Interprogram Essay

Searching for Common Ground and the Path to Wisdom

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By Jennifer H. McCarthy
Director, Special Projects

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The interprogram area's efforts to promote demo-cratic values and contemplative practice expanded in significant ways during 1996 while support for the defense of the nonprofit sector developed into a separate initiative.

The Foundation established the interprogram area to support and reinforce connections among the core program areas of the arts, environment, health, and Jewish life. In 1996, the interprogram area focused on these two seemingly dissimilar yet fundamental issues that inform the Foundation's work: democratic values and contemplative practice.

Over the course of the year, increasing numbers of concerned citizens and groups recognized the urgent need to reaffirm the central values of democracy that unite and strengthen diverse communities and the country as a whole. Interest in contemplative practice also blossomed as more and more individuals and organizations began to explore the benefits of meditation and contemplation as a path to wisdom and equanimity.

Responding to the challenges to the nonprofit sector, the Foundation created a nonprofit sector initiative for 1997. The objectives of this new initiative are to defend the vital role of advocacy as a critical activity of the nonprofit sector, to develop creative reforms for the nonprofit sector to make it more effective, and to strengthen the infrastructure organizations that contribute to the health and vitality of the nonprofit sector.

The Foundation published Holding the Center: America's Nonprofit Sector at a Crossroads, by Lester Salamon of Johns Hopkins University, to alert funders, policy makers, and the public to the importance of the nonprofit sector and the challenges it faces. (For more on this issue, see Charles Halpern's essay on page 8.)

Democratic Values

The democratic values initiative seeks to support the search for common ground among diverse groups within the Foundation's program interests; to understand the religious and political movements on the right and to oppose their activities where core values are threatened; and to encourage eVorts to develop a fair and pluralistic vision of democracy.

We believe in the importance of creating a national environment for civil discourse, in which committed people of diverse backgrounds and interests who share common core values can join together to discuss practical strategies for rebuilding American society.

In 1996, the Foundation awarded renewed funding to Sojourners for The Call to Renewal, a project working to develop an alternative faith-based voice to the religious right and stimulate a new political conversation around a range of issues that are deeply divisive in public life-such as race, poverty, welfare reform, and abortion. The Call to Renewal convened a National Forum on Faith and Politics in Washington, DC, in September, followed by six regional conferences, which together sought to create a more civil, compassionate, moral climate, especially toward the poor and marginalized, during the presidential election campaign.

In another effort to bring diverse people together for community development and civic participation, we supported Libraries for the Future in organizing a series of national forums using the public library as a neutral convener and civic space to generate dialogue among diverse groups around the role of arts and culture in local communities and the larger society. Libraries are also key institutions for building support for intellectual freedom in their communities. In 1995, there were 740 recorded censorship attempts against library materials, including classic books such as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Catcher in the Rye, and Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

With renewed support from the Foundation, the American Library Association (AMA) expanded its efforts to teach librarians how to respond successfully to censorship challenges and to develop effective community-based anti-censorship coalitions. In 1996, the AMA's Intellectual Freedom Leadership Development Institute, in collaboration with local partners, trained 870 librarians in 435 communities, forging a national network of librarians, teachers, and administrators for intellectual freedom.

In Seattle, Washington, the National Campaign for Freedom of Expression continued to protect core democratic values through education and advocacy on behalf of freedom of artistic expression. The group, made up of artists, arts organizations, audience members, and concerned citizens, helped promote a progressive agenda in the arts world as well as in the larger community, including initiating collaborations with organizations working to counter censorship outside the arts movement.

Our support for the National Center for Economic and Security Alternatives is designed to promote the many innovative programs around the nation that are strengthening democratic values and offering new models of hope for a revitalized civil society. The center will issue a report on effective models of institutional innovation in the Foundation areas of health, environment, and the arts, and develop a strategy for linking successful programs with initiatives in other communities.

The center's project, The Emerging Society: Toward a New Vision of Democracy, will also provide key data to an important Foundation initiative, tentatively titled the Century Project. A "think tank without walls," the Century Project will seek to raise the visibility of scholars, activists, policy makers, and organizations with progressive, innovative ideas for solutions to the fundamental problems at the heart of our democracy. Initial projects may include a rethinking of the role of the nonproWt sector, which is confronted by a number of challenges, and the ways that society is preparing citizens for the changing nature of work.

Contemplative Practice

The Foundation's promotion of contemplation as a vital element in easing pain and comforting the dying, understanding environmental values, and renewing Jewish spirituality led to the creation of this special interprogram initiative to explore and promote the importance of contemplative practice through academic inquiry and public education.

With the Fetzer Institute, the Nathan Cummings Foundation created the Project on the Contemplative Mind in Society to take the lead in encouraging the practice of contemplation in America. In 1996, the project conducted a successful exploratory retreat for corporate executives, completed the groundwork for a series of focus groups to explore attitudes about meditation and contemplation, and initiated a program of fellowships to promote the study of contemplative practice in a range of academic Welds at U.S. universities. The project received fellowship applications from scholars in psychology, theology, philosophy, women's studies, Japanese literature, gerontology, English literature, music, speech communication, Wne arts, religion, chemistry, anthropology, dance, American studies, and management.

A grant to the Harvard University Graduate School of Education to support the work of Dr. Howard Gardner will demonstrate the role of contemplation in engendering humane creativity not only in the arts but in such professions as the law and journalism. The Foundation also supported Upaya's Institute for Contemplative Work with Dying People in its efforts to bring contemplation into the mainstream of medicine as a therapeutic approach to healing for people who are dying and their caregivers. The institute provides introductory and advanced training sessions to health care professionals working with the dying.

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