual care.
In a similar way, we grateful to the Emergence Foundation and other donors for kick-starting a process of giving and receiving that has the potential to make this video-based online course available for free in the long term. By giving the funds needed to cover the core production costs of the online course, the course becomes available at no cost when it is released. Any help you can give by donating now helps us get this course off to a better start and also helps us keep it free.
If the course becomes popular, it is possible that sufficient donations could come in not only to maintain this course, but also to update and improve it, as well as to develop others. Thank you for any help you can give.
With thanks to Carlotta Cataldi for images