Jonathan Rosenthal, Executive Director, New Economy Coalition
New Economy Coalition was founded on the belief that creative, organized people can create meaningful alternatives to our increasingly unsustainable, undemocratic, and unjust economic system. As such, we celebrate and support the enormous amount of work happening all around us to imagine and build a future where people, communities, and ecosystems thrive. We recognize that the groups doing that work are often isolated from one another, under-resourced, and unknown beyond a small circle. NEC seeks to embolden our movements by providing New Economy visionaries with a network of peers to learn from and collaborate with, a forum for addressing common challenges, and increased access to media, funding, and other vital resources. We believe this networked approach, which encourages collaboration, experimentation, subsidiarity, and resilience, is vital in the face of complex systemic crises where opportunities for meaningful action often emerge at the local or regional level.
This talk will give an overview of the vision of how NEC will evolve over the next several years to build connective tissue between and among movements, sectors, networks and people to build grassroots power through creative experimentation with working groups, narrative development, re-granting, and convening.
About Jonathan Rosenthal
Jo
nathan has spent the last 35 years as a leader in the fair trade movement, working to transform destructive aspects of business into a positive force for people and the planet. He co-founded and led Equal Exchange, a pioneering worker-owned fair trade company (and NEC member), as well as Oké USA, the first fair trade banana company in the United States.
Jonathan is currently the Executive Director of the New Economy Coalition, working at the intersection of small is beautiful and societal systems change with a diverse network of 150 organizations that are imagining and building a new economy that meets human needs, enhances the quality of life, and allows us to live in harmony with the rest of nature.