Sow Peace is an open organization dedicated to promoting world peace. It focuses on two main activities:
An open organization is a community formed to promote a goal shared by all of its members. There is neither hierarchy nor pre-established roles among the members. Joining the organization or dropping out of it are individual, personal decisions that involve only knowledge that the organization exists, the desire to fulfill its goal and the desire to belong. In addition to their common goal some open organizations may choose to establish a series of guidelines that their members must follow.
This implies that an open organization:
Sow Peace is based on two ideas that can be summarized in the following statements:
As an open social organization Sow Peace, a social endeavor for the common good, does not belong to anyone, nor are there any committees or special funds for Sow Peace. Sow Peace belongs to all of its members and to be a member wanting to do so is sufficient along with abiding by the organization’s rules. No member has greater faculties than any other.
War is a community effort, and peace is also. But convincing everyone is not simple since the arguments, symbols and meanings to which each person is sensitive and receptive are as varied as are individuals themselves. Someone may be convinced by one look at a painting or a photograph, which seen by someone else has no effect but they in turn may be persuaded by reading others’ thoughts on the issue. Some will have to see the horrifying facts and figures about deaths and torture. Others may not respond through a rejection of war but rather by discovering the joy and happiness of living in peace, of sharing and meeting new people and learning about different cultures. The paths are infinite and very complex. No one individual can express or communicate them on their own. That’s why Sow Peace is an organization open to everyone, and for everyone, where anyone who wants to can join, and each member can help in their own way sharing and spreading the messages of others, reinterpreting them and/or inventing new ones, containing the idea of Peace. The more we are in numbers, the more we believe in the cause and the more we share and spread it, more and more people will be convinced and will continue to convince others. Finally with passing generations we will be so many in number that it won’t be possible to organize wars anymore. Yet even then it will be necessary to keep insisting and sowing peace generation after generation so that war can never return.
Sow Peace is designed so that you can help and it depends entirely on each one’s participation.
You can do many small things that will have a big impact and a great value for sowing peace.
What’s most important for Sow Peace is that lots of people know us and what we stand for so you can help by letting people know that Sow Peace exists. There are many ways of doing this:
Another very important way to help is by reinterpreting our message. Each person is different and everyone reacts differently to the messages they receive. What has moved and convinced you may not have the same significance for others. In order to convince many people we need many versions of the same message, we need you to express Sow Peace’s message in your own way and share it. This includes everything from literal translations to new texts, images, videos, and forms, and even techniques, media, and technologies that haven’t been invented yet. Finally we invite you to make Sow Peace a significant part of your life, while those who are totally devoted to promoting peace will always be welcome and highly appreciated we put more faith in everyone doing a little bit to promote peace every day.
Sow Peace is designed to include all those who are already involved in or want to be involved in or are convinced of the importance of promoting peace. As long as you abide by the rules, supporting Sow Peace does not mean no longer supporting or participating in other groups.
Sow Peace is designed to be inclusive. It allows you to be a member just by wanting to be one and to make very simple but very important contributions. It is open to all those who put promoting peace above any other ideology, preference, characteristic, affiliation or way of thinking.
Sow Peace is centered on society’s transforming and educating itself to prevent wars. It is a multigenerational, multicultural endeavor that integrates, promotes and encourages all kinds of initiatives and actions in favor of peace carried out by many different individuals, groups and organizations.
As an open organization the expectation is that the community itself will react to insure that the rules are upheld. The members themselves should neutralize any misuse of the name and any other resources of Sow Peace by taking whatever actions they consider appropriate.
Sow Peace’s rules are aimed at preventing abuse and misuse of the organization and what it represents. A good way of preventing this is simply by not doing what the infringer requests. In some cases it might be convenient to point out the abuse so that those not yet familiar with the organization and its rules will not be deceived and Sow Peace’s image will not be degraded. In such cases, however it is important to underline that no member of Sow Peace is the organization’s spokesperson and one should avoid incurring in another abuse or misuse in trying to prevent the initial one.
As a social endeavor for social well-being we want whatever is generated for Sow Peace to be accessible to everyone and not misused. The contents of Sow Peace are of all and for all. Therefore we invite you to generate content with the Creative Commons license (Attribute, Share under the Same License) explained on the following site: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/. However, as long as you do not infringe any of the manifesto’s guidelines you may publish contents under whatever license or protection you prefer.
We want people to talk about and to promote Sow Peace but not to use Sow Peace for other ends or causes. It would be impossible to explain all of the possible scenarios for this to happen but we hope that the following examples will be clear and helpful:
Yes: Impresores de playeras que adicionalmente a su producción normal hacen algunas alusivas a Siembra-Paz (con contenidos comercializables) y las comercializan al costo o casi al costo.
No: A clothing brand that prints and gives away millions of tee shirts alluding to Sow Peace but includes their brand’s logo. (Clearly their real objective is to promote their brand).
No: Someone who cannot earn a livelihood by stamping tee shirts and decides to make and sell tee shirts alluding to Sow Peace to do better economically.
Yes: A lecturer who mentions Sow Peace at their speaking engagements and invites people to learn more about it.
No: A lecturer who sells or commercially promotes lectures about Sow Peace or what he/she has done to promote Sow Peace or the impact Sow Peace can have on society, etc. etc.
Yes: Web sites that want to include Sow Peace logos, botons and banners.
No: Websites that ostentatiously and deceptively use and display texts and logos alluding to Sow Peace in order to attract Sow Peace’s sympathizers, whom they are in fact trying to convert into clients.
Yes: A musician who when performing says: Thank you it is a pleasure to be here performing for all of you … and I would like to take advantage of this opportunity to invite you to learn about an initiative called Sow Peace.
No: A musician who when promoting their concerts mentions Sow Peace, for example: ----‘s Grad Tour, get you tickets for only $$$, concert for Sow Peace.
The portal, Siembra-Paz.org: This caracter of the ogranization is explained here and it permits access to the other tools initially used to créate and promote Sow-Peace (you are most likely consulting it right now). The portal will not change much and when it does it will mainly be to make corrections and incorporate new tools and languages. The portal is a permanent reference for the goals and values of Sow-Peace and by definition these will not change. At the same time the portal is and will be one of many forms being connected to and informed about the various activities and initiatives linked to Sow-Peace. To accomplish this it will be based on tools that are accessible to everyone. When the portal was created the ones listed below had been thought of and selected (we hope that social innovation will generate an infinite number of new forms and channels).
Twitter Hashtags and Accounts: The following accounts and hashtags exist in Twitter so that everyone can publish and dissiminate contents relaeted to Sow Peace:
#semasPacon (global)
#siembraPaz (Spanish)
#sowPeace (English)
#seminaPace (Italian)
Fan Page on Facebook: This is a kind of counter of those who sympathize with Sow Peace click Like at the FanPage if you have decided to be part of Sow Peace. We hope Sow Peace will extend way beyond Facebook users and it is just one of the many ways to help and express your sympathy for Sow Peace but is very simple and popular and very easy to use.
WebWideTags: In Sow Peace we expect hashtags to expand throughout the entire Internet so that it won’t be necessary to use twitter to connect content to some specific topic. For this to happen we ask that you use the hashtags proposed for twitter in blogs, wikis and in general all kinds of pages on which you publish content related to Sow Peace. Also we hope that eventually the search engines will habilitates searches for this type of content y for that reason we invite you to make periodic searches for the hashtags that interest you with your favorite search engines and/or ask them for that function (request that they provide that function).
It is hoped that they will generally be self-administered. In other words that they be administered communally and thus require very little intervention from any one person in particular. However there are some things that have to be done or initiated by someone. Some like the portal, and the FaceBook and Twitter accounts, were opened by me, as the initiator of Sow-Peace, but I hope that there will be many others generated and maintained by other members of this community.
This is the defining characteristic of an open organization. BEING PART OF Sow-Peace should be simple and at the same time an act of personal conviction.
Sow-Peace is a social effort for social wellbeing. To make sure that it does not become an instrument of any specific group or interest, no one should be able to control Sow-Peace.
This is why Sow-Peace exists. All who sympathize with join this cause should be aware of and share this goal.
As paradoxical as it may seem there are not just a few who have proposed achieving peace by violent means under premises such as “If I kill all of my enemies there will be no more fighting”. In Sow Peace we believe that this path is mistaken and counterproductive. Therefore even though Sow-Peace wants to learn about, generate and promote many forms of seeking peace, we want to make it clear that for our members the use of violence can never be considered as an acceptable means of doing so.
We want everyone to belong to Sow Peace and everyone who wants to join is welcome, with no other considerations. However participation in, or promotion of, armed conflicts is in direct opposition to the objectives of Sow Peace. Sow Peace seeks to constantly reduce the number of people who participate in those kinds of activities and therefore specifically prohibits its members from doing so.
As an entity that is self-regulated by the behavior and knowledge of the members themselves it is vital that they know and are aware of the type of commitment they are deciding to assume.
The value of Sow Peace is its purpose. People join for this reason alone, not to follow a leader or belong to a group. Any attempt to change this objective means not understanding and not belonging to Sow Peace.
Sow Peace is a social effort for social well-being. There are no committees and no member has more attributes than any other, so no one can speak in the name of Sow Peace. However all members are expected to spread knowledge of the organization and to promote peace.
The only way to achieve lasting peace is by putting it above any other idea, tendency, preference or cause. Given the enormous variety of peoples and cultures there is a vast range of intentions and causes that may seem very correct and noble to some and incorrect or unimportant to others.
Sow Peace is a point of convergence for everyone who wants to achieve and promote peace above and beyond any other cause, interest or group to which they might adhere. If Sow Peace is used to promote any other causes, all of those who do not sympathize with those causes may by driven away from Sow Peace altogether also abandon, along with what they might reject, the promotion and procuring of peace.
Note: This does not mean that members of Sow Peace should only dedicate themselves to this cause alone. To the contrary everyone can, and it is hoped that they will, dedicate themselves to all kinds of non-violent activities, goals and causes but that whatever time and energy they dedicate to Sow Peace is used strictly for promoting peace and nothing more.
It is very important to Sow Peace that we have convinced you but since war is a communal effort it will be possible as long as there are some people remaining who are not convinced yet. Therefore it is extremely important that others learn about and become convinced of the importance of Peace and attaining it. Keep in mind that even in the midst of prolonged periods of peace, wars can arise as supposed solutions to many situations and emotions that are intrinsic to human life. Therefore it is of utmost importance that we sow peace constantly.
Everyone, no matter what your profession or activity is welcome in Sow-Peace but in the case of politics and public service it is particularly complicated to distinguish between promoting and misusing Sow-Peace.
Para evitar el prejuicio de la sociedad, de Siembra-Paz y de los mismos actores políticos y servidores públicos. Son los que así lo deseen únicos convocados a promover y procurar la paz sin mencionar a Siembra-Paz.
Faith, religion and churches are an essential part of societies that should promote and seek peace. In fact many religions seek and promote peace just as Sow Peace does. However religions and other types of beliefs also include many other ideas, norms and beliefs that are not part of what is sought or implied by Sow-Peace. In order to achieve Peace, people and churches need to agree in their desire for peace and place it above their desire to convince others of, or convert them to, their faith. This does not mean giving up one’s faith or it's evangelizing processes and methods; it simply implies that you desire to live in peace with those whose religious beliefs may be different from yours. Therefore all members of Sow Peace who belong to any church or profess any faith are requested to be especially cautious when inviting others to learn about Sow-Peace and to be sure to avoid using Sow Peace in attempting to evangelize or convince anyone of your faith or religious beliefs.
Sow-Peace is formed by the people and the messages, ideas and testimonies that we use to communicate with each other and to seek peace. It is a social endeavor for social wellbeing and as such has no definable economic value that could be directly related to money. However many of the people and media that it is and will be based on need and use money. Therefore some initiatives to promote Sow Peace might require more money than their promoters can or are willing to provide. This rule does not prohibit such activities and donations but it excludes Sow Peace for any misuse of such funds.
Sow Peace is an open organization dedicated to promoting world peace. It focuses on two main activities:
Sow Peace is an open organization dedicated to promoting world peace. It focuses on two main activities:
To any member of Sow-Peace:
español 
