What is WiserEarth?

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WiserEarth helps the global movement of people and organizations working toward social justice, indigenous rights, and environmental stewardship connect, collaborate, share knowledge, and build alliances. All tools and content are free to use. The site is commercial-free too. Here you will find:

The WiserEarth Directory
The world's largest free and editable international directory of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and socially responsible organizations (over 110,000 in 243 countries, territories, and sovereign islands).

WiserEarth Groups
Online community forums where members can engage in discussion, post and share resources, and collaborate on projects.

WiserEarth Community
A vibrant community of over 30,000 members making connections, sharing resources, solutions, jobs, and events.

WiserEarth Taxonomy
The world's most detailed classification of issue areas related to social justice and environmental restoration.

WiserTuesday Gatherings
Global face to face gatherings which are focused on supporting collaborations across sectors working towards social change.

Why do we need WiserEarth?

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There are more than one million organizations and many millions of us around the world who are actively working toward ecological sustainability, economic justice, human rights protection, political accountability and peace -- issues that are systemically interconnected and intertwined.

Our effectiveness to prevent harm and institute positive change is undermined by our lack of collective awareness, duplication of efforts, and poor connectivity.

What has been missing is a map and directory of our network that includes the resources for communication and cooperation; in essence, an infrastructure through which to coordinate our efforts. WiserEarth provides this infrastructure. It provides a way for us to become better connected and more effective at working together.

What you can do in WiserEarth

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Find people, organizations and groups from all over the world who are involved in the social justice and environmental community

Connect, share ideas and network with the people who share your interests

Generate visibility and support for your work

Create a group for your community of action

History

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WiserEarth is a project of the Natural Capital Institute (NCI), an organization committed to the restoration of the earth and the healing of human culture.

WiserEarth's vision comes from NCI’s Executive Director, Paul Hawken, who recognized its need when researching his latest book, Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being, and Why No One Saw It Coming.

“I knew that if we could understand the connections and visualize the breadth of global efforts on behalf of social and environmental justice, we would recognize the largest movement the world has ever seen. WiserEarth is where this movement can begin to see itself.”

WiserEarth was launched on Earth Day, April 2007. Initial funding for WiserEarth supported the critical phase of building the platform, populating the site with a base of content, and listening to the needs of partners and community members.

In the Spring of 2008, WiserEarth went "open source", meaning its technical code was released to the world. Other projects can now customize a full scale website based on this WiserPlatform code without relying on NCI’s financial leadership.

Since its release, WiserEarth's functionality and tools have co-evolved with its users. Starting out as a directory, WiserEarth now offers social networking tools for people to connect and collaborate around issue areas. We invite you to read about WiserEarth's Principles.

WiserEarth will always be a work in progress. We hope WiserEarth community members will donate their time and intellectual property to help make WiserEarth a true global resource. The history from this point onward is collaboratively written by all of us - the community.