Corporate Volunteerism

[Harrison Owen]

This is wonderful – without your permission I have been sending it all over
the world to development folks at places like the World Bank – with a note
saying something like SEE – this is what you could be doing.

 

Harrison

 

Harrison Owen

7808 River Falls Drive

Potomac, Maryland   20845

Phone 301-365-2093

Open Space Training www.openspaceworld.com <http://www.openspaceworld.com/>


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Personal website http://mywebpages.comcast.net/hhowen/index.htm
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-----Original Message-----
From: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU] On Behalf Of Gilbert
Brenson-Lazan
Sent: Thursday, March 24, 2005 3:52 PM
To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Subject: Corporate Volunteerism

 

Hi, Lisa:

Here´s one experience we had several years ago that hasn´t been mentioned
yet and may be useful to you.  

A transnational food products company in Colombia, South America, wanted to
show its Corporate Social Responsibility with a corporate volunteerism
project in the small farming towns surrounding their plant and where the
dairy farmers (their providers) lived and worked.  Our original plan was to
just do an OS for the interested people in the company and the NGOs that
were interested in (read that "competing for")  getting the job.  

Halfway through the day´s work with several excellent plans on the wall, one
group asked itself, then asked other groups, why are they deciding this when
it is the communities themselves that should be participating in deciding
what kind of help they wanted and needed.  The idea spread like a wildfire
amongst the seventy some people in attendance and the only decision made
that day was to take the process to the three small towns and ask them.
Three groups of volunteers offered to promote the idea in each of the towns
and outlying areas.

At each of the three, half-day OS sessions on three successive Saturday
mornings, an average of 150 peasant farmers, their families, town political
leaders (who of course tried to "organize" the event which we didn´t allow),
NGO leaders that served the communities and volunteers from the Company met
to discuss the particular community needs and what the company could do, in
a non-paternalistic way, to help them develop sustainable programs.

The impact was amazing, not just in the development of the programs, many of
which are still in place and functioning many years later, but in the
collective self-image of the people who learned that day that they can do
something about their reality.  An interesting by-product that was
attributed to the OS events by the Company Vice-President for Community
Affairs, was that in all three of the towns, representatives of the
predominant, traditional political parties were thrown out of office at the
next mayoral and council elections in favor of  
grass roots representation.

Warm regards,

Gil

At 02:00 a.m. 24/03/2005, you wrote:
  7. OS for corporate volunteerism (5)



 

 
************************************************************* 
Dr. Gilbert Brenson-Lazán - Executive President 
AMAUTA INTERNATIONAL, LLC 
Bogotá, Colombia - West Hartford, CT, USA 
E-Mail: <gbl at amauta.org>  Website: <http://amauta.org <http://amauta.org/> >

************************************* 
We optimize the effectiveness of those who facilitate, lead and manage
processes
of sustainable cultural transformation in organizations and communities.

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