The Leadership for a Changing World program, a partnership between the Ford Foundation, the Institute for Sustainable Communities* and NYU's Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, recognized approximately 150 exemplary community leaders who worked in 90 organizations around the country.
The goals of the program were to recognize and better understand social change leadership in American communities in order to contribute to changing the national conversation about leadership to one that recognizes the importance of community leadership and appreciates that leadership comes in many forms and from many different communities.
The Research and Documentation Component, housed at the Research Center for Leadership in Action at NYU Wagner, supported this goal by developing opportunities to engage award recipients in conversations and reflections to deepen our collective understanding of leadership practices and to produce new knowledge grounded in experience.
Central to this work has been the belief that creating a new conversation about leadership depends on the ability to describe community leadership clearly and with an authentic voice. RCLA is committed to doing research about leadership with leaders, rather than on leaders.
Therefore, the program worked to generate new knowledge about community leadership through a collaborative approach. Throughout the course of the program, award recipients were invited to become co-researchers and to explore collectively how leadership happens in their communities. Co-researchers were able to observe, analyze their own experience, and share reflections about what makes their practice successful, and what leadership challenges they confront.
Through these activities, we have developed new understandings about the ways in which communities trying to make social change engage in the work of leadership. These findings continue to inform our scholarship and the development of the Social Change Leadership Network, a program to support and connect social change leaders across the nation.
*The Institute for Sustainable Communities assumed management of the Leadership for A Changing World program in October 2006 when the Advocacy Institute, which had administered the program since 2000, transferred its operations to ISC.
Co-Producing Knowledge: Practitioners and Scholars Working Together to Understand Leadership
By Sonia Ospina, Ellen Schall, Bethany Godsoe and Jennifer Dodge. Building Leadership Bridges 2002. (2002) 59-67.
Taking the Action Turn: Lessons from Bringing Participation to Qualitative Research, By Sonia Ospina, Jennifer Dodge, Erica G. Foldy, and Amparo Hofmann-Pinilla, Handbook of Action Research 2nd Ed., Sage Publications, 2008
The Tapestry of Leadership: Lessons from Six Cooperative Inquiry Groups of Social Justice Leaders, By Lyle Yorks, Arnold Aprill, LaDon James, Anita M. Rees, Amparo Hofmann-Pinilla, and Sonia Ospina, Handbook of Action Research, November 2007
From Consent to Mutual Inquiry: Balancing Democracy and Authority in Action Research,
By Sonia Ospina, Jennifer Dodge, Bethany Godsoe, Joan Minieri, Salvador Reza and Ellen Schall, Action Research 2:1 (2004) 47-69
