SAN JOSE, Calif. – June 11, 2008 – The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and American Leadership Forum-Silicon Valley (ALF) today announced a partnership to create a Common Good Collaborative in Silicon Valley. A $1.5 million Knight grant will be used to develop a series of discussions and other programs among regional leaders and influential individuals to address critical issues facing the community.
The Common Good Collaborative will reach out to community partners to develop community dialogues, forums and a speaker series. These events will address pressing societal issues, explore principles of the common good and develop a framework for setting priorities in the community. The goal is to create a new way for Silicon Valley to address issues and affect positive change.
“Cross-sector networking is the way to create change in Silicon Valley. By bringing together the leaders who can influence the issues impacting this community, we can accelerate transformation,” said Alberto Ibargüen, president and CEO of Knight Foundation. “This collaboration will serve the common good by combining Knight’s focus on transformational change with ALF’s twenty-year record of developing individual leaders.”
“In a region that honors the individual contribution of the entrepreneur above almost anything else, serving the common good is a tall order,” said ALF CEO Ann Skeet. “ALF believes it is time to apply Silicon Valley’s celebrated ethic of innovation to elevate the understanding of the common good and develop an approach to communal problem-solving based on democratic principles fashioned for the 21st century.”
“We know from experience and research that social ties and community engagement in Silicon Valley continue to be weak,” said Knight Foundation’s San Jose Program Director David Mills. “We want to engage the community to find new ways to come together and seek a diversity of perspectives to strategically tackle critical issues.”
About Knight Foundation
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation promotes excellence in journalism worldwide and invests in the vitality of San Jose and 25 other U.S. communities. The foundation focuses on projects with the potential to create transformational change. For more, visit www.knightfoundation.org.
About American Leadership Forum-Silicon Valley
American Leadership Forum-Silicon Valley (ALF) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to building a better Silicon Valley community by joining and strengthening leaders to serve the common good. ALF was founded in 1988 to create a regional network of diverse senior-level leaders across private, public and nonprofit sectors. ALF Fellows and Senior Fellows, now numbering more than 400, have created a network that brings together a broad cross-section of leaders committed to building a stronger community, using collaborative leadership skills to identify and deal with complex regional issues, modeling servant leadership and creating opportunities to work together in ways that make a significant difference to Silicon Valley. For more information visit www.alfsv.org.