Have you heard of imaginal cells? This is what Amaha Selassie asked us as we sat in the jungle-themed hotel lobby. It was the night after the #ShiftThePower Summit in Bogotá, and 5 of us had come together seemingly by accident, talking for hours about the worlds of possibility and complexity that the Summit had unlocked. None of us knew about these cells, so Amaha explained
The decision to develop this strategy came after a period of introspection and a strong demand from our members to prioritize the people. There was a perception that ZimRights had fallen victim to elite capture creating a Secretariat that was in the pocket of the donors with no motivation for shifting the power.
Recognizing that no single person has capacity to take on the whole system, incremental change in multiple different places can be powerful.
Hope is a strategy, and we need to practice what we preach.
This quote represents what the #ShiftThePower Global Summit was to me: a space to hear uncomfortable truths and to collectively reimagine solutions. When Marie-Rose Romain Murphy of …
Funding into communities is important, but what if unlocking local energy is our most powerful resource of all?
When someone asks you to introduce yourself, what’s the first thing you think of? For me it’s “Hi, I’m Yande the Power Shifting Director at Restless Development…” and the rest follows. Who are we without the values that shape us and follow us in our vocational day jobs?
When I landed in Bogotá, my instinct was to stop for a while and fill my lungs with air, realizing that my body, accustomed to living at sea level, felt the need to move more slowly and breathe more deeply.
If we view this as a journey and not as an individual, separate outcome, it makes for a thought worth reflecting on.
As global leaders met at the COP in Dubai, over 700 change-makers who work in communities in over 80 countries met in Bogotá with a focus on harnessing and mobilizing resources so that all may thrive, even in the midst of the climate crisis.
