In working on a book of essays, I came across something I wrote in Caracas in 1989 that I thought might interest some of you. It is an excerpt from a brochure on ICA Venezuela (Instituto de Asuntos Culturales Venezuela). As you recall, we were in the process of taking the Order Ecumenical out of being, and many of the national ICAs were also going through transformation. Here it is:

ICA Venezuela practices the fine arts of culturally based transformation. Our vision is to be a catalytic force of individual and corporate transformation. Our mission is to release the human spirit within organizations, communities, networks, and individuals towards greater productivity and quality through action-research, leadership training, participatory planning, and catalytic implementation.

We believe that human culture is the ground of development and that to develop any corporate structure or person their unique culture must be honored, understood, and transformed. We believe that people can become aware of the very dynamics of transformation and thereby co-create change towards greater productivity and quality.

By becoming conscious of their values and assumptions, people can begin to manage change through their own myths, rites, and symbols. The fundamental assumption in this approach to managing change is that consciousness affects action - that consciously held perceptions result in concrete action and that to change a person’s perception is to begin to change the form and activity of the individual or the corporate structure.

We believe that the macro context for social transformation is the Earth as an eco-system. The micro context is the individual human being as a mind-body-spirit system. Communities, organizations, and networks are the middle-level, structural contexts for transformation.

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