Feb/03/12//Curtis Ogden//Inspiration

Growing Our Way Into a New Economy

This may be the best 14 minutes of your day (and the best TED talk ever). Watch it! Go Green Bronx Machine! Si se puede!

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Feb/02/12//Curtis Ogden//Race, Class, Power

Funder as Convenor: Part 2

A year ago I blogged about the critical role of convening in collaborative multi-stakeholder change work, particularly as it plays out through a funder.  Having been in Michigan last week working with a group of diverse foundations in a customized Facilitative Leadership session, I have additional thoughts to offer stemming from a very productive and provocative conversation about how to address and manage power dynamics when one attempts to initiate a partnership or collaborative effort and one is holding the purse strings or a significant portion thereof.  continue reading

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Feb/01/12//Curtis Ogden//Learning Edge

The Betterness of Bitterness

This post comes courtesy of our friends at the National Bitter Melon Council (NBMC) – Jeremy Liu (also a board member here at IISC) and Hiroko Kikuchi.  NBMC is devoted to the cultivation of a vibrant, diverse community through the promotion and distribution of Bitter Melon. Its projects, events, and festivals celebrate the health, social, culinary, and creative possibilities of this underappreciated vegetable and of embracing bitterness as a key to personal and community change.

Everyone experiences bitterness. We all deal with it; often in ways that are counter to addressing the bitterness, by denying, rejecting, or repressing the emotions, and/or our loss and our attachment to loss that create our bitterness. The need to actively address our bitterness is profound. continue reading

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Jan/31/12//IISC//Sustainability

Prepared to Fail

The following post is reblogged from Seth’s Blog. We hope that it will enrich your life and much as it has ours.

“We’re hoping to succeed; we’re okay with failure. We just don’t want to land in between.”

–David Chang

He’s serious. Lots of people say this, but few are willing to put themselves at risk, which destroys the likelihood of success and dramatically increases the chance of in between.

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Jan/30/12//Cynthia Silva Parker//Featured, The Collaborative Organization

Reflect and Strengthen

I asked my colleagues for suggestions about grassroots leaders and organizations doing great things in the world. One suggestion was Boston-based Reflect & Strengthen, which turned ten in 2011.

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