In February of 2015, over 200 changemakers from 20 countries around the world met in Jordan for GATHER+962 to take practical steps towards transforming conflict in and between their communities.
GATHER, a Seeds of Peace initiative, marked a new milestone in Seeds of Peace’s journey as a leadership development organization. Matt Courey, Vice President of the Seeds of Peace Board of Directors, shared why this matters at the opening of the inaugural event.
“The world has changed since Seeds of Peace was founded in 1993. In some ways the paths to change seemed clearer then. We said things like, “Treaties are signed by governments, Peace is made by people.” We didn’t spend much time thinking about if treaties are NOT signed by governments. Well—now we have to. For better and for worse, non-state actors are taking the initiative all over the world to affect the change they want to see. Now it’s our turn to thoughtfully and strategically create the change that we want to see.
“Drawing on lessons from conflict transformation in places like Northern Ireland, South Africa or even going back to the Civil Rights Movement in the US, we are building the infrastructure for change out of a much broader array of career choices—journalists and businessmen, artists and educators, women leaders and entrepreneurs—equipping all relevant actors to accelerate the social, political and economic change necessary for peace to take root.
“Seeds of Peace was founded with the goal of empowering new generations of leadership. Well guess what? Here we are, one generation later, demonstrating a belief in professional aged changemakers to be that new generation of leadership—in practice, in the present, like right now.”
Watch video of Matt’s opening remarks.
GATHER+962 opening Remarks delivered by Matt Courey
My name is Matt Courey. I am a Managing Director at Credit Suisse, a Swiss bank, where I run a bond trading desk. In 2002, I met Bobbie Gottschalk, co-founder of Seeds, and I asked the question you are all thinking: What in the world could a bond trader possibly do with an organization like Seeds? The answer would follow. I started with the Young Leadership Committee in New York. I helped found Seeds of Peace UK in London. I quit my job to work as a Camp counselor. And I traveled to the region to see our programs and visit our amazing graduates.
My Story
So here’s my story: I’m the grandson of immigrants from Syria and Lebanon. I grew up in the US during the awful Lebanese Civil War, and struggled to create a life and a career that had meaning for me as a Lebanese American. In my travels to over 90 countries, in my day-to-day work with colleagues and clients, and of course with my circle of family and friends, Seeds of Peace has shaped how I engage other people, how I listen and value what people share with me as a gift to be absorbed and processed, slowly but surely building my own sense of purpose.
Over the last five years, I’ve served on the Seeds of Peace board, which has grown dramatically and diversified. I have personally experienced the incredible evolution of our organization and our community—bottom to top—culminating here with our flagship graduate program, GATHER.
Seeds of Peace GATHER Initiative
I want to acknowledge the difficult choice that many of us made to come here today. It was likely unpopular. And the logistics of physically moving yourself from your homes to get here was probably difficult and even dangerous. So take a look around: from Palestine and Israel, from Egypt and Jordan, from Cyprus and the Balkans, from Pakistan and India, from the US to Afghanistan—all of us are coming from realities that are violent and oppressive in one way or another.
So with a solemn appreciation of the realities that we all overcame to get here and a reiteration of our common conviction that we refuse to accept those realities, I want to warmly welcome each and every one of you to GATHER.
From the beginning, Seeds has meant a lot of things: bringing people together, communicating to break down barriers, reflecting on and affirming identity, building and sharing dreams.
The world has changed since our founding in 1993. Back then, there seemed to be clearer paths to creating change—we would hope for a couple of our graduates to end up as president or prime minister of their country. We said things like “Treaties are signed by governments, Peace is made by people.” We didn’t spend much time thinking about if treaties are NOT signed by governments. Well—now we have to. For better and for worse, non-state actors are taking the initiative all over the world to affect the change they want to see. Now it’s our turn to thoughtfully and strategically create the change that we want to see.
So while we re-worked our language and broadened our goals, at our core we are still the same Seeds of Peace: bring people together, talking and respecting, sharing a vision of a world where we don’t have to accept what is, when we know what can be.
Drawing on lessons from conflict transformation in places like Northern Ireland, South Africa, and even going back to the Civil Rights Movement in the US, we are building the infrastructure for change out of a much broader array of career choices—businessmen and journalists, artists and educators, women leaders and entrepreneurs—equipping all relevant actors to accelerate the social, political, and economic change that is necessary for peace to take root.
So while we’ve re-worked our language and broadened our goals, at the core we are still the same Seeds of Peace: bring people together, talking and respecting, sharing a vision of a world where we don’t have to accept what is, when we know what can be.
Let’s be Tough on Ideas and Gentle on People
So let’s use these next few days to connect people, ideas, and resources. We want to balance the need for rigorously-researched ideas with our fundamental value of respect. So let’s be tough on ideas and gentle on people.
Speaking of people, let’s talk about who’s here. So the community we’ve assembled includes Seeds of Peace graduates, other emerging leaders from the Middle East and South Asia, and established leaders in philanthropy and finance, diplomacy and technology, and media.
Thanks to the recent growth of our board, thanks to the creation of the Global Leadership Council, thanks to our record as the oldest and largest program of our kind, and thank to our hard-earned reputation for political neutrality, we are uniquely set up to attract this caliber of human capital to support our growing community of changemakers.
Let’s Disrupt the Status Quo
Part of our mission is to disrupt the status quo, and that is a concept and a task that exists on lots of different levels, but I want you to reflect on three. First, at the basic level of individual choice: disrupting your own status quo. Learning and unlearning, allocating your time and resources to your initiative, even your choice to be here today.
Second, at the opposite end of the spectrum, disrupting the status quo in broadest sense. Re-imagining a better world—what does that mean for you? Equal opportunity for economic empowerment, gender equality, care for the environment, an end to violence in all its forms, a media which educates and empowers as much as it entertains—whatever your vision is for your initiative, embrace as a key part of the process: imagination as disrupting the status quo. JK Rowling (the author of my favorite books, the Harry Potter series) once said: “We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.”
Re-imagining a better world—what does that mean for you?
Third—somewhere between the individual commitment to change on a small scale, and imagining a better society on a large scale, disrupting the status quo means something in the middle: coming together in groups, small and large, to leverage and learn from each other’s ideas and experiences, each other’s careers and talents, each other’s resources and time. That is why we are here. Individual and collective action, inspiration and impact.
A New Strategic Direction
Seeds of Peace was founded with the goal of empowering new generations of leadership. Well guess what? Here we are, one generation later, demonstrating a belief in professional aged changemakers to be that new generation of leadership—in practice, in the present, like right now.
This is not a one off initiative but part of a new strategic direction, in line with the age of our graduates and the evolving social and political terrain in the regions in which we operate. In June of this year, for example, we’ll be running a Gather Leadership Incubator in London, to support some of the initiatives that develop here this weekend.
Here we are, one generation later, demonstrating a belief in professional aged changemakers to be that new generation of leadership—in practice, in the present, like right now.
As with all things Seeds of Peace, much of the potential of Gather rests in the days afterwards, in the ways you take it home—leveraging this network to improving on an idea, working with someone you meet here to turn an idea into action, or simply participating in the larger support system of the Gather community by helping others in function or in morale. It all counts. And it starts with you.
A Turning Point
As a final thought, 50 years ago this month, US president Lyndon B Johnson finally took the offensive in the fight for civil rights for African Americans with an unprecedented speech to congress demanding the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Thanks to a mosaic of coordinated efforts from the likes of Martin Luther King and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference, to Rosa Parks and the Women’s Political Council, to the Freedom Riders and unnamed white and black business owners who worked together to minimize violence, it was a ten year acceleration of individual and collective action, inspiration and impact that led to Johnson’s momentous speech. He opened by saying this: “At times, history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man’s unending search.”
For him it was the search for equal rights for African-Americans. For you it could be the search for many different things. The hashtags you submitted when you applied to Gather included: #OneLaptopPerChild #responsiblerefugeereporting #EnoughWithBiasedHistory #Educategirls
When I think about the 22 years of growth at Seeds of Peace, when I think of the thankless job our staff has done in managing the logistics of this conference, when I think of the choices all 200 of you have made to be here, I get pumped for the new few days. History and fate have indeed brought us here because we refuse to accept what is, when we know what can be.
I want to warmly welcome each and every one of you to GATHER.
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