February 2009
World Accord Announces Planned Retirement of Executive Director Terry Fielder
Written by Administrator Thursday, 12 February 2009 23:55
Terry Fielder, having been the Executive Director of World Accord since July 1984, asked the Board to begin planning for his retirement over two years ago. “It is more difficult to think of leaving than it was to think of coming. World Accord is more than a job or career – World Accord has become part of my signature, part of my last name, part of my expression of things I believe and believe in.” stated Fielder. “World Accord has brought us into friendship with some of the greatest people that our nation and the world community has ever produced.”
Under Fielder's leadership, World Accord has developed funding from CIDA (Government of Canada), Community of Christ World Hunger Fund, Wild Rose Foundation, other foundations and from thousands of ordinary Canadians. Those funds have been channeled through local partner organizations in dozens of countries around the world. This approach allows those local organizations to implement development programs that have improved the well-being of many thousands of hard-working people who have been born into the poorest circumstances.
The World Accord Board of Directors will be launching a search to recruit an Executive Director.
A Personal Note from Terry Fielder:
Dear Friends:
In 1980, a handful of North Americans got together. They were looking for an alternative to the “aid” model that characterized our relationship with what was then called the “Third World.” All had personal lives and other work responsibilities that made them busy people, yet they cared for a world in need and they dared as a group to ask “What if?” They had given a great deal of thought about ways to empower communities of people born in poor circumstances. They conceived an agency that would enable people with resources to share them with those who had not. It was these early thoughts and this new agency that attracted me.
One day in 1984, the phone rang in my hardware store and within a minute, life for me and my family changed forever. Sandra and I had been volunteers with this new agency for four years and now the Board of Directors asked me to be the first staff member of what we now know as World Accord. We would need to leave the security of our home town and a business that was solid and profitable. It was both scary and exciting.
World Accord has evolved significantly over these 29 years. The “what” that handful of people wanted to accomplish all those years ago continues to be proven as valid. The values, the hope, the concept of empowering the poor were visionary at the time and are today accepted as critical to fostering an environment where people can flourish sustainably in peace with each other and the environment we share. While the “what” is the same, the “how” has changed greatly as we have learned what works and what doesn’t. Expectation and Hope are powerfully different concepts. Our Hope motivates us; our Expectation is based on HOW we exercise our power of choice.
In mid 2006, after 22 years as Executive Director of World Accord, my wife Sandra and I made a difficult choice and I approached the Board of Directors of World Accord and asked them to begin a process of Succession Planning. It is more difficult to think of leaving than it was to think of coming. World Accord is more than a job or career – for Sandra and I, World Accord has become part of our signature, part of my last name, part of our expression of things we believe and believe in. World Accord has brought us into friendship with some of the greatest people that our nation and the world community has ever produced.
The belief I share with Sandra and our children and with the Board of Directors of World Accord is that this agency needs to remain a vibrant component of our world community. The realization of Well-Being For All is still some distance off, beyond the horizon. The world community needs organizations like World Accord to express their hopes from a base of shared values.
The Board of Directors takes seriously their responsibilities for governance of this cause-related agency. They employ the same techniques we learned together a long time ago in the villages where projects were designed by listening and deciding together. Over the next few months, the Board will search for the person that World Accord needs to advance the cause of world accord.
Many people have influenced the evolution of World Accord and fostered and encouraged me to experiment as we learned and continue to learn how to express concern and caring. I treasure the life we have shared. I expect a shared future where we can and will still toil with our eyes fixed on our dream for a better and more peaceful world. I hope we get a chance to celebrate together the past we have shared and the future we have yet to experience.
Terry Fielder
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