Adam Sharpe
Adam Sharpe leads on the theme of Demographic Shifts and Impacts.
Humanothon is a human, world, change-aware ‘marathon’ – a thematic movement – for sense making and building shared understanding.
Theme: The global phenomena of population decline and the future it will create.
Date: 6th September
Time: 2 pm Helsinki | 1 pm Paris | 7 am NYC
Duration: 2 hours
Intent of the Build: To bring more stakeholders with different skill sets into the humanathon process, continue to encourage sparkons. Adam Sharpe is planning to create a report on population decline that all researchers and participants will be mentioned in.
Build Approach: Humanothon program over sessions and asynchronous contributions
Status of the Build – Ongoing
In our first humanothon on population decline, we brought together 20 thinkers, researchers, development professionals, futurists, students, and concerned citizens. The results were fascinating, as evidenced by the Sparkmap.
Example Sparks and Sparked on thinking from Session 1.
You can also login to explore the evolving SparkMap – a systemic view to the theme. Humanothon is a continuous build and we work towards a synthesis
Economic depletion, housing, and a generation that has given up
Besir Wrayet, a crisis management expert from Turkiye, emphasised that the gap is widening between the Rich and the Poor which is surely impacting fertility rates. Idris Azim, a government affairs consultant in Kuala Lumpur, shared that one of the most severe forms of economic depletion, which is increasing the gap between rich and poor, is the rise of unaffordable housing, which is an unintended consequence of population density, societal advances, the 20th century-rise of technology, and modern property market ideals. Dorsa Babei, a young female peacebuilder and co-director of PeaceMentors sparked on, sharing that “I feel many youth have given up on the system and hence don’t educate themselves on this matter. Considering the inflation rate & all the issues related to youth accessing funding and having a budget, to me having proper financial literacy for the future generations and current youth is a necessity”. She went on to recommend that “parallel to allocating budget to youth and creating youth friendly processes, we also need to provide youth with financial literacy and help them navigate their path in the fragile economic situation they live in.”
Keep LGBTQIA+ communities and their rights in mind
Dr Lonny Brooks an Afrofuturist and Afroqueer Forecaster in Oakland California highlighted that it will be “crucial to Keep LGBTQIA+ communities and their rights in mind as political backlash against their assertion of voice increases as concern for population decline rises”. Dominique Jaurola, long-time futurist and founder of Hunome sparked on sharing that “a conservative wave is on the rise. It is flummoxing how belief and ideologies are placed in the center of thoughts about what the future should look like – tailored for the middle of the bell curve of who we humans are. Women back to the kitchen is one such flavor… When we find balance in our thinking and decisions we no longer need to ebb and flow in our inclusive decisions for the sake of the loud and often unfortunately ill informed.”
Women’s Bodily Autonomy: Rights and choices
Dr Roy Wadia, a communications expert in the field of international development hailing from India, emphasised that “women’s right to choose when or if to get married; when or if to have children and how many… These rights and choices are fundamental to gender equality.” He went on to recognise that “To encourage women and couples to have children, we need policies and measure that encourage gender equality in raising children and managing households, enabling women to work and earn on par with men, and enabling men to play an equal role in areas traditionally left to women. Population decline is a reflection of economics and changing sociocultural norms, and policies to address it must be holistic and not knee-jerk.” Petranka Malcheva, a changemaker working for the Office of the Future Generations for Wales, sparked on that domestic pressures on women can be alleviated to enable them to have children (if they choose to do so) more easily. Increased childcare provision would also have the double benefit of enabling women to re-enter the workforce after childbirth, increasing economic activity. Currently childcare costs (in the UK) are too high and many women choose to either not have children or to stop working to care for their children. Addressing this issue can both encourage women to have children but also help those that choose to have children return to the workforce.”
These are some example beginnings of potential areas of enquiry and deliberation that could and should be seized upon at our next Humanothon on demographic shifts and impacts, in particular population decline.
During the registration process, please specify “Demographic shifts” in the field ‘how did you hear about us’.
You will receive the Zoom session link on the email you use to register to Hunome.
If you have already registered let us know at hello (at) hunome (dot) com that you are interested in joining this session.
Please note that the ‘add to calendar’ item at the end of this page only pencils it in for you but is not known to us.
Once you have finalized your registration to Hunome you can find the evolving SparkMap here
We look forward to mingling with you in this thematic build of understanding.
Adam Sharpe
Adam Sharpe is an Award-Winning Futurist, Youth engagement specialist, and Winner of the NGFP Intergenerational Fairness Award 2022.
About Hunome
Hunome is uniquely designed to build shared understanding through collective sense-making. The SparkMap is a non-linear, evolving, multi-dimensional, map of understanding on the theme. SparkMap is a great way to visualize the understanding that a group of people have on a particular theme. Hunome is the only space online that truly builds multidimensional understanding together, making you perceptive and enabling decision-making with confidence faster.
About Humanothon
Humanothon is a program run on the Hunome product. You can take leadership on a theme that needs multidimensional understanding and that you want to build with a concerted systematic attention with a group. Hunome product is there to use and our team helps the leads set this up with materials.
You do not need to run a Humanothon to build multidimensional understanding on Hunome. You can also just start by clicking on ‘New SparkMap’ once inside Hunome and craft your own understanding and see others join.