// COLLOQUIUM FOR THE COMMON GOOD
The Colloquium for the Common Good is the Opportunity Collaboration’s signature seminar on executive leadership, economic justice and the good society. The Colloquium addresses the transcendent principles that drive poverty alleviation and asks Delegates to think realistically about the nature of economic justice and the good society.
The Colloquium is part and parcel of the Opportunity Collaboration. In small groups, all Delegates participate in this core curriculum, creating a common experiential bond and shared set of learnings. Before the event, Delegates receive a USB memory stick with about 75 pages of “homework” readings. Readings are also available online (see below).
The Colloquium refines executive judgment and sets the collaborative stage for sustainable social change. Every informed leader knows complex problems, like poverty, require multi-dimensional solutions and multi-stakeholder engagement.
The 2010 Colloquium invites participants to explore the practical tension between traditional philanthropy and the increasingly popular idea that social enterprise provides the best means of alleviating poverty. The debate over philanthropy and social enterprise is a challenge to all of us to create “capitalism with a human face.” In the ideal, market consciousness combines with people consciousness to produce leaders who recognize human nature as it is and work to produce practical solutions to the problem of poverty.
The 2010 Colloquium readings advance a solution to poverty which involves understanding the engines of both capitalism and human need. In these readings, Delegates will hear the voices of the disenfranchised, but also the voices of those who believe they have found a route to empowerment. The following readings reveal both the promise and the danger of top-down or externally imposed solutions, allowing Delegates to consider a productive combining of market forces with an ethics of care. To assist your review of the readings, a short Colloquium Delegate Study Guide is available.
Leadership and Human Nature (Session One - Saturday, October 16, 2010, 9:00 am)
Required Readings:
• Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from Birmingham City Jail”
• Brothers Grimm, “The Wonderful Musician”
• Anne Sexton, “The Wonderful Musician”
Speaking Truth to Power (Session Two- Sunday, October 17, 2010, 9:00 am)
Required Readings:
• Antigone
• Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas
My Values, My Practice (Session Three- Monday, October 18, 2010, 9:00 am)
Required Readings:
• Giving Voice to Values, “A Tale of Two Stories”
Poverty and Freedom (Session Four - Tuesday, October 19, 2010, 3:00 pm)
Required Readings:
• Frantz Fanon, “On Violence in the International Context,” from The Wretched of the Earth
• Hernando de Soto, “By Way of Conclusion,” from The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else
• Henry David Thoreau, “Economy,” selections from Walden
Colloquium Co-Directors
Leigh Hafrey
Senior Lecturer, Behavioral and Policy Sciences, MIT Sloan School of Management
Author, The Story of Success: Five Steps to Mastering Ethics in Business
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Michelle Best
Co-Director, Colloquium
San Francisco, California
Colloquium Moderators
Lucia Alcántara
Principal/Founder, FuturesToday
Dobbs Ferry, New York
April Allderdice
Chief Executive Officer, MicroEnergy Credits
Seattle, Washington
Carola Barton
Senior Consultant, Geneva Global, Inc.
Santa Cruz, California
Molly Coye
Chair, Board of Directors, PATH
San Francisco, California
Jonny Dorsey
Executive Director, Global Health Corps
New York, New York
Abigail Falik
Chief Executive Officer, Global Citizen Year
San Francisco, California
Theresa Fay-Bustillos
Principal & Founder, Ideal Philanthropy
Former Executive Director, Levi Strauss Foundation
San Francisco, California
Anne Friedman
Member, Women Donors Network
Hillsborough, California
Paola Gianturco
President, Gianturco Family Foundation
Author, Women Who Light the Dark
Mill Valley, California
Christopher Hest
CEO, Friends Without A Border/Angkor Hospital for Children
New York, New York
Marina Kim
Director, Ashoka University
Washington, DC
Frieder Krups
Founder, HiMaT Grassroots Development Foundation
Muzaffarabad, Pakistan
Jessamyn Lau
Program Leader, Peery Foundation
Palo Alto, California
Tiffany Persons
Executive Director, Shine on Sierra Leone
Venice, California
Ananya Roy
Education Director. Blum Center for Developing Economies
Author, Poverty Capital
Berkeley, California
Tina Sciabica
Executive Director, READ Global
Washington, DC
Ritu Sharma
President, Women Thrive Worldwide
Washington, DC
Lloyd Taylor
President, NetElder Associates
Foster City, California
