Network exchanges
Global exchange is at the heart of everything we do at SIX. We believe we can only make progress by building trusting relationships so we can support each other. We also know these are challenging topics, and context really matters. So to make these insights useful for people, we organised a series of global conversations to help people meet new friends and contextualise these topics.
We also believe in reaching beyond our own ‘bubbles’, so have collaborated with philanthropy networks to bring out networks together and dive deeper into key themes that came out of the scan with new funders.
Philanthropy, Power and New Challenges: Insights from a global call between WINGS and SIX networks
Philanthropy, Power and Radical Change - in collaboration with Ariadne network
Radical free thinking
Freedom to break away from the herd
And find we are not free-range,
But accountable to the grass, the sun, the Earth
And all the other animals and life that sustain us;
To find that we are fat on stolen land.
How do we hold our herd accountable?
Do we sheer off our coats and stand naked
And brave in the wind,
Giving our wool to others for warmth?
Do we change the herd; who is counted among us?
Or disband and reorganise?
The fields we choose to graze in,
To lend the strength of our teeth,
Are conservative, fenced in, controlled,
Well-fertilized.
We are the ones responsible for eating the grass
To make the field’s wealth look less;
To hide the riches beneath our hooves
And to distract from the wind-brushed scrub
Left outside the fences.
Radical self-care
We ourselves as individuals are not actually the sheep
But the herders
Can we throw off out cloaks and see each other
And look out over the field at the sheep?
Can we see them? Can we see the fences?
Can we break the fences,
And mend our hands,
And break them again
To take the herd out to the scrub
And learn a new symbiosis
A new relationship
And look back to find
The fields were just a dream?
— This was a poem Kelsey Spitz-Dietrich wrote in summary of the online learning exchange.