Our Values

At Access 2 Perspectives, we are committed to human rights, equity, and ecological sustainability.

The foundations of our work as scholars, entrepreneurs, and researchers are compiled of respect for the diversity of life and nature and concern for the peaceful coexistence of all cultures, based on individual freedom and responsibility.

Our actions are intended to preserve the natural foundations of life for present and future generations and to promote their further protection and restoration. We understand ecology holistically in the sense of a unity of nature and the development of civilization, the goal of which is to protect and preserve life.

We collaborate and cooperate with people and organizations who pursue ecological, social, or cultural goals and want to creatively help positively influence our societies and ecosystems. Together with them, we develop new forms of research and innovation engagements that are determined by solidarity and responsibility for our environment on this planet.

We live and act by our moral standards as is reflected in the projects we engage in, the partnerships we build and maintain as well as the tools we use.

Below are a few examples:

Human Rights

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Article 27

1. Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.

2. Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

Go to un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/

UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

Article 31

1. Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their cultural heritage, traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions, as well as the manifestations of their sciences, technologies and cultures, including human and genetic resources, seeds, medicines, knowledge of the properties of fauna and flora, oral traditions, literatures, designs, sports and traditional games and visual and performing arts. They also have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their intellectual property over such cultural heritage, traditional knowledge, and traditional- al cultural expressions.

2. In conjunction with indigenous peoples, States shall take effective measures to recognize and protect the exercise of these rights.

Animal Welfare

“Animal welfare is a complex and multi-faceted subject with scientific, ethical, economic, cultural, social, religious and political dimensions. […]”

It is attracting growing interest from civil society and is one of the priorities of the OIE. The OIE, at the request of its Member Countries, is the international organisation responsible for setting standards on this topic.

The OIE Global Animal Welfare Strategy was developed from lessons learned from actions taken at national and regional level and aims to be a source of ongoing guidance for the OIE’s activities in this area. Adopted in 2017 by all Member Countries, it was developed with the objective of achieving: “A world where the welfare of animals is respected, promoted and advanced, in ways that complement the pursuit of animal health, human well-being, socio-economic development and environmental sustainability”.

The strategy focuses on the development of international standards on animal welfare, in consultation with Member Countries and key international stakeholders, developing the capacity of Veterinary Services, improving communication with governments and raising awareness around the issue, and, finally, supporting Member Countries in the implementation of these standards.

The BfR performs the role of the “German Centre for the Protection of Laboratory Animals (Bf3R)” and coordinates all associated activities nationwide with the goal of:

Reducing animal experiments to the necessary minimum
Providing the best possible protection for laboratory animals.

Furthermore, national and international research activities and a scientific dialogue shall be encouraged by the work of the Centre.

Mission and goals of the German Centre for the Protection of Laboratory Animals (Bf3R)

Intensifying research on alternative methods
Advice to authorities and research institutions
International harmonisation of alternative methods
Research funding of alternative methods
Provision of information to the public and experts

The activities of the German Centre for the Protection of Laboratory Animals are part of the Animal Welfare Initiative of the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) entitled “Minding animals – new ways to improve animal welfare”.

Ecosystem protection and restoration

Open Scholarship

Access 2 Perspectives is a signatory and supporter of the following scholarly principles:

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Provisional Adoption of UNESCO Recommendation on Open ...

Berlin Declaration

The CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance can be downloaded here in summary or fullThe CARE Principles in Spanish - CREA para la Gobernanza de Datos IndigenasThe CARE Principles in Vietnamese - Các nguyên tắc CARE đối với quản trị dữ liệu b…

Our Digital Infrastructure: Tools and Services

We use the below listed digital tools and services, many of which are open source. The commercial tools we use were carefully selected for usability and efficiency in our cross-cultural and remotely operating team.

To ensure data security and privacy, all our operations strive to align with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to the best of our capacity and knowledge. Read more about GDPR compliance at gdpr.eu.

Balancing between ethical concerns and functionality

With the digital tools and services accessible online, we look at a vast variety of ethical standards, data security and privacy levels, environmental impact, and reliability differences. As each of our team members as well as the people we work with has different preferences and habits in the usage of subsets of these tools and services, we have learned to balance ethics with functionality. You will probably, therefore, find tools in the list below, that are infamously known for one or the other ethical concern while often the only feasible option for efficient remote collaboration in certain regional and cultural contexts.

Please e-mail us in case of any questions and if you have recommendations to make for us to look into 🙂

Finances

As a vehicle for international collaboration of experts and professionals working together for global equity in scholarship, Access 2 Perspectives strives to comply with the Fairwork global principles.

Banking for a better future.
At GLS bank, our money is invested in social and ecological projects both in Germany and around the world.

For our community services, we use Open Collective to collect and spend money transparently.

Buy your tickets, membership investments and support our projects at opencollective.com/access2perspectives

As a globally operating organization with a team, a community, and clients distributed around the world, we use Wise to keep banking fees at a minimum.

Some of the countries in the world are not yet served by all finance institutions, Azimo fills most of those gaps.

Local storage and green hosting

We host most of our files – and certainly those that contain sensitive data – on the WindCloud servers in Northern Germany that run on carbon-emission-free energy powered by wind. Excess heat is used to grow algae for food supplement production as a by-product.

Learn more about green/eco-friendly hosting at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_hosting.