About Us

Up the River Endeavors (URE) is a consortium of organizations and individuals brought together by an innovative philanthropist, Kenneth Malcolm Jones, whose personal goal is to address the fundamental question of how human beings can reconcile with nature so that we can ensure our own survival and that of other living things that share our planet. There are nine member organizations and a growing number of associate members (specialists who are invited to participate in one of our annual meetings) involved in URE. Seventy-five percent of participants are women and each participant is a decision-maker in their organization. Each organization individually addresses important issues such as gender relations, global warming, world peace and social justice. The URE consortium is collectively organized around the perspective that the various problems addressed by each organization have in common one or more root causes. The consortium endeavors to identify and address those root causes.

While none of the consortium organizations shares exactly the same analysis of the root causes of the problems we address, we have been inspired by our association, our dialogue, and by working collaboratively to seek a better, more sustainable world. In our efforts to learn more about root causes, we have considered data on human evolution, male/female relationships and the behavior of closely related primate species. We have realized that it is imperative to understand our biology (for instance, our propensity to create 70 million additional humans each year... over replacement numbers) in order to address human gender relations. We believe that imbalanced gender relations manifests itself in many societal and environmental concerns and, as such, is a root cause of many of the world’s problems. A biological perspective is informative as we consider how we can change from a mindset of competition to one of cooperation. The URE believes that achieving gender equality is essential to saving our planet and our species. In the “Suggested Materials” menu, you will find a reading list reflecting our current and previous years’ study materials. Links are included to assist you in obtaining these materials.

We are currently considering the effects of the “nesting instinct” among humans. That is: the tendency of humans to gravitate towards pair-bonds instead of the collective community and to focus on acquisition of status and resources instead of cooperation. This tendency is linked to the very costly parental investment that human females make in their infants as a result of being a large-brained social mammal. The nesting instinct in humans generates competition over resources both within and between groups as growing families strive to acquire more consumer goods. Many of these goods require fossil fuels and disposable packaging, and they leave inordinately large ecological footprints on the Earth we all share. Changing our collective mindset to a cooperative, sustainable, and balanced lifestyle is essential if we are to survive as individuals, families, communities and as a species. Empowering women is a crucial ingredient in engendering this change. The URE is dedicated to new ideas, radical rethinking of relationships, gender equality, and a willingness to experiment. We hope to raise awareness. Together, we are seeking a new way forward and a new way of thinking about what it means to be a good steward of the Earth’s finite resources.

This year consortium members will come together to collaborate on one exciting new project. The URE will work with young people throughout the country and with students from the University of Southern California on an internet project. The goal is to engage this generation in an multi-media dialogue including the most current use of on-line communications, pointing the way toward new insights and a different global mindset. This project will attempt to involve a young audience that is attracted to visual culture and interactive technology. The website will attempt to encourage its users to solve problems and also to seize opportunities to change the way we think and the way we interact with each other in a global community. You can read more about this project by selecting “Current Project” from the menu.

About the Founders

Kenneth M. Jones, Mal, as almost everyone calls him, is an inventor, machinist, activist, philosopher, philanthropist and out of the box thinker who believes that the human species is behaving so destructively that it might not survive. He hopes to find agreement on the core destructive behaviors and consensus about what species-wide changes might be made to save ourselves.

Carol Koury, Mal’s wife and confidant, is a long time feminist, social, environmental and health activist, author and Enneagram teacher who believes the entire planet is in trouble because of patriarchal behavior and spin on human history, a lost sense of rapport and respect for the rest of Nature, and an unchecked, institutional greediness on the part of large economic entities and governments run almost exclusively by short-sighted men. She believes in personal responsibility by starting within ourselves to find peace in the world, and allowing social activism to develop from that internal peace.