City As Playground

The Bible and The Newspaper - An Introduction

How do we navigate today's urban world - holding the bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other? How do we navigate the tension of contemplation and action, street and the academy in our active engagement in the city?

Join us for this new City as Playground series as we'll be exploring these tensions by engaging thought leaders and practitioners from across the world and throughout the Leadership Foundations' global network.

Can You Imagine a Playground? - A Just City

Can you imagine a city that is just? A city where everyone - regardless of background, birth family, race, or creed - receives what they need to fully thrive as human beings...

Justin Beene, President of the Leadership Foundation of Grand Rapids, Center for Community Transformation (GRCCT), joins us to explore the shape of God's justice in his city.  Dr. Beene describes how GRCCT is seeking to extend opportunity in a city ranked amongst the worst economically for African-Americans. 

• • Statistic cited from Forbes Magazine, 2015. 
  • Grand Rapids Center for Community Transformation

Can You Imagine A Playground?

In this year-end series of 2021, we're returning to our roots, letting our imagination guide us as we explore more deeply the animating metaphor of Leadership Foundations: our world's cities as playgrounds.

Join us as we hear from LF leaders from various cities as they imagine their own city as a playground, a place where vulnerable and marginalized people are able to fully flourish and thrive.

 

Guests:

• Nahshon Nicks, First Coast Leadership Foundation
• Anthony Branch, Memphis Leadership Foundation
• Courtney Dugstad, Next Chapter Ministries, Leadership Foundation of Rochester, MN
• Carlos Huerta, Center for Community Transformation, Leadership Foundation of Fresno, CA

City as Playground Recommendation:

The Moral Imagination: the Art and Soul of Peacebuilding by John Paul Lederach

Traditioned Innovation: An Invitation into Brave Space

What if instead of seeking safe spaces, we worked to create brave spaces, spaces where we could bring our deepest selves, our deepest vulnerabilities to the table in a way that might make real transformation possible? Rev. Jen Bailey, founder of the Faith Matters Network joins us to explore the possibility of building trust across our deepest and most intractable lines of difference, recognizing that all social change happens at the speed of trust.

Traditioned Innovation - An Introduction

With the beginning of the new year, 2021 brings plenty of uncertainty along with it. How do we approach this new and uncertain future? How do we seek long-term change in our world's cities, when we don't even know what will happen tomorrow?

Could it be that the deepest resources of our traditions hold the key to some of most promising current-day innovations?

 
In this series, Traditioned Innovation, Leadership Foundations explores how we bring to light and make use of the wisdom of our traditions in our new and innovative ways to meet the most urgent challenges of our modern urban world. 

Forgiveness And The Art Of Collaboration

A Conversation with Rachel McPherson of Mutuality

In this podcast we explore what real, authentic collaboration is and how it can help us out of our deep ruts of resentment and rivalry.

Rachel McPherson, Founder and CEO of Mutuality, joins us to share about nurturing collaborations amongst the least likely of suspects in the New York Governor's Office and amongst businesses and nonprofits.

 

 

 

Can Reform be Nonreactive? - Policing in America and Leadership

Nicholas Sensley, President and CEO of the Institute for American Police Reform joins us to talk about policing, the need for reform, leadership, and how to bring about real, lasting and comprehensive change.

 

Leadership as Accompaniment

Pancho Argüelles, Executive Director of the Living Hope Wheel Chair Association, joins us for this episode exploring spiritual and social aspects of Accompaniment.

Immigration and Leadership Amidst a Pandemic

How do immigrants survive in cities during a pandemic? Sam Rajshekhar - President of the YuvaLok Leadership Foundation in Bangalore, India - and Noah Baskett - Director of Global Advancement for Leadership Foundations - join the podcast to discuss the challenges that immigrant communities face today.

 

Sam describes, in heartbreaking detail, both the challenges he's seeing on the ground in Bangalore as his team works to meet their needs, along with the many signs of hope that continue to make themselves known. 

 

Music - Epidemic Sound:

• Under a Cloud - Across The Great Valley
• Let us Go Back - Tomas Skyldeberg

About Leadership Foundations:​

RELATIONSHIPS THAT CHANGE OUR CITIES CHANGE OUR WORLD.
CITIES ARE THE EPICENTERS OF CHANGE IN THE WORLD. And it’s painfully obvious that the only way to positively change our cities for the better - particularly for the marginalized - is through the power of relationships.

Leadership Foundations creates meaningful and productive relationships between experienced leaders, passionate local advocates, and community stakeholders, all working together toward one common goal.

 

Learn More at https://leadershipfoundations.org

 

 

Leadership and the Challenge of Racial Injustice

Cornelius Williams- president of the Resurgence Leadership Foundation based in Atlanta, Georgia - joins host Rick Enloe and LF President Dave Hillis to reflect on the current racial turmoil throughout the US. Cornelius reflects on his own leadership journey, the enduring work that's needed to bring about racial equity, and how the film, Black Panther, might lend us some hints.

 

Read this reflection from Cornelius for background information.