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Landesa’s 6th annual Seed the Change Luncheon

Thank you so much for helping to make this year’s 6th Annual Seed the Change Luncheon our most successful event yet! With your support, more than $320,000 was raised to help fund this life-changing work.

We hope you came away encouraged by the messages shared.  As an investor, you have become an important partner in the growing movement of supporting land rights as a vital way to alleviate poverty around the world.

Your voice and involvement is extremely important to the success of our work. Please watch and share This is My Land: Rwanda, a video spotlighting the impact of secure land rights on the lives of six families in Rwanda, with your network.

Thank you!

About this year’s luncheon

2012 Seed the Change co-chairs: Elizabeth and Jonathan Roberts

2012 Seed the Change will feature a keynote address by Sidney Rittenberg

11:00 – 12:00: Registration and social hour

12:00 – 1:30: Program and lunch

Not able to join us for the lunch on March 9th? Regret gifts of $300 or more will also be fully matched! Seed the Change by making a gift today.

A special thank-you to our generous Seed the Change Matching Gift Fund donors, whose contributions of $1,000+ will match gifts of $300 or more!

Mike & Lisa Anderson Shirley & Ping Kiang
David & Araceli Barclay Julie & Scott Lewis
Douglas P. Beighle & Kathleen Pierce Christina Lockwood
Brookshire-Green Foundation Lincoln Miller & Nancy Sapiro
Jim Cardillo & Patricia Kern-Cardillo Doug & Emilie Ogden/The North Ridge Foundation
Sandra Clark Roy L. Prosterman
Jon Fritzberg Susan Schlatter
Mimi Gardner Gates Tagney-Jones Family Fund at The Seattle Foundation
Lenore Hanauer Foundation Lynn Thomsen
Susan Heikkala Lawrence Wilkinson
About our Keynote Speaker

Sidney Rittenberg, author, scholar and China business expert, is perhaps best known for his unusual relationships with China’s top leaders over the past 60 years.  After being sent to China by the U.S. Army during World War II, he soon joined the UN Relief Program, which led him to the city of Yan’an – the birthplace of the Chinese Communist Revolution. While in Yan’an, Mr. Rittenberg established close relationships with China Communist Party leaders, including serving as a leading translator for Mao Zedong. He was the only American citizen accepted into the CCP, which he left after the Cultural Revolution. Of Mr. Rittenberg’s 35 years in China, 2 were spent living with farm people in tiny Chinese villages, and 16 were spent as a prisoner in solitary confinement on false charges of being an American spy. He was freed in 1977 and moved back to America in 1980. Accounts of his life, experiences and relationships in China were published in 2001 in the book The Man Who Stayed Behind. He now advises major clients such as Craig McCaw and Colgate/Palmolive in their relations with Chinese companies, and serves as a visiting professor and Adviser in Chinese Studies at Pacific Lutheran University.

Event History

The Seed the Change event started in 2007 as a breakfast for 79 guests and has quickly become the premiere event in Seattle at which to celebrate International Women’s Day. Our 2011 event was our biggest and most successful yet – with almost 700 guests in attendance, more than $250,000 was raised to support Landesa’s projects. Guests left inspired after hearing uplifting speeches from Dr. Geeta Rao Gupta, Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF, and our West Bengal State Director, Gracy Middey.

The Seed the Change luncheon draws prominent leaders from philanthropic, corporate, and civic circles together to hear about how Landesa is changing the world by securing land rights for poor rural farmers. As Bill Gates stated in his May 2011 Small Farmers are the Answer Global Challenge launch, “Reducing hunger and poverty begins with these small farmers in the developing world.” Help us utilize this event as a tool to reach more and more supporters around the globe who can help us achieve our 2014 goal of securing land rights for an additional 20 million poor farming families.