In the process of our ongoing exploration of the unique contribution of
the World Café and the World Café Community Foundation during these
times of challenge and transformation, several things are becoming
clearer to us. Perhaps most importantly, we've reaffirmed our deep and
enduring commitment to ensuring that the core ideas, principles, and
process of the World Café remain freely available to all.

In
recommitting to the "open source" approach and grass-roots perspective
that has led the World Café into the vibrant, dynamic global force that
it is today, we are also reaffirming our faith in the global community
of World Café friends and practitioners to serve as stewards for its
ongoing development and evolution in increasingly diverse, creative,
and powerful ways.

One expression of this is our recent
decision to stop singling out specific individuals as "regional
stewards" on the website. Instead, we encourage all friends and
practitioners to think of themselves as active stewards of the World
Café.

We invite each of you who cares about the World Café to
step forward to help nurture the areas and activities you feel
passionately about — to serve as an "attractor" and resource for
others who may want to join in hosting conversations that matter.

For
some, this may be holding World Café events in your town or city,
hosting conversations about the questions that matter most locally. It
may mean mentoring new World Café hosts, telling people you meet about
the transformative power of conversation, or actively sharing
innovative practices in the online community forum.

For many,
it will mean supporting the the World Café Community Foundation by
"tithing" 10% or more when you are earning money from the World Café
(as a growing number of practitioners are starting to do), as well as
sharing your stories so others can learn from them, and perhaps most
importantly, it means listening to the spirit of the World Café and
working in ways true to her (we're pretty sure it's a "her")
principles.

Stepping up to World Café stewardship will look different to different people. What might stewardship mean to you?

We're
very excited about this change, and in the next month or two will be
moving to a new online community platform that will give us a better
way to steward this network together. We'll share more about the new
platform in the next month or two, but rest assured it will be much
simpler to use and have the features we need to stay in touch and grow
together.