Stories

Our partners’ stories of personal, organizational and community transformation continually confirm that our Civil Society Organization (CSO) Strengthening Program and our global partnership programs work; yielding deep-level transformations of biases, attitudes and behaviours – where real change happens.

In our workshops, we invite our participants to share their stories of change with each other. The stories of significant change we continue to hear not only inspire our participating organizations to keep on with their difficult change work, even in (especially in) conditions of conflict and trauma, but the stories model to other organizations that transformation can and does happen.

A meeting to conduct a baseline assessment of an organization progressed smoothly, but the the group was not energized by the process. Collecting baseline information is tedious at the best of times. But things changed when the group was asked how they felt about working with their facilitators. This simple question of feelings, often overlooked, transformed the entire session. The natural shy nature of the members soon dissolved. Both men and women members revealed the traditional nature of their community and the fact that women are not viewed as significant contributing members of society.

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