Statement of Philosophy
The International Institute for Human Understanding (founded in 1995) exists to foster the welfare of humankind through practices of tolerance, compassion, and human understanding. The Institute evolved as a response to alienation, misconstruction, and injustice which lead to human suffering, loneliness, and oppression. The quest for understanding involves all systems of nature, both human and natural-environmental, and prompts members to promote an ongoing agenda of education, inquiry, and service. This quest for human understanding inspires searches for meaning within cultures and contexts. The Institute seeks to provide impetus for ethical responding within the ever-growing circle of diversity. Engagement in the mission of human understanding questions underlying philosophical assumptions, encourages civil discourse, and promotes humanitarian ideals reflecting acceptance, compassion, equality, and justice.

The aims of the Institute include:
• Fostering the study and research of human understanding to promote ethical and cultural responses reflective of humanitarian ideals.
• Advancing the values of tolerance, acceptance, and compassion among people.
• Promoting the search for meaning as a way of alleviating human suffering and enhancing quality of life.
• Developing OpenU’s (Open Universities) of the IIHU in villages, cities, and countries throughout the world.
• Developing publications, consultations, conferences, and outreach programs focused on the promotion of human understanding and the promotion of quality of life.

The Institute for Human Understanding attempts to promote the authentic telling of human experiences and events to bring people together in a humanistic way. The Institute sponsors programs to alleviate the alienation and separateness that individuals experience in the non-dominant groups of society. Through coming to understand others from the authentic sources of their different experiences, we hope to create meaning and positive social change. Through such understanding which originates from the people themselves, we aim to decrease conflicts, oppression, discrimination, and other kinds of suffering.

Thus far, the International Institute for Human Understanding has accomplished the following:
• Hosted and sponsored a number of international research conferences promoting the aims of the Institute.
• Provided educational programs for the community and for the academy. • Developed a number of school-based primary health centers in Miami-Dade County.
• Created the OpenU of the international Institute for Human Understanding.
• Developed IIHU community forums.
• Created the following centers within the IIHU:
Center for Social Justice
Center for Philosophy and Ethics
Center for the Study of Mind
Center for Culture

history
In 1995, a few academics and community activists in Miami were discussing the preponderance of scholarship on "caring" written by our colleagues in many social science and health care fields. We knew that many conversations were occurring internationally as to what encompasses and enhances caring. We passionately wanted to actualize the concept of “caring”. In dialogue we all agreed that authentic caring, characterized by empathy and knowledge, requires an extensive, sensitive, and exquisite quality, and that is human understanding in depth and breath.

These discussions excitingly gave birth to The International Institute for Human Understanding (IIHU), an organization founded to foster the welfare of humankind by way of promoting compassion, justice and tolerance through the advancement of human understanding.

After being affiliated with universities for the first ten years, IIHU became an independent, not-for-profit 501(c)3 organization. Our beginning premise was unwavering, that human understanding of others - whether groups or individuals - was unequivocally essential to this actualization of a "caring" philosophy and or a "caring" action.

So, how would we accomplish this?

As our thinking became more expansive, we discovered that no other organization (to our knowledge) focused on means to human understanding from the perspective we were developing. At that time, while we remained committed to a traditional agenda of caring for others through service, we realized that other modalities such as inquiry and education were critical to the promotion of human understanding.

This three prong approach to human understanding, service, education and inquiry can be seen through a sample of our activities as listed below.

• The IIHU Primary Care Center founded to meet the social, health, and educational needs of underserved elementary students and their families in five public schools in Miami. A center was established in each school. IIHU facilitated counseling, teaching parental skills, health care measures, physical and mental assessments of children and their families with appropriate referrals, tutoring, sports and being “friends” with the children, their faculty and families. This Center is still ongoing under the auspices of a university and serves as a model for interdisciplinary service and education to the underserved in our communities.

• The IIHU Forum established to bring scholars and community organizers together to broaden the knowledge of human understanding through a monthly lecture series and quarterly. • The IIHU Annual International Research Conference usually held in Miami in March focuses on bringing researchers and experts from around the world together to share their research on topics that can raise our consciousness about what it means to be human. These three day conferences also include workshops and an award segment, described below.

• The IIHU Excellence in Human Understanding Awards are given annually to individuals who throughout their careers demonstrated excellence in the promotion of human understanding through their fields of endeavor. Among those who received this honor were David Lawrence, then Editor of The Miami Herald, the late Dr. Patrick Lee, Provost of Barry University, and Dr. Art Fournier a dedicated community activist and devoted physician who today, among other services, leads health care teams in Haiti. Among other IIHU award recipients over the years were Dr. Jose Pedro Greer, Dr. Maureen Duffy, Dr. Janice Morse, Connie Vance, and Dr. Max van Manen.

• Promotion of IIHU Centers around the world is an important goal and individuals are encouraged to collaborate with the IIHU headquarters in Miami, Florida, about starting IIHU branches in other locations (see “Create A Center”). For example, in the IIHU Annual Conference Book of 2001, the following IIHU branch centers were listed with their presidents: The IIHU Melbourne Center in Australia, The IIHU Seoul Center in Korea, The IIHU Manhattan Center in New York, The IIHU Mississippi Center, and The IIHU Amman Center in Jordan.

• Authorship of books, chapters, and manuscripts that promote human understanding is an outstanding contribution from our members. • International speaking engagements under the IIHU banner is another activity that members excel at in continuing the goal of promoting human understanding.

• The Open U, established in 2006, is the newest development of the IIHU, boasts an impressive curriculum of courses, workshops, and lectures about all aspects of what makes our community and society more compassionate, tolerant and just.

• Certificates in Human Understanding are awarded to students completing either a Level One or an Advanced Level of Human Understanding. The Certificate in Human Understanding is guided study through the Open U. (see, OpenU Certificate Programs.)

Click here to read: A Short Story