UNITY EARTH brings people together by growing worldwide spiritual culture that fosters reverence for the sacred and respect for all forms of diversity. We do this through music festivals and other events that bring together indigenous ceremony, uplifting speakers of diverse faiths, and spirit-based music. It was originally formed under the name 1God by Ben Bowler with the people he met throughout various charitable endeavors over the years. He also founded the NGO Blood Foundation, which supports people living on the Thai/Burma border. This program started the “Monk for a Month” program, inviting people from all over the world to stay in a Buddhist Monastery on the border and learn about Buddhism through personal experience. This was followed by a program called “Muslim for a Month,” which ran in Turkey a few months later.
Unity Earth has since then organized U Day festivals in different countries to celebrate the intersection of interfaith/interspirituality and music on a global scale, using modern marketing techniques to tell a positive narrative about how people from various faiths work together to create good. Our current focus is on the "Road to 2020," a series of events from Ethiopia to Australia to Canada to India and to Israel/Palestine that will culminate in a Caravan of Unity across the United States, arriving in New York on the 2020 International Day of Peace. On the Road to 2020, we are forming partnerships with many organizations, including the URI, that are helping humanity to build cultures of peace, justice and healing for the Earth and all living beings. Unity Earth signed a Memo of Understanding with the URI in 2018 at the Parliament of the World's Religions.
Unity Earth is a URI Cooperation Circle as well as a URI Partner, so the two organizations have had a rich and fruitful collaboration - especially in the celebration of World Interfaith Harmony Week and the U-Day Festival, which is held in Ethiopia in partnership with URI-Africa. Unity Earth and URI have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to provide a framework of cooperation within which they will work together globally towards shared goals, specifically:
· To promote interfaith harmony and a culture of peace, respect and mutual understanding;
· To work together in creating awareness towards love, peace, justice, environmental sustainability and spirituality; and
· To promote the teaching of the Golden Rule as a guiding principle to enhance peaceful co-existence and to safeguard human rights, mutual respect and dignity.
