NIRMAN For Youth’s Post

Team up with Anglia Ruskin University experts in social change. 🤝 Would you like to bring a positive change to your company, clients and/or the society? ✔ Do you need a helping hand with research expertise? ✔ Team up with ARU to turn your social change problems into ASCh! (ASCh stands for Applied Social Change – a Research Hub based at ARU, Cambridge). Read more 👉 https://lnkd.in/enzJ463n #SocialChange

There's no separation between social issues and business issues. The ongoing events in Kenya should teach you that separating business and social awareness is damaging. Social impact is no longer a buzzword. It needs to be embedded in your founding values and into every business decision. You could be the best product in the market but without heart and a social impact strategy, the public will notice and react accordingly. Sitting on the fence is not an option and silence signals consent.

Making social impact in resource-deprived communities comes with its own unique challenges. These communities might be lacking access to essential infrastructures due to the lack of government oversight or ability to provide. Each country creates its own structure, goals, and laws for what they believe is necessary. We aren't here to combat those but to operate within our ability from the existing environment. We believe positive impact breeds positive change. The more social impact good we can create, the more it will want to be reproduced. Each project partner must go through the proper channels in creating their social venture in that region. This can be some of the harder parts of the process. Getting legally set up might take longer than desired and the excitement for social impact can wane. Yet, done correctly, it will produce greater impact without later frustrations or fines by not doing it right. It creates better partnerships with the local authorities and often gains support by those authorities through the process. Learn more about our values at prosintl.org

Joni Avram has some incredible content lined up for this webinar. I hope you can make it!

Here are a few tips to consider when working towards social change 📍Whether as an individual or an organisation, be a part of awareness and educational programmes (formal or informal) that drive social and societal change. Engage in discussions, and community programmes and speak on policies that will help project your voice on the issues of social change that’s important to you. 📍Be a part of the communities most concerned with the change. Change does not happen overnight, and it requires effort and intentionality. Go to the grassroots to understand peculiar issues and problems that they are facing and that will give ideas on the strategies that’ll best reach them. 📍Leverage technology. Technology in its various forms has come to stay and those that will bring social change should explore digital platforms, social media, and other tools to connect with people, research, connect with the communities, and mobilise resources for social change. 📍Promote maintainable practices. Initiatives that can be sustained and maintained should be encouraged. Where there is social change, it should last a lifetime and not just for a short while. Thus, ensure the activities proposed for social change in communities are those that can be sustained with minimal or no further supervision. #SocialImpact #Growth

🌟 How to create meaningful Social Change through a Theory of Change (ToC)! 🌍✨ 🔍 What's a ToC? It's a roadmap that outlines the impacts needed to achieve the social change you seek. It's crucial to explain why and how your initiative expects to make an impact. 🤔 To develop your ToC, consider these key questions: 1️⃣ What social change are you working towards? 2️⃣ What needs to happen for this change to become possible? 3️⃣ How will your initiative contribute to this change? 4️⃣ How can you maximize your impact with the resources you have? 📝 Here are some methods to help you craft your ToC: 1️⃣ Make a clear statement of intent about the change you're seeking. 2️⃣ Share this statement with a diverse group of people and listen to their feedback. 3️⃣ Identify the types of social change your initiative aims to achieve, such as capacity building, perception change, or policy change. The types of social changes are as follows: 👉 Building Capacities: Capacity Change: Increases knowledge, skills, and access to information. Access Change: Empowers voices and fosters community-driven change. 👥 Influencing Individuals and Communities: Perception Change: Shifts attitudes, beliefs, and perceptions. Behaviour Change: Supports shifts in individual or collective behaviors. Cultural Change: Transforms social practices and values. 🚀 Building Movements: Relational Change: Cultivates networks and sustains communities. Positional Change: Empowers marginalized communities. Discourse Change: Encourages diverse dialogue and perspectives. 🏗️ Changing Structures: Policy Change: Alters government and institutional policies. Legal Change: Modifies existing laws or establishes new ones. Norm Change: Shifts practices within organizations and institutions. Economic Change: Transforms market or economic functions. 🚀 By understanding these elements, you can develop a robust ToC that guides your efforts towards creating lasting social impact. Let's work together to make a difference! 💪 #socialchange #theoryofchange #impact #communityempowerment 🌟

Social Spark was featured in New Times, Inc., San Luis Obispo! 🎉 From the article: "The whole world is becoming more and more digital," she said. "That can be great in so many ways, but we really want to encourage in-person connection because as technology-focused as our world becomes, the one thing that you can't replace with technology is social connection." Huge thanks to New Times SLO and Libbey Hanson for spotlighting our journey and the impact we’re making here on the Central Coast and beyond. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/gpBVjaAF

Boundary spanning and the relational work of people and organisations that do it are critical to social innovation. In four separate conversations I've had with expert boundary spanners this week - from academia, social enterprise, community development and philanthropy - all have commented on how undervalued this work is and how difficult it is to get it resourced. Such resourcing includes both funding for the work and, as importantly, supporting the cultural shifts needed for organisations often experiencing the 'hunger games' to work together creatively with the commons in mind. It's not rocket science, but the appetite for impact seems to blinker some to the realities that complex systems need those that intermediate and aggregate, and that impacts at scale are rarely the outcome of individual 'winners'. Transformative change needs greater valuing of and support for the boundary spanners, the liminals and the aggregators in social innovation systems. My contemplation of the day.

Social value is all about people. It’s about making decisions that meaningfully consider the social impact on people who who live, work, visit a farm or estate as well as people who currently don’t – their health and well-being, their quality of life and longer term, the creation of positive life outcomes. Enhancing the social impact of an estate or farm can benefit landowners, land managers and society as a whole. Click here to read the latest Spotlight report from Savills Rural: https://lnkd.in/eqerhrq9

This is a great critical review of social impact. Having worked in different sectors, social impact is deeply connected to $. Social impact is not neutral or purely altruistic. $ as an input or output will always impact the type and quality of outcomes. In the public sector, there is value for $ while in the private sector, value must yeild increased profit (brand recognition, increased consumers etc.) There are also concerns about applying financial metrics to social value, arguing for new approaches to assess social impact properly. It suggests that monetizing social impact oversimplifies complex issues, reducing them to financial terms that may not fully capture their significance. Assigning monetary values to social outcomes is challenging, subjective, and context-dependent. Monetization often prioritizes quantifiable impacts, overlooking qualitative aspects of social change. Good stuff - give it a read.