From the moment they woke up to the moment they went to sleep, the staffers’ and trainees’ days were marked by continuous labor alongside each other. The ultimate goal of this program was to encourage trainees to return to their home villages and become community leaders of sustainable development and environmental efforts—leaders who would know how to live in and for the collective.

Western aid organizations typically attempt to manage dispensation of bureaucratic benefits, often via the free market. Such aid turns both the staff and recipients into neoliberal subjects.

This book discusses how a large, Shinto NGO (The Organization for Industrial, Spiritual and Cultural Advancement, or “OISCA”) runs a very different kind of international organization in which the goal is not to atomize people but to unite them. Becoming One shows how collectivist, Asian practices offer viable alternatives to Western modes of organizing, acting, and being together in the world.