The Time is Ripe for Social Entrepreneurs
Coro Alums Using GS Tools
I found myself in Aptos, CA recently at an alumni gathering of Coro, the leadership training organization through which I got my start professionally. It stirred my thinking like an ice cream beater on a hot summer afternoon, and the results are exciting me almost as much as the ice cream I can remember from those days long ago.
I’m beginning to believe that our country can reinvent itself in the civic arena much as we did in the early 1900s, after the very uninvolved 1890s when millions were coping with the industrial revolution and the isolation and confusion in the new cities. Robert Putnam’s book, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Communities, made this appeal to me several years ago, but I wasn’t optimistic then. I sense a quickening now.
While looking through some past work I came across this Partners for Change model that I co-developed with Sissel Waage, then VP of R&D at The Natural Step. We’d worked together at a fascinating symposium at the Weatherhead School at Case Western University in late 2003 bringing together social scientists and activists who had deep experience in social change. This process drew on our long experience facilitating cross-sector meetings.