Learning Networks
2013 Mel King Community Fellows
Background
The Community Innovators Lab’s Mel King Community Fellows Program is dedicated to the legacy of Mel King, a still-active champion of cities and the communities they comprise. Mel King initiated the Community Fellows Program in 1970 when he was an adjunct professor at MIT. The program offered Fellows a year-long sabbatical at MIT, where they could reflect, conduct research, acquire skills, and build new relationships.
Class of 2013
The 2013 MIT CoLab Mel King Community Fellows (MKCF) program is focused on labor/community partnerships and innovative approaches to organizing worker power. It will have a particular focus on exploring the applicability of the Mondragon worker cooperative model to the US context. The class brings together a strategic grouping of labor and community leaders from around the country who are interested in investigating new frameworks for advancing worker power and economic democracy – and working more effectively together. The members of the Mel King Class of 2013 are seasoned leaders. They are concerned with the current state of US-based social movements and are pursuing new ideas and directions. From May 2013-October 2013, they will spend time reflecting about how social justice, worker and labor movements in the US could benefit from innovative approaches to organizing workers’ economic power and building labor-community collaborations. It is hoped that through this Fellowship, they will build strategic relationships with each other with a view toward helping each other strengthen their movements and make stronger connections to economic democracy. The MKCF at MIT CoLab provides the shared space for deliberation and facilitates a six-month-long collective leadership journey.
More information on the 2013 cohort and their activities is available here.
Information about the 2010-2011 and 2012 Mel King Community Fellows Programs are available at their respective web sites.
Class of 2013 Contacts:
Juan Leyton
jleyton@mit.edu
Dayna Cunningham
dayna@mit.edu