Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Alain Berranger on February 4, 2012 at 6:13pm

Dear Ulrich, excellent advice!... Alain

Ulrich Burkhard said:

Dear Kubwimana,

leadership is not that difficult as soon as we overlook circumstances of leading.

If we want to lead, we must be careful, be heartfelt, be ready to be misunderstood, we must NOT ask for permission, we must act, must lead only in field where we are comptent and cooperate with other leaders in other fields.

Thats my opinion!

Permalink Reply by kubwimana Venuste on February 4, 2012 at 10:42pm

Dear  Urich & Alain,

Thank you all for advice i really hope very soon this platform  can be accessible for all young generation so that they may also understand that leadership is not difficult....

Honestly i sometime suspect that is not being refused to be leaders but us; youth we are afraid to fight for leadership  positions. we are afraid to be lead... 

Permalink Reply by Alain Berranger on February 5, 2012 at 6:47pm

Yes Kubwimana, Ulrich said leaders do not ask for permission to be leaders! Just do it! I did that all my life!..got into a lot of trouble at times!...but never regretted it as the people I ended working with were my rewards!...

Alain

Permalink Reply by Ulrich Burkhard on February 5, 2012 at 8:50pm

Hi Kubwimana,
I am happy that you feel our advices heartfelt. I am also taking advices from many sides, and will never stop listen to others and their valuable experiences.

Uli

Permalink Reply by kubwimana Venuste on February 6, 2012 at 10:45am

Alain,

thank for sharing your personal experience...even if i just don't understand many circumstances  i just do it! i just follow my heart and instinct... no matter what results at the end of the day i won't regret because what made me difficult at the beginning it was that i was doing and taking decisions that my heart can't live with!!!  

Alain Berranger said:

Yes Kubwimana, Ulrich said leaders do not ask for permission to be leaders! Just do it! I did that all my life!..got into a lot of trouble at times!...but never regretted it as the people I ended working with were my rewards!...

Alain

Permalink Reply by kubwimana Venuste on February 6, 2012 at 11:09am

Dear Ulrish,

Your advice that i get here on GKP really inspire me and give courage to keep  going forward innovatory against all odds... Because this is what put all youth of today in jeopardy. we  don't know or we ignore the principle of "open mind" i realized that an open mind is the beginning of self-discovery and growth. we can't learn anything new until we can admit that we don't already know everything.

i realized that an open mind is an attitude . it means you don't think you already know everything. That's the trouble with too many young people. we learn a litle and then we think we know everything. Then our minds shut down, and nothing new gets in.We become know-it-alls. That's the worst  mistake you can make.

many young people we misunderstand the open mind as the same thing as an empty head. But i strongly believe that an open mindedness is an attitude, the key to all learning and personal development. I think the purpose of education  isn't to fill our minds but to open them. the more knowledge  we have, the more we realize how much we don't know... is what the open mind is. It help us to see all sides, to be more understanding and to be aware of our own limitations.... 

Ulrich Burkhard said:

Hi Kubwimana,
I am happy that you feel our advices heartfelt. I am also taking advices from many sides, and will never stop listen to others and their valuable experiences.

Uli

Permalink Reply by Helmut Leitner on February 17, 2012 at 5:14pm

Dear kubwimana Venuste,

it's very inspiring to see you communicating here. For me the question Young or Old, is unrelated to leadership. What I would wish for, in any situation, is a good and successful leader. I know an old lady, a grandmother, 70 years old. who is active in the students organisation here, as a real leader of the cross generations section, and she is great in her leadership. She invented the "Monday Academy" many are talking about, the idea stolen from her. We all know about leaders, that were young revolutionaries when they became leaders, and turned into old dictators. So it's a non-issue, in my opinion. Nothing wrong with politically correct sweet words, given to the youth as encouragement, like to you here. I'm 56, more than twice your age, and that may well be the average of the other people talking here. Alain is older, Klaus a bit younger.So, you have falling in pit with old guys. :-)

Leadership is not something abstract, it is not given or passed on. You can found an organisation and take the risk, and so build your own leadership role. That's probably what you have done. Other people can trust you, but it is more logical to trust you in the context of your organisation, based on what you have already proven to be able to do. Especially to make money work for a given goal efficiently, in a correct and controllable way. And you build on that, step by step. If you are lucky, you can make a jump ahead, but basically leadership is the result of concentrated and good work.

What I can tell you is what it takes to grow in leadership, if you are interested in that. First, you should like people, to be able to understand them and their needs, you should be happy to communicate and be with them, you should always be genuinely interested in your fellow citizens. Second, you should have or develop the ability to organize, to plan and work towards a plan, to solve problems and learn from mistakes. It would help greatly if you know how to run a corporation, to keep order in all legal and financial issues. This means a commercial or legal education, or a number of years of practical work in that area, or a natural talent for organization. Third, last but not least, you should be honest.

I hope, you'll find my contribution not too des-illusionizing, it's not ment that way.

Good luck from Austria, Europe.

Helmut

Permalink Reply by Franz Nahrada on February 22, 2012 at 12:02pm

Dear all,

the conversation seems quite stuck at the moment. I talked to my friend Pamela McLean who runs a very successful development partnership between the UK and Nigeria, Dadamac Foundation, and she pointed me to a short statement of Eilleen Conn that was really an eye - opener for me and could be, for all of us, to reall enter this new phase of cooperation together:

http://www.socialreporters.net/?p=455

In the interview Eileen says that between half and three quarters of civic activity is not countable – it is below the radar. That’s not just because the activities are small, but because they are different. It’s a bit like physicists spending years looking for the smallest piece of matter, then finding it is better seen as energy waves.

In the community we look for small groups and expect them to operate like bigger organisations who have paid staff and vertical management systems drawn from the world of work. But in fact the small groups operate through the energy of person-to-person horizontal networking.

That doesn’t mean they don’t need support – but it is different. The professional voluntary sector works within a system of grants and contracts drawn from the world of work … and this doesn’t fit well with the horizontal systems of small groups where generally people are not employed.

here is the video:

Permalink Reply by Klaus Stoll on February 22, 2012 at 6:45pm

Dear Franz

Thank you very much for your important contribution. A lot what you have pointed out is in my personal opinion right. It is about how we interact with each other and which systems we are using. The vertical system we are using mostly today is fraught and has large problems, the horizontal system you are talking about has a lot to offer to make things better. But, is it a either or, this system or the other?. I think there is nothing wrong with paid staff and an organizational structure, if they are honest and effective. Here is nothing wrong with groups of volunteers that find new ways to interact with each other in new and better ways. The question for me is: are they as effective and realistic as they need to be? Nobody can volunteer forever, we all need to eat, or we need to make a rule that social and development activists can and should only become active when they have an independent source of income like in the good old time of Carnegie and Rockefeller where the good and wealthy executed their social responsibilities through charitable works.(and may these "good old times" never return).

Again, I think the way forward is somewhere in the middle. We need effective organizational structures that are build on one to one horizontal relationships. I think GKPF is one of the organizations that has realized that these kind of changes are needed. GKPF is only as horizontal and effective as its members make it. What we should all expect from each other is that we implement social change and positive development in the most effective way and that is often done better through a coordinating and communication enabling structure then through reliance on personal interaction. Even those personal interactions nowadays require organizational and resource input. The technology of the Village talks requires resources, the movement needs a minimal structure and rules, the big difference is who is making the informed choices about what is needed or not. We have to create sound mechanisms so that the horizontal informs the vertical. And guess what the result will be: both, the vertical and the horizontal will become as effective as they had never been before. I am all for horizontal based verticalism !

Franz Nahrada said:

Dear all,

the conversation seems quite stuck at the moment. I talked to my friend Pamela McLean who runs a very successful development partnership between the UK and Nigeria, Dadamac Foundation, and she pointed me to a short statement of Eilleen Conn that was really an eye - opener for me and could be, for all of us, to reall enter this new phase of cooperation together:

http://www.socialreporters.net/?p=455

In the interview Eileen says that between half and three quarters of civic activity is not countable – it is below the radar. That’s not just because the activities are small, but because they are different. It’s a bit like physicists spending years looking for the smallest piece of matter, then finding it is better seen as energy waves.

In the community we look for small groups and expect them to operate like bigger organisations who have paid staff and vertical management systems drawn from the world of work. But in fact the small groups operate through the energy of person-to-person horizontal networking.

That doesn’t mean they don’t need support – but it is different. The professional voluntary sector works within a system of grants and contracts drawn from the world of work … and this doesn’t fit well with the horizontal systems of small groups where generally people are not employed.

here is the video:

Permalink Reply by Alain Berranger on February 22, 2012 at 10:13pm

Dear Franz,

Yes the conversation is stuck or finished?... time to get some action going!... funding is only a means to get things done,but it is very necessary... so what is the next step in VIT development and what can GKPF do about it?

Thank you for sharing the video by the way. Very interesting analogy! I believe need horizontal peer networks at all levels to relate to each other. As long as we have monetizing societies, we will need funding at all levels and most important also for different levels to relate...and Mme Eileen recognizes the need for funding, even in horizontal peer systems...

Alain

Permalink Reply by Franz Nahrada on February 22, 2012 at 11:25pm

And I do too! Recently I spoke at a conference in Zurich about intergenerational issues and voluntarism in communities....and I could hear my sociological colleagues deploring the demise of voluntary engagement in many villages. They found out that people with stable income like postman or policepeople were stable pillars of many voluntary associations, without the outside even noticing how all this worked together. Now that more and more people loose their jobs, especially in rural areas, we see that many third sector structures break down.

But of course this is not an excuse for us to blame the economic crisis for doing nothing, still we need to know that nowhere in the world the very essential works of volunteers works without some source of economic leverage.That is just a reason to be more creative and understand the interplay of succesful local economies with their abilities to motivate and support people to also work freely, because the goal of the work and the process of the work motivates them.

If anything, the future of our society will be depending on this. We need much more voluntary activities, not less, we cannot monetise the care people have for each other and their environment. But it is very important to support those who care, and those who enable them to care.

Support comes in many ways: one is the way that was already mentioned, recognizing and encouraging instead of punishing and discouraging leadership, or if you wish, social entrepreneurship. We must transform from single hierarchy structures to distributed authority, understanding that many people can lead and be recognized as leaders in different situations and contexts - and this comes as mutual recognition of their natural, spontaneous capabilities, their eagerness to learn, their social flexibility, Thats what Helmut described. I learned this in the medicine wheel, an ancient ceremony of native people: If you give people the recognition, the talking stick, the responsibility, and you really listen to them, they will start to begave differently. They will learn, they will make mistakes and fail sometimes, but somehow there is a miracle happening and they will want to improve.

The second thing is to encourage wise resource use, the sharing of capacities instead of hoarding for one single group or purpose. In fact the better people will learn to interact locally, the more likely is they will discover the solution is at hand in their immediate environment.

It is at this point where the third factor comes in, the reassurance that there is also external support when needed. We try to talk with communities about the idea that mutual help does not stop at village, local or regional borders; that if you enable a process today, you might be the benefactor of this process the day after tomorrow. The people of Open Source Ecology call that the "Karmic Debt" of communities. We might find that idealistic, but in fact we realize in our part of the world that many positive developments cascade this way.

What does that all mean for Village Innovation Talks?

First we really want to be distinct by focussing on groups that took leadership with positive results, even if it was not really recognized by the local authorities in the beginning. We want to give reassurance to the people that did it anyway, even if they were told to be mad, overambitious, arrogant or whatsoever - because these people are the people that really make the difference. We are giving them a forum to see that they are not alone. We are giving them the reassurance that it happens almost everywhere in that way.

Second we want to help them to do even better by this. We want groups of innovators to exchange strategies, ways to win the consent (not the power) in their communities.

Third we want them to formulate bold new dreams. One realized dream alone does not make a successful community, we all need many innovations and we can learn from each other. We even want those to actively pursue the production of a talk that rather say "we want to know" instead of "we have to show".

Fourth we want them to build capacities of their own. Even the media production and the communication to the world should migrate to their own control, motivating them even more to learn and communicate. We want to establish the right platform and the right training for this, but build on the energy field of people who consider it THEIR thing. We know that we will build a great repository of contributions and we need their consent from the beginning that all that emerges should possibly be shared knowledge for good, documented and stored for later retrieval and use.

Fifth we want to be able to foster and support where there is really a temporary lack of capacity, if an otherwise valuable process would be endangered. We need the help of GKPF to be able to do this, to fill in the missing links in endavours that really are fruitful and thriving. And I think GKPF will need activities like these to prove that it has dicovered new ways to use donors money wisely and prudently. The reachout of GKPF, its member base and institutional network is still fantastic and a great asset that could be turned into something that we all want to see: a new blooming of communities in a world that has overexploited the very fabric of our togetherness.

As in physics, we are at the beginning of a totally new energy souce, that will bootstrap society into the next millennium.  The networked-enabled cooperation will eventually change the rules of all games and provide us with the base of a future almost exterminated by the age of industrial overcompetitiveness. We will discover that for the first time in history we will thrive immensely on one single factor: to enable people to do what they really, really want.

Permalink Reply by Ulrich Burkhard on February 23, 2012 at 12:27pm

Dear Franz,
I like bricks, stones, craftsmanship, building houses, planting trees and doing other things like that.
What about theories? What about your theories?

Now the time has come, to bring the VIT in bricks and stones. We are all happy seeing VIT within an ordinary institution with a clear leadership and ordinary daily work. Therefore many peoples in Austria and Germany have supported the VIT-process volunteerly not only in their spare time. Specially social entrepreneurs with little free time have given full power to make it an institution.

A philosoph behind is needed (this comes exellenty by you and coworkers), but now VIT must give physical innovations we have here in Austria and Germany in hundreds a voice. And of cause including the scope to include other countries. We love you theories behind VIT but we know sufficiantly about.

VIT in brick and stones has started if the phase talking of theory around has passed by. And as we are human beings we must not think of each detail before in theory. If the heart is with us everything is all right now. Toward the VIT we are all heartfelt with the idea behind. So nobody needs a further proof or theory of what could or could not come out.

Lets come again to brick and stones: our region is an innovation hub for incountable physical innovations on the village level, but nobody ever thought in theoretical terms about. We are just doing and then finding out, "OH there is a theory behind" fine! And really often you Franz has had the idea 10, 15 year back in theory. That's live!

I asked a local actor whether he knows about multi sector parntership? "No" was his reply. He didn't need any theory to act in the right direction. Isn't it fantastic? That is what I mean with heartfelt!

And now to sum up – an excerpt out of a film under my direction (Ekopan Media) – giving the many actors in  our region a voice, who know that they are changing our world without ever thought about the theory behind. I love them, and I love this special scene! The film in full is also up in youtube, but only in German.

The man speaking in this piece of film is the CEO of a regional food supplyer (tegut). For the first time it happenes in Germany that a regional not to small food supplyer invests (with others) again into "small grocery shops" interacting within multsectoral partnership on a highly mutifunctional level. I do understand the concept behind but to describe it in words is even for me very difficult. Much easier with the VIT – it is audio-visuell, that what I like!!!

We all see in the example: without thinking there is the horizontal and the vertical world already interwoven, without theory.

Mr. John from tegut is only waiting for your VIT to tell the world about their experiances. ....

http://youtu.be/ipHkjEcNLOk

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