Local economy fellowships

[eridani]

http://bealocalist.org/balle-local-economy-fellowship

Our Fellowship is North America’s only fellowship dedicated solely to advancing the local economy movement. Where other programs focus on individual social entrepreneurs trying to scale single enterprises, we focus on local economy connectors - people who each represent, convene, and influence communities of hundreds of community entrepreneurs. A new values-aligned economy will first start locally, will require cultivation locally, and therefore connectors who convene at the local level are crucial for making change. Like most Fellowships, this one is designed to identify leaders of a field and to accelerate their work in ways that advance the entire field. BALLE’s choice to focus on conveners as Fellows is a strategy to maximize leverage. Rather than investing in one leader to scale a single social enterprise, the BALLE Local Economy Fellowship invests in connectors who represent whole communities of local businesses. We also believe this network effect will empower us to reach critical mass – and to shift and influence the mainstream – in a much faster manner. Our vision is real change within a generation. We believe that investing in multiple local economies in every state, and aligning 250 interconnected pioneering communities over the next decade, can bring the attention and resources necessary to make the change we desire.

We believe long term success will require a new paradigm for leadership. As such, transformational development is deeply integrated into BALLE’s Fellowship curriculum. Success for the Fellowship includes transforming local leaders, accelerating local and collective impact, and making the key concepts of a local economy – local ownership and production, connection and alignment with purpose, community and the natural world, and prosperity for all – more mainstream and actionable