Living Earth Youth Dialogues with American and Chinese Young People Sharing from the Heart

Living Earth Youth Dialogues Sharing from the Heart is a monthly initiative where young people from China and the United States come together around the pressing ecological, cultural, and spiritual issues of our time. Through sharing thoughts, personal stories, and actions in local settings, Chinese and American youth will begin building cross-cultural bonds to support a vision of a new, ecological civilization. Thus far, the program has produced seven events featuring inspiring young people from both China and the United States. Some of the topics presented by these visionary young people include ecovillages and intentional ecological communities; human-centered urban design; cosmopolitan ecological philosophies & theologies; pursuing sustainable and ecological career and life paths; and promises and pitfalls of urban rooftop farming and issues with the dominant global food swapping model.

For World Unity Week, the coordinators of the program—Jared Morningstar (American) and Vivian Song (Chinese)—will present on the vision behind the initiative and share the numerous successful cross-cultural dialogues the program has facilitated thus far. Jared and Vivian will showcase a number of the Chinese and American presenters who have come to share their work and ideas in the dialogues.

Vivian Song is an independent consultant and a network builder based between New York and China. Combining her specialisms in research journalism, urban studies, and community building, Xinlin has been weaving community networks within China and beyond since 2009. Trained as a teacher, after a 3-year urban study in 16 emerging second-tier Chinese cities, she became a returning student of the lively urban culture worldwide. She collaborated with designers, photographers, and filmmakers making reports from the streets. Since 2018, she joined AMO’s global research initiative studying the countryside’s future and visited more than 20 Chinese villages, where exciting transformation is taking place. With a strong belief in “diversity in culture but unity in nature,” her work focuses on forming cross-sector Glocal collaborations to create meaningful dialogues that ignite social change. She is currently working with ecologists, economists, and educators to create learning experiences for communities in China’s ecological hotspots.

Jared Morningstar is a writer and educator with academic interests in philosophy of religion, Islamic studies, comparative religion, metamodern spirituality, and interfaith dialogue whose work in these areas seeks to offer robust responses to issues of inter-religious conflict, contemporary nihilism, and the “meaning crisis” among other things. Jared works for the Center for Process Studies and the Cobb Institute where he helps promote process-relational thinking and living. Jared holds BAs in Religion and Scandinavian Studies from Gustavus Adolphus College, where he graduated in the spring of 2018.

Living Earth Youth Dialogues Sharing from the Heart is a project of the Living Earth Movement, the Institute for Postmodern Development of China, and the Cobb Institute.

Presenters Name and Email: Jared Morningstar jared.morningstar@cobb.institute

Vivian Song xinlinsong@gmail.com

Join us in the #LovingLivingEarthStewardHeirShip Convergence Room