Turning 40
RESOLVE turns 40 this year and we've recommitted to a less polarized world with a shared commitment to transforming ambitious ideas into real benefits for people, communities, and ecosystems.
How about you?
Take a look at our FY '17 Annual report Annual Report https://www.resolv.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Resolve_AnnualReport2017-FINAL.pdf. We profile some of our work over the past year. Abby Dilley reflects on our anniversary. I take stock of the rapidly changing external context and what it means for our programs and partners.
We need to worker harder than ever to create partnerships where they are least likely and most needed. Its the only way we'll tackle our critical social, health and environmental challenges.
Partnerships help us navigate today's tricky terrain. We're in a disruptive period. The technology and information sectors are serving as key accelerants. Political and cultural polarization (a trend on the rise for well over three decades) has become a toxic byproduct of the increasing inadequacy of institutions and governments to keep pace with and support parallel societal transformation. Aversion to risk taking has become an impediment to collaborative leadership and has undermined incentives to reach across constituencies to find a common vision and strategy to solve problems and achieve societal goals. Cynicism and insecurity can take hold when the response of governments and institutions is inadequate, particularly when systems and structures are brittle and unable to help society and individuals adapt to and thrive amidst significant change.
We are not cynics: our organizational focus is positive. We thrive on hope, vision, and impact. We know partnerships and strategic collaboration, when done well, can be a game changer. At RESOLVE we have our eye on what’s happening below the polling, predictions, and politicking to the underlying churn, agitation, and tumult. As an international, non-partisan organization, our concern is not the name on the campaign sign, nor the political party – it’s the polarization and the narrowing space for collaboration and partnerships, the declining integrity of key institutions, and the need to hold open space for dialogue and defend civic norms.
While the media spotlight is on conflict, we are supporting a renewal of efforts to reach across divides in the interest of solutions to big health, environmental, and international development challenges. We see this renewal where communities and entrepreneurs are seeking to build economic resilience, in the unlikely partnerships that are catalyzing our energy shift, and the willingness of stakeholders to ask themselves hard questions about the role of new technologies to address our changing climate, feed a rapidly growing population, and protect biodiversity on our planet.
Our team of collaborative leaders (mediators, policy experts, strategists, scientists, innovators, and facilitators) are laser focused on building a new narrative for partnership. We’ve strengthened our work on hot-button health issues like addressing opioid use and misuse and the allocation of scarce medical resources, gained significant traction with our sustainable agriculture toolkit, launched ReGrow West Africa in Sierra Leone to strengthen development capacity in a post-Ebola context, designed and convened a partnership to help communities with replacing lead service lines for safer drinking water, were featured on PBS for the positive impact we’re having using technology to address community-elephant conflicts, and facilitated a groundbreaking adaptive management program for the Missouri River.
Our model only works when we have good partners. So thanks to all of you for your vision, creativity, risk-willingness, and perseverance.
Stephen D'Esposito, President, RESOLVE