Celebrate with us!
United Planet’s 15 Years of Building a Community Beyond Borders

MISSION
To foster cross-cultural understanding and address shared challenges
so to unite the world in a community beyond borders

“In today’s world, global challenges transcend borders. To address these challenges–poverty, global health, climate change, involuntary migrations–we need to work together as a global community. We are constructing the upper stories of a building in efforts to effect change without focusing on the foundation…the foundation necessary to solve these global challenges is in building stronger relationships and greater understanding across cultures.”
–David Santulli, Founder and President, United Planet

15 Points about United Planet
as shared by founder David Santulli

HIGHLIGHTS

• Spending time with our diverse volunteers and communities around the world (from the children in Romania and Moldova to Tanzania and Nepal) and working with our committed partners who spend their lives serving worthy causes in their communities.

• Hearing from volunteers or partners about how our programs changed their lives, from expanding global perspectives, providing new language skills, enhancing abilities to get along with others across borders, and developing new skills to inspiring a major academic or career change.
• Listening to stories from our Global Health Fellows and Leaders about how our programs transformed their lives and helped them succeed in their academic and career pursuits. These special opportunities would not have been possible for these students without the generous support of our essential sponsors and partners.
• The opportunity to work with the most dedicated, supportive, globally-minded, positive (and gifted!) team that I could ever imagine all over the world–thanks to our volunteers, team, boards, country coordinators/teams, partners, and supporters!
• The joy of seeing people connect and build relationships together beyond borders and seeing the spark in someone’s eyes when they learn something fascinating from one another across cultures.

15 @ 15
Click here for reflections shared by volunteers, staff, board members, country coordinators, group leaders and friends who make up the United Planet Team! (Coming soon!)

REASONS for UNITED PLANET

• The current dysfunction and fragmentation that exists globally is unsustainable.
• The problem with how we go about addressing global challenges in today’s world is that we start constructing a building from the third and fourth floors. Instead, we need to focus on building a strong foundation – a foundation bonded together through understanding, respect, and mutually supportive relationships across borders.
• Isolation breeds fear. We need to keep our connections open across borders so that we can foster mutual understanding, respect, and partnership.
• No one person or organization can achieve impact in isolation. We can only survive and thrive through each other’s support and partnership. A community of individuals and organizations must work together across borders to build a more united planet.
• We cannot solve the transnational challenges of today’s world or reach our full global potential unless we work together. We are unable to work together without understanding, respect, and mutual support as our foundation. We need to work very hard at building this foundation. Once we learn to work together, there are no limits to what we can achieve to ensure a peaceful, cohesive, and sustainable world.

PRESSING AHEAD

• We = everyone, everywhere. The urgency for the work of United Planet has grown more and more over the past 15 years. A united planet can only be achieved when we all work in collaboration.
  
• United Planet’s team values have guided us through many challenges: courage, compassion, perseverance, generosity, open-mindedness, respect and teamwork.
• Some adages that helped me through the early days and that are still relevant today:
  • A united planet requires a change of enough hearts and minds.
  • “Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean.” (Ryunosuke Satoro)