Project Save the World began in 2018 when Professor Metta Spencer, then the outgoing president of Science for Peace and the long-time founder and editor of Peace Magazine, organized a two-day conference, “How to Save the World in a Hurry,” at the University of Toronto. The initial purpose was for progressive NGO leaders to define 25 “planks” in a single “platform” that, if implement together, would greatly reduce the risk of the most serious threats to humankind: war and weapons; global warming; famine; pandemics; radioactive contamination; cyber risks; and the negative effects of economics, governance; and civil society. About 100 persons attended. 

On the first day, experts spoke and answered questions about the particular risks in which they specialized. The second day was for breakout groups to discuss these threats. These groups generated the overall Platform for Survival, which was adopted in a plenary session. 

As a follow-up, we created a new website, tosavetheworld.ca, and gradually adopted an organizational title: Project Save the World. We acquired a YouTube channel and began holding forums by Zoom — hour-long discussions by experts about these global threats, live on YouTube, and which we edited and posted permanently both on YouTube and our website. We advertise these conversations on social media and by mailed posters to a growing list of frequent viewers.

Although initially Project Save the World was produced and managed as the project of Peace Magazine,
a small publication for peace activists,  over time the strength of the two organizations reversed. Peace Magazine’s circulation was declining markedly, whereas the work and expense involved in producing the website and forum series mushroomed. Also, the magazine’s 40-year archive, which is available as text-only on the Internet, attracts a large audience of people searching for particular topics with browsers. 

During Covid, the magazine’s printing house went out of business so we began to publish the magazine exclusively in a digital form, available through a magazine aggregating company, PressReader, although the paid subscriptions remain insufficient to predict a bright future as a profit-seeking publication. 

However, the digital format made it possible to distribute the magazine free-of-charge to thousands of like-minded organizations worldwide. Just as the prospects of the print magazine vanished, the actual distribution of the digital publication multiplied by the thousands. We were mainly producing articles based on the discussions of researchers in the forum series. In effect, the magazine had morphed into an exceptionally fine house organ, the newsletter of Project Save the World. 

Now in 2023, that de facto reversal will be recognized with legal and official changes. CANDIS, the not-for-profit corporation that had owned and controlled Peace Magazine, will turn over the magazine to a newly incorporated not-for-profit, Project Save the World, and then dissolve, having no further purpose. The magazine will fulfill part of Project Save the World’s official purpose, namely “the advancement of education by providing an open forum for qualified researchers to discuss their research with other experts and to make those results available to the public.” 

The second half of this purpose — making the results available to the public — is now fulfilled by all three of our platforms; our two websites, the forum of videos and audio podcasts, and our digital newsletter/“Peace Magazine.” These services are all widely available withut charge as our offering toward the survival of humankind. But we thank those subscribers to the magazine who remain with us loyally and still pay, now mainly throughPressReader, CAN $20 per year. 

We. the members of Project Save the World, are all people who have supported some of these activities, either by volunteering to work on the publication, a website, or the “broadcasts” or by donating money – usually about CAN $100 — at least once within the past three years. If newcomers wish to participate in these projects, please contact us, for we have a list of chores that sometimes requires volunteer assistance. Email us, stating your interests and aptitudes, at project@tosavetheworld.ca.