Photo by Jer Clarke

2024 was a challenging year in many ways, and we are happy to see the back of it. The incredible work we get asked to do and the inspiring people we get to work with get us through every year. Here’s a recap of what we did for clients and our work to help support our colleagues and networks and some ideas on how we might work together in 2025.

Work we got asked to do

• Working with Rebecca and Mahinour, we evaluated the first cohort of The Centre for Economic and Social Rights’ Decoding Injustice Learning Lab, which took place in 2023. In the summer, supported by Auska and Mahinour, we ran the next cohort of 24 participants.
  • We began developing an online version of the Decoding Injustice Playbook with John’s help to help groups replicate the Learning Lab’s social learning experiences, research systematic economic injustices in their contexts, and advocate for their communities. 
• Working with Arthur and Nicolleta, we strengthened The Society for International Development’s programmatic strategies.  
• In June, we collaborated with Tim, Helena, Emily, and Adam at Connected by Data for a Data Design Lab for their Community Data Campaigns Cohort.
• We coached Allison, Pamhidzai and Tapiwa at WIEGO on designing and facilitating a meeting to validate research on how street vendors and waste pickers might use administrative justice as a strategy to overcome their challenges as an informal workforce. 
• We trained Yasirah, Basani, and others at the Institute for Economic Justice on designing and facilitating sessions involving potential users on their Climate Finance Toolkits. 
• We also worked closely with the Global Voices Core Team, Eddie, Filip, Georgia, Lauren, and Malka, to prepare for the first Global Summit in seven years by planning, designing, and running their internal meeting in Kathmandu during the first week of December, which involved over a hundred members of the GV community.
• Working closely with Elan, Luis, Nikki, and Sarah from the RightsCon team, we drafted new session design templates and training sessions to strengthen their ability to engage participants at RightsCon in Taipei in February 2025. 

Our self-funded work

We’re dedicated to supporting our colleagues be more effective.

• We are grateful for the network of facilitators who have been working in diverse contexts since we launched the Collective Power Playbook in late 2023. We are particularly grateful to Jesse and Soledad, who rolled up their sleeves and contributed in big ways. With the help of the network, we trialed and released two ‘plays’:
  • Turning Individual Experiences into Community Solutions
  • The Epitaph
• We continued to co-convene The Capacity-Builder Convergence with Gunner at Aspiration. These convergences aim to bring people who identify as capacity builders together to share practice. Topics that got covered in our online convergences in 2024 were:
  • measuring the effectiveness of capacity-building work
  • capacity building strategies
  • addressing and working through dysfunction
  • developing vibrant strategies
• A major highlight has been our collaborations with Sarah Allen. Sarah and I started working together in 2016 during her role as the Mozilla Festival Director, and we’ve continued our collaborations this year as she transitioned to becoming an independent consultant; we worked together on The Remote Team Cohesion Lab, and we established the Event Design Strategy Network.
• We were honoured to help Aspiration convene their Non-Profit Software Development Summit in November, along with the pre-event on “Movement Hosting“. We talked much less about software development that the event name might suggest, and much more about how digital technology can equitably, appropriately and accountably empower racial, social, and climate justice movements.

How might work with us in 2025?

Our experience and expertise in fostering connections, developing strategic frameworks, and delivering impactful sessions in diverse contexts make us ideal collaborators for organisations seeking to strengthen their abilities to harness collective power, drive social change, and build resilient communities. We can work with you to: 

• design and create with your network and avoid the growing graveyard of dead resource 
• strengthen your team’s cohesion 
• run a cohort/network of practice or 
• co-create a strategy with stakeholders. 

If you have a critical upcoming meeting or event that would benefit from an experienced external facilitator, please feel free to respond to this email or schedule a time to chat.