Hardwired Global is a non-governmental organization whose primary purpose is to make it possible for every person to experience freedom of conscience. The nonprofit does this by training local leaders to achieve the fundamental rights spelled out in Article Eighteen of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and empower these pioneers with the tools they need to make positive reforms and governmental laws that will end religious persecution. Interestingly, Hardwired Global has no religious or political affiliation and works to defend the fundamental principle of freedom of conscience, thought, religion, belief, or unbelief based on the simple premise that humans are “hardwired” with this right.
In November of last year, I had the opportunity to experience the same kind of training local leaders in developing countries receive at a conference called “Shipwrecked.” Hosted by Tina Ramirez, the founder and president of Hardwired, Shipwrecked is a simulation where participants learn what it is like to flee from persecution and end up in an entirely different country with entirely different people.
On the morning of the conference, attendees were given a nametag and pamphlet labeled “A Personal Guide to Living in Fruitopia.” I opened my guidebook to learn that I was a Blueberry who had escaped from the persecution of the Lemons and had ended up shipwrecked on the island of Fruitopia. The day began by having participants break into groups with the same assigned fruits and go through a series of activities. The activities included things like brainstorming an official name for our tribe (e.g. Blueberrians, Lemon Heads, etc.), creating our own religion with rituals, symbols, and doctrines, and networking with other fruit communities to form alliances. After role playing and mingling with the other fruits, it was obvious that we had one thing in common: all of us had been unfairly persecuted and longed for freedom to be ourselves.
Halfway through the simulation, Tina Ramirez explained that her mom was instrumental in developing the curriculum for the simulation. In between activities, I approached Tina’s mom and asked about the thought that went into creating the curriculum. She told me that it took Tina and her team awhile to come up with the perfect simulation to train people who were going through horrible persecution. Originally, they tried using people’s actual religions or political ideologies, but found those topics to be too sensitive, and the training objectives would never be reached. Utilizing her background in elementary education, Tina’s mother helped her daughter craft a curriculum that was both simplistic yet practical enough to be effective.
In the afternoon when the simulation was over, we had the opportunity to hear from speakers who deal directly with issues concerning religious liberty in Congress as well as from survivors of persecution in Sudan and Iraq. The conference ended with a black-tie gala to celebrate the fifth-year anniversary of Hardwired. Famous donors, such as Kathy Ireland, encouraged the audience to become involved with Hardwired and contribute to the auction, where they hoped to raise $100,000.
As someone who is interested in the process of writing curricula that help people understand big ideas in simple ways, I found the genesis of Shipwrecked’s curriculum fascinating. Even more impactful was witnessing the existence of such an organization. In my experience, it’s common to hear about religious liberty organizations that are religiously or politically affiliated, but I had never before heard of a nonprofit helping fight for freedom of conscience for Jews and Sunnis, Hindus and Sikhs, Christians and atheists.
In today’s religious and political climate, polarization between opposing sides has become the norm; however, for one weekend in November, I was fortunate enough to experience a community whose mission is to empower and protect the rights of all humanity. While that may sound like an impossible task, the Shipwrecked conference showed me that providing freedom of conscience may be much more natural than we imagine. Perhaps that is truly how we are hardwired.
–Keiko Paige Matsuda, Class of 2019
Note – Later this past school year, in February, Tina Ramirez visited campus to deliver the 2019 Isaac Backus American Freedoms Lecture, speaking about the work that Hardwired is doing in Iraq, Nigeria, and the Sudan.