Background Reading

As background reading, this brief narrative, "Global Gathering Enrollment," is an early piece by Elisa Sabatini, Executive Director of Via International (formerly Los Ninos).  Included as an attachment is an article by Meg Wheatley on networks and emergence ("Using Emergence to Take Social Innovations to Scale"). 

Increasingly, it feels to me there is something quite remarkable emerging around and about the Global Gathering.  This morning, at a meeting of the Foundation's distribution committee, I learned that Paul Farmer will be at Virginia Tech for two days this Spring.  In October, he will be speaking at USD's 20th Social Issues Conference.  Our Global Gathering is being hosted at USD in the context of the Social Issues Conference.

The photo was taken from the Tijuana side of the border at San Diego-Tijuana: an iron fence running to the sea that separates us.  In our thinking, in my thinking, how often I run into iron fences like this. How can I overcome my iron fences?  The Gathering promises to be a convocation of exceptional leaders preparing the next generation of leaders for whom fences are no longer needed.

This morning in conversation with a young colleague, I had a glimpse of this new, emerging leadership that sustains relationships, builds teams and cohorts, values connections more than personal fame.  

I see in her a leadership that is about *us*, instead of about being The One.  I find this inspiring and hopeful and gives the Global Gathering clearer meaning.