Linda Stout - Collective Visioning: How Groups Can Work Together for a Just and Sustainable Future

Praise for Collective Visioning

This inspiring and practical guide to community organizing should be read by everyone involved in the struggle for justice, democracy, and equal rights. Linda Stout knows how to bring people together to be agents of change. Read this book and find out how you can do this too.

John Shattuck, President and Rector, Central European University, and former US Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor

Linda Stouts book represents decades of profound experience activating ordinary people to do extraordinary things! She inspires people to take action toward the kinds of future they truly want, to experiment with expanding their sense of empowerment, build a cohort group for support, and get on with changing their world. Stout knows we proceed from the dream outward into activism. She is a true master of inspire, inform, and activate. Collective Visioning is where it all begins.

Christina Baldwin, coauthor of The Circle Way and author of Storycatcher

The peace movement is too intellectual. There needs to be a book that speaks to regular people. Linda has taken the research we did and made it real and accessible.

Elise Boulding, cofounder, International Peace Research Association, and author of Cultures of Peace

Lindas book is urgently needed now. Many congregations are starting to engage in Appreciative Inquiry and visioning processes to identify hopes and dreams but lack the tools that can translate these into concrete action.

Susan Leslie, Director, Office for Congregational Advocacy and Witness, Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations

Now more than ever our world needs to make use of Lindas heartfelt and innovative approaches to engage people of all backgroundsincluding those whose voices are not often heardin creating futures that work for all. Buy this accessible, straightforward guide today and make a difference tomorrow.

Amanda Trosten-Bloom, Managing Director, Corporation for Positive Change, and coauthor of The Power of Appreciative Inquiry

Lindas soul is well endowed with a generous, optimistic, and creative sense of the capacity for enlightenment and change for each fellow mortal, no matter what social class or ethnicity each represents. She offers opportunities for our democratic process to work, indeed, flourish, giving us hope in a climate so laden with negativity. Her book is most timely when we hunger for new approaches to solving so many problems eroding our communities.

Loring Conant, Jr., MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School

Linda Stout is in a unique position for defining an inspiring new vision of community-based social change. For many years, she has brought a healing, collaborative, sensitive approach to working with groups and social movements. She deeply understands their hopes as well as their challenges and fully appreciates the wide range of diversity across many aspects of our society. I know of no other activist, leader, or visionary who possesses such an all-encompassing and perceptive understanding. To listen to Linda is to be inspired, to gain new hope that a fundamental transformation of our culture is not only possible but may be much nearer than we expect. A book that carries her vision around the country to new audiences is a valuable contribution.

Dr. Ron Miller, President, New Visions Foundation

This book does not focus on all that is wrong with the world but holds fast to the centrality of vision, hope, and persistence for real change. Linda Stouts life embodies the courage to tackle hard issues, such as race, class, gender, and sexual orientation, from a perspective of inclusiveness and justice for all. This book is the next logical extension of her readiness to speak truth and encourages us that real love is about caring for all people, not just the ones who look and sound like us.

Rev. John H. Vaughn, Director, Twenty-First Century Foundation

Collective Visioning

HOW GROUPS CAN WORK TOGETHER
FOR A JUST AND
SUSTAINABLE FUTURE

Linda Stout

Collective Visioning

Copyright 2011 by Linda Stout
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed Attention: Permissions Coordinator, at the address below.

Ordering information for print editions
Quantity sales. Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the Special Sales Department at the Berrett-Koehler address above. Individual sales. Berrett-Koehler publications are available through most bookstores. They can also be ordered directly from Berrett-Koehler: Tel: (800) 929-2929; Fax: (802) 864-7626; www.bkconnection.com Orders for college textbook/course adoption use. Please contact Berrett-Koehler: Tel: (800) 929-2929; Fax: (802) 864-7626.
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First Edition

Paperback print edition ISBN 978-1-60509-882-1
PDF e-book ISBN 978-1-60509-883-8
IDPF e-book ISBN 978-1-60509-884-5

2011-1

Cover design: Barbara Haines
Cover art:
Design and composition: Beverly Butterfield, Girl of the West Productions
Copyediting: PeopleSpeak
Indexing: Rachel Rice

I write this book in honor of my parents, Kathleen and Herschel Stout, who modeled core values of honesty, respect, and compassion while teaching me principles of equality, justice, and peace. But most of all, my parents supported me and believed that I could accomplish anything I wanted to. I deeply miss them and know they are proud of who I am today.

I HAVE come from growing up in extreme poverty to being a leader of a national organization. If anyone had told me when I began workingfirst, in tobacco, later in a hosiery mill, and then moving my way up to be a secretarythat I could make real change in the world and actually write books, I would have looked at that person as if he or she were talking another language. I was not the leader type and did not have the education or confidence to do any of these things.