PEGASUS is an acronym built from the first letters of our main themes: PEace, Global health and SUStainability. The representation of the Pegasus – a winged horse of Greek mythology appropriately captures our essence and spirit. Since ancient times Pegasus has been an emblem of inspiration, imagination, and knowledge, as well as an icon of wisdom. Pegasus’ symbolism of strength and justice is the embodiment of all that we hope to achieve through our activities to improve global health by fostering peace and sustainability.
Vision
We envision a world where peaceful interaction provides for sustainable global health.
Mission
To promote equity, justice and global health in its nexus with peace and environmental sustainability through interactive fora to share research, education, field experiences, advocacy and policy.
Working Principles/ Values
To encourage and support collective action to meet shared health needs and address global and planetary health challenges.
We Value:
COMPASSION
We recognize the interconnection of all beings and, as stewards of life on this planet, seek to demonstrate genuine empathy, compassion and caring for all life as we promote informed, sustainable, holistic, integrated, and transdisciplinary actions to alleviate suffering of life and land and ecosystems.
EQUITABLE APPROACHES
We are committed to transforming society into one that encourages, supports, and celebrates diverse perspectives, contexts, cultures, beliefs, and ways of living and doing, which help lead to positive sustainable change. We strive to build an inclusive community unified in our shared commitment to social responsibility.
ANTI-OPPRESSION, ANTI-RACIST AND DECOLONIZING APPROACHES
Recognizing various forms of systematic, direct and indirect forms of discrimination, inequity and oppression, we seek improved, sustainable health and wellness outcomes for all people and communities with protection for the vulnerable, empowerment for the disempowered, equity for the disadvantaged, and justice for those whose rights are violated.
RESPECT
Within PEGASUS Institute the value of Respect is expressed as taking the time to actively listen to and engage with a variety of voices to ensure support is given to, and the dignity is respected of all life.
ENGAGEMENT
We strive to engage in meaningful dialogue with colleagues, partners, learners and a wide variety of informed voices, stewards and stakeholders from around the globe. We aim to work collaboratively to enable, empower and prioritize underheard and local voices.
CRITICAL THINKING
When tackling current and pressing issues, we encourage staff, committee members, volunteers and colleagues to face difficult truths, ask tough questions, and challenge alternatives. We attempt to provide platforms that allow multiple perspectives and safe spaces, approaching realities with an open mindset, actively listening and embracing shared learning to grow individually and collectively.
TANGIBLE SOLUTIONS
We facilitate the sharing of insights, and cultivate creative, flexible strategies that challenge the status quo to promote innovations, sustainable action and meaningful change, developing local solutions relevant to each local context using local capacities.
Goals of PEGASUS Institute
- Foster a commitment towards service in Global Health, as well as an appreciation for diversity, interdisciplinary learning and inter-professionalism within the field.
- Examine critical links among peace and health determinants such as education, poverty, equity, the environment and development.
- Create partnerships leading to transdisciplinary collaborations, ethical interaction and cooperative action to help address global health problems both locally and internationally.
- Identify opportunities for education, knowledge translation, integrating and building concepts
- Develop and refine ideas for research and prepare for advocacy and participatory action.
Core Activities
Core activities of PEGASUS Institute include Interactive Events, Educational Activities, Publication of Information, Research, Policy and Advocacy.
We engage experienced professionals, academics, students and young professionals as well as those with lived experience in our work.
One of PEGASUS Institute’s main activities has been our PEGASUS Institute Virtual Event Series (https://pegasusinstitute.ca/videos/) of webinars and roundtables that are hosted in English, French and Spanish. The purpose of our virtual events is to provide a platform to create discourse and to spark action to address global health, peace and environmental challenges that are interconnected. From some of our webinars and roundtables PEGASUS Institute has been developing projects with partners and stakeholders that will lead to change, impact and transformation.
We strive to produce tangible outputs such as academic publications, toolkits, community resources, online repositories and share and exchange information through many avenues such as events, our website, social media, newsletters, blog, mentorship programs, books, videos etc. with an aim to create meaningful change.
A key outcome is the refinement of new ideas on advocacy and participation in global change towards peace, health and sustainability, with cross-fertilization of ideas to develop a variety of problem-solving approaches from around the world.