World Cafe Community

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"?

Welcome to the World Café Community Blog!

The World Café is a global community of people dedicated to awakening and engaging collective intelligence through conversations about questions that matter... Welcome to your blog! Your active involvement is warmly invited.

The Gift of Harvesting

The essence of the World Café work is in the evocation of collective intelligence for the good of the whole - be it the ‘whole’ of each individual café, the World Café global network, or the larger communities of which we are all a part.

One very important way to contribute back to this ‘whole’ is to share the story of your own experience. Perhaps it doesn’t sound like much, but it is one of the most valuable contributions you can make.

When we read the cumulative stories of these conversations we begin to notice the patterns and ‘themes’ that are living in this community of networks. This helps us understand what these themes are telling us in relation to the ‘great narrative’ of our times and gives us an opportunity to make meaning together.

I wrote this brief overview in response to a new, next-generation host who'd asked for a little more information about harvesting before addressing her first big café, and in writing it I realized more fully just how valuable harvesting is - for all of us.

Dialogue Project

Here is a wonderful video of an interview with David Isaacs and Juanita Brown, including clips from a World Café that David and Nancy Margulies hosted. This video was created as part of the Dialogue Project: