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
Recognizing that no single person has capacity to take on the whole system, incremental change in multiple different places can be powerful.
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?
If we view this as a journey and not as an individual, separate outcome, it makes for a thought worth reflecting on.
Mientras los líderes mundiales se reunían en la COP de Dubai, más de 700 agentes de cambio que trabajan en comunidades de más de 80 países se reunieron en Bogotá con el objetivo de aprovechar y movilizar recursos para que todos puedan prosperar, incluso en medio de la crisis climática.
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.
Do you want to be part of a global conversation that puts communities in charge of their own development and that produces flourishing lives for all?
Do you believe that the current international funding system can and must be re-shaped to be more locally-owned and locally-led?
Do you want to be inspired by new ways of deciding and doing that are emerging around the world, that centre dignity, equity and trust – and that recognize the resources and inherent power of communities?
If so, join us in Bogotá from 5–7 December 2023!
The #ShiftThePower Fellowship, organized by the Global Fund for Community Foundations, is excited to announce the second cohort of the Fellowship.
As we undertook this work, we came to appreciate the depth of our personal conditioning as well as that of the staff, leadership, and organisations that engaged in these conversations. We became more aware of the extent to which our own personal perspectives and those of others involved in the discussions have been shaped by existing norms and practices of aid.
Unicorn organizations are extractive, ruthlessly competitive, and hierarchical in their relationships with others, especially local organisations, while zebras tend to have flatter structures informed by the people they serve, and they value empathy and solidarity. Unicorns speak sophisticated English and they “impress” with terms like scalability, profitability, innovation, impact, cash, burn rate, key performance indicators, and IRR (internal rate of return). Zebras don’t know those fancy words because they speak like regular people using less technical terms.
