Page 7 - WVD Brochure 22 october20

Mr. Charles Fowler FRSA, MA

Chairman of “Human Values Foundation”, which uses positive
values to promote young people’s social and emotional
development; Helps run the “UK Values Alliance”, whose mission
is to place values at the heart of UK Society; Project partner of the
Collaborating Centre for Values-based; Practice for Health and
Social Care at Oxford University, Patron; Advisor to the anti-
poverty charity; Lead Organizer and Coordinator of “World
Values Day” Giving World, and an Ambassador of the
Transparency Task Force.

Mr. Charles thanked Ms. Perja for organizing the conference and all the participants, panelists and
supporters too. He felt very wonderful to be part of the conference. He further expressed the
purpose of World Values Day is really to increase awareness and the practice of values around the
world. The values are the things most important to us in life. We can define it so many ways. But
the essential thing about them is they are really important to us. They are becoming more and more
prominent, more and more obvious in public debate, and social discourse, but actually, they're not
really still very well understood. So events like these are really important to make them better
understood. The reason that World Values Day – WVD was launched in the first place was to raise
awareness of values, and to make people understand the importance of values in their lives, and the
lives of the communities and societies around them. Four years ago, over 100 organizations got
together to launch WVD, as a collaborative project around the world. The aim was to put values at
the heart of every society, every country, every community around the world, so that people could
help be helped to see that values are really the key element, the crucial element for everyone, as
individuals and also communities, to be aware of them and to practice them. That is the glue that
binds us to each other, the glue that make our society work. Maybe they're not working too well at
the moment, either.

Values are really important. Referring to values Charles was talking about positive human values,
good positive values, like kindness, compassion, respect, nonviolence on us. Actually, we all have
more or less the same values really, in essence. Since launched five years ago, World Values Day
has grown amazingly rarely. It has launched with, no profile, no visibility. The last WVD was on
October 15, they managed to reach through their social media campaign 75 million people across
67 countries, which is a huge number. This is just the first step, which it is raising awareness of
values. It is a little bit in the sides of people's consciousness, they're becoming a little bit aware
that values are being talked about. It's not all about people communicating on social media.
Important though, is also about people really doing things practicing the values. The message of
World Values Day this year, was putting “Values into Action”, which is, the key message about
values in any context.

On World Values Day hundreds of large international organizations, and countless numbers of
smaller organizations like hospitals, schools, universities, NGOs, local governments, businesses
of all kinds, took part in all kinds of different activities. They're all designed to raise awareness or
renew the awareness of values in their organizations. And to get back into the habit, if they've gone
out of it, of putting those values into practice. Essentially, we believe that more people become

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