29 January 2023: An Earth Agora at Home for Humanity, France, to “Foster the Art of Humanity”

schieffer
Jan 29, 2023
3 min read

Updated: Feb 17, 2023

A unique constellation of four organizations co-hosted this Earth Agora with the aim of Fostering the Art of Humanity, across borders and beliefs. Home for Humanity Planetary Movement; Dialogues en Humanité (Lyon and worldwide), Come To My Home Festival (Morocco with international events), and ValMuse (a regional music association in the Valromey, where also Home for Humanity France is lodged.

Around 11am, on a Sunday morning, Home for Humanity, France, filled up with about 30 people, each bringing a vision for humanity and some food to share. The aspiring aim of this Earth Agora was to cultivate the art of humanity. Participants assembled in the living room to listen, as ouverture, to Driss Alaoui Mdaghri (Founder of Come to My Home and Home for Humanity in Casablanca, Morocco) reciting a rich bouquet of his inspiring poems, accompanied by Dirk and Ismael Boerner, two ingenious musicians from the Valromey, and also representing Val Muse: Together they set the tone for the co-creation of a powerful atmosphere. Driss’ poems were mainly in French (as the common language of most people present), but the audience also experienced poems in Arabic, Kurdish, and English. Here is one of Driss’ poems that was read:

L’Alpha et l’Oméga Musique des sphères Cithares, sistres, cymbales Kinnors et tympanons Mélodies et vibrations Et mon corps envouté Par les voix des sirènes Mouvements mélodiques du cosmos Enchantements harmonieux des étoiles D’orient et d’Occident Chantez et dansez sous la lune éternelle Qui éclaire le ciel des nuits d’Orient Peuples amazones Navigateurs intrépides Voyageurs audacieux Explorateurs de l’Alpha et de l’Oméga Vous êtes des miens et je suis des vôtres. Alpha and Omega Music of the spheres Zithers sistrums cymbals Kinnors and tympanons Melodies and vibrations And my bewitched body By the voices of the sirens Melodic movements of the cosmos Harmonious enchantments of the stars East and West Sing and dance under the eternal moon Which lights up the night sky of the Orient Amazon peoples Intrepid navigators Daring travelers Explorers of Alpha and Omega You are of mine and I am of yours.

The event proceeded with explaining and sharing the different organizations present:

Ø Come to My Home, an art festival originated in Morocco (but with editions also outside the country), with the aim of creating art (music, poems, theatre, paintings, …) together, to foster peace and communication

Ø Dialogues en Humanité, based in Lyon, organizing events to foster dialogue and communication across the globe. Co-founder Geneviève Ancel, passionately shared that this is a time for meeting, sharing, learning to listen and co-construction; and Dialogues en Humanté is a series of events and placed where to reflect together and learn to "create society" to live in peaceful communities that know how to get away from opposition, competition, exploitation and all forms of abuse and violence.

Ø Val Muse, a French music school, that wishes, through music, to encourage exchanges and to contribute to promote the magnificent territory of Valromey. For the driving force behind Val Muse, Constance Boerner, Val Muse is not only a music school which offers more than 20 disciplines, but it also strives to enhance the life choice of the inhabitants of Valromey by offering concerts and animations.

Ø Home for Humanity, aiming at Co-Creating Home on Earth, through supporting the potential

of individuals to become agents of transformation, of homes to become seedbeds for ecological and societal regeneration, and of cultures to contribute uniquely to an inclusive Earth civilization, ultimately seeking to transform our divided world into a united home for the indivisible family of life.

Rama Mani followed by enacting two stories of two people she encountered: a young mother from Cameroon, Lynda Leogah Forkwa, doing her master studies in International Affairs, hoping to transform the community she lives in by attracting young back to education and out of drugs and misery. And a Swiss university student, Marco Bellarosa, originally from Eritrea and missing his home country, with the wish to soothe the pain that rages through its population. Both performances were profound and moving, evoking in the spectators a swirl of emotions, as had the poems recited before.

The earth agora was beautifully closed with a shared lunch, where people had the chance to meet and talk to each other, at the end of which a circle of future wishes was spoken. Every person present, shared a wish for the world of the future, beautifully collected in a spontaneous poem by Alexander Schieffer, as well as some “interactive” poems of his.

In culmination, everyone was dancing to the tunes of Dirk (piano) and Ismael (balafon) Boerner, grasping the last moments of this powerful event, which indeed became a practice ground for “fostering the art of humanity”.

by Matilda SanGiorgio, Home for Humanity Team Member, Switzerland / Italy