I have recently completed a very interesting and inspiring project with Stop Aids Now!*    The purpose of the project was to create a facilitator's toolkit that can be used by communities in Sub-Saharan Africa in their work to empower woman and girls. HIV rates are often higher among women and girls, and women and girls living with HIV tend to bear a heavier burden. This increased vulnerability is largely due to gender-based discrimination. To be effective, HIV prevention, care and support must contribute to transforming gender based attitudes, behaviours, and norms. The toolkit takes the participant on a journey using an appreciative frame. 
The project worked closely with community organisations to co-create a product that is strengthening to the community, and take into account local practices.

Different way of working in the community

Experience of Stop Aids Now! in Kenya has shown that a change in perceptions, beliefs and behaviours of both men and women on gender equality is possible through a different way of working in the community. Behaviour change happens over a more extended period of time, and therefore activities and discussions in small groups which happen in-depth, over a longer period of time with a consistent group is most effective. This effectiveness is further enhanced when activities are facilitated by community leaders or peer-education volunteers trusted by the community. Often, the entry points to these discussions are not sensitive issues such as HIV or sex, but economic empowerment, education and religion.   

Toolkit

The toolkit was specifically designed to support this process and to enable the facilitators to support behaviour change. The learning process of community members  can be compared to a journey. In the toolkit we utilise the idea of the mythical ‘heroic journey’ as a framework for thinking about the learning process.  The consultants also consciously used an appreciative frame to design the learning thread of the toolkit.  Such an approach assumes that every person, every community and every organisation has some capacity and strengths to build on. It focuses on positive aspects about the organisation or community that are tangible sources of hope and learning.

Positive feedback

In feedback sessions and train-the-trainer sessions, the community organisations provided overwhelmingly positive feedback to the toolkit and the impact this can have on their work.  Kessels & Smit South Africa was responsible for the project management and learning design of the project specifically, and worked with a Kenyan consultant, Pascaline Kang'ethe to produce a product which is relevant for the target audience and their challenges.

The toolkit can be accessed via publications (categories Organisational Change, Society and Sustainability, Personal Development) on the K&S website.

*STOP AIDS NOW! aims to expand and improve the Dutch contribution to the global response to HIV and AIDS. Five organisations, the Aids Fonds, Hivos, ICCO, Cordaid and Oxfam Novib, have joined forces and are part of STOP AIDS NOW!

Everyday complexity

More and more I am realising the contribution that complexity theory and systems thinking can bring to our everyday life. Yes, I admit I am one of those people who are completely fascinated by the complexity thinking and how the application of this can help us in our lives and organisations! In recent blog Dave Snowden complained that some people just like the language of complexity, but don't really know much about it. Well, I might be one of those... but then in the spirit of complexity, I am learning, trying out new things, doing action research, trial and error to see which patterns are emerging!

Why this theme today? Well, i have been finding that this is a topic that interest people - people realise that some of the challenges we face today, can only be in the complex domain. How many of us have not lamented on how complex things are - work or life? And complexity language is probably a bit intimidating to many, so other than using it to 'identify' where we find ourselves, people stop there.

And then there are some people who do amazing work in the field of connecting the conceptual frameworks of complexity with the reality. I was having a very interesting conversation with someone from the CSIR the other day, on how there is a growing understanding of the limitations of normal science in this space. And on the some of the amazing things that people are doing in this field. He is doing work with our very own parks board and were relating some amazing examples of how the Kruger National park is operating as a learning organisation. Yes, very consciously and methodically. This see scientists and staff in the park willing to experiment, and willing to fail in order to solve complex challenges. Realising that if you try what you always do, you will get the answers you always do.

Anyway, this might be theme of coming posts - how do we apply complexity thinking to everyday life and problems. How do we make insights which complexity science has brought us, practical for our organisations.

On that note: I am part of a team organising an event on the 4th of September which is about just that. Using the whole system to bring about change - sustainably! We invite anyone who has an interest in the use of participative processes, and who have worked with the whole system to bring about complex change, to come and share and learn with us. For more information and the full invitation click here.

More on the topic of complexity and practical approaches soon!

Resilience through Beauty

For a new blog, I am not doing so well with regular posts! Almost 11 days later... I have been thinking a lot about writing the blog, but not actually getting round to it. So this is where discipline or 'practice' comes in.

Last week we had a breakfast with the topic of Resilience. We have these breakfasts once in a while, when we want to explore a topic with some other interesting and diverse people. Resilience has been something that I wanted to write about for a while now. Especially about personal resilience as it it seems to be a concept that I am working with quite consciously right now.

My business partner introduced the breakfast on Friday with thoughts on writings by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. In his acceptance speech for the Nobel prize for literature Solzhenitsyn talks of Beauty, Goodness and Truth. And the first of these is Beauty. This provided a good focus for the breakfast and nice linkages to how we like to approach our work. What I find fascinating is how these concepts kept on popping up in my environment since then.

I was reading a review of the new Ron Howard movie, Angels and Demons by Naas Ferreira in The Sunday Independent this afternoon. And once again up come the idea of Beauty, Goodness and Truth. He used Ken Wilber's Integral map to critique the movie. One of the themes in the movie is concerned with the relationship between science and religion as played out between the Vatican and the 'Illuminati' (linked to a number of conspiracy theories). Without going too much into the Wilber map, the elements Beauty or 'Beautiful' as Wilber calls it, concerns itself with the art, self & the 'I'. Goodness is represents morals, culture and 'we', while Truth represents science and nature. Ferreira makes the case that according to Wilber's map there cannot be a conflict between religion and science as these two work on different parts of the integral map, and this is missed by the film.

What I find most interesting is using the idea of Beauty (art, self and I) as a central thought to personal development and growth. Solzhenitsyn apparently says that of the three trees; beauty, goodness and truth, beauty is the first and grows the highest. Meaning, start with beauty and the rest will follow. This might seem naive or even impractical in a world where there is so much goodness and truth needed. How can we do that? How do we find beauty in our world, and in every situation and every person? It is easy to find beauty in nature. We can easily see the perfection of a flower or an wild animal. With people it is more challenging and our idea of what 'should be' or 'should not' immediately comes up.

And if we are not judging others, we are often feeling like we are under attack from them or the situation. The classic 'lack or attack' response. I have been reading some interesting writings on the brain and how it operates. The amygdala, the ancient reptilian brain of ours scans all stimuli first before it is passed through to the cortex (the more analytical and developed part of the brain). This document proposes that the way to short circuit the amygdala and its natural fearful response, is to enter the place of 'intrigue' or 'mystery' and in that way you activate the more moderate cortex and stay out of the fearful place.

For me the link between intrigued and finding beauty is clear. If we are more intrigued with people, rather than be in judgment or fear of them, could we find more beauty in them? If we ask more questions and explore the mystery of the other, find that which is interesting and beautiful, could we stay out of the fearful responses which seems to be so genetically programmed into us?

Could it be that through being intrigued about the other, and our world, by focusing on creating beauty in everything we do, we could create more goodness and truth?

I don't know, and I hope so. I am certainly intending on taking responsibility for creating that in my world.

a new blog

This feels like a new blog, even though it is not. Previously I set up this blog to be a tool for a Learning day with a client, but that was sort of a once-off. I decided that I liked the name too much to let it go, and it is perfect for what I want to do on this blog.

So what do I want to do? Well, someone said to me that blogging is sometimes a bit self-indulgent. That actually helped me, as it made me realise that it is no different from journalling or processing thoughts on paper. Well, the idea of beautiful creamy paper, a beautiful pen describing poetic thoughts always somehow seems to bring out the best in my writing. And also allow me to write freely, almost with abandon. So my hope is that I can transfer that to this electronic medium, without losing some of that abandon. And hopefully not being to self-indulgent in the process! Well, at least that is the beauty of the democratizing of the web, and media. You can vote with your feet! You decide where spend your precious time, and I trust that those who need to be here will be here. And after all, this gives me the space to process 'wordily', which sometimes is raging in my head.

So, what fascinates me at the moment... and always has, is people and their most private private ways of dealing with life. Or rather LIFE. Our battles, our insights and learnings. Our stumbles, our shifts. The joys which comes with realising something and feeling that, 'now that I know that...things will never be the same again'. Only to realise a few months later that you have fallen down the same hole again. Picking yourself up, trying to anchor that learning once again, so that you can start the adventure of learning and living again. Or rather engage with it consciously again....as we never leave the adventure. Only in our head!

So this blog will be very much about personal development, and the complexity of our beliefs. I am intrigued by resilience, personal resilience. It is something I hope to have. And then also how do we create resilience on different levels of the system. Organisations? Our country? How can we use positive principles to create ever more virtuous cycles. For ourselves and for the greater good? And I am also a business owner, building a business. So part of it is also for me about resilience in that context. How do I stay true to myself, while being relevant, pragmatic and in alignment to what my context requires from me? And also lighten up in the process too.... enjoying the adventure of it all?

So in that spirit, I end this posting with one of my other passions. That is photography and capturing beauty. So I hope to share some photo's and ideas in the time to come. Usually it is capturing nature, because as they say ' nature is not as challenging as people'. (in photography and in life!)

So my first photo is one taken one morning from the patio of a dear friend of mine. The early morning light on the fern, the swirling patterns just intrigues me. I hope you enjoy it!