Global Fund Founders Seek to Promote Idealism

By Ellen M Shehadeh

People with energy to change the world often exhaust their idealism when they are consumed by adult responsibilities. Not so with Tish Van Camp and Alex Kochkin of Inverness Park, self-described "social visionaries" and co-founders of the Point Reyes Station-based Fund for Global Awakening.

They imagine a different world and -- armed with traditional business credentials and considerable financial resources -- have set out to bring their dream to life.

The Fund For Global Awakening, a public nonprofit, has existed in its present form for four years. It receives its financial backing from the Foundation for Global Awakening, a private foundation which is, as a foundation brochure explains, an outgrowth of the 38-year-old private Van Camp Foundation.

The Van Camp foundation was focused primarily on "family violence, social trauma, and sexual abuse." That foundation donated more than $3 million to "countless numbers of women, children, and families," the brochure adds.

Not "pork and beans"

While the public tends to think of the Van Camp family money as coming from the pork-and-beans business started by Tish Van Camp's great-grandfather in Indianapolis, he actually lost that business to others. He subsequently moved to Southern California and started Van Camp Seafood Company in San Pedro. The money in the family foundation is derived from the seafood company.

Van Camp said she began to question "the suffering I saw around me growing up." Traveling helped her separate herself from her own culture and challenged her beliefs. After she "came back into the world" she grew up in, she and her husband settled in West Marin.

"The nature and the small community are wonderful teachers," Van Camp said. Her husband, Alex Kochkin, added that West Marin affords the couple "a connection to the earth" and a proximity to the Bay Area, where significant innovative work is being done.

When the foundation shifted its name and its orientation, it moved from addressing the effects trauma has on people to attacking what they saw as the underlying causes leading up to that trauma.

"A new language"

This change, the foundation brochure says, was a move towards "the coordination and facilitation of new paradigms."

Written in what Van Camp calls "a new language," the foundation's brochure explains Global Awakening's mission as assisting "humanity's spiritual and social awakening by providing facilitation and resources for projects and individuals who are expressing this consciousness in practical ways."

Kochkin acknowledged this "new language" is "a little different" from more plain-spoken English but has "a familiar quality."

Such language is meant to reinforce the foundation's message, much as the sound of a poem adds to its meaning.

Said Kochkin, "Language, culture, and beliefs are mutually reinforcing" and that by writing in this style, his organization asks people to "take a deep drink" and pay a certain "quality of attention to language with a different cadence."

The fund's work

The brochure explains the work of the Fund for Global Awakening as "concentrated in three primary areas: widespread social expression of the new consciousness, interconnecting of the new energy and the financial and other resourcing of the new work."

In an interview with The Light, Kochkin spoke passionately about Global Awakening as being "a spirituality that bridges all belief systems." It stresses the commonality of all people, rather than their differences, he said.

"We are not human beings having a spiritual existence, but spiritual beings having a human experiences," he added.

With a professional background, which includes marketing research and product management, Kochkin calls the Fund for Global Awakening "a new type of United Way, a global-based charity."

While many philanthropies are "in competition with each other," the Fund for Global Awakening contributes its own funds, as well as solicits money from corporations and individuals, for projects that share a common purpose.

Doesn't follow dogmas

In spite of Global Awakening's obviously spiritual leanings, the brochure states explicitly that the fund "is not limited to nor influenced by any political, economic, or religious interest."

So far the Fund for Global Awakening has spent money on four main projects:

• A $400,000 national-research program called "In Our Words 2000" to examine the "emerging values and expressions of transformation from the hearts and minds of the American people."
• A media campaign called "Messages: Awakening the Heart of Humanity," which so far has produced three polished TV spots, radio messages, and messages geared to periodicals, billboards, and bus stops. All messages promote forgiveness.
• The "Dream-pad Project" that has provided funding for three poetry projects in Marin Country schools.
• Approximately $200,000 in planning and research for the "Internet Domain Project," which (the foundation brochure explains) "is designed to address the full spectrum of information, inter-connection, and resourcing in service to social and spiritual awakening."

The national research program hired professional researchers to design a 210-question phone survey, which typically took more than 40 minutes per respondent to administer. The survey questioned people about such matters as alternative healing, spiritual and religious beliefs, expanded consciousness, and "non-ordinary experiences."

Respondents were asked to react to statements such as, "If we could forgive and reconcile all our past hurts and conflicts, we could all accomplish so much more." Or, "Everyone should look at life as a glass half full rather than half empty." Or, "The bottom line is that we are all just looking to be loved and accepted as human beings."

"Commonality of values"

Results of the survey, the Global Awakening brochure says, show that "a majority of Americans share a commonality of spiritual values and beliefs that go beyond an identification with traditional religious beliefs" and that they "value spiritual and social awakening."

Global Awakening takes these results to mean that Americans, and indeed people all over the world, are ready to hear their message.

To get the message out, Global Awakening hired an experienced media producer, Barry Fishman, to be executive producer for the "Messages" campaign, which Global Awakening calls "one of the most extraordinary efforts devoted to helping humanity awaken to its vast potential."

Fishman told The Light it is his job "to come in below the radar" and to actually "talk about violence and abuse -- without showing it -- to shift the story."

To tell the story, Fishman explained, he used the "contemporary tools" of advertising "to motivate people to change their violent or abusive behavior."

TV spots filmed in West Marin and San Francisco are meant to surprise viewers (who may be expecting a message about a new soap or car) but are instead are told by a voice-over that "anger takes joy as its prisoner. Let it go."

West Marin School

Global Awakening provided the primary financial support for a children's poetry project, "Language of the Awakened Heart," which was offered at West Marin School from Fall 1999 to Fall 2000.

Principal Jim Patterson told The Light the program is now continuing as an elective class, with discretionary funding from Shoreline School District's parcel tax.

The principal and the School Site Council are pleased with the program, which, Patterson noted, combines art, poetry, and music: "It is remarkable what the kids are producing." He said he also values the special program because "it touches kids that the regular program doesn't."

Patterson, however, acknowledged he has had no direct contact with Global Awakening, and although he appreciates its financial support, his understanding of the fund is vague.

Poet Terry Glass worked as a consultant for the Fund for Global Awakening's poetry project, "Language of the Awakened Heart," while also teaching poetry at West Marin School. At the same time, she produced "a poetry guidebook based on spiritual values," which she proudly calls, "a nice piece of work."

The project, notes the introduction to the children's poetry book, was guided by the belief that "within the imagination of children lives wisdom that can lead us to a better, kinder world."

Lagunitas School District

The Fund for Global Awakening, along with California Poets in the Schools, also funded a poetry project at Lagunitas School with Glass and poet Michele Rivers. Glass is now teaching poetry at Miller Creek School in another Global Awakening-funded project. The project is also getting financial assistance from the California Arts Council.

What are the fund's plans for the future? Global Awakening views the Internet as a fertile ground for its messages. A Global Awakening survey found that 57 percent of those interviewed said they would be interested in subscribing to a "low-cost, on-line, Internet service which was entirely dedicated to personal and global transformation."

With an eight-part Global Awakening Internet Domain Project, the fund hopes to "play an important role in gathering and facilitating all manner of abundant resources for the purpose of assisting this flowering of humanity," the foundation's brochure notes.

Plans for Internet

Kochkin said that to carry out the Internet project, the fund will contact "strategic partners for technology and funding."

The fund also plans to devote time and money to informing people about the results of its research.

However, the Fund for Global Awakening has not escaped the country's economic problems, and Kochkin acknowledged the Fund has laid off numerous staff.

Not only is the fund now limited to five staff members (down from 12), it has become more difficult for the fund to elicit contributions from private and corporate donors, who are also feeling the pinch.

Global Awakening, nonetheless, plans to keep open its offices in Point Reyes Station's Old Creamery Building and a graphics office in the Old Livery Stable.

Meanwhile, Kochkin and Van Camp are eager to discuss the Fund for Global Awakening's ideas and projects with West Marin residents. A meeting will be held at 7 p.m. Wednesday, May 30, in the Dance Palace for other people who interested in changing global consciousness. More information about the fund is available at the FFGA website.

http://www.ptreyeslight.com/stories/may24_01/global_awakening.html

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