Calling all emerging community leaders
August 03, 2011
by Sean Meyer, London Community News (link to original article in its entirety)
For the last five years, Emerging Leaders (EL) has been striving to help empower London’s next generation of community leaders.
Now, one year after officially incorporating as a non-profit organization, EL is launching a membership drive to help identify just who the next generation might be.
Kevin Van Lierop, EL’s Community Energizer after being hired on as the organization’s first employee back in February, said the past year has seen the organization grow steadily while offering programming to a growing list of London residents.
“I think people see a value in what we are trying to do. The leadership across the city, on non-profit boards, are aging. They want to retire and do other things with their lives. So they know we need to foster the new leaders in our community,” Van Lierop said. “It is something of a changing of the guard. We have great talent in this city and we are tired of losing it to other places. There is great talent here, great opportunity, so the question becomes how we can connect the two.”
Van Lierop said EL offers a wide range of programming. EL offers everything from professional development programming on how people can better their skills as a leader in the workplace or community to providing resources and tools to help individuals start their own small businesses.
But perhaps EL’s most important program is fundamental to what it is all about.
“Maybe if you are looking to make an impact in the community, you are looking for what you need to know to do that. And so we need to know how we can help you achieve that goal,” Van Lierop said. “The programs we have run over the past five years have been well received. There were criticisms, but they were constructive and helped us move forward. It has been great to see things grow.”
One way Van Lierop said EL can achieve that growth is by finding out just who is out there looking for such services.
To that end, EL has launched a membership drive people can get involved with both in person and online. Interested people can sign up during the EL annual general meeting on Aug. 11, at Museum London or online through the membership page of the Emerging Leaders website, http://www.emergingleaders.ca.
When EL first began, membership was restricted to local youth. However, in an effort to attract a wider membership base, Van Lierop said that restriction was done away with.
And so far, the change appears to have attracted what Van Lierop said is a fairly diverse range of interested people.
“Since I started in February, one of the big things was whether we were going to have a formal membership. People want to be a formal part of something and be a bigger part of the community as a whole,” Van Lierop said. “We have removed that (age limit) because we recognize that everyone from an 18 year old who is just starting at Fanshawe College to an established lawyer all have something to be gained by following leaders in the community.”
Van Lierop himself said he has also enjoyed a great deal of personal growth since taking on his position with EL. And in his case, as with all of those EL is hoping to work with, there is great untapped potential.
“There has been a learning curve. Being the only employee I have had to rely on a lot of volunteers in the community for support to push things through,” Van Lierop said. “I have been overwhelmed with the amount of support that people have been willing to provide to a young organization that doesn’t have a long track record.
But people realize they can get in on the beginning of something that could be much larger.”
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