Look Who it Was Random video

How Your Story Becomes Our Story | Karen Olson | TEDxPokrovkaStWomen

679 views · Published 18 December 2018 · 14:46 · Indexed 13 October 2026

Channel: TEDx Talks · 2018 · Nonprofits & Activism

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We live in an era of unification. The technological and communications revolutions of the last decades help us to unite to create communities that can give meaning to our lives and wings to our dreams. 

“Today, women and our allies are uniting to fight for our common values. To make this possible, we need true leadership, which we define in community organizing as “taking responsibility for enabling others to achieve common purpose in the face of uncertainty.” For me this is an important concept: if we identify leadership with the act of taking responsibility, each of us gets the opportunity to become a leader.

Community organizing begins with a simple story about our own individual experiences, values and choices, which we then link to the story of the values and aspirations of the community that we create. But sometimes our stories can be difficult to tell, and that requires us to find the courage to tell them.” Karen Olson is a community organizer with 10 years of experience in the US, Europe and Russia. She studied community organizing at Harvard with Professor Marshall Ganz. Karen was one of the seven coordinators of the 2017 Global Women’s Marches that took place in 200 cities in 84 countries outside the US, gathering millions of people around the world in support of equality, diversity, inclusion and a focus on the climate. She also launched the Theatrical Perspectives program in Moscow in 2012, now in its 9th season of providing young people with disabilities the opportunity to have their artistic voices heard and to experience inclusion. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

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