Important study led by our Advisory Board member Dr. Steven Waddell, in which I also participated.  Dr. Waddelll continues  with this study, and we will report on his progress. “  -  Hazel Henderson, Ed

February 10, 2010

If you were given 10 million euros and three to five years, how would you go about “changing the role of the financial system to better serve economic, social and environmental objectives”?  The EU is asking that question.  And that’s something that I’ve been answering with a consortium of more that 20 European universities. Our proposal went in last week.

For me, all this builds on the work of the Global Finance Initiative that I led.  Scaling Impact’s Sanjeev Khagram and I were convinced of the need for a multi-stakeholder Global Action Network (GAN) in the global finance arena that would take on the very issue the EU is asking with an EU focus.  Starting in January 2008 – just before the financial crisis and with $185,000 from Ford Foundation – we analyzed the global financial arena by further developing mapping methodologies and putting together a stewardship team that came up with a clear action strategy.

But we couldn’t get money for the next phase…because the financial crisis shrank foundations’ budgets and visions!

One exciting aspect about the EU Call is that they clearly want what I’d call a societal learning and change strategy…

FULL ARTICLE CONTINUED: FINANCIAL CRISIS AS A LARGE SYSTEM CHANGE CHALLENGE