Initiatives of Change - Carlos Monteagudo and Melinda Lackey

“Our vision is that someday everyone will have access to reach their personal potential,” explains Carlos Monteagudo. “To realize that end, SEED convenes unusually diverse communities and taps their creative potential to grow system-wide solutions.” Melinda Lackey continues, “The groups we assist promote access to education, child care, health care, elder care and work. This is something we can do about poverty together.”

As co-founders of SEED (Solutions for Economic Empowerment and Dignity), Monteagudo and Lackey set this vision as the reality they want to build with their lives. Centered in Queens, New York, SEED first took shape when Lackey and Monteagudo partnered on a project as fellows of the Kellogg National Leadership Program in 1997. The partners set out three goals: First, exemplify a way of being in the world. Second, create spaces that nurture that way of being. Third, teach others how to create such spaces.

Lackey worked as a ballet dancer on Broadway before leaving the stage to establish two nonprofit organizations, one for women affected by HIV/AIDS and the other for students supported by public assistance. In both experiences, Lackey found inspiration and wisdom for her work with SEED. “Dancing in the corps de ballet revealed a vision of the individual as part of a whole in which each person is responsible to bring their best contributions to the group,” She said. Lackey also saw her experience in theater productions connect to her work with nonprofits: “I felt the benefit of collaboration; the power and creative magic when diverse groups gel around a common vision and learn to move as one.”

Monteagudo grew up in Chicago as a refugee from Cuba. Living his early years in poverty greatly impacted his life. While pursuing higher education, he found people around him who couldn’t see a vision for their lives—couldn’t see a way out. He committed his life to helping the impoverished and disenfranchised and became a psychiatrist. In his work and training at a number of public hospitals, he realized his patients were receiving too little treatment, too late. In fact, he was treating the end-stage results of long-standing poverty. “I was pulling people out of the river half-drowned. I knew that I had to move up river and create changes where bad systems were pushing people in.”

Monteagudo and Lackey set to work on a methodology to strengthen community and nonprofit groups. Their program has four key aspects:
Potential: SEED provides learning experiences that promote fundamental shifts in frames of reference so that community groups can imagine what it looks like to operate on a larger scale and act from this broadened perspective.
People: SEED delivers community-building technologies that increase the depth and breadth of relationships across professional, cultural, political, generational and other divides.
Process: SEED trains groups for collaboration to progress from fragmentation (separate perspectives, competing agendas) to integration (authentic, co-creative engagement).
Product: SEED creates tools to help groups create system-wide solutions.

In 2003, SEED piloted their program and worked closely with two different local coalitions to address poverty issues. SEED’s role is part advisor, trainer and facilitator; through consultations, workshops and strategy sessions, SEED helps organizations develop their visions and their capacities to collaborate for positive change. New developmental programs are being generated — even a self-guided interactive training in the format of a “serious game.”

“Our personal experience of partnership is a microcosm for the larger work of SEED,” explains Monteagudo. “When I found that my medical work didn’t meet my expectations, I took a leap of faith to be part of a meaningful relationship and be an authentic self.” Melinda echoes the sentiment, calling on her own experience, “Leaving the ballet meant a change in my identity, a walk into the unknown. But this work is a true expression of who I am. I feel that this work is what I am here to do.”

As SEED moves forward, others are joining the courageous and creative interaction. Through this process, Monteagudo and Lackey see a vision that values diverse, creative collaboration as a dynamic force of infinite potential. Monteagudo explains: “SEED is a model for being, a movement to create communities reflective of who we are and who we want to be as people. SEED could be everywhere, a way that is practiced, taught and shared; People coming together with a common vision, moving from passive onlookers to active, skilled collaborators.”

By Chris Breitenberg. Lackey and Monteagudo have been involved with IofC since 1999 when they first attended Caux. For more information, write to 68-36 108th St. Suite B66, Forrest Hills, NY, 11375, call (718) 793-6509 or email info@SEED-NY.org