Leadership
Choosing to Be the Change
Emerging Leaders Initiative
The
Center's leadership program, Choosing to Be the Change, focuses on youth
leaders. The leaders of the future need to experience and experiment with
cooperative leadership processes and skills so that when they enter the
fields of science, politics, religion, education, business, etc. they will
be equipped to create cooperative ways of being, thinking and working in
their respective fields. Our work is a demonstration model as we mentor and
train young people in a shared leadership and shared responsibility model
that they then apply to their own project or organization.
This program provides capacity building for leadership teams enabling them to become effective leaders who demonstrate, model, and facilitate positive organizational development and growth. As the team creates their own future, they are transformed through their application of learning.
Areas covered in this program are:
Shared leadership/shared responsibility *
Organizational development and planning *
Leading through cooperation *
Meeting and group facilitation *
Group dynamics *
Ethical leadership
Groups we have worked with include:
Youth
to Youth Bear Hugs Project
The leadership team of the Youth to Youth Bear Hugs Project operates within
a youth-adult partnership model. Youth are mentored in project design,
development, and evaluation. Youth work as a team developing cooperative
leadership skills in the implementation of the project. The Youth to Youth
Bear Hugs Project was one of the Peace in Action projects featured at the
United Nations International Day of Peace observance September 12, 2005. Liz
Mooney, youth leader, spoke at the UN describing the project and the power
youth have to make a difference in the world.
Youth to Youth Bear Hugs Projects Youth Leaders Liz
Joslin and Liz Mooney.
The
Student Peace Alliance
The Center has worked closely with the Student Peace Alliance (SPA)
mentoring, coaching and training leaders as they have initiated and grown a
national organization campaigning for a US Department of Peace and dedicated
to creating cultures of peace on school campuses throughout the USA. The SPA
is specifically interested in "being the change we want to see in the world"
and the Center has assisted and supported them in creating an organizational
structure and processes that reflect their understandings of a culture of
peace. The group has grown from a handful of college student leaders to an
organization with over 100 active groups at high schools and colleges around
the country.
University
of Vermont Community Service Scholars Program (CSSP)
The Vermont Community Service Scholars Program provides scholarships to
Vermont students who have shown a dedication to community service in high
school and who contribute to the community through service and maintain a
commitment to their studies while students at UVM. Each Year, Vermont CSSP
contributes more than 5,000 service hours. CSSP students have taken the
Youth to Youth Bear Hugs to the Burlington Boy’s and Girl’s Club. We
provided cooperative activities training to CSSP students at their
orientation meeting this fall. Our first Center for Cooperative Principles
intern is a CSSP scholar.
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." ~ Buckminster Fuller