Emerging World

...and that's a wrap! 🎉 Thanks for following along with our #20storiesfor20years. It's been great to reflect on the highlights of the past two decades that have shaped who we are as an organisation and the impact we’ve been able to have through our work. We hope the stories have inspired you to continue shaping a better future in your part of the world! As we come to the end of the year, we want to say a big THANK YOU to all of our clients, partners, associates and supporters -- we've loved working with you to foster human connection and resilient and inclusive leadership through our transformative experiences. From all of us at Emerging World, have a restful holiday season and all the best for 2025!

💫 Story #20: Discovering 'What's Emerging?' We kicked off our anniversary celebrations this year by hosting a special virtual event for our community of clients, participants, and associates called ‘What’s Emerging?’. It was an opportunity to both celebrate our journey to this point and look ahead to the possibilities of the future.    Staying true to our ethos, we crafted an immersive learning experience where participants envisioned a better future, explored their unique strengths, and identified ways to spark meaningful change in the world. It was wonderful to engage and connect with familiar faces from past experiences with Emerging World, social impact leaders and progressive thinkers. The experience empowered participants to see their potential, inspiring action and a ripple effect of positive change. We look forward to continuing to empower individuals through our transformative experiences in 2025! https://lnkd.in/enpr9_f6

💫 Story #19: Developing Best Practice In 2023 we published the #BestofBothWorlds study – focused on the best ways to drive impact in corporate volunteering experiences, particularly in a hybrid context. Our findings highlighted 5 themes; essentially 5 things you should incorporate into the design of your programmes to maximise their impact. This year, we decided to create an opportunity for managers of corporate volunteer initiatives to discuss these themes through our 2024 Discussion Series. The discussions turned out to be valuable times of peer learning and we’re grateful to our discussion leads for joining us in championing best practice in corporate volunteer experiences: experiences that are transformative, focused on partner needs, and that provide opportunities for participant growth, development and connection. Cc: Desmond McCaffery Stefanie Berg Katlyn (Katie) Merkel, MBA CAROL LELAND Amanda Bowman Maeve Spence #CorporateVolunteering #BestPractices #SkillsBasedVolunteering #TransformativeExperiences

💫 Story #18: Rewarding Tenure with Volunteering Launched in 2022, Unit4's Act4Good Anniversary Experience has built connections among employees, fueling their passion to give back and support nonprofit organisations, and connecting them more deeply to the company's purpose. We're grateful to have supported the programme from the very beginning. Maeve Spence, Employee Engagement Manager at Emerging World, shares some insights on the programme's design and subsequent impact: https://lnkd.in/eCa7PqnW #20storiesfor20years #EmployeeEngagement

💫 Story #17: Building Dedicated Advisors Emerging World started as an idea. Its early days were characterised by bootstrapping, proving concepts, shifting business models, and networking.  We’ve been grateful for the support of many individuals during our journey; people who’ve supported our vision and believed in the power of this work. But one of the inflection points came when we created space for a dedicated group of advisors to come on board. The feeling was that we needed more expertise in the spaces we were operating in – Leadership development, CSR and Sustainability. Through networking and serendipity we were connected to a number of key people Professor Chris Bones, philip radcliff, Nick Brooks and Ed Williams who all gave their time to help us move forward on our journey. At the time of reaching out, the intention was to create a group that would help us expand into new markets. But the timing meant that the group actually spent considerable time helping the company navigate the turmoil of the 08/09 Financial Crisis. Having the practical and moral support at that time was truly invaluable and a number of those relationships have endured over time. Both Ed and Phil have been regular members of our associate coaching team since, bringing their experience to work on different client programmes. Chris has continued to be a supportive sounding board over the years. Our advisors helped us to understand the importance of diverse perspectives and the power of a compelling vision and cause to mobilise action. Our thanks are heartfelt. If our work has inspired you and you’re interested in joining our community and cause in an advisory or coaching capacity, let us know. We love to expand our network. #20storiesfor20years #AdvisorySupport #CoachingSupport #Networks

💫 Story #16: Building Resilience Impact and evaluation remain buzz words in the employee engagement space, because there is a clear understanding that our programmes have little weight if they are not having an impact on the lives, communities and business objectives they are connected to. Back in 2021, we diverted slightly from our historical benchmarking reporting to look at a particular impact measure of our corporate international service learning programmes: #resilience. We knew the programmes were effective at helping participants connect more deeply to purpose, make positive changes to the way they work, and feel pride in their organisation. But did the programmes help participants develop the behaviours and mindsets needed to navigate times of uncertainty and turbulence? 👀 Spoiler alert: They do! Immersive Learning experiences build resilience! And while the study was conducted in response to the circumstances of the pandemic, the insights remain relevant to our current context. Resilience is more crucial than ever for employees facing complex challenges both inside and outside of their work contexts. What’s more, our study was not only able to show various resilience behaviours these programmes develop in participants but also the specific factors of programme design that build resilience. If you want to learn more about how immersive learning experiences help build resilience for participating employees, check out our resilience blog series: https://lnkd.in/e5Trix6q  #20storiesfor20years #ImmersiveLearning #Resilience #NavigatingUncertainty 

💫 Story #15: Launching our new solution area We’ve always believed in the value of #diversity and #inclusion in our work at Emerging World. Making progress on complex business challenges requires the ability to understand and leverage diverse perspectives, and people need to feel included if they are to be able to share and contribute fully. Until 2022, D&I was a recurring theme in much of our work but was never the main focus. However, that year we made the decision to frame our work in this space as a separate solution area. This would allow us to support the specific needs of corporate leaders and functions tasked with ensuring their workforce and the initiatives they were engaged in were operating with a lens of equity and inclusion. The solution area also embraced the notion of #belonging – that for people to give their all to their organisation’s cause, they need to feel they belong, that their values are aligned and that they will have opportunities to fulfill their potential. We’ve applied our immersive learning philosophy to create transformational experiences with a diversity, inclusion and belonging lens for organisations such as WP Engine, ServiceNow and the Global Epicenter of Mobility (GEM) among others. Promoting inclusive leadership, confronting bias among leaders, helping to integrate equity and inclusion into the fabric of the companies we work with, and promoting the work of community-based organisations working with marginalised and historically excluded groups, are all elements we continue to push in the work we are doing in this space. While DEI as a concept currently has its vocal detractors, we recognise it as a source of innovation for companies, a competitive advantage, and as vital to humanity’s continued prosperity on our shared planet. If you’re interested in learning more about our work in the DEI space, get in touch! #20storiesfor20years #DIB #DEI #EquityandInclusion #InclusiveLeadership

💫 Story #14: Our longest running programme The Global Citizens Program (GCP) has been our longest running programme to date -- which speaks to its stellar leadership, excellent calibre of participating employees, and inspiring partners that all worked together to make the programme such a success. Learn more about the genesis of the programme and its impact from our Operations Director, Kirsty Foster, who supported the programme from the very beginning: https://lnkd.in/geTFzp8A #20storiesfor20years #GlobalCitizenship #CorporateVolunteering #TransformativeExperiences

Story #14: Our Longest Running Programme #20storiesfor20years

💫 Story #13: Supporting our Partners At Emerging World, we’re always amplifying the work of our partner organisations because they truly are the focal part of our experiences. Their efforts drive social and environmental change around the globe and we appreciate the part we are able to play in fueling opportunities for them to connect with companies through our transformative experiences and leverage business for good. Over the years supporting our partners has looked like… 1️⃣ Partnering with ANKAA Project on the Unit4 Act4Good Anniversary Experience where teams of Unit4 employees have supported the organisation through corporate volunteering 2️⃣ Providing capacity building support to Dream A Dream through workshops with Senior Leaders as part of a Salesforce Immersive Leadership Development Programme 3️⃣ Helping to address complex challenges Brilliant Cities was facing through Action Learning solutioning with our corporate clients Check out these organisations and the remarkable work they are doing to make a difference in the lives of the communities they serve. And a big THANK YOU to each of our over 800 partner organisations that have been involved in our programmes, both past and present, helping us all think differently about the world and our place in it. https://lnkd.in/edmMT6QM #20storiesfor20years #NonprofitSupport #BusinessforGood #ImmersiveExperiences