This year’s 43rd Annual E. F. Schumacher Lecturer featured Co-founders of Rising Tide Capital Alfa Demmellash (CEO) and Alex Forrester (COO). Drawing on their experience in catalyzing community-rooted entrepreneurs, the pair delivered their lecture “Beloved Community as Ecological Civilization.”
The event was held in Great Barrington, MA at Saint James’ on Saturday, October 21 at 3 PM ET. A recording will be published online in early November.
2023 marks the 50th anniversary of E.F. Schumacher’s Small Is Beautiful. The book’s appearance in 1973 inspired a movement for appropriate technology, renewable energy, relocalizing production, worker-ownership, redistribution of land, and more. This 43rd Annual Schumacher Lecture falls in a year of celebration — gathering old voices and new in conversation, envisioning a hopeful future for our communities and the planet.
In Small is Beautiful, Schumacher taught that a just, regenerative economic system would only come about alongside a deeper moral or spiritual reorientation. As he wrote, “[t]he task of our generation, I have no doubt, is one of metaphysical reconstruction…“ Alfa and Alex’s impactful work, uplifting entrepreneurs in disadvantaged communities, is guided by the same ethos.
This spring, during our May Schumacher Conversation, Alfa shared how their Jersey City, NJ-based organization launches community entrepreneurs by “meeting them where they’re at,” through evening and weekend hours, guidance in languages other than English, and connections to forms of patient capital. When well-supported, she explained, these creative and determined individuals shape livelihoods for themselves and others while sparking renewed vitality in their places. By offering not merely information, but wisdom, and not only ‘services,’ but care, Rising Tide is unlocking human potential at community scale.
As Chief Operating Officer at Rising Tide since 2004, Alex has also been at the forefront of a movement for grassroots economics that champions the creativity and courage of local entrepreneurs in building thriving, inclusive communities. In addition, Alex is currently pursuing Masters-level research at Drew Theological Seminary on ecology, economics, and spirituality.
Alex and Alfa’s organization is a prefigurative institution: inspiring and guiding other non-profits around the United States. The model has expanded and their award-winning programming is being replicated nationally, with Rising Tide now serving over a thousand entrepreneurs each year in cities across the country. Together, Alex and Alfa are recipients of the prestigious Heinz Award, and have been recognized with Rising Tide Capital at the White House, United Nations, World Economic Forum, CNN Heroes, and elsewhere.
This collaboration of two Annual Lecturers was the first of its kind. Both Alex and Alfa cite Small is Beautiful as foundational influences. As Alfa articulated in May:
I think the invitation from Schumacher’s affirmation of our humanity, and humans as being small and therefore beautiful— there’s vitality there… this is the decade where we can take this invention called “money” and actually use it to do all the things that our brains and hands are so adept and capable of doing…
Our speakers were be introduced by Agatha Bacelar, who sits on the Schumacher Center Board of Directors. A Question and Answer session followed the lecture.
