Our Principles
Fourth-Way Guiding Principles For Building a More Sustainable and Harmonious World

These Sixteen Guiding Principles for building a sustainable and harmonious world community emerged from a 40+ year process of reflection, consultation, and action within Indigenous communities across the Americas. They are rooted in the concerns of hundreds of aboriginal elders, leaders, and thinkers, as well as in the best thinking of many non-aboriginal scholars, researchers and human and community development practitioners. These are the guiding principles and values that will guide all of the programs, processes, interactions and activities of the Four Worlds Foundation in Panama and its sister affiliates throughout the Americas.
These guiding principles constitute the foundation for the process of healing and developing ourselves (mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually), our human relationships (personal; social, political, economic, and cultural) and our relationship with Mother Earth. They describe the way we must work and what we must protect and cherish. We offer these principles as a gift to all who seek to build a sustainable and harmonious world community.
Preamble
We speak as one, guided by the sacred teachings and spiritual traditions of the Four Directions that uplift, guide, protect, warn, inspire and challenge the entire human family to live in ways that sustain, and enhance human life and the life of all who dwell on Mother Earth, and hereby dedicate our lives and energies to healing and developing ourselves, the web of relationships that make our world, and the way we live with Mother Earth.
The Sixteen Guiding Principles
Starting from within, working in a circle, in a sacred manner, we heal ourselves, our relationships, and our world.
Starting From Within
1. Human Beings Can Transform Their Worlds
2. Development Comes from Within
3. No Vision, No Development
A vision of who we can become and what a sustainable world would be like, works as a powerful magnet, drawing us to our potential.