Семинар: Embracing complexity: NGOs in the New World Order of Innovation and Disruption

16 ноември 2012 г.

CORPluS Foundation is hosting a guest speaker who will lead a workshop on Embracing complexity: NGOs in the New World Order of Innovation and Disruption.

The workshop will be held on Friday, November 23 at the American Corner Hall of the Sofia City Library/Slaveykov square. It will start at 9:00 p.m. and will finish around 1:30 p.m.

Here is a brief summary of the workshop:

The 21^st Century poses many challenges for the NGO sector around the world. Traditional funding sources have become smaller and more competitive. Programs of state service provision are replaced with market-driven theories for reducing poverty and promoting development. Fields once dominated by the voluntary sector are now crowded with public-private partnerships and sector-bending social enterprises that promise to 'do good' and 'while doing well.' NGOs are increasingly not viewed as service providers but as innovators, disrupters and catalysts that are tasked with creating 'systems changing' interventions which can be brought rapidly to scale. What does this rapidly changing environment mean for existing NGOs and for new organizations trying to find their niche? This workshop will help NGOs to begin to think about and address those questions. We will explore concepts from the fields of systems and complexity science in order to better understand the forces at work and to give organizations an opportunity to embrace complexity instead of fearing it.

Using participatory methods, participants will reflect on their organizations' existing practices and 'theories of change' to assess how these stand up to the current and future environment in which they will operate. This new order will force NGOs to revisit existing ideas, experiment with new models, build new partnerships with a variety of sectors, engage with social media and recommit to learning and evaluation as they seek to contend in a competitive, data-driven, results-demanding environment.

The training will be conducted in English by Felix (Skip) Bivens. Here is his short bio:

Felix (Skip) Bivens holds a PhD in International Development Studies from the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Sussex in Brighton, England. His background is in rural community development, political organizing, service-learning in higher education, community university partnerships, peripatetic education and participatory facilitation. His current research interests include learning and teaching for transformation in higher education; participatory and systemic action research; community-based research; cognitive justice and knowledge democracy; and using systems and complexity analysis to understand processes of institutional and social change. He has research, teaching and facilitation experience in the US, Europe, Central America, South Asia and East Asia. He is a graduate of the London School of Economics (MSc) and the University of the South (BA) in Sewanee, Tennessee. He currently works as the director of Empyrean Development Consulting and Research.

We would like to invite representatives of NGOs which are interested to participate. Please confirm the participation of your organization and the number of participants by replying this e-mail or fbivens@corplus.org no later than Tuesday, November 20.