"We are better than this!"

OWON will create a dramatically altered consciousness about the need for, and practice of, new ways for humanity to come together and make decisions that are fit for the 21st Century. 

There will be a major uplift in these kinds of practices across the world as it becomes increasingly apparent that only these kinds of more inclusive decision making processes are able to tackle the most dramatic and transformational changes that we will all need to go through in order to face the many crises faced by everyone on this fragile planet. The kinds of decisions that our leaders fear to make should their popularity fail in the eyes of the people they are governing.

"We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it"  Jean-Claude Juncker , president of the European Commission 2014-2019.

 OWON is a cultural campaign to shift attitudes and change the current narrative, creating mass awareness and demand for processes like Sortition chosen Citizens’ Assemblies to solve the global crises we face.  It will use multi-media pop culture to reach hearts and minds, inspiring a global movement that amplifies the agency of ordinary people and brings about large-scale systems change. People aren’t apathetic about politics, but alienated from current systems they feel powerless to change. 

In a world that is becoming dramatically polarised, these assemblies are anti-polarisation machines.  Where regular people from all walks of life are brought together through a lottery style system - reflective of society according to age, gender, ethnicity, economic background and geography - participants of the most opposing views and positions listen to each other in conditions that support trust and non-judgement. This inevitably leads to a deepening of understanding and respect between people of profoundly polarised positions. Even though they may not end up agreeing, their deep divides are eroded by their overwhelming commonality. OWON projects not only elevate this extraordinary potential but elevates the voices of those people who have gone through these transformations.   

In a world where misinformation and disinformation travels four times more quickly and reaches six times more people than information, assemblies run with high levels of integrity and independence become an oasis of credible information in an infinite desert  of disinformation, propaganda and lies.  

In a world where politicians and leaders increasingly have their hands tied by party politics, electoral  pressure, lobbyists, vested interests and ideological tribalism, regular people coming together in these assemblies, being informed about an issue in an unbiased way and deliberating together towards solutions, are free to make the kinds of far reaching, common sense decisions that ordinary governing leaders are unable to get to.