Help design the programme for the Pathways to Power Symposium! Send us your ideas by 12 July!
21 Jun 2019
“The best way to predict the future is to create it”
The Symposium will be a small event (maximum 80 participants) aimed at bringing people together for two days of creative and constructive conversations. It will have three goals:
- To shine a light on, and join up, different strands of emerging practice and organizing from around the world that advance people-led development and shift power.
- To explore new and more effective ways of working at the intersections where bottom-up approaches fueled by “social power” meet top-down, formal institutional processes shaped by rules and resources.
- To develop a common theoretical framework – based on solidarity and movement generosity – to set out clear pathways to power and to guide our next actions.
Read more about the initial planning process here.
Who should attend?
- We’re looking for an “unusual,” global, mix of practitioners, funders and researchers who operate in different parts of the development system and who are up for a different kind of conversation with fellow collaborators whose paths might not normally cross.
- In the spirit of #ShiftThePower, we want those engaged at the cutting edge of new ways of deciding and doing at the community level to be in the majority (a ratio of 60:40).
- We want people to come already “warmed up” and ready to participate. That could mean, between now and November, submitting, co-writing or peer reviewing a research paper, joining an online discussion or webinar, co-designing a session, preparing a lightning talk etc. What this preparation looks like will be up to you: we just want to know that everyone who attends will have committed to engaging in new conversations and in considering new or different ideas outside their normal siloes. In short, we want you to bring your “partly-baked” ideas.
- We want people to be open about new ways of doing things, and to be active in joining up approaches that may at first sight be counter-intuitive, but which challenge narrow practice in helpful ways.
Send us your ideas and suggestions
We already have a few ideas up our sleeves (including an emphasis on community philanthropy as a form of, and force for, locally-driven development) as a strategy that builds assets, community capacity and voice, but we want to co-create the programme for the Symposium with those who want to be there. Here are some questions that might stimulate your thoughts (but don’t be restricted by them and include others if you wish):
- What are your burning questions?
- What are some of the “pain points” in the current development system (think shrinking space, #AidToo, public trust, changing nature of aid, etc.) that are forcing us to think and work differently?
- How can we get better at joining up of new forms of citizen-led organizing and asset mobilization as part of a distributed, flatter system for the future?
- What needs to happen to infuse existing systems and structures with new energies and ways of organizing that build on community assets?
- What will it take to shift “buying” outcomes to “building” for the long-term (thanks, Non-Profit Finance Fund)? And how to negotiate the transfer of resources and develop models that foster inclusive ownership?
- What are some of our blind spots that we can help each other overcome?
- What resistance can we expect and how can we overcome it?
- In all of the above, how do we confront and manage the issue of power?
Guidelines for the event
This will not be an ordinary meeting.
- There will be no “show and tell”
- We will be “all in” to:
- Think creatively to find new ways of “deciding and doing”
- Support one another
- Share our power and resources
- Enjoy each other’s company
- Face some difficult issues
- We will commit to coming out with a plan for “movement generosity”
- We will “be the change that we want to see in the world”
Next steps
1. Send us your ideas
- Send us your ideas and proposals by 12 July, in the form of a couple of paragraphs by using the “Get In Touch” form below.
- Be bold – and drill down on the burning question you want to explore.
- Tell us:
- Why you are interested in contributing to the Symposium
- Who else you think you would want to involve (we don’t need names at this point but rather “types” of people and institutions within the development system).
- If you are in a position to fund your participation – or that of others? Limited grant funding for travel will be made available.
2. Registration
Because the event will be small (80 people max), invitations to register for the event will be on the basis of two things:
- The submission of a great, bold and important idea that includes a specific emphasis on power, and clear commitment to doing some “homework” beforehand.
- Selection of specific topics by an Advisory Committee that reflects the diversity and range of perspectives within the development system.
There will be no registration fee but voluntary contributions will be welcome.
Might there be an interest to design a workshop/session on implicit bias? Specifically, a session on how to recognize and move past implicit bias when working with different development stakeholders. The session might help individuals working in development (i.e., nonprofit staff, leaders, and board members; individual and institutional donors; aid agency professionals; etc.) to examine what implicit bias is, how to recognize their own implicit biases, and how to help their respective organizations move past bias towards transformative actions that support a desire to advance equity and inclusion in development. Alternatively, the session could engage participants in thinking about how to design an implicit bias training/workshop for key stakeholders in their respective countries or organizations.
Over the past two years, I collaborated with an NGO in Indianapolis (Peace Learning Center – https://peacelearningcenter.org/) to offer a two-hour workshop on implicit bias for members of different executive search committees at a university. I am currently in the process of analyzing the evaluation data we collected over the past year (via pre-post surveys and face to face interviews). During the workshop, we could share: (1) the workshop rationale and approach; (2) a review of the scholarly literature that reveals how implicit bias has impacted hiring/decision-making in different types of organizations; (3) tools and strategies that have been designed and tested to help people understand and work through their implicit biases in the pursuit of diversity, equity, and inclusion; and/or (4) the results of our evaluation.
Given the anecdotal and empirical evidence of bias within nonprofit organizations and funder organizations and how biases influences power sharing, I thought there might be interest in conducting a workshop on this concept and/or discussing this concept with the group that is planning to attend this symposium.
How do we move from training to building sustainable capability around resource mobilization at community level? In South Africa I believe we can harness the potential of unemployed youth graduates in communities with their skills and technological competencies to work with and support community based organizations who bring understanding of their issues and know what is required to address them. In this regard, how do we access resources offered through youth employment creation agencies and social enterprises to support this and ultimately build a community driven model of resource mobilization and impact .
Currently, I am seeing “localization” and “locally led development” focus on a change of the locus of activity rather than shifting power. For this, and so much more, the Pathways to Power Symposium is crucial.
When considering how to shift the power, I believe that one way to do so is to ensure that aid and development programming is done in a collaborative, shared, and flexible way that centers authentic partnership. At the Pathways to Power Symposium, I am particularly interested in contributing to and learning about ways to create systemic shifts and generate movement in the current aid and development sector to value and emphasize the power of partnerships and authentic collaborations. With my work in the Stopping As Success (SAS) project (www.stoppingassuccess.org), I have been reminded that “local” and “international” are not a dichotomy – there are many synergies and opportunities for accompaniment and collaboration. In addition to the ethical argument of partnership, there is also an economical one because when authentic partnership is centered in project design and implementation the project is often more sustainable as it is driven by the needs of the community where work is being done. However, the current aid and development sectors do not have protocols in place to prioritize and value programming that is done in a collaborative way with shared decision-making at the beginning, middle, and end of the project. There is much to elaborate on this topic, but in an effort to keep it to a couple paragraphs as instructed, know that I am willing to do some work beforehand to prepare for the symposium and am eager to brainstorm and actively work towards systemic change with a diverse and intersectional group of changemakers.
In regard to what I bring to the symposium: I am a part of the SAS consortium that has been advocating for locally led development by researching the topic of responsible INGO transitions and exits. We have conducted 20 case studies in 13 different countries that outline positive deviance cases of INGO transitions and exits. We are the only group specifically focused on how locally led entities paired with authentic partnership and accompaniment from INGOs can shift power and transform development to reflect context specific and locally driven agendas. We are interested in larger questions around power dynamics and other systemic imbalances as well as the technical aspects of transitions. I am confident that the conversations, shared lessons and sector-shifting ideas that are generated from the symposium will not only influence the SAS project but the sector as a whole. If I was invited to attend, SAS could cover my participation, but unfortunately we are unable to sponsor others.
People move from one country to another for a variety of reasons. They may be in search of social, political, religious, economic or personal freedom, and prosperity, or may be in pursuit of opportunities that maximize business interests. Other times, to seek a more peaceful quality of life as they near retirement. And in recent years, as a consequence of climate change and natural disasters. This movement of people underlies the phenomenon of transnational communities. In the Americas, there is a profound impact on how people across the hemisphere view themselves and each other.
Too often migrants are invisible in their communities. In their communities of origin, they are sometimes absent in the considerations of public and private institutions, and in their communities of destination they are often politically and socially marginalized. As long as they remain invisible, we cannot appreciate the strength of transnational communities and how this special form of community enriches both sending and receiving nations. Transnational communities are indispensable to fight the challenges we face.
The following questions come to the fore when thinking about transnational communities in the Americas:
• How can we shift the power from a horizontal perspective? (Bottom-bottom)
• How can a community invest in another community in a completely different country that may share the similar roots and challenges?
• How can we create the sense of community across borders?
• How we can be more human and inclusive to each other?
We need to promote solidarity, inclusion, and the recognition of transnational communities. We have to build global power based on new leadership from within these communities to influence the way the political agenda is shaped and to increase their legitimacy and voice.
What if there was a way to create a network of people committed to addressing local and regional challenges by tapping into these vibrant yet often invisible transnational communities?
Building Broader Communities in the Americas (BBCA) was created in 2014, as a collaboration of community foundations and partner organizations working together to strengthen communities throughout the Americas can help address these and other major challenges. Led and coordinated by CFLeads, in partnership with the Inter-American Foundation (IAF) and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, BBCA has a variety of participants. Thus far, most of them are transnational organizations and community foundations in Mexico, U.S., Puerto Rico, El Salvador, Haiti, Brazil, Colombia and Canada.
We have been working in 3 areas:
1. Mapping: Supporting research on the transnational ties that connect our communities, with the aim of strengthening those ties.
2. Cross-Border Giving: Promoting cross-border giving that connects and strengthens communities and community foundations.
3. Learning: Providing community foundations with peer-learning and capacity-building opportunities.
Through BBCA, members have encouraged solidarity and sought to understand the nature of transnational communities and discover ways to engage with them. We wish to learn more about what connects us as humans.
In the symposium, we can share the lessons and results that we have had in these areas. Most importantly, we want to learn from other regions how they themselves or their institutions connect with their transnational communities. We can then take what we have learned to strength our movement and to connect it to global community philanthropy, perhaps through micro projects that can keep people in touch and working around this.
We have a unique opportunity to build a network of interconnected institutions (starting with the Americas but eventually it could be across the World) that share a deep understanding of and engagement with their transnational communities, recognizing these communities as a vital element in shifting the power.
How we can transcend the role of citizenship related to only to a single place and build trust across borders? We always talk about the local arena, then the global, and then “the glocal,” but what really is in-between?
The migration crisis is one of the “pain points” of the world right now that forces us to think differently. We have all these burning questions and ideas mentioned above that we would like to discuss with people around the world to rethink what is happening and deliberate on how we can contribute to mitigate this world problem.
We have to reframe international development as it relates to migration, positioning new actors and new ways of interactions, blurring boundaries between philanthropic organizations (foundations, NGO’s, CF, international organizations, etc.).
And about the logistics and attending, maybe we can fund partially the participation of one or two people from BBCA initiative.