People often become doctors because they want to heal people, and by extension, heal the world. Wendy Sternberg left her successful internal medicine practice in Evanston Illinois because she decided she could better heal the world through Genesis at the Crossroads (GATC), an organization she founded.

GATC mission “is to bridge cultures in conflict through the arts and to create innovative arts-education programs around the world.”

Wendy just spent the several months in Thailand as part of the very exclusive Rotary Peace and Conflict Studies at Chulalongkorn University. Wendy’s work was just written about in the Bangkok Post. Here they describe her best-known program.

The GATC’s most distinguished project to date is the Genesis World Music Ensemble, or the Saffron Caravan, which brings together music artists from the Middle East, North Africa and the Americas to revisit, reinvent and link musical traditions. The organisation began uniting musicians from cultures in conflict in 2004 with the pairing of a Jewish-Moroccan and a Muslim-Moroccan musicians. The artists had never been introduced to one another before, and together they performed with a band comprising musicians from nine different nationalities. Their performance served as a finale to GATC’s two-day ethnic music festival. The group later travelled to Los Angeles, New York and Washington, D.C. Later in 2005, GATC’s Israeli-Palestinian performance became a part of the United Nations’ 60th Anniversary celebration.

At See3 we have the pleasure of collaborating with Wendy to help her find a way to document and distribute video from her upcoming concert tour of Egypt and Jordan. We are also excited about how Wendy is expanding the work of GATC:

“Another humanitarian programme that incorporates arts education is Armed Them with Instruments, which encourages adults and children from the US to donate musical instruments to the children in North African and Middle Eastern countries. This programme also aims to take vulnerable youth off the streets by providing them opportunities to study music at conservatories.”

Some of us feel trapped in our professions and wonder, can we really change the world? Wendy Sternberg answers the question with a resounding Yes!

The folks at NTEN have already begun planning for their Nonprofit Technology Conference 2009, and they’re asking the nonprofit community to vote for the sessions they like the most.

Last year we ran two great sessions: “The Age of YouTube” and “How to Show, Tell, and Active with a Video-centric Microsite“.

This year, we’ve submitted 8 sessions that we want to lead. Click on our session titles below and give them 5 stars (or as NTEN puts it, “I’m already there in my mind”) if you like what you see.

1. Online Video: Tools of the Trade
2. Online Video: Creating a Strategy
3. Hands-On Video Production: Documenting the NTC
4. Viral Video: How to Make it Work for Your Organization
5. You Made a Video, Now What?
6. Web 2.0: How to Get the Buy-In You Need
7. Drupal for Dummies
8. Ning: Building a Custom Social Network

See you at NTC 2009!

The folks at the One Voice Movement — who have been supporting Israeli-Palestinian negotiations toward a two-state solution — launched one-year of civic action and a countdown to a peace agreement. They are hoping to pressure the parties to continue the momentum from the Annapolis meeting, resulting in a Palestinian state at peace with a secure Israel.

One of the tools they are using are large public countdown timers in Tel Aviv and Ramallah. And, they have this web widget with the countdown. This is an example of portable content online – bringing the campaign to the people and not just bringing the people to the campaign. You can learn more on their site.