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LETTER FROM THE CENTER

Dear Global Community, 

It has been a time of transition and new beginnings at the Center, with some key people moving on – Julia Ross has left, and Suchitra Sarda is moving on to her Ph.D. at the University of Illinois, Chicago, with our dear friend and Center Board member Kimberly Schonert-Reichl. This has given us a chance to restructure roles and responsibilities in our leadership team with Jane Drake stepping into a new role as managing director, Gus Boell becoming assistant director of youth leadership, Mette continues as executive director, Peter will take on a more formal role as community organizer and Julie Diaz will dedicate some of her time to strategic initiatives. These changes in the organization promise to help a great deal in aligning our overall strategy and operations in the face of the rapid growth of the work and our aspiration to support the promising changes unfolding in both breadth (reaching a larger scale of engagement in key hubs like California and British Columbia) and depth (reaching increasingly more broadly to the on-the-ground reality of educators, students, and communities).  In the middle of these management changes, we did our first ever hybrid or “blended” workshop in June – 30 folks at MIT and almost 100 folks participating remotely. It worked far better than any of us had expected and strengthened our hunch that this mixed media – live and virtual – modality could open many doors for the work going forward. For many of our partners, COVID restrictions are gradually easing, and more face-to-face gatherings are possible – yet, we do not want to lose the enormous benefits of cost and access that our forced two-year experiment with virtuality has revealed to us all.

On top of all this, the new Systems Awareness Lab at MIT has now formally launched, and going forward we will both divide our time between the Center and the Lab. The primary initial focus of the Lab is to study the impact of Compassionate Systems change, to develop a methodology for a better understanding of what is involved in cultivating Systems Awareness, and to develop an explicit scientific approach to the understanding of generative social fields. As you can imagine, this dual evolution of the Center and the new Lab is incredibly exciting, and we are delighted to partner with several sites in California for the initial research. We believe the timing is right as the work has matured in many places – due to the amazing dedication and commitment of so many of you engaged in making this happen. It’s time to share more broadly the Compassionate Systems change we are all growing locally, for what we hope will become a profound global impact.

 

In deep appreciation, 
Peter and Mette

Our blended 3-day workshop. Peter Senge and Mette Boell, June 2022.

 

In This Month’s Issue:

SITE DEVELOPMENTS
Compassionate Systems Community Calls | Asia Pacific – by Richard Owens and Dave Secomb
California Community Calls, Creating Connection between K-12 Leaders | California – by Anissa Sonnenburg
Compassionate Systems in BC is Learning from Deep Traditions in Indigenous Communities | British Columbia – by Joanne Schroeder

HOW TO HOLD SPACE
Compassionate Systems Facilitation for Cultivating Generative Social Fields
A new learning opportunity for Compassionate Systems Master Practitioners
– by Mette Boell

STORIES FORM THE FIELD
Leading With our Hearts Through the Covid-19 Pandemic – by Jennifer Yales
The Covid-19 Conversations: Supporting Expanded Learning Staff During a Pandemic – by Jen Taylor

LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES
How to hold space – Compassionate Systems Facilitation for Cultivating Generative Social Fields
Introduction to Compassionate Systems | November 28th – December 1st | 2022 | At British School of Jakarta, INDONESIA (Hybrid workshop)
Introduction to Compassionate Systems | March 7th-10th | 2023 |  At MIT, Cambridge Massachusetts, USA (Hybrid workshop)

YOUTH COUNCIL
New and Upcoming Youth Council Cycle – by the Youth Leadership Team

CENTER UPDATES
Certification Program for Compassionate Systems Master Practitioners & Staff update

 

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