World Cafe Community

What Juanita's Up To!

More from Juanita Brown, co-founder of the World Café, including some highlights from her recent email on behalf of the World Café Community Foundation's Harvest Fund Drive:

"I continue to be excited and delighted by the potential of this work at the leading edge of conversational leadership around the globe. I’m hopeful that with your support we’ll be able to expand our Wiser Together initiative which is empowering the collaboration of people across generations with the capacities to co-create communities and organizations that embody the wisdom of all generations. Here's an interview from our own personal efforts in this regard on our ¨family farm¨ in North Carolina in collaboration with next generation leaders.

I’m also very intrigued by the pioneering collaboration we’re exploring with the International Storytelling Center that is demonstrating the power of connecting individual and collective storytelling with catalytic conversations, community-building and committed action. We're collaborating with their Staging Change Institute on Nov 3-6, and would be delighted to see others of you there!

In addition, the World Café is joining with others in nurturing inter-generational gatherings of leaders across modalities of conversational work, helping to catalyze a global effort to bring many of the doorways to collective intelligence into the “jardîn central¨---the central garden—of our human experience—and to use these on behalf of movements for positive futures across the planet.

(Click the image to see it larger)

As David and I transition from our role as direct coordinators of our global work into the role of ambassadors for the ¨World as Café,¨ we are deeply grateful to Amy Lenzo, Deborah Goldblatt, Barbara Krohn and the core team who is continuing to nurture the life of the  World Café. We hope you, too, will continue to fuel this incredible movement with your time, your skills, your financial support, and your love.

With gratitude for all that you've helped to happen,

Juanita

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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.

 

Our Friends in Japan

We at the World Cafe Community Foundation have been feeling the concern and empathy that the rest of the world feels for our brothers and sisters in Japan during this challenging time. Our prayers and thoughts have been with the entire nation as it goes through this difficult re-adjustment period, and especially with our many dear friends in the Japanese World Cafe community.

We got this beautiful letter from our friend and colleague Daisuke Kawaguchi that reveals the invincible charachter of his countrymen and women, even during this time of tragedy, and the courage and valor in his own heart. His words inspire me, as I know they will you:

As you know, Japan has been facing a severe tragedy of Tsunami.

Fortunately, my family and acquaintance were safe, however, we are spending a sad moment to recognize the fact that estimated 20,000 people have died.

Still, we see a good sign in this tough situation.

Although there are a lot of problems to solve, this experience has reminded us of the importance of social capital and the beautiful human dignity at the same time.

People are helping with each other more than ever here in Japan, and we are relearning the spirit of sharing and volunteering. (Some impressive twitters are on this site)

Foreign media surprisingly reported that there was almost no robbery even in this severe situation.

A lot of courageous people in a self-defense force rescued tens of thousands of people (Yesterday an 80-year-old woman and her grandchild were rescued from the rubble after 9 days!).

Lack of electricity in Tokyo has changed our life totally. We are saving the electricity as much as we can. There are no neon lights even in the downtown. Now I go back home from my office earlier than before, which enables me to spend more time with my family.

All of this might be opportunities to think about energy savings and what is important to us in global level.

In addition, we are encouraged by billions of prayers and support from all over the world every day. I just want to say thank you, thank you for letting us know that we never walk alone!

I believe that when we get over this situation, we can be stronger, more gentle to the people and environment, and create the better society which we can be proud of. In order to realize this, conversational leadership will play the most significant role.

I am determined to dedicate myself to the recovery of our society by creating space for reflective and generative dialogue such as the World Cafe offers with our networks of practitioners!

Conversation and Community

David Isaacs sent me this quote from Peter Block:

My belief is that the way we create conversations that overcome the fragmented nature of our communities is what creates an alternative future.

This can be a difficult stance to take for we have a deeply held belief that the way to make a difference in the world is to define problems and needs and then recommend actions to solve those needs.

We are all problem solvers, action oriented and results minded. It is illegal in this culture to leave a meeting without a to-do list.

We want measurable outcomes and we want them now.

What is hard to grasp is that it is this very mindset which prevents anything fundamental from changing.

We cannot problem solve our way into fundamental change, or transformation.

This is not an argument against problem solving; it is an intention to shift the context and language within which problem solving takes place.

Authentic transformation is about a shift in context and a shift in language and conversation. It is about changing our idea of what constitutes action.

~ Peter Block from his Civic Engagement Series, sponsored by A Small Group.

Conversation

by Tom Atlee, of the Co-intelligence Institute

I want to expand the concept of conversation.

The Latin and Indo-European roots of "con" and "vers" connote "turning together".

This deeper understanding opens up new meanings.

When we speak our truths and hear each other deeply, letting each other's voices and ideas and stories and passions shift us, we turn together.

When we dance or listen to music, and our bodies and attention resonate with its shifting vibrations and emotional resonances, we turn together.

When we all share the same perspectives, hopes or horrors within the vibrational embrace of mass media and the webs of telecommunications -- 911, elections, earth from space -- we turn together.

When we respond adaptively to the situations we face -- individually or collectively -- we are turning together with the energies and realities that reside within those situations.

When we as a community come together in times of crisis, rather than splitting apart into adversarial or self-aggrandizing camps, we are turning together.

As all plants breathe in carbon dioxide and breath out oxygen, and all animals breath in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide, we turn together in and as one great cycling flow of oxygen and carbon, 
releasing the energies of Life.

As our one small and beautiful planet spins out its days and nights, and circles the sun into seasons, and glides with our whole solar family on one vast arcing arm of our spiral Milky Way galaxy, we turn 
together.

We are in conversation -- all of us, all the time, at more levels than we know -- turning together.

Waking up is our emerging realization that we can converse more consciously, learn to do it more knowledgeably and heartfully, inspired and inspiring, and thereby evolve together with -- and into 
-- greater wisdom, wholesomeness, and grace... turning, together.

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.

Making a Difference

Regional and global steward Carlos Mota said something recently that triggered an important question.

Carlos was talking about not just using the World Café for "business as usual", but utilizing its power for truly transformational work on real issues. In other words, to use the World Café for those conversations that really matter, that explore new possibilities and drive social change.

This reminder of our "real work" evokes an inquiry to drive our work long into the future: "When have you seen the World Café really make a difference? Either immediately, in one café, or cumulatively over time?"

Please add your responses to this question in the "comments" field below.