Center for Cooperative Principles

Leadership

Choosing to Be the Change
Emerging Leaders Initiative

Our children and youth are leading us into the future. They need opportunities that awaken their wisdom, compassion, and purpose in order to build a positive and creative life and offer their unique contribution.

Young people working cooperatively stacking cups 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 the shared leadership and shared responsibility model that they then apply to their own project or organization.

We have participated in student conferences and provided training and coaching to emerging young leaders.

This program provides capacity building for leadership teams. Leaders experience working within a Cooperative Partnership Model enabling them to become effective leaders who demonstrate, model, and facilitate positive organizational development and growth. Areas covered in this program are organizational development and planning, leading through cooperation, meeting and group facilitation, group dynamics, ethical leadership, transforming conflict, shared leadership/shared responsibility and the dynamics of change. As the team is transformed through education, skill building, and application of learning, the youth are empowered to create their own future.

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.

Two young people holding small teddy bears

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.

"No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit."

Helen Keller

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