Designing leadership immersive journeys
journeys for change, são paulo
Role: Country director | Project: Journeys For Change, Sao Paulo, Brazil (2014)
Team: Celia Hodson, Naomi Noronha, Ricardo Dutra & Richard Alderson
Fig.6: Journeys for Change participants join founders of social business A Banka at their music studio in one of Sao Paulo's most dangerous slum areas
What happens if we take leaders from developed countries to meet some of the pioneers of change in developing nations such as Brazil and India? Would they be able to learn from these "unexpected" social realities and gain insights that might help them build new futures back in their home countries? We curated a nine-day immersive journey in Brazil to explore these questions.
“This journey has confirmed for me that experiential learning is the way forward, meeting real people in a real context without really knowing what that might be - has been where I have grown and learned the most, moved forward the most and made leaps.”
Fig.7: Natura's sustainability manager questions how the company can go beyond zero envrionmental impact?
“The most impressive thing I saw was during the visit to Fight for Peace, given how it has developed against a very difficult environment shaped by extreme violence and poverty. It was fascinating to see how they were really combining skills, experiences and tools from non profit, public and private sectors to guarantee a future for the project.”
lessons learned:
- projects that gained visibility showcased solutions that combined elements from public, private, and non profit sector in creative new ways
- to bring forward preferred futures, project teams were able to imagine new ways of leverage existing resources
- unexpected encounters through real-world learning are mind-expanding