Practitioner's Colloquium: our learnings

23 organisations. 3 insights. 6 actions. 17 design principles.

We brought together practitioners from 23 organisations around India around the theme of the meta crisis. We inquired into the future and shared what is emerging in the field of working with youth.

With a focus on socially inclined young people, we shared our experiences, learnings and possibilities for the future.

We discovered three insights:

1. All problems that seem personal to young people have a systemic aspect. Making that visible helps young people see the interconnected crisis at play in the moment
2. The crisis is of disconnection. To learn to identify the disconnects in any system (mind-body, man-nature, material-spiritual) is the key to restoring it in balance. Relational fields are particularly important to discover solutions to wicked challenges.
3. There is a sweet spot between nihilism and naive optimism, that of empowerment. Empowering young people to act effectively should be a part of building capacity - resilience, future skills like systems thinking and adaptability are key components of this response

For socially inclined young people (we call them L2s in our language) we see that after a fellowship experience they tend to scatter away or at best engage as alumni.

To support their journeys on an ongoing basis we realised the need to-

1. Enable them: resource them with finances, relationships and connections to continue the journey of social change.

2. Expand perspectives: create exposure beyond the domains in which they were initiated into the social change space.

3. Connect to the ecosystem: make the larger fabric of connections that they are a part of visible.

4. Inspiring them to act: in their local contexts where they can create change on the ground.

5. Retain them: ensure that the journey and connection to social change stays life long.

6. Build ownership: to take them beyond silos and embrace leadership roles in their organisations.

Finally, we uncovered 17 design principles based on our collective knowledge. Some of them included-

1. Designing simultaneously for short and long term.
2. Using other modalities including art and body work actively.
3. Keeping fun, joy, and hope alive (especially agendaless bonding).
4. Unapologetically collaborating to share learnings, listen to each other, and tap into collective wisdom.

We will be bringing this knowledge into the commons through these posts. We are also available if any of you would like a more granular and detailed sharing of what emerged.

This step towards enabling a meta crisis response in India was exciting and has convinced us about both the need and possibility of enabling a future-ready generation of socially inclined young people.