World Family Stories Now on Youtube
Learning Life is pleased to announce that all seventeen of our family diplomats (FDs) family stories are now up at our Youtube Channel. Through their stories drawn from their different vantage points in thirteen different countries, the FDs raised a range of ordinary and extraordinary issues families face, from leaving home and moving abroad, to the discrimination faced by those with disabilities, to the impacts of human trafficking and climate change.
In 2022, Learning Life launched the second phase of our Family Diplomacy Initiative (FDI) with the first online international FD training in July to October 2022. FDI is an ambitious, long-term, grassroots effort to connect, train and empower a growing international corps of family diplomats 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 family diplomats, and those citizen diplomats advocate effectively via nonprofits, businesses, media and governments for the needs, concerns and aspirations of families worldwide.
FDI’s Phase 1, launched in 2016, initiated live international family dialogues and connected a growing number of people (now over 14,000) worldwide to FDI on Facebook. Phase 2 is focused on training a growing international corps of FDs with an eye, in Phase 3, to connecting these trained FDs to governments, nonprofits, businesses and media so that they can advocate effectively on issues that affect their family and other families like them, from cancer, depression and domestic violence, to war, climate change and migration.
The seventeen FDs stories dealt with a range of issues facing families:
Afghanistan: Mohammad Siavash on war and refugee flight
Albania: Beltina Gjeloshi on identity and discrimination
Bangladesh: Nusrat Jahan Nipa on home and climate change
Cameron: Atenkeng Cynthia on disability and opportunity
Costa Rica: Gustavo Carvajal on immigration and opportunity
Georgia: Esma Gumberidze on hardship, sacrifice and fulfillment
Ghana: Aaron Yaw Akomea on investment in education
Liberia: Mulbah Isaac Flomo on the legacy of civil war
Liberia: Leroy Quoi on the power of a single mother
Nigeria: Chirunim Agi-Otto on human trafficking
Nigeria: Justice Umesi Onyekachi on primogeniture
Pakistan: Sami Noman on flooding and climate change
Trinidad & Tobago: Tenille Archie on tradition and standing for one’s self
USA: Chloe Terani on international health crisis
USA: Joe Toles on foster care and adoption
Zimbabwe: Ittie Chaunzar on activism and abduction
Zimbabwe: Tadiwa Mudede on disability and suicide
You can watch/listen to any of our FDs’ family stories here at Learning Life’s Youtube Channel.