In January 2011, the Trustees of LEAD International met in anticipation of the 20th birthday of LEAD. We asked ourselves, ”how can we tell our story differently in order to bring out the timeless truth that LEAD contains”.

That truth is that it is people across the globe who can decide a wiser future for nature and humanity; and when some of them are brought together to practice shared values, vision and information about sustainable development, they can become powerful leaders. To answer the question, we found that the universal myth of Phoenix best expresses our vision.

In January 2011, the Trustees of LEAD International met in anticipation of the 20th birthday of LEAD. We asked ourselves, ”how can we tell our story differently in order to bring out the timeless truth that LEAD contains”.

That truth is that it is people across the globe who can decide a wiser future for nature and humanity; and when some of them are brought together to practice shared values, vision and information about sustainable development, they can become powerful leaders. To answer the question, we found that the universal myth of Phoenix best expresses our vision.

The Phoenix is a mythical story common to many ancient civilizations including Egypt, Persia, Greece, Native America, and India. It tells of a beautiful, strong bird that having lived its life-span, burnt into ashes, and rose again in renewal and transformation. Soaring high, the bird embraces change and rebirth.

What does this story mean for us at LEAD? This international NGO turns 20 years old in 2012, and has created a global Fellowship of over 2,000 outstanding leaders who undergo an in-service training for sustainable development. It has 12 national and regional hubs across the world with independent governance and an international secretariat based in London.

But in these 20 years the world has changed profoundly with both heightened levels of destruction for nature and humans alike whilst new opportunities such as social networks and deepened understanding of climate change have also altered the ways that we work together. So our quest to evolve our story in a changing world developed from a problem to a collective visualizing around the question: ‘what if?’

We used the Phoenix myth to think more intensely and realized that the organization and its network has creative gems lying hidden within it, waiting for the release of potential if we are willing to open its governance and structure to it. From our collective intuition at LEAD International Board, we are now crafting an explicit shape and we have given ourselves till end 2012 to turn our correct posture into right action for a rebirth of LEAD in a new form that embodies the timeless truth its mission represents.

Some examples of the creative potential that we will nurture in the next year are the LEAD Africa Fellowship Programme that turns LEAD’s presence into an enterprise for leadership training aiming at 500 LEAD Africa Fellows per year in partnership with Shell Foundation; an unprecedented scale that is enabled by innovation in our training technologies. LEAD in Latin America has met Avina Foundation in order to imagine a reinvented entity that addresses the leadership needs of that great continent. In Asia, the Climate Change Knowledge Network directed by LEAD and sponsored by DFID, connects grassroots and practitioner experience with policy development for environmental change at national and regional levels. The latest creative gem from within is a voluntary meeting of a LEAD Fellows group in Oxford to re-imagine the Fellowship itself.

An essential element of the rebirth, we need to also discover new means to execute the vision. Here also, the LEAD network has many examples to learn from, and this changed world has new sources. Donors are no longer only in the West, crowd sourcing provides new models and a large established network offers new possibilities of scale.

LEAD was imagined in 1992 by a few visionary people; we hope you will join us as we work to envision LEAD 2.0 – the next incarnation. Our election of a new Chair of LEAD International is an important succession that will help the organization to practice its own values and design for change in transformative ways.

Mehjabeen Abidi-Habib,

Board Chair, June 2008 - June 2011

Roland Kupers,

Board Chair, June 2011 Onwards