TWI Blog

With Or Without God

By November 23, 2009

A couple of experiences of late call my attention to a rather large question. First, I sang with my choir at the How Sweet The Sound gospel choir competition to 13,000 people who congregated to hear gospel music… which is, well, about God, or Spirit, or the Universe, or the Divine Essence, or the vast…

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Beyond the Rockstar Paradigm

By October 29, 2009

During a plenary at TWI grantee Interfaith Youth Core’s conference Interfaith Youth Work: “Leadership for a Religiously Diverse World”, I was struck by Representative Keith Ellison’s, 5th Congressional District of Minnesota, vehement statement: “let’s differentiate between leaders and leadership.”  Clearly positional leaders can demonstrate very little leadership while those of us without positional authority can offer…

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Indepedent Sector's Future Lab: They Built It and They're Not Coming

By October 21, 2009

By John Esterle I recently got another email from Independent Sector trying to solicit input and ideas for Future Lab: An Ongoing Challenge for the Nonprofit Community to Chart a Vibrant 2020. The Lab is a well-intentioned effort to promote online dialogue and collaborative thinking that IS has clearly devoted considerable time, energy, and money…

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Maya Enista: Utne Visionary

By October 19, 2009

By John Esterle The Utne Reader has published their annual list of “50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World” and Maya Enista, CEO of TWI grantee, Mobilize.org, is among them. Congratulations, Maya! As I went down the list of the other 49 visionaries without recognizing a single one, I couldn’t help but think of the…

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21st Century Skills

By October 15, 2009

By John Esterle Mark Wilding, Executive Director of The PassageWorks Institute (a TWI grantee) has written an insightful post on “21st Century Education from the Inside Out” that makes the case for moving beyond polarized debates within education (e.g. skills vs. content, discipline vs. an open heart; ends vs. means) if all of our kids…

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