Family is by far the most valued relationship in people’s lives across the world, surpassing work, politics, leisure, friends, and religion, according to the World Values Survey. At the same time, families are affected by the wide range of problems societies face, from diabetes and depression, to pollution and climate change, poverty and recessions, and war and terrorism. Despite the family’s vulnerability and value worldwide, seldom are families invited to participate in decision-making alongside business, labor and government, or engaged to connect people across the world’s cultural, economic and political divides. Family is thus a culturally powerful yet largely untapped force for a more caring world.
Learning Life’s Family Diplomacy Initiative (FDI) is an ambitious, grassroots effort to connect, train and empower a growing international corps of volunteer family diplomats (FDs) to participate in decision-making at local to global levels. We envision a world more connected and caring because every family has one or more FDs networked with fellow FDs across the globe, and these citizen diplomats together advocate effectively for the needs, concerns and aspirations of families worldwide via nonprofits, businesses, media and governments.
To achieve this vision, Learning Life is tapping into the power of the internet. Not everyone can afford to travel, but growing numbers of people across the globe are eagerly communicating online. The internet is an enormously popular, cost-effective, large-scale force that is used for good and bad purposes. The bad includes sowing disinformation, intolerance, and violence. The good though includes nurturing dialogue, learning, and collaboration that can open minds, nurture caring, and transform lives.
Learning Life is thus harnessing the power and potential of families and the internet to build an international family diplomacy movement online. In fall 2016, we launched Phase 1 of FDI by connecting lower-income families online in Washington DC, Puerto de la Libertad, El Salvador, and Dakar, Senegal. From 2017 to 2019, Learning Life completed two pilot projects — a community photo project and a food culture project — that engaged small numbers of lower-income families in the USA, El Salvador, Senegal and Jordan. In 2020 we completed a larger scale food culture project. In 2021, we more than quintupled the membership of FDI on Facebook, from less than 1,700 to over 10,000 people worldwide, and organized a series of live international dialogues on the question: “what do families worldwide need to be safe and healthy?” In 2022, we began Phase 2 of FDI, tapping into our growing global FDI network on Facebook to identify and begin training motivated Family Diplomats, improving their knowledge of citizen diplomacy and global family patterns by 11%, and their storytelling skill by 24% on average in 2022, and 9% and 28% respectively in 2023. Learn more about our 2022and2023trainings’ impact. See the poster at the bottom of this page for FDI’s vision and three phases of development. In 2024, we are holding a series of four dialogues on family security with an eye to identifying families worldwide affected by five major issues: war, poverty, climate change, gender-based violence, and the internet.
“I participate in FDI because I want to be a better global citizen. Through FDI, I gain insights into the experience and perspectives of different people across the world, and that understanding helps me be a better global citizen.” -Prudence Hounhoui (left), Porto-Novo, Benin, FDI Member
How You Can Get Involved
Here are five ways you can get involved and support FDI (click the links below that interest you to learn more and get involved):
(2) Sponsor a family diplomat for as low as $250 for individuals and $1,000 for organizations to support their international training. Meet some of our Family Diplomats here.
(3) Attend the 2024 dialogues on family security: These international dialogues will be via Zoom and focus on five major threats to families’ security – poverty, war, climate change, domestic violence, and the internet (social media, gaming, etc.) – how families experience these threats, and how these challenges can be addressed. We encourage you to join the dialogues with one or more of your family members, and if your family is affected by one or more of these issues you may have the opportunity to speak.
(4) Volunteer as a Family Diplomat or Family Diplomacy Ambassador: FDs learn about issues impacting families, connect with other families locally to globally affected by the same issues, and develop their skills to become effective advocates for families worldwide. FDAs recruit volunteer FDs and fellow FDAs in their community, country and/or internationally, represent and advocate for FDI, and help Learning Life advise, connect, train, and/or learn about our FDs. Both attend meetings every two months via Zoom, and participate in communications via Facebook and/or Linkedin between the bi-monthly meetings as needed.
(5) Intern with Learning Life: Want to connect with the world, and gain experience in democracy and citizen diplomacy? Learning Life interns are undergraduate or graduate students who typically volunteer about 10 hours/week for several months, usually in spring, summer and/or fall, to gain resume-building nonprofit experience as they assist with a variety of Learning Life tasks, including research, outreach, social media, fundraising, design, planning, and else. To apply for a Learning Life internship, please send along your resume to email@learninglife.info.
For More Information
Want to learn more about family diplomacy? Click here for a deeper dive. For video recordings of FD trainings and family storytelling:
This archive includes Learning Life news, spotlights about our participants and volunteers, and blog posts from Learning Life’s founder, Paul Lachelier.
Many college students and recent graduates look to volunteerism and nonprofits as a means to gain experience and bolster their resumes. For Learning Life intern John Charles Hanley (who goes by Johnny), however, non-profit work is not just a temporary stop on the road to a career, but his intended path in life.
A native of Virginia, Johnny attended James Madison University, majoring in Justice Studies and minored in Interdisciplinary Religion, becoming President of the JMU Freethinkers and an active member of the Vietnamese Student Association. Johnny’s studies and independent reading spurred his interest in “using research in positive psychology to challenge the way our society thinks about happiness and meaningful relationships.” He hopes to start a non-profit to pursue this interest.
Accordingly, Johnny has taken internships with non-profits to learn about how they work, starting with Virginia Organizing. As Johnny explains, Virginia Organizing is “an organization that encourages those who have traditionally had little or no voice in our society to participate in issues that directly affect the quality of their lives,” from predatory lending to Social Security. With Virginia Organizing, Johnny helped organize grassroots events and projects, encouraged Virginia voters to become politically active, managed information tables to engage citizens on key issues, and represented the organization in meetings with local politicians.
Johnny started interning with Learning Life in October this year, working thus far primarily to help inform northern Virginia residents of our “buy local, learn local” holiday program through research, email and door-to-door outreach. Asked why he is interning with Learning Life, Johnny responds, “I volunteered with Learning Life because I am passionate about education as a tool for social change. I want to learn how to bring knowledge to a diverse audience because I hope to one day work to empower people with educational content.”
When he is not interning with Learning Life, Johnny is training to become a violin teacher. He has been playing violin since he was seven years old and hopes to use his expertise to earn a little extra cash and help people learn to play the instrument. But all this is preface to an exciting adventure on which Johnny will soon embark: around April 2014, Johnny will be moving to Cape Town, South Africa to join his girlfriend, who will soon be pursuing international development studies there.
We at Learning Life are grateful for Johnny’s work with us, look forward to working with him in the first months of 2014, and wish him the best in his move to South Africa and his developing career in non-profit education!
To learn more about interning or volunteering with Learning Life and other ways you can help, contact us at email@learninglife.info.
Intern Spotlight: Anjali Jacob
One of our pleasures at Learning Life is discovering the talents of the people who volunteer and intern with us. This past summer, we happily discovered the artistic talents of one of our interns, Anjali Jacob.
Anjali is currently in her sophomore year as a psychology major at Marymount University in Arlington, Virginia. An honor roll student and National Honor Society member as a student at Chantilly High School in Chantilly, Virginia, Anjali was awarded a Presidential Scholarship to attend Marymount.
Given a keen interest in the arts and letters, Anjali writes both poetry and prose, blogs on current events and social issues, does photography, sings, and plays guitar and piano (the latter for 12 years now). In 2011-12, in her high school senior year, Anjali became art editor and manager for her high school’s literary magazine in the 2011-12 academic year. That same year, the magazine won a Columbia Scholastic Press Association award and first place in the magazine division for the Virginia High School League’s annual publication awards.
Anjali started her internship with Learning Life by gathering university contacts, and researching and writing up facts for website and social media distribution. But we soon discovered Anjali’s artistic talents when she used Photoshop to begin producing art work to accompany some of the facts we distribute – the combination of which our interns called “instafacts.” By the end of her internship in August, Anjali had produced 24 instafacts, one of which we display here with her profile. We used her material to launch a page on Pinterest, which you can access here to view all of Anjali’s art work.
Anjali also produced remarkably professional draft t-shirt and napkin designs for funding projects Learning Life is pursuing. As we told Anjali, she has a promising future in design if she wants it.
However, Anjali is keen on going to graduate school after college in order to become a licensed therapist. She aspires to help children suffering from mental and emotional disorders, and has accordingly worked in summer and after-school programs to help children in need.
Asked why she chose to intern with Learning Life, Anjali replies, “I was looking for something that had a platform I could believe in, one that I felt was worth putting time and energy into. After some research, I found that Learning Life seeks to empower people through incidental learning, which is something I believed I could definitely contribute to through visuals and graphics. I’ve always felt that ignorance is much too great a problem amongst both youth and elders today; taking this internship meant that I could actually attempt to do something about it.”
We at Learning Life greatly appreciate Anjali’s distinctive contributions to our organization and wish her the very best in her future. Thanks, Anjali!
To learn more about interning or volunteering with Learning Life and other ways you can help, contact us at email@learninglife.info.
Washington DC, Puerto de la Libertad, El Salvador, and Dakar, Senegal. From 2017 to 2019, Learning Life completed two pilot projects — a community photo project and a food culture project — that engaged small numbers of lower-income families in the USA, El Salvador, Senegal and Jordan. In 2020 we completed a larger scale food culture project. In 2021, we more than quintupled the membership of FDI on Facebook, from less than 1,700 to over 10,000 people worldwide, and organized a series of live international dialogues on the question: “what do families worldwide need to be safe and healthy?” In 2022, we began Phase 2 of FDI, tapping into our growing global FDI network on Facebook to identify and begin training motivated Family Diplomats, improving their knowledge of citizen diplomacy and global family patterns by 11%, and their storytelling skill by 24% on average in 2022, and 9% and 28% respectively in 2023. Learn more about our 2022 and 2023 trainings’ impact. See the poster at the bottom of this page for FDI’s vision and three phases of development. In 2024, we are holding a series of four dialogues on family security with an eye to identifying families worldwide affected by five major issues: war, poverty, climate change, gender-based violence, and the internet. 
“I participate in FDI because I want to be a better global citizen. Through FDI, I gain insights into the experience and perspectives of different people across the world, and that understanding helps me be a better global citizen.” -Prudence Hounhoui (left), Porto-Novo, Benin, FDI Member
