World Cafe Community

Message from David Isaacs

As we move into day four of our first ever formal fundraising event, the Harvest Fund Drive, here's a message from David Isaacs, co-founder of the World Café:

Some Members of the World Café Community of Learning and Practiced have asked: "If the World Cafe is a "gift", why is the Foundation requesting financial contributions?" 

My answer to that sincere question is:  "Because allowing the "gift" to continue to be shared broadly through the World Cafe online community and through the website
allowing people on all 7 continents to freely use the process and the principles to generate collective learning and wisdom is interdependent with members appreciating the
value of the work and resourcing it with financial as well as energetic currencies."

in a recent trip to South Africa, I learned about Ubuntu, an African cultural contribution to humanity's remembrance of the essential nature we share with all forms of life, the essence of acting creatively in community. It is expressed simply as: I AM, BECAUSE WE ARE! 

The World Cafe, the world "as cafe"  as energized and resourced by The World Cafe Community Foundation is committed to that remembrance!

That is why Juanita and I continue to financially support the work.  We hope that you too feel called to contribute to TWCCF's continuing capacity to pay forward the gift of the World Café.

With respect,

David

Our immediate goal is to raise $25,000.00 by November 4, 2011.

Thank you to all of you who have already joined us in making this Harvest Fund Drive a great success. Please make your valuable contribution to the World Café Community Foundation now.

You'll be helping to catalyze the most critical conversations of our time.

We Are Not Ants

We're pleased to note that the World Café has been mentioned in the 2011 Spanish language edition of We Are Not Ants (No Somos Hormigas), a collaboration by four young people from Spain who took Mahatma Ghandi's challenge to "be the change you want to see" seriously.

We Are Not Ants champions positive change in a number of ways - first and perhaps most powerfully it is written from the standpoint of Appreciative Inquiry, and focuses primarily on what is working. They wanted to write a book "against the current zeitgeist of pessimism and world-weariness", calling it a "guide-book for the well-informed optimist on the state of humanity".

The book has three chapters - "Things That Work", "Things That Go Wrong and Need To Be Fixed", and "Initiatives Decicated to Positive Change". Their piece on World Café is in the third chapter, listed under new ways of Communication. 

The authors of We Are Not Ants are converting the ideas in the book into a crowd-sourced directory of social innovation projects or organizations like the World Café Community Foundation that either

• generate new opportunities for people
• promote a more efficient use of material and intellectual resources
• enable a more sustainable use of natural resources

They've invited readers to submit new social innovation projects and groups for publication in future printings, including the English language edition they are currently seeking a publisher for.

We thank them for the shout out and wish them all the best!

It Takes a Village to Raise a Village

Please contribute! We need your help now to keep the gift moving

A Message from Juanita Brown and David Isaacs

The World Cafe Community Foundation will be receiving a very welcome contribution of $25,000 dollars in the new year, which can be leveraged most fully if it can be matched by contributions from the global World Cafe community. 

New Horizons for World Café Resourcing

As the seasons shift we’re all experiencing the cycles of change and transition, and the winds of change are stirring within the World Café as well. While change can surface questions and unknowns, it can also open up opportunities for potential and possibility.

Given our exponential growth and other changes over the last year or two, the World Café Community Foundation has been focused on creating a healthy “resourcing eco-system” to financially sustain its work of supporting the global World Café as we continue to grow and evolve.

In the World Café tradition of evolving through friendship, our need for support in this area was met by two wonderful friends of the World Café who have stepped forward to help: Erica Peng and Nicole-Anne (“Nicole”) Boyer.

These two young women bring the joy and energy of inter-generational collaboration to the WCCF resourcing team, along with inspired new ideas and the wisdom of their extensive experience in a variety of key areas.

Erica met Tom and Juanita at the Shambhala Leadership Institute this past June, and right away they knew she would bring a great contribution to this work. Erica’s gifts to us are already apparent though her passion for deepening human connection and conversation, her talents in using the power of film to tell compelling stories, her can-do attitude and willingness to pitch in and lend a hand to what is most needed.

Nicole came to us through long-time World Café friend Napier Collyns, co-founder of GBN Global Business Network. As a GBN alumnae, Nicole is a foresight specialist and facilitator with a mission to catalyze “better futures” through dialogue. Nine years ago she fell in love with the World Café and has been using it ever since. After relocating to San Francisco from Paris, France, she felt it was time to give back to this community what she has gained in her practice. Nicole has a deep understanding of this kind of systemic and strategic undertaking and her experience is particularly appreciated as we approach foundations and individual donors with invitations to become resourcing partners.

Over the next few months the World Café Community Foundation resourcing team will be inviting you too to participate, and we’ll be sharing what’s happening in the resourcing process as it evolves. Current plans include an enhanced website, a series of short videos and other web 2.0 invitations for the general public, as well as addressing Foundations, key individuals and the World Café network as a whole.

We will be exploring ways to engage your thinking and participation in this important project and your ideas are very welcome. If you have initial thoughts to share, please contact Tom Hurley or Amy Lenzo.

Stay tuned for more!

      

Ubuntu

We received this email recently from Jennifer Goudemand in South Africa. It was so beautiful I had to share it with you all here:

"Thank you for this work – I stumbled upon this methodology very recently, and am awed by the power, relevance and willingness to share evident in The World Cafe.

In my country, we are undergoing many changes, and, as is the way with all humanity, we resist them largely as vexing and irrelevant to our selfish needs. The ethos of the Café system allows us an opportunity to connect with peoples of all political and religious shapes and sizes, to better understand what we all aspire to, in the proverbial Bigger Picture.

Remarkably, in my personal experience, most of Mankind has similar desires and goals – the safety of our families and loved ones, the education of our children, the right to pursue opportunities unfettered. Sadly, our dogma has created a gulf across which it is sometimes nigh impossible to traverse, but which is reachable via the bridges the Cafés create, pockets of safety in which to explore another’s point of view, unthreatened. And to learn, continually, the value of Oneness. 

I’ve had only warmth and ‘Ubuntu’ from your people: “...what is this thing we call Ubuntu? ... Ubuntu means each one of us can only effectively exist as fully functioning human beings when we acknowledge the roles that others play in our lives. Most Nguni languages in Southern Africa will say: “umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu [a person is a person through other persons, or I am because we are]”.

It is about accepting our inherent interconnectedness. This is the one missing piece of our current socio-political, leadership and business puzzle. At a glance, ubuntu seems idealistic. Yet, when understood, it is the foundation for social coherence. It engenders self-respect, whose current lack among individuals across all communities (rich and poor) breeds the levels of violence we experience.” (Dumisani Magadlela)

I look forward in great excitement to making World Cafés the adjunct to my work and life, to meeting the minds of others and understanding their stories, which must be one of the most enriching Learning Curves to which I’ve ever been led.

In great appreciation for your dedication, and the gifts bestowed.

Jennifer"

Appreciation

In the September issue of TableTalk, I spoke about the challenges & uncertainty of the times we're in now and how it's in these times that we become even more appreciative of things like the power of conversation and the blessings of community. In the spirit of harvest and thanksgiving, I invited us all to take a moment and think about the things we most appreciate about this work we're all engaged in.

Note: The remarkable photo above was shared freely under a Creative Commons license. It came from Gregory Smith's work on the CARF (Children at Risk Foundation) page on Flickr.

I've already started getting some wonderful responses by email and on the online community forum .

Alice McGillivray sent in two photos of a World Café on leadership within park and protected areas, wordlessly voicing what she appreciates, and our friend FireHawk Hulin from Resonance shares this video of David Cooperrider's thoughts, which he taped in a 1990 interview at his home in Illinois:

From Sharon Joy Kleisch, the World Café regional steward in Florida:

"The World Café opens a world of possibilities. Connecting is easy and leads to the most interesting people, passionate about doing important work in their communities and on this planet. Local cafes offer the gift of meaningful conversations that haven’t happened in quite this way before. Sometimes the local and the larger network interface, creating potentials for sharing and the delight of new insights.

As much as I appreciate these qualities, perhaps even greater is to experience a living system and to be part of a healthy example of how and why such a theory works."

From Juanita Brown, co-founder of the World Café:

"One of the things I’m most appreciative about in relation to the World Café is the truly amazing and beautiful community of heart and spirit that is stewarding this work forward into it’s next generation of life and creativity.  I am truly humbled and blessed to sense the love, commitment, creativity and capability with which so many around the world are co-evolving this beautiful “being” that is the World Café in service to life affirming futures in local communities and regions around the globe.

With my deep appreciation and respect."

You, too, are most warmly invited to use the comment function below to share your own thoughts on what you most appreciation about the World Café work. Thank you!

Gift Economy

One of the gifts of the World Café is continually being invited into great conversations. 

One such conversation happened last week when social visionary Nipun Mehta joined us in Mill Valley to reflect on the principles and resourcing practices at the heart of CharityFocus, the non-profit started in 1999 as an experiment in the gift economy. 

Our interaction stimulated some wonderful creative thought; afterwards Nipun wrote this post summarizing his ideas.

What are your thoughts on resourcing? How do you envision the "gift economy"?