An Economy for Peace has to be built together

Fellow Changemakers, the organizers of the International Interreligious Conference of the Focolare asked me to share my personal journey in how my interreligious experience as a youth impacted my path as an entrepreneur and a Changemaker. Some episodes shared here are included in my book on Creative Change. Here is what I shared in Rome.

My interreligious journey began as a teenager when I met the Focolare Movement, which I discovered was deeply involved in dialogue among religions. This foundation helped prepare me as I got more involved in interreligious dialogue.

Through this encounter I had the opportunity to participate in Religions for Peace (RfP) where I served as the moderator for Interfaith youth in Asia for six years.

There it opened my mind and horizon to know the relevance of this dialogue for peace. I want to be clear: the Focolare did not send me as a token participant but empowered me as a youth leader and trusted me, that set off an extraordinary adventure to know fellow youth leaders in Rissho Kosei-kai(RKK) and Shanti Ashram as our movements worked to help lead Religions for Peace youth movement. Here I want to thank Christina Lee, Roberto Catalano, Paul Lemarie in the Focolare movement for trusting me as a youth leader.

The encounters with other interfaith leaders profoundly changed my life and I wrote some of these experiences in my new book of "Creative Change". In a special way I considered as my mentor Rev Kyoichi Sugino of RKK who taught me so much, thank you dear RKK family. So i hope that I will not be the only one who benefitted from this youth leadership experience and that our three movements will always commit to nurture a constant group of youth leaders who know each other over a decade or more and can mobilize our movements for action

Chiara Lubich, who inspired me greatly, understood the importance of founding new creative structures for unity. She understood that peace is not a given and has to be fought with hearts and minds in concrete ways.

Peace is never possible without equal dignity and love of neighbor in our economy. So in 1991 concerned about growing gap between rich and poor, Chiara inspired by the experience of early christians where no one was in need, launched the? Economy of Communion or EoC in short, a new economic theory in favor of mutual love. Why does this matter, it matters because in order to end poverty, it is not as simply as ending material poverty but poverty of trust, institutions and ideas .

Pope francis in 2017 in meeting all of us involved in EoC said that unless we can influence and change the rules of the social economic system, universal brotherhood cannot be realized. Basically he called us to be serious about Chiara's original intuition to bring about the united world through the economy.

One thing that I learned from my own experience trying to practice EoC in my business for 20 years is this: to achieve it, you have to fight the selfish and negative impulses designed into the current economic system;

They are like a dead tree with ghostly fingers that haunt you when you do not pay attention. The enlightening thing for me about being inspired by Chiara is that she was not simply loving; she was always thinking creatively about how to bring about a united world.

With my business partners, one a Muslim, a Protestant, and me a Catholic, in founding our company, Consulus, whose mission is to drive change, we understood, from our interpretation of what Chiara said, it is not enough to be ethical; it is not enough to be nice.

We have to be creative in creating new management theories inspired by the Economy of Communion to shape new leaders in business, politics, and non-profit organizations.

One experience on dialogue: in the company, every year we have a practice called Bonsai,

it is a practice inspired by the Focolare where we share our feedback to one another such as an affirmation on how they have made an impact to our lives and where maybe they have not done things well with purpose. We have done this internally for about 17 years and it continues to be a deepening of relationships experience. We have since introduced this to our?clients, and people were moved in many situations. One person who worked with her boss for years thanked us for this practice of Bonsai where everyone is respected as a beautiful plant, she said that it was beautiful to hear from her boss in specific ways about how well she did her work. Because she never had the opportunity to hear it. This deepened the trust between them.

We also understood that we cannot simply be a company in Singapore but must find a global network of fellow changemakers - to prove this can work on a global scale. We started going overseas, and some of our earliest clients are faith-based organizations such as the National Islamic Bank of Brunei.

To challenge the largest consulting firms by showing that it is possible to do large-scale projects such as remaking an entire city or airport and still be a force for good.

Another experience in dialogue is, we worked on large township projects and usually when a large company develops a township, they do not involve the community.

So in Sarawak (Malaysia), we introduced this approach of involving the community before building. We ask the people living there what is so special about the state capital of Kuching. The community then submitted 2,000 stories of love and unity about Kuching. From these stories, we built and developed a township where?people?can come together in purpose and unity. Today that?township?is a place where people gather for events, they come together to celebrate arts and culture. And we named it?Saradise, Sarawak and paradise, because where there is purpose and unity, it is indeed paradise.?

Through this experience we brought the owner to Rome to learn more about the economy of communion model.

After the experience he too decided to transform his entire business towards?sustainability?so as to have an impact on Sarawak he pledged to go into planting fast-growing trees in the state and provide economic opportunities for the tribal people.?

Last month, I was in Abuja, and I met Cardinal Onaiyekan, whom some of you know in Religions for Peace. He asked me why I was there. Together with my partner, Dr Andrew Kawasaki from Nigeria, who believes in the Economy of Communion, I said to him: Your Eminence, we are here because we want to build an economy for a united world. He was so pleased he said:

“ I look forward to your progress. And learning more about this idea of the economy of Communion is needed here.”

Just like what the Cardinal said, I hope to learn from all of you these days as we build an economy for peace together.?