『自分が変われば、世界も変わる』 シアトルで学ぶ社会起業！　（第6回）

シアトルから日本への旅

As many of you know, I recently made a trip to Tokyo, where I had a great opportunity to speak with a number of people who are interested in the ideas and applications of social innovation. I had such a wonderful time! I found there to be a recognizable ‘buzz’ in the air around building community and inspiring purposeful action and I am already looking forward to my next visit to Japan, which I hope will be sooner than later. For those of you who were unable to join any of the public events, please join the Rootspring (formerly iLEAP) Facebook Fanpage and you will stay updated as to the next time I come to Japan.

技術的だけでなく、文化的な要素の必要性

What I found to be particularly inspirational in my talks and meetings was the high level of personal understanding of the challenges that we face when shifting our practices to being more collaborative, intentional, systemic, and progressive. It is my experience that making this move is not one of technique only (that is, if we only ‘do’ things in a ‘different way’, then everything will be better), but it needs to be cultural as well. Here I do not mean ‘culture’ in respect to ethnicity, but in the various routines and patterns that we are enmeshed in through our daily personal, social and professional practices. These cultural patterns are the things that we often do not question nor take the time to explore why we do the things we do. Who’s interests are served by these patterns? I believe that it is from this place of inquiry that change can take root and more collaborative, social innovations emerge.

ソーシャル・エンタープライズ・ワールド・フォーラムへの参加

In a few weeks, I will be participating in an interesting gathering of social innovators and entrepreneurs in San Francisco, California, called the Social Enterprise World Forum (http://www.se-alliance.org/summit_10program.cfm). Over 1,000 attendees are expected, from all over the world, and I expect that there will be an abundance of creative, inspired people! Also, earlier in the same week, Rootspring will be at the Revisioning Value conference http://www.revisioningvalue.org/, which is being co-sponsored by our good friends at Shorebank Pacific, in the lovely city of Portland, Oregon. So much going on in the same week related to social innovation!

シアトル・夏のプログラム

Finally, we have opened recruitment for our Summer 2010 Social Innovation in Seattle program that will run for 4 weeks, from August 16, 2010 through September 10, 2010. Space is limited for this program, so please do inquire before all the spaces are filled! Also, there is a setsumeikai at Mainichi Education on Friday, May 21, 2010 to discuss the program.

Thank you for reading-and please feel free to email or contact me with any questions.

Hope to see you here in Seattle!