No one person or group has the skill set to fulfill World of Promise on their own. It will take all of us.

That being said, the project was launched by Jonathan Shefa. Jonathan has worked as a group facilitator for 30 years, in a wide range of contexts. For the first several years, he engaged primarily in anti-hunger work, working with everyone from local community food banks and university groups, to the United Nations. He later spent many years facilitating dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians, primarily religious leaders.

For more than two decades, Jonathan’s work has included a deep exploration of the relationship between our inner experience and how that shapes the world around us. This has led to years of teaching, ranging from standalone sessions across the U.S., Canada and abroad, to month-long workshops at the Esalen Institute.

Jonathan has also spent decades studying Torah wisdom. He is a certified Integrative Gestalt coach, trained as a pastoral counsellor and mediator, and studied Non-Violent Communication intensively.

Reflecting the principal relationship he aims to highlight—how our lived, internal experience leads us to shape the world around us—he holds a bachelor’s degree from McGill concentrating in spiritual philosophy, and a graduate degree in Public Policy from Harvard.

For a number of years, he lived as a monk on a hilltop; now he lives with his wife and kids on a small island off the coast of British Columbia, Canada. For the past few years he has been writing a book on climate change, exploring Torah secrets that may help us reach our truest potential, save the planet and ourselves along with it. World of Promise is an outgrowth of that process.