OUR MISSION AND VISION
Our mission is to model and cultivate servant leadership communities around the world.
Our vision to see a growing number of thriving, sustainable servant leadership communities that are bringing transformation to our world.
Learn about our history, mission, vision, values, board and staff team.
Our history traces back to the creation of the Kazakh-American Free
University (KAFU) in Ust-Kamenogorsk, Kazakhstan in 1994. This
university offered a unique education in post-Soviet Kazakhstan that
was based on international partnerships. In 1997, Dr. Marshall Christensen visited KAFU with
three business representatives from Oregon. As a result of their
visit, in August, 1997, they created the Marshall Christensen
Foundation for International Higher Education (the MCF). The initial
work of the MCF was focused on supporting the development of KAFU and its
goal to develop leaders for independent Kazakhstan.
In 2004, Marshall Christensen created a servant leadership
course for students at KAFU. The impact of this course was dramatic. Students were
eager to talk about the leadership problems that they saw in the
world and to consider a better approach that embraced different
values. As a result, Marshall Christensen and Daniel Ballast (who was working
as vice-president at KAFU), understood the tremendous need to work with places
of learning to help students and teachers consider leadership principles based
on the universal values of people and relationships. They developed a formal
program called the "International Servant Leadership Program" or "ISLP."
This program included the concept of an "Academy" where students would travel to
a certain place to experience real-life examples of servant leadership. Over the following years,
Co-Serve began to operate elements of the ISLP in a growing number of countries.
To operate programs
around the world, the MCF relied on a growing base of public donor
support and, in 2008, the MCF received formal
authorization to operate as a public charity in the United States. In 2009
the Board of Directors approved the DBA name for the organization,
"Co-Serve International," a name which better reflected the
on-going work of the organization. Co-Serve believes that servant leadership is
all about building accepting, empowering, and interdependent communities. Today,
Co-Serve works to support such communities around the world, including in Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Thailand, the Philippines,
Nigeria and the USA.
Our mission is to model and cultivate servant leadership communities around the world.
Our vision to see a growing number of thriving, sustainable servant leadership communities that are bringing transformation to our world.
Co-Serve's Board of Directors represent servant leaders from a broad background of experience:
Co-Serve is incredibly fortunate to work with and learn from the following individuals as part of its staff team: