An Invitation to Stewardship

In the process of our ongoing exploration of the unique contribution of the World Café and the World Café Community Foundation during these times of challenge and transformation, several things are becoming clearer to us. Perhaps most importantly, we've reaffirmed our deep and enduring commitment to ensuring that the core ideas, principles, and process of the World Café remain freely available to all.

In recommitting to the "open source" approach and grass-roots perspective that has led the World Café into the vibrant, dynamic global force that it is today, we are also reaffirming our faith in the global community of World Café friends and practitioners to serve as stewards for its ongoing development and evolution in increasingly diverse, creative, and powerful ways.

One expression of this is our recent decision to stop singling out specific individuals as "regional stewards" on the website. Instead, we encourage all friends and practitioners to think of themselves as active stewards of the World Café.

We invite each of you who cares about the World Café to step forward to help nurture the areas and activities you feel passionately about -- to serve as an "attractor" and resource for others who may want to join in hosting conversations that matter.

For some, this may be holding World Café events in your town or city, hosting conversations about the questions that matter most locally. It may mean mentoring new World Café hosts, telling people you meet about the transformative power of conversation, or actively sharing innovative practices in the online community forum.

For many, it will mean supporting the the World Café Community Foundation by "tithing" 10% or more when you are earning money from the World Café (as a growing number of practitioners are starting to do), as well as sharing your stories so others can learn from them, and perhaps most importantly, it means listening to the spirit of the World Café and working in ways true to her (we're pretty sure it's a "her") principles.

Stepping up to World Café stewardship will look different to different people. What might stewardship mean to you?

We're very excited about this change, and in the next month or two will be moving to a new online community platform that will give us a better way to steward this network together. We'll share more about the new platform in the next month or two, but rest assured it will be much simpler to use and have the features we need to stay in touch and grow together.

Comments

[Account Deleted]

Dear Community,

It is great to hear this news as it is something that I have been waiting for a while. So thank you for this great idea and initiative.

I have found my passion for building a learning community through conversations - that's how it has led me to the world cafe as well as the other tools and modules.

I have run the World Cafe in our young community several times when it was always nice to hear different thoughts and inspirations at the end.

However, the only way for me to learn how to facilitate the process is from the online source. Therefore, it will be a great idea to connect with everyone to share the experiences and learning.

I do look forward to this.

Thanks and warmly,

Tuan Anh from Vietnam.

[Juanita Brown]

HELLO TUAN ANH,
How wonderful to hear from you and to know that the World Cafe is finding a home in Viet Nam! Can you tell us a bit more about the work you are doing in your community and what you are learning about the Cafe experience from your experimentations? What questions are you exploring? What new insights have emerged?
With warm regards and my very best wishes,
Juanita Brown