People ask: how long has your organization been around? How did you get your start? Well…….
CFS was birthed out of a series of short term mission trips of perspective that the Broetje family took to Mexico in the 1980’s. They learned that poverty, corruption, lack of assessable resources there were forcing people to leave their land, and head north. In 1986 the Center For Sharing was formed around simple advocacy programs for women and children in Mexico. Later CFS began to see the need for services and development amongst women, children and families living in their local community as well.
What is the connection with Vista Hermosa & Broetje Orchards?
Vista Hermosa is the community which has built up near Broetje Orchards main facility in Prescott. Many employees of Broetje Orchards have lived at Vista Hermosa during some period of time since its birth in 1991. Whether they still live there or not, many of those families have kept contact over the years, as their children have grown up and started families and/or continued on with their education. CFS now partners with a number of these young adults and emerging leaders in various ways as we together serve the wider community. They understand what it takes to stand with people facing challenging issues in such a way that they don’t give up, but rather, are able to dream good dreams for their families and pursue them.
What is Vista Hermosa Foundation?
VHF is a Broetje family private, philanthropic foundation which partners with vulnerable communities in the U.S and internationally in ways that foster sustainability around a sense of belonging, meaning and common purpose among all involved. VHF operates around a ‘theory of change’ model of development using servant leadership as its methodology. VHF occasionally partners with CFS on international income generating projects designed to benefit the community in which CFS servant leadership course alumni live and work.
What will I learn in a Servant Leadership Course?
You may come away with a deeper understanding of yourself, God and others, and the relationship between them all. You may also gain a clearer sense of call….where your passion and purpose lie, along with further clarity about how to apply them towards building a better society.
Why did you choose to have offices in Pasco, WA?
Because we believe that the principles of servant leadership are best taught when the theories are connected to real communities of practice, CFS chose to settle into the newly developing community of Tierra Vida. This community is still in the process of establishing its shared values and vision for the future. The values of servant leadership provide guidelines for positive growth and development as families continue to move into the neighborhood and become part of ‘the way we do things around here” for the benefit of the common good they share.
What is the Center for Sharing trying to accomplish?
The mission of CFS is to foster individual leadership development within a community setting that increasingly sees itself as the builders of a better (more loving and more just) society in that place. Communities become healthier as leaders invest values such as trust, compassion, service, community, respect wherever they have been called to serve on behalf of the whole.
How do you choose the communities you work in?
Typically, we are invited by some group within a community, to offer servant leadership development opportunities there, with the hope that participants will become more able to lead and serve others in such a manner that in the process, people grow, become healthier, wiser, freer, more likely to become servants themselves, always with an eye out for those most vulnerable in that place.
