Date: Saturday, July 10, 2021; Sunday, July 11, 2021
Time: 2:30 – 4:30 pm
Presenters: Mary-Wynne Ashford, Sheila Flood and Sharon Welsh
ʻAbdu’l-Bahá was a strong supporter of action to build a global society to end war and build an advancing civilization. He supported the formation of the League of Nations during his lifetime, and after World War II, Shoghi Effendi supported the founding of the United Nations. The founding documents of the UN express universal spiritual values.
Today, global issues like Climate Change, War, and Pandemics require global solutions, but structural issues leave the United Nations inadequate to address them. Baha’i teachings address values needed to advance the urgent reforms that must be made.
The two workshop sessions will introduce proposals from the 2020 book, Global Governance and the Emergence of Global Institutions for the 21st Century by three distinguished Baha’is, Maja Groff, Augusto Claros-Lopez and Arthur Dahl. The book is available as a free download from Cambridge University Press. It is 500 pages long.
About the Presenters:
Mary-Wynne Ashford is a retired family doctor and palliative care specialist. She became a Baha’i in 2009. She served on the Saanich LSA and was twice the Saanich delegate to the National Spiritual Assembly. She has been a leader in nuclear disarmament nationally and internationally for almost forty years. She was a Special Advisor to the Government of Canada at the UN Special Session on Disarmament in 1988, and continued to attend UN Conferences on the Non-Proliferation Treaty and consult to the Government. She served as Co-President of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War for four years, and continues on the Board of IPPNW Canada. IPPNW was awarded the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize. Her book, Enough Blood Shed: 101 Solutions to Violence, Terror, and War has been translated into Korean and Japanese.
Sheila Flood joined the Baha’i Faith at the age of 20 in PEI. After graduating from the NS College of Art, she taught art in NB and, in the early 1980’s, worked at the Baha’i National Centre in Toronto. After a period of pioneering in Guadeloupe FWI, she and her husband Jim and two young children moved to Quebec City in the early 90’s. She worked at the Baha’i Centre there for 7 years, serving on the Regional Teaching & Administrative Committee, which became an appointed and then elected Baha’i Council. Sheila and her family moved to Vancouver Island in 2003, where she serves on the board of the Victoria Multi Faith Society, paints, writes, leads a walking club and enjoys weekly Baha’i study sessions.
Sharon Welsh always says the best thing that ever happened to her was discovering the Baha’i Faith in her 40’s, as it helped her make sense of the world and has inspired and shaped her life since. Born and raised in Victoria, she spent most of her adult life working in the social services. Although, supporting the peace movement in principle and sometimes in action, it is only recently that Sharon has explored the United Nations and global governance in any significant manner. She has found the whole process incredibly interesting, informative and intriguing. She knows she has much to learn, but a large spark of interest has been ignited and she is excited to see where this will lead.
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