These are wild times to be alive. From the local to the global, we are facing complex, interlocked crises. Yet, around the world people are responding in creative, dynamic, grounded ways to adapt and emerge.

Omega Resilience Awards, a new program of Commonweal, was created to gather a community of people interested in resilient strategies. Collectively, we strengthen generative connections and share narratives of resilience. What will emerge? What will coalesce? We do not know. There are no clear maps, roads, or nautical charts to guide us in these times, but we know we have to move forward and create new narrative byways as we step into the unknown.

Join The New School co-host Michael Lerner in conversation with three of the co-creators of this dynamic global resilience community. In this first conversation, Michael speaks with Nnimmo Bassey from Health of Mother Earth Foundation in Nigeria. Join us for part 2 and part 3 of the series in May and June, when Michael speaks with Manisha Gupta from StartUp! in India, and Anabella Museri and Sofia Nemenmann from Asociación Argentina de Abogados/as Ambientalistas/Colectivo de Acción por la Justicia Ecosocial in Argentina.

Nnimmo Bassey

Nnimmo is the director of the ecological think-tank Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF) and member of the steering committee of Oilwatch International. He was chair of Friends of the Earth International (2008-2012) and was named Time magazine’s Hero of the Environment in 2009. He is a co-recipient of the 2010 Right Livelihood Award also known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize.” In 2012, he received the Rafto Human Rights Award and in 2014, Nigeria’s national honour as Member of the Federal Republic (MFR) in recognition of his environmental activism. He received an honorary doctorate from the University of York, United Kingdom in July 2019. Bassey is a Fellow of the Nigerian Institute of Architects and has authored books on the environment, architecture and poetry. His books include We Thought it Was Oil, But It was Blood (Kraft Books, 2002); I will Not Dance to Your Beat (Kraft Books, 2011); To Cook a Continent – Destructive Extraction and the Climate Crisis in Africa (Pambazuka Press, 2012) and Oil Politics – Echoes of Ecological War (Daraja Press, 2016). He is fondly called The Living Ancestor by young activists.

Find out more about The New School at Commonweal on our website: [email protected]. And like/follow our Soundcloud channel for more great podcasts.