Philosophy

The Amsale Gessesse Memorial Foundation operates on the principle of Ahimsa (nonviolence and respect for all life) and its founder’s deep and abiding belief in biocentricity and the interconnectidness of all life. The foundation promotes non hierarchical and non-exploitative relationships between human beings and all other life forms.

Today, 3 billion people (half of the human population) live on less than two dollars a day, in a world where 1 billion children live in poverty (half of the world’s children) 640 million live without adequate shelter, 40 million have no access to safe water, 270 million have no access to health services. About 29,000 children under the age of five die each day. We at the Amsale Gessesse Foundation believe that we can make a difference by providing the resources necessary to alleviate the suffering of our fellow human beings.

About 50 billion nonhuman animals are slaughtered for their skin and flesh each Year, and billions more are tortured in myriad ways for the sole purpose of serving the needs and wants of human beings. The Amsale Gessesse Memorial Foundation promotes the right of all nonhuman beings – of all species - not to be used by human beings for entertainment, food, clothing or experimentation.

Ignoring the importance of the symbiotic relationships among human beings, nonhuman animals, and plant life has led to extinctions of about 20,000 species annually—100 species a day, four species an hour. Clearing forests for agriculture (‘’hamburgerizing’’ forests) and other forms of development, draining and filling in wetlands, damning up rivers, abusing coral reefs, and relentless high-tech ocean fishing are leading towards the collapse of ecosystems on which all life depends.

The Amsale Gessesse Memorial Foundation was created in the belief that biodiversity is essential for human life and maintaining and expanding biodiversity are crucial for sustaining human cultural diversity, cultural wealth being intimately interwoven with environments rich in life forms.

We believe our human health, our treatment of each other and nonhuman animals, our relationships to Earth’s ecosystems and biosphere, our protection, management, and distribution of Earth’s wealth, and human relationships in a global community and economy are all directly connected to our fundamental attitudes about ourselves and how we fit in the natural world.

In other words, the direction we humans take moving forward will depend on how we envision our place in the universe – whether we see our species (or some privileged part of it) as specially gifted and central to creation or adopt a more open – minded Approach to what is other than ourselves.