Over the past decade there has developed an increasing sense that the world has moved beyond the fault lines engendered by post Second World War geo-political arrangements. Older conceptual categories that divided the world into 'East-West' and 'North-South' axes are now in turmoil; nation states seem to have lost their old power to new international networks and regulatory bodies. War and institutional violence are now as much part of living in the world as are environmental crises and the displacement of millions. New global inequalities around knowledge systems have emerged, adding to those existing already. The global scenario has also seen the rise of East Asia and India in the world economy; we also witness new changes in Latin America and Africa. The ongoing transformations of politics, society and culture in India, China, Iran, Turkey, in the Arabic speaking world, in Indonesia, Nigeria, South Africa, Brazil, Argentina and Mexico are of profound significance and signal a broader churning of radical proportions.

These transformations of the post-1945 global arrangements pose new challenges for grant making. How do we respond to the new challenges, where some of the most interesting experiences and pressing questions are emerging in areas not part of the historical Western world?

The foundation will respond by harnessing resources garnered from within the best traditions of enlightened philanthropy (especially, but not only) in the United States in order to catalyze a critical mass of activities and processes linked to cultural activity, intellectual reflection and research in emerging areas of the world, especially in Asia, Africa and Latin America, and migrant/diaspora communities dispersed all over the world.

The knowledge and creativity of those who are expanding the horizons of discourse and action are seen by the foundation to be of immense value to the global community at large. The foundation's design incorporates an understanding that facilitating support to emerging areas is best coupled with an acknowledgment of the need to learn from the same emerging areas. Hence, the foundation seeks to learn from what it seeks to support. We hope, as a U.S.-based foundation, to respond by incorporating the knowledge and experience of those active – culturally, intellectually, and politically – in the Global South into the world process of analysis and decision-making.

The foundation will thus largely base its design and grant making policy on the experience and wisdom of those active in the new Global South. It recognizes the fact that new visions of the world, and many 'wills to globality,' or a multiplicity of desires to reshape our destiny and future through a global connectivity, can be located in these experiences.

We are witness to the emergence of a diversity of consciousnesses that usher in new values, desires and energies, creative and transformative acts, visions of community and commoning (acting in concert within an open and universally accessible space to nurture dialogue and collaboration), as well as innovation and experimental ways of making and doing things on an unprecedented scale. This ferment of creative energy rides on the transformations in information and communication technology that have made it possible, for the first time in human history, to found and sustain a truly global conversation; a dialogue across the fault-lines of culture, history, race, religion, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, age, wealth and power. For the first time, we can speak of the possibility that every experience, every thought and every desire can leave its imprint on networked global consciousness, provided it has access to the means to communicate and can reproduce itself. This deepening of the complexity of the human record is a fragile guarantee that violence, despair and ennui need not in the end, prevail.

The foundation will be truly global in that it will speak to a world in motion, and encourage studies and practices that reflect on that transformation.