July 13, 2009
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What a treat! 40 Latin American alumni of Rare’s Pride program are gathered together in Guadalajara, Mexico this week to share stories, reflect on their past experiences, and explore possibilities for launching an alumni network. I plan on attending two full days of their retreat in order to see what I can learn from them, and to get a sense for myself of the benefits of investing in an alumni organization.
I am not sure I have much with which to compare this program. My MBA program at Georgetown holds a number of alumni events. Some are purely social. They are basically cocktail parties. Some are slightly more business-oriented, such as networking fairs. Others offer educational opportunities, guest speakers, seminars, even trips. For the most part, the Georgetown grads are on the receiving end of free alcohol, networking opportunities, and the occasional lecture series. The alumni don’t produce new knowledge, they don’t often share their own stories except interpersonally, and there is no organized way for us to work together to advance our individual or collective work. But then again, I doubt many graduates even have these expectations. For the university, I’m sure the ultimate measure of success for alumni relations is fundraising. They’re good at this. In fact, Georgetown just opened a state-of-the-art business school that was paid for with alumni funds.
Rare’s idea of an alumni gathering is a little different. Let’s start with the goal. We simply want to offer an opportunity to Rare’s past partners to reconnect, gain some additional training, share stories, and if they so desire redefine their partnership with Rare. While I haven’t yet had a chance to ask them personally, my guess is that many Pride alumni want help running additional campaigns, or they want additional training. Some will want help identifying funding sources to pay for ongoing behavior change efforts; others want to simply hear what’s going on with other campaigns in the region.
I have my own interests of course. I’d like to see these local conservation leaders collaborating throughout the region to achieve a host of new objectives, for example: building greater demand for social change models within the environmental community, perhaps by helping organizations recognize that human behavior is the root cause of environmental challenges; creating a virtual community of social marketing practices; mentoring newly trained campaign managers or at least following their campaigns and encouraging them along; helping Rare track campaign impacts much longer than the 1-2 year timeframes we’ve grown accustomed to; helping us recruit new sites and new partners as we expand over time; and challenging and supporting us as we try to develop a platform for all this collaboration.
But let’s see what they have to say….
July 14, 2009
Day One – though I spent it on airplanes getting here – was apparently quite good. If the photo sessions before dinner were any indication, this looks a lot like a Latin America reunion. It’s a pretty animated group. Sharon Price, who worked with a team to organize this event, had this to say about day one.
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…Too bad I missed the yoga.
A couple of interesting tidbits I’ll follow up on today:
Elizabeth Cabrera from Paraguay is now launching her THIRD Pride campaign. No Rare funding, no ongoing support, but she’s won an Overbrook Fellowship, started a Master’s in Sustainable Development at National University, and she’s launching a third campaign. Not bad for a young woman who only graduated college in 2002. Here’s a quick interview with her on day one:
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Hear Elizabeth as she explains (in Spanish and Guarani, her native language in Paraguay), how exciting it is to be in this reunion and closes with, “I love the Rare family and feel like part of it.”
Stay tuned for more highlights!
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