We Need To Talk

The world is entering a turbulent era. Economic inequality is growing. Polarization is deepening, and democracy is under attack from authoritarian leaders everywhere. At the same time, we face climate change, biodiversity loss, and a mental health crisis fueled by loneliness, disconnection, and a loss of purpose.

We need to change course, but how? The good news is, solutions exist. Across the globe, researchers, innovators, experts, and organizations are figuring out smarter ways forward. Creativity, curiosity, and innovation remain humanity’s superpowers.

Still, they struggle to break through. Populist arguments and a flood of misleading content divide us. Social media, which often rewards conflict as anger drives engagement, spreads harsh rhetoric. We blame, divide, and dehumanize.

Individualism has gone extreme and is waging a war against the common good – against care, compassion, and collective wisdom. We are sliding backwards – in effect, it’s a war against all the things that make humanity beautiful.

To make things worse, we are not talking to each other. Communication has become our Achilles’ heel.

A Foundation for New Solutions

How can we build consensus in this polarized world? We need new stories told with a kind of communication that inspires, bridges divides, brings new solutions into focus, and leads to action. The New Foundation was created for exactly this purpose: to shift the conversation, bridge ideological divides, and bring people together around new ideas. We want to create excitement for a future built on smart, long-term thinking that benefits everyone.

To do this, the foundation creates narratives that are made to resonate widely – stories rooted in tolerance, cooperation, and respect for the planet’s life-giving force. By communicating ideas that benefit individuals, society, and the planet, we challenge the notion that self-interest must be at odds with the common good.

We promote solutions that bring us closer to our universal human aspirations: freedom, justice, security, peace, community, well-being, and harmony with nature.

The New Foundation Responds to Today’s Challenges by Working With a Wide Range of Organizations To Spread Compelling and Powerful Ideas Through Stories That Resonate Across Divides.

Why Are We Starting
The New Foundation?

The New Division has created the communication for three of the world’s most fundamental frameworks: the UN’s Agenda 2030 (SDG), the new UN framework for biodiversity (KMGBF), and The Inner Development Goals (IDG). In addition, for the past ten years, we have helped many of Sweden’s largest companies with their sustainability communication.

Through our work, we have realized that our greatest challenges are systemic and cannot be solved by individual companies alone. We need a holistic approach that fosters broad collaborations and a conscious commitment to solutions that benefit individuals, society, and nature.

The world is full of fantastic organizations working to address all dimensions of our challenges. However, their efforts struggle to gain traction, as they tend to be too academic for a broad audience.

The New Foundation is a natural consequence of this insight.

We want to collaborate with organizations, foundations, public institutions, businesses, and academia to create new compelling stories with powerful messages told with clear communication that appeals to a broader audience. The New Foundation drives engagement by framing facts and insights within a larger humanistic, societal, and environmental context.

«The miracle of your mind isn’t that you can see the world as it is.

It’s that you can see the world as it isn’t.»

Kathryn Schulz, Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error

Support Us and Work With Us

The foundation is under formation, but we are excited to talk to you about ideas, possible projects, and collaborations. If you are interested, contact jakob@thenewdivision.se or siri@thenewdivision.se and we can send you a PDF or get on a call with you.

A Word About Storytelling

«What is true of a story is true of love: for either one to work, you’d better be good at talking and good at listening. Likewise, if stories only succeed when we consent to suspend disbelief, relationships require of us something similar: the ability to let go of our own worldview long enough to be intrigued and moved by someone else’s.”

“It is not about living idyllically in our similarities, but about living peacefully and pleasurably in our differences. It is not bestowed from beyond the normal human realm but struggled for and gained, slowly and with effort. And it is not about unchanging love. It is about letting love change us.»

Kathryn Schulz, Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error