Power to the People: Citizen Engagement and Social Transformation
Video Description
Panel called Power to the People: Citizen Engagement and Social Transformation at the Skoll World Forum 2009. The moderator is Ray Suarez of The NewsHour on PBS and panelists are Kailash Satyarthi, chairman, global March Against Child Labour; Daniel Lubetzky, founder and president, PeaceWorks Group; The Honourable Mary Robinson, president, Realizing Rights
Speakers
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Daniel Lubetzky is CEO of KIND Healthy Snacks, makers of award-winning healthy foods, and Chairman of PeaceWorks, pursuing both peace and profit through neighbors striving to coexist in conflict regions. He is also the Founder of the PeaceWorks Foundation's OneVoice Movement, empowering moderate Israelis and Palestinians to achieve peace, and Co-Founder of Maiyet, forging partnerships with artisans in developing economies to create a new luxury fashion venture. Lubetzky received a BA in Economics and International Relations (magna cum laude) from Trinity University, and a JD from Stanford Law School. He has received many awards, including the Peace Security and Reconciliation Award, the Peace Makers Award and the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship. He was also selected as Entrepreneur of the Year by Entrepreneur Magazine. Lubetzky was selected by the World Economic Forum as one of 100 Global Leaders for Tomorrow in 1997 and later as a Young Global Leader.
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Founder, Kailash Satyarthi Children's Foundation
The life and work of Kailash Satyarthi is synonymous with the crusade against child slavery. Kailash was born in 1954 in Vidisha in Madhya Pradesh, India. He has a degree in electrical engineering and a post-graduate diploma in high-voltage engineering. After a few years of teaching engineering in a college in Bhopal, Kailash founded Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Save the Childhood Movement) in 1980. BBA symbolises the struggle against child labour and child servitude and initiated the South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude (SACCS). Kailash started “Rugmark” in 1994, a social labeling program in which rugs are labelled and certified to be childlabour-free. Recently, he has promoted the empowerment of children through a nationwide crusade for the formation of Child Friendly Villages. Kailash is the founder of GoodWeave, a 2005 Skoll Awardee.
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Chair of The Elders, The Elders
Mary Robinson was elected Irish President in 1990 and served for seven years as a principled and transformative leader who fought for equality and women’s rights throughout her time in office. A firm believer in dialogue and reconciliation, she broke taboos by being the first Irish head of state to make official visits to Britain, as well as regularly visiting Northern Ireland. As UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (1997-2002), Mary Robinson became renowned as an outspoken voice dedicated to investigating and exposing human rights abuses across the world.
Mary Robinson has been a member of The Elders since the group was founded in 2007 and was appointed Chair of The Elders in November 2018. She has travelled to the Middle East several times with The Elders to encourage peace efforts and support Israelis and Palestinans working for peaceful coexistence; visited the Korean Peninsula to help ease tensions between North and South Korea and learn more about North Korea’s chronic food crisis; joined an Elders' delegation to Côte d'Ivoire to emphasise the importance of reconciliation following widespread civil conflict.
Mary Robinson also founded The Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice. Its work from 2010-2019 meant climate justice went from being effectively a taboo topic to being an approach to climate decision-making and action that is people-centered, rights-informed and fair.
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Freelance Journalist, Individual
Ray Suarez is co-host of the weekly radio program "World Affairs," presented by the World Affairs Council of Northern California and KQED FM. He has just completed an appointment as the McCloy Visiting Professor of American Studies at Amherst College in Massachusetts.
Suarez has hosted programs for Al Jazeera America, PBS, and NPR. He has authored three books, "Latino Americans: The 500-Year Legacy That Shaped a Nation"; "The Holy Vote: The Politics of Faith in America"; and "The Old Neighborhood: What We Lost in the Great Suburban Migration." His series of interviews with historian Howard Zinn has been collected for a new volume from New Press this year, and he contributed a chapter to "The Good Fight," a collection of writing from historians and activists on the long struggle for equality in the United States.
During his years at the PBS NewsHour, Suarez was the lead correspondent for coverage of global health challenges, filing a vast array of stories from Africa, Asia, and Latin America, from the H1N1 pandemic in Mexico, to fighting HIV-TB co-infection in Southern Africa, to broadening vaccine access in Nicaragua, eliminating a major cause of child death.
Earlier in his career, Suarez was a Los Angeles correspondent for CNN, a reporter in London and Rome, and an editor and producer for ABC Radio News in New York. An active Episcopal layman, Suarez is a member of the governing body of Washington National Cathedral, the Chapter. He holds a BA in African History from NYU, an MA in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago, and 15 honorary doctorates from colleges and universities across the US.
