What If Our Shared Humanity Had a Family Tree?
Could human actions have a family tree of their own? I have been reflecting on how actions across the world might become connected — and whether recognising those connections could strengthen our sense of meaning, belonging and shared humanity.
There is something fascinating about building a family tree.
People we have never met, and whose existence we may never even have known about, gradually become part of our own story. Different family branches meet, intertwine and give rise to new generations. A family tree makes invisible connections visible.
But what if we could not only discover connections, but also create new ones through our actions?
An Idea with Deep Roots
For more than three decades, I have worked in environmental education, international school collaboration and community-based action.
Through the international ENO school network I founded, and later through Peace Circle®, I have seen how shared values can become concrete actions in very different cultures and environments.
I have also wondered why some shared experiences create lasting commitment, while others remain isolated events.
I have been exploring these experiences through my book project, Turning Values into Visible Actions.
As part of that work, I developed the TVIVA mechanism, in which shared values, shared understanding and visible actions contribute to a growing sense of shared ownership. It is not a linear sequence, but an ongoing process of interaction.
Gradually, a new question emerged: What happens when an action in one community opens up a new possibility for another community to act?
This question has given rise to HVIA2030 — Human Values in Action.
The Same Purpose, Different Actions
In September 2026, we celebrated Global Peace Circle Day together with Plant and Care for Peace Association and the international Peace Circle® network. More than 200 schools from 35 countries participated.
The shared idea was simple: people gather around a peace tree and express peace and care for people and nature. Yet across the world, this idea took many different forms.
In Madagascar, students at a school in Sabotsy Namehana gathered around their peace tree. Their video featured local music, Gasy Tsara by REKO BAND, bringing in a sense of love for their country, nature, people and culture.
In Portugal, the school community in Águas Santas transformed its peace tree into a collective artwork, with students writing words associated with peace.
In Georgia, students at Anabasisi School in Zestafoni planted a tree and decorated it with colourful ribbons carrying messages of friendship, love, togetherness and peace.
These were not mechanical repetitions of the same activity. Each community brought its own language, culture, creativity and way of expressing a shared purpose.
The same underlying idea, but different actions.
What Can We Not Yet See?
Global Peace Circle Day showed how a shared idea can take different forms in local communities. But what else might emerge between these actions?
What would happen if students in Portugal encountered the video from Madagascar and discovered a new idea for their own activities?
What if students in Georgia found something in a Peace Circle organised in another country that they wanted to adapt the following year?
These are possibilities, not claims about connections that have already occurred. We know how communities adapted the shared idea, but we do not yet know how they may have influenced one another.
This could be the next step: helping communities encounter each other's actions and recognise what emerges from those encounters.
In HVIA2030, one community could share an action and explain the purpose behind it. Another community could discover that action, see a new possibility and create its own response, adapted to local circumstances.
It could then send a message to the original community, explaining what inspired it, what it kept and what it changed. The original community could, in turn, recognise the connection as genuine.
In this way, connections would be grounded in people's own experiences and mutual recognition, rather than merely in similarities between actions or conclusions drawn by technology.
Recognising a connection would not mean approving, owning or evaluating another community's action.
A school's own peace tree is valuable in itself. Its meaning does not depend on whether it inspires other communities.
Nor does every encounter need to lead to another action. Sometimes learning about another community's experience can simply broaden our understanding.
A Family Tree of Actions — Human DNA?
When we explore our family history, we discover connections that already exist. We do not create those connections by researching them; we learn to recognise them.
Human actions offer an interesting difference.
We can both discover connections that have already emerged and help create entirely new ones.
An action in one community may open up a possibility for another. Sometimes a new action may draw inspiration from several communities at once.
Such a network would be more complex than a traditional family tree. Its branches could meet again, intertwine and form new connections.
This led me to think about something I call Human DNA.
I do not mean biological DNA. I mean the purposes, values, experiences and inspirations that travel through human action.
They do not move unchanged from one community to another. Every community interprets what it encounters through its own circumstances, keeping something, changing something and creating something new.
The different expressions of Global Peace Circle Day illustrate this principle: a shared purpose does not require identical actions.
With HVIA2030, I would like to go a step further and help identify the actual connections through which communities encounter and carry forward one another's experiences.
Shared humanity would not remain merely an abstract idea. We might begin to see concrete traces of it in the connections between human actions.
What Do I Want to Understand?
The deep intention of HVIA2030 can be expressed in one sentence:
To strengthen meaningfulness, human connection and shared humanity through visible action.
This is the heart of the idea.
Not technology, a database or a map, but people and their experiences.
Consider a school that participated in Global Peace Circle Day. Its students have done something meaningful to them.
What if they later discovered that their action had helped another school community find its own way to act?
Could this strengthen their sense that what they did mattered?
And could the second community experience a sense of connection with people elsewhere who share similar purposes, even though their circumstances are very different?
I do not yet know the answers. Nor do I assume that recognising connections will automatically strengthen meaningfulness or belonging.
It is also possible that seeing these connections could lead to comparisons or make someone's own contribution feel small. For some people, such connections may not feel meaningful at all.
These experiences are equally important to understand.
Practical experiments and possible future research may help us understand how people experience and interpret these connections.
When the Network Begins to Grow
I am currently developing the first digital prototype of HVIA2030 and gathering feedback.
I envision an environment where communities can share their actions and recognise connections between them.
Over time, a growing map could begin to emerge. At first, it might show individual actions, followed by connections recognised by people themselves. New actions could emerge, different influences could meet, and the network could take on new forms.
Technology should help people notice these connections, not decide on their behalf which ones are genuine or meaningful.
Nor should the map become another reporting obligation.
Every day, countless small and large actions take place around the world, expressing care, responsibility, hope and the desire to build a better future.
Most of them remain invisible to one another.
Perhaps one of the most important questions is not simply how we encourage people to act.
Equally important may be how we help them see the connections between their own actions and those of others.
Then we would not merely tell people that we are part of a shared humanity.
We could help them discover concrete connections through their own experiences and actions.
A family tree reveals where we come from.
Could a growing network of our actions reveal where we belong — and what we might grow together?
Have you ever discovered that something you did inspired people in another community? Or have you found a new idea for action after seeing what others have done?.
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