More About Our Mission as a Non-Profit
Our mission is to encourage, inspire, and assist people from all over the world with the writing of their auto-biographies and biographies of their loved ones, as well as to read and learn from each other’s life-stories, both living and dead, famous or non-famous.
We do this with the hope of spreading compassion, understanding, empathy, and a much needed sense of unity in diversity, all across the globe.
Since the dawn of our civilization, world history has been dominated by warfare, hate, famine, poverty, as well as other atrocities and social injustices. Sadly, millions of people from the past didn’t get the opportunity to write their life-stories, and unfortunately this continues to this very day. Today, billions of people still stand without having written their auto-biography, i.e., the story of their lives.
We at The B.I.O. firmly believe this to be an unacknowledged tragedy of human history that has been almost completely ignored for far too long. It is our goal to do our part to help rectify this great historical misfortune, one person at a time; one life-story at a time. After all, history is about people, and should be written by people, for people, no matter who they are, or where they come from, or what they believe. Every single person, regardless of race, creed, gender, sexual and/or political orientation, has the right to have their life story written, without reserve, as they see it. And despite what history has traditional taught us, you don’t have to be famous or infamous to be the subject of biography. Everyone, equally, shares in the exact same right.
Ever since the time of the Ancient Greeks, historians have been primarily known for focusing their research and writing about war and conquerors. Herodotus, who’s considered to be the “Father of History,” wrote about the causes of war between the Persians and the Greeks. Plutarch, probably the world’s first modern biographer, wrote about the achievements of great statesmen and politicians, such as Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great. This is not to say that these individuals, much like nations at war, or great artists, don’t deserve historical attention or recognition, but history is supposed to be about all people, not just about those in power.
We, at The Biography International Organization, want to literally change the narrative. After all, history would be far less interesting without people, and it is through the telling of our life-stories that we feel connected and not alone in the world. From our oral storytelling traditions, to Homer’s epic poems about the Trojan War, to novels, movies, and social media, it is through the art of story-telling that we make sense of our world and how we make sense of ourselves, but we still have a lot more work to do. We must continue to challenge the very art of storytelling, because if we do, we essentially challenge ourselves.
And as we continue to become more of an open and historically conscious society, we must never cease seeking and finding new pathways to connect, not just with each other, but with our inner selves. From the time of the great Frederick Douglas to the late great Anne Frank, we can never underestimate the power of words, and the power of personal narrative. One book can help change the world.
In summary, our mission is quite simple: to help people from all across the world write their biographies, so that we can pass onto future generations what have learned, through all of our failures, triumphs, and dreams, while at the same time, hopefully, exponentially increasing our collective knowledge and information for the sole benefit of one another, as members of one humanity.