LPGN’s Incubated Initiatives
Cercles de Lideratge
(Leadership Circles) (Catalonia, Spain)
In May 2021, ICIP (Catalan Institute for International Peace), which depends from Catalonia’s regional parliament, promoted a dialogue & adaptive leadership workshop for influential young people linked to major political parties and civil society organizations. The group had not met for a training before nor in a place devoted to learning and information exchange, without the pressures of cameras (e.g. in a televised political debate). The project, called “Cercles de Lideratge” (Leadership Circles in Catalan) and consisted of 4 sessions covering the following topics:
- introduction to adaptive leadership: concepts (technical vs adaptive, leadership vs authority)
- understanding change in systems: (faction mapping for adaptive work)
- leading change in systems: (intervention strategies) and
- managing internal systems: resilience to lead sustainably. Given the interest and positive feedback shared by participants and ICIP, the institution is repeating the same experience in 2022. For more information on the trainings, visit ICIP’s press release about the program.
- What is your individual project (real objective).
- What is unique to your approach?
- What is the Adaptive work in your project?
- Where are you with your project’s objectives?
Paris Peace Forum
(France)
The Paris Peace Forum is a multi-actor platform to address global governance issues.
Its policy team explores new forms of cooperation between governments, civil society and the private sector from across the world to strengthen the governance of global commons including on outer space, digital issues, global health and climate.
Its Scale-up Program supports the development and outreach of teams leading initiatives that have a concrete impact on global challenges. It supports these changemakers from around the world through mentoring by high-level personalities, a peer learning curriculum, and advice on strategy, organisational change and external outreach.
- What is your individual project (real objective).
- What is unique to your approach?
- What is the Adaptive work in your project?
- Where are you with your project’s objectives?
Seeds of Peace
Haitian youth committed to building a better society
(Haiti)
Semans Lape aims to promote leadership, representation and effective participation of young women and men in peacebuilding in urban conflict affected areas in Haiti.
At the heart of this 18 month project implemented by Concern Worldwide is the meaningful participation of youth in the peacebuilding processes and overall decision making in their communities. It is youth led and brings together young people from neighborhoods in conflict with one another helping to build a collective mobilisation and amplify the voice of those most affected by the crisis – young men and women from the metropolitan area in and around PaP. Through this project, youth who otherwise would not come together, reflect collectively towards the root causes of the conflict in their neighborhoods and to act together to build peace.
- What is your individual project (real objective).
- What is unique to your approach?
- What is the Adaptive work in your project?
- Where are you with your project’s objectives?
Rooznevesht
(Iran)
Rooznevesht is an almost four-year weblog in Farsi, on which I daily share posts about economic development and adaptive leadership. I share about cutting edge papers on economic development and a summary of my readings about adaptive leadership with my audiences.
Two unique aspects of my approach are 1) Daily frequency for posts, to keep the connection alive, and 2) Combining two topics of economics and leadership that are hardly presented together, with a vision of empowering economists with leadership capabilities.
- What is your individual project (real objective).
- What is unique to your approach?
- What is the Adaptive work in your project?
- Where are you with your project’s objectives?
Adaptive Leadership Foundation/ALF
(Kenya)
The idea of Adaptive Leadership Foundation was inspired out of the need exercise leadership to bring social change.The story behind the Adaptive Leadership Foundation is anchored on the realization that when the universe is kind to place on you certain privileges, you feel compelled and duty-bound to pay forward or give back to the society. It was in July 2018, that I looked for a team to help put together short lessons targeting young people on Adaptive Leadership.This has since evolved beyond young people to an online learning platform.
For more information visit:
https://www.adaptiveleadershipfoundation.org/
- What is your individual project (real objective).
- What is unique to your approach?
- What is the Adaptive work in your project?
- Where are you with your project’s objectives?
Sentinel Event Review
(Mexico)
In 2021, the Mexican nonprofit Fundación IDEA began collaborating with several State Attorneys and the U.S. Department of State to enhance the State Attorneys´ public policies and organizational capabilities. Key to the project was establishing an effective mechanism for the State Attorney to engage with other stakeholders from the Criminal Justice Sector, such as police departments, judicial institutions, and the different walks of the community. Fundación IDEA proposed the Sentinel Event Review (SER) as such mechanism.
The SER is the collaborative analysis of a sentinel event. A sentinel event is a significant negative outcome that signals that problems within a system exist and may lead to similar bad results if the system is not examined to find root causes and proper remedies.¹ Within the context, a sentinel event might be the wrongful conviction of an innocent person, the ineffective investigation of a dangerous person or even the failure to protect victims within the prosecution process.
Individual objective: Become a lead facilitator of peacebuilding challenges within the criminal justice system in Latin America.
Unique approach: I am adding to the SER a process for peacebuilding to the root-cause analysis.. The process comes from my experience designing and co-facilitating the Seattle Sentinel Event Review, which reunited the Seattle PD and community members after the massive confrontations due to George Floyd´s assassination.
Adaptive work: Create a healthy space so the different stakeholders deal with sensible and contentious topics. Such space is necessary so parties can “put the work at the center” and consider recommendations to change the system.
Status of objectives: In May 2022, we began the implementation of SER in the southern state of Yucatán.
The YES Initiative
LeDAREship@KR(Palestine)
In 2020, the YES Initiative was founded by three master of public administration students at the Harvard Kennedy School, One Palestinian student from the Gaza strip and two Israelis. The initiative deliberately focuses on the intersection of education and business – two topics that are acceptable by Palestinians and Israelis as a growth lever and are therefore feasible to pursue.
Realizing the depth of challenges caused by the conflict, and the estrangement between people in both sides, on all levels, imposed an urgent need of enabling new agents of change. One of the approaches for achieving such goal is by helping young leaders from both sides to adapt new methods of interaction, by going through an educational journey together, to study an Executive MBA program at the Kellogg School of Management in Tel Aviv, where all participants are equal and all are teaming together at one of the best MBA programs in the world.
The Palestinian students are not only going to return to Gaza with advanced education, and strong global network, they will also experience new ways of interactions with people from different segments of the Israeli socity, where in return, Israelis are going also “for the first time” to know the Gazan-Palestinian as classmates in a very collaborative environment which can assist to support growing wise voices calling for peaceful and fair solution.
real objectives: 1. Empower Palestinian young leaders to change the current reality and recreate hope. 2. Facilitate advanced knowledge transfer into the Gaza strip. 3.Found influential wise voices in the Israeli community supporting a peaceful and just solution .4. Create a new generation of changing agents to lead and inspire.
unique approach: The program has created new and different interacting opportunities between the Palestinian and Israeli young leaders, where they are, for the first time ever, studying, teaming, thinking, and socializing together through an educational journey that was never available for Gaza residents before.
the Adaptive work:
- The acceptance of the partnership in education.
- The tolerance of the local authorities (in both sides) to allow and facilitate the interaction.
current Status: Feb 2022 witnessed the formal launching of the
YES initiative program, three business administration master
students from Gaza have obtained the needed approvals from
both governing authorities and started their studies at the KelloggRecanati Executive MBA program in Tel-Aviv. The initiative was
able to provide full scholarships in addition to handle all other
related expenses for the students. Currently we are recruiting and
selecting the next cohort.
Boaztam
(Listen to me)(Kashmir)
In the Himalayan region of Kashmir, years of foreign rule and oppression through successive regimes has ensured that trauma resides in the bodies of common people like a blood sucking pest. This trauma is not just untreated but unacknowledged, leading to constant spilling of the past into the present, in a way that any sort of hope in the future or from it never seems like an option for an ordinary Kashmiri.
It is widely accepted that part of what ultimately resolves trauma is the recognizable public acknowledgement of it. Erecting a monument, constructing a memorial – these are all the “infrastructures” through which a society or community engages with the past and acknowledges collective trauma. Kashmir has failed to construct any museum of memories or any memorial. This project intends to provide ordinary Kashmiris the specially allocated space to talk, to tell their own stories, to speak about who they are, their memories of the past, their hope for the future, more importantly their trauma. The intention is to channel this collective grief and trauma into imbibing leadership within the community
real objectives: These spaces will act as a laboratory where people will get a chance to diagnose and may be find a way to change the stagnance in their lives. This is keeping in mind, that community is just one stakeholder in this conflict. But also one that hasnt been given a chance to sit on the table yet.
unique approach: Will seek help of one psychiatric hospital, that has been receiving an exceptionally high number of depression patients in the last two decades to get access to those who have reached a point where they are seeking help. On the other hand, will speak with all those, particularly women, visiting these sacred spaces for catharsis.. Involving religious spaces is a deliberate attempt considering Kashmiris have for long used religion for healing.
the Adaptive work: For a people who have waited for decades for a leader, and blamed their destiny for being an orphan, leaderless country, this will be an attempt at bringing people at the centre of the problem.
current Status: Concept. Only preliminary interviews done at shrines and with psychologists
EC0-Alliances
For Change, LLC
The systems and structures of the past are often not wellsuited to address mega-issues like climate change, loss of biodiversity, wildfires, and flooding; conflicting values between energy, food production, and conservation; wellworn disparities between who is included or excluded; pandemics and disease; and mounting socio-economic divides.
The rapid pace of change and uncertainties ahead create conflict, divisions, tension, and disruptions for the very people that signed up to make a difference.
Eco-Alliances for Change, LLC is an inclusive team strongly influenced by the natural world to sustain a diversity of ecosystems and human communities for the future. Our mission is to create conservation impact by increasing the capacity and resilience of people and their organizations in the work of change.
For more information, visit:
https://ecoalliancesforchange.com
real objectives: 1. create inclusivity and trustworthy processes that support complex differences among people and organizations in the work of conservation–acknowledging a range of values, experiences, cultures, and histories; 2. develop adaptive systems and practices that are strongly influenced by the natural world; 3. connect and support local and regional conservation initiatives that are actively sustaining a diversity of ecosystems and human communities for the future; 4. host and participate in networks of support for people and organizations seeking to make more progress on the toughest conservation challenges; 5. build and deliver leadership development programs that address environmental crises and result in global conservation impact; and, 6. design business management systems to ensure sustainability, foster learning and innovation, and drive impact.
unique approach: we work across multiple scales – local to global – supporting a diverse array of communities in collaborative landscape-scale conservation, leadership development, and other practices that bring to pass new behaviors, capacities, and relationships across divides.
The Adaptive work:
- understanding and connecting to the natural world and its ecosystems and communities to evolve as a planet
- development of adaptive capacity
- building leadership development programs for the environmental community
current status: November 2022 witnessed the formal launching of EcoAlliances for Change, LLC; we are focused on sharing this new effort with multiple partners who care about the future of the planet and its sustainability
