• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Polycentric Leadership

Collaborative, communal leadership empowering multiple centers of influence

  • About
  • Traits
    • Charismatic
    • Collaborative
    • Communal
    • Relational
    • Entrepreneurial
    • Diverse
  • Articles
  • Resources
    • Case Studies
    • Video
  • Book
    • Press Release
    • Author Announcement
    • Endorsements
  • Requests
Case Study: USA Unites

Polycentric Leadership / 11-October-2021

Case Study: USA Unites

Noel Becchetti

Vision:  To inspire, connect, and equip youth to transform global societies through movements that promote hope, non-violence, and reconciliation

Mission:  To work alongside local leaders and transform conflict by hosting international summits, national conferences, specialized workshops, and strategic trainings to empower youth as agents of sustainable change

“You want your leadership to look like who you’re trying to reach.”

Sean Cooper comes to USA Unites from decades of experience in pastoral ministry.  In July 2021, he moved from the church realm to help to found USA Unites, a member of Global Unites (GU).  Launched as Sri Lanka Unites in 2006 by Prashan DeVisser, GU now comprises 10 member countries spanning four continents, the United States being the newest.

Sean co-leads USA Unites with fellow Orlando, Florida resident Jamila Millette, who serves as National Director.  While their long-term goal is to spread USA Unites throughout the 50 United States, they are focusing first on their local Orlando area.

“Through November 2021, we have 87 workshops booked at pubic and private high school campuses in the Orlando area,” Sean told me.  “Jamila is African-American and I’m white, so we have the beginnings of diversity.  Orlando is actually quite diverse, with large Latino and African-American footprints.  So we have our work cut out for us.”

What will they offer in the workshops?  “We believe that the keys to moving young people toward hope, non-violence, and reconciliation is to help them to learn how to listen, learn, and lean in as we face difficult issues and challenging conflicts.  Whether it involves recapturing these skills or learning them for the first time, this is where we need to start.

“We’re actually asking young people to be selfish in this sense:  They will make the best life decisions when they put diverse people around them.  So as they are open to engaging with a diverse group of friends and others in their communities, they will learn how to better react to disagreements and conflicts, especially compared to the toxic social media environments where most young people currently dwell.”

Sean describes the USA Unites leadership model as polycentric.  “Jamila and I work together as partners.  As our leadership team grows, we intend to keep it flat, with the focus being on collaboration.  It’s not rocket science; it’s essentially a common-sense outgrowth of what we seek to teach.

“The coronavirus pandemic has exposed a number of additional pandemics we face in the USA—racial, political, and cultural, to name a few.  As GU is committed to hope, non-violence, and reconciliation, we need to figure out how to apply these principles to the plurality of pandemics we currently face.

“This is 35,000-foot thinking, I admit, but I’m intrigued by the root definition of pandemic, which is a word from the Greek language.  The Greek root is pandemos—pan meaning “all”, and demos meaning “people”.  In other words, a pandemic is something that affects all people.  Our experiences in the racial, political, cultural, and public-health areas the past several years have brought this truth to the surface all too clearly in our country.

“How to we take on the multiple pandemics looming over us?”, Sean asks.  “GU Founder Prashan DeVisser puts it well:

We are about peacemaking. The key to peacemaking is keeping people at the table, as long as it takes, to make real peacemaking progress.  To accomplish this, you must have the right people around that table—people who share a vision for the possibility of peace, and the willingness to invest themselves in what can be an exhausting, painful, exacting process.  Without those people, you are lost.  With those people, there is hope.

“Our dream is to raise up a nation of young people who will be the right people around that table, powered by leadership that looks like the young people we are trying to reach.  It’s a big dream, but it can be done.  That’s why I’ve signed up.”

Author Bio

Noel Becchetti is the Vice President for Leader Development at Asian Access. Previously, he served as Executive Director for Truthseekers International, a ministry committed to spiritual and social freedom for the oppressed lower castes of India. He previously served for 13 years as President of Center for Student Missions (CSM), an urban short-term mission and service ministry working in the United States and Canada. He also enjoyed over 12 years at Youth Specialties, where he launched and directed Youthworker Journal and eventually served as Vice President, Publishing.

More Information

This case study is from an interview with Sean Cooper of Global Unites and is published here with permission.

Header photo by Remi Walle via Unsplash.

Please follow and like us:
error
fb-share-icon
Tweet

Filed Under: Case Studies Tagged With: case study, Global Unites, Joseph Handley, mission, noel becchetti, Polycentric Leadership, Prashan DeVisser, Sean Cooper, USA Unites

You may also like

Case Study: Global Unites Case Study: Lausanne Movement A Case Study in Polycentric Leadership Structure for a Movement

Primary Sidebar

Book Release!

Check out Polycentric Mission Leadership for an innovative look into the 21st-century mission vision. Available for purchase at Regnum Books, Amazon and Barnes & …

Read more... about Book

Recent Posts

  • Polycentric Leadership for DAO’s: Web3 Bootstrapping Strategies – Part 2
  • A Polycentric Alternative to Hierarchical Church Leadership
  • What Is Polycentric Mission Leadership?
  • World Evangelical Alliance Mission Commission (Polycentrism): Our Missions Future.
  • Book Review – Missional International Church Network
  • The World Is Changing Fast. Are You Ready For A Seismic Shift in the Way You Lead?
  • Difficult Terms – ‘Polycentric’ by Joe Handley
  • Polycentric Leadership for Kingdom Movements (Part II)
  • Endorsements
  • Decentralising leadership: from monolithic to modular and polycentric

Categories

  • Case Studies
  • Charismatic
  • Collaborative
  • Communal
  • Diverse
  • Endorsements
  • Entrepreneurial
  • Introduction to PCL
  • Relational

Popular Topics

Allen Yeh articles Asian Access BMS World Mission Bob Wilson case studies case study charismatic christian leadership collaboration Daniel Ospina Decentralising leadership Elliott Snuggs global global leadership Global Unites J.D. Payne Joseph Handley Kang-San Tan Kirk Franklin Lausanne Lausanne Movement leadership leadership principles Mary Lederleitner Micaela Braithwaite missiology mission movements noel becchetti partnership polycentricity Polycentric Leadership Prashan DeVisser Promod Haque RnDAO Robert Adair Sangeet Paul Choudary SIM Stanley McChrystal Takeshi Takazawa teams Video Wikipedia World Evangelical Alliance Mission Commission

Continue the Discussion

Let’s talk further. Feel free to connect with me on social media or via email. You can find out more here…

  • Joe’s blog
  • Joe’s bio

Stay Updated

Get new posts by email...

Press Kit

  • Bio
  • Images & Logos
  • Interview Requests
  • Link Tree
  • About the Book
  • Order Book

Footer

Follow PCL

RSS
Follow by Email
Facebook
Facebook
fb-share-icon
Twitter
Visit Us
Follow Me
Tweet
LinkedIn
LinkedIn
Share
YouTube
YouTube
Instagram

Search

Copyright © 2020–2023 Polycentric Leadership · Design by HCS · Log in

  • About
  • Articles
  • Book
  • Resources
  • Privacy
  • Contact