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While we talk about how we work by centering care, we have to examine what care means to us - not just collectively, but at an individual level too..What reflects as care to me and not just what can care look like at an organisational level? HOw do we go beyond literal meanings and conventional understanding of it?

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Trust building and relationships becoming a core practice

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Trust building and relationships becoming a core practice

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it is striking how trust building, focusing on relationships and the quality of the 'how' in including deep listening has become a part of everyone's practice so intentionally and consciously (including with the Board and (some?) back donors). Big shift from 2020 (MF).

Growing recognition that the time it takes to build trust and deepen relationships is rewarded with quality, solidarity, positive feelings like joy

many team members seem to be consciously drawing upon/utilising their own networks and friendship relationships to expand or extend UAF A&P work

many team members seem to be extending themselves beyond their own job descriptions to support others (I'm wondering if there is a shadow side to this - re - exhaustion or learning to set very clear boundaries??)

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2023: Year of Deep Listening and Proactive Actions

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2023: Year of Deep Listening and Proactive Actions

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All actions, changed ways of working and understanding of contexts and cases are arising out of our ability and privilege to listen deeply. We are engaged in a series of proactive actions that is building the base for what will shape our work in the coming years

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Loved how folks shared and listened to eating habits and work space set up with a curiosity for fellow human beings (Yas)

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Experimenting - seeing "failure" as learning

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Experimenting - seeing "failure" as learning

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striking how much more at ease team members are with experimenting without fear of failure (mf)

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I'm also struck at how what it means to practice something (ie. creating a culture or way of doing) is becoming increasingly important. Eg. you're talking now about the language you're using to communicate with activists - do you speak in a way that is "right" for them - whether disability activists or sex worker activists, which is more complex than 'simple' translation from English. Another eg. is in the meaning of co-leadership. At first its meaning was linked to the 'formal structure' of the co-leads. Now it's meaning is expanding to other team members working "formally" as co-leads like Tara and Anna or 'co-leading' in the way the huddles are being planned or 'co-leading' in the way multiple team members responded during the Oasis meeting.

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it is also striking how building the muscle inside the team learning and meeting spaces - for deep listening, pausing, creating space/spaciousness, learning to know and connect to people you're working with as 'whole' people is now 'filtering' into work and relationships with others across the ecosystem - including big funders!!!

Growing recognition of the value of 'idle' time and it's contribution/necessity to creativity and innovation
mf)

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What makes the huddle feel less scary/less heavy?

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What makes the huddle feel less scary/less heavy?

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I'm curious to hear what helps make the huddle more 'inviting' - is this something that develops over time? Is it about the way the huddles are being facilitated? The way the team is entering them? A greater ease with reflection and 'facing ourselves'? Is it less scary only for those who've been coming for a long time or also for newer people? (mf)

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Listening carefully to and responding to activists is impacting our work across task areas 

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Listening carefully to and responding to activists is impacting our work across task areas 

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I'm struck by how listening to activists now is not only about "a convening" or 'giving them voice', but how its affecting thinking and doing. How its about the meaning of being participatory, about critically engaging with how to meet their needs - not only in what kinds of grants are being offered but how they're being offered (and even to whom like advisors RR grant); how the financing is being delivered; how the communications is being created and developed. Where 'piloting' and research is first being done interactively with activists it in turn is leading to greater efficiency and "co-creation".

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- Specific challenges brought up by team members in the coming days
- What Caroline shared about 'power over' from the fund
(Yas)

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From reactive to proactive mode: how did this happen and what next?

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From reactive to proactive mode: how did this happen and what next?

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There is a clear sense in the team of having switched from reactive mode during the Afghanistan crisis to proactively engaging defenders and activists. For example, Viri shared how, had there not been the spaciousness for everyone to reflect this year, the team wouldn't have been able to connect the dots and expand the organisation's definition of risk and push back on DFAD's risk mitigation requirements.

It'd perhaps help sustain the team's high energy if a clear narrative of how this shift has happened can grow out of these conversations, and learnings can be distilled. At the same time, the alertness and appetite for challenges in the team shows how folks are able to embrace constantly changing dynamics in the work while appreciating good times like this. (Yas)

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Celebrating the loop of collective and individual learning

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Celebrating the loop of collective and individual learning

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Lifting up Shan's words and movement at the ending circle, yesterday I heard many celebratory stories of how the space for growing both together and individually has allowed better collaborations, deeper listening and engagements, more innovations to happen. (Yas)

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While these spaces promote collective learning, these processes have also led to individual growth. People are changing, there is transformation evident in individuals. In how many ways are we able to see personal growth in ourselves?

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Sarah

Women in Parliament is an ongoing issue talked about at community and international level but lacks political will

Women still seen as inferior to men, they have to face many cultural barriers to be elected representatives

Women are needed in Parliament so that key issues can be addressed that male dominated cabinets don’t give attention to

Ava

Tried many times but failed before - but worked this time - which made me reflect on what we did differently this time

Lesson for strengthening collaboration between Sister Funds

RRG models > brought staff members together for them to discuss and share how they do it, challenges they face, etc.

What worked is that there was space to experiment without fear of policing or failure, adequate time and flexibility over months to prepare

Saw the value of connections and conversations

Learning about own and others’ strengths and acknowledging it was useful

Built trust in the team

Noelene

Relationship with DFAT > it has developed very well in the last 6 months

Last year was the first year of our grant, we have built trust over last 18 months which led to them reducing the reporting requirements from us which would otherwise be very time consuming

Pushed back on bureaucratic expectations wrt grantee partners which wasn’t feasible for us; we also questioned their definition of ‘risk management’ which they have taken on board and responded to it positively, taking it to consideration and shared with senior officials part of due diligence

This shows they trust us and are committed to our partnership (AIR partnership)

Being an Australian, have been building a relationship with DFAT officials so this was fulfilling and has been a massic learning experience

We now have processes in place that make it easier to engage with other donors as well (Canadian govt, Swedish govt)

Sunayana

Board meeting in Bali > We gave ourselves spaciousness and investing time to play, build personal connections etc which shifted something

We managed to complete all paperwork and tasks and still manage to do all the above, including building trust between each other, bringing everyone together

Anna

Convening with West Papua activists > most fulfilled when everyone reached home

We always have the intention to expand our outreach but remote places or risky places get left out

West Papua challenged our usual practice, we took calculated risks, and it came together really well in the end but took a lot of trust-building within the team

With changing contexts, question of to what extent we take risks as a team gently, kindly, together - is something we need to figure out

Ila

I enjoyed worked on the sex workers’ rights activists grants call

We employed a participatory process in the we developed communications around it leading to better results because we consulted with multiple stakeholders - activists, grants team, advisors

Within the team we had a collaborative approach

Lot of invisible work involved in political framing, background research and understanding

We learned to put our audience at the centre of all communications and speak in a language they understand and relate to

This is how we now want to be doing comms - in a participatory, inclusive process moving forward, vs in a templtised way

More space within the team to think critically, strategically, hold each other accountable

Got appreciated by an advisor about how good the SWR grants call content was

Shan

When are we powering with and when are we powering over? What are we frustrated at?

intention to collaborate, intention to shift the narrative are bearing fruits

credibility with activists, institutions, and within the team

cross-pollination across teams, having members involved in different projects helped the whole team become stronger by seeing the bigger picture of our work e.g. Fareen's story of joining Oasis with a Finance perspective

a nurturing environment that supports individual growth feeds into collective learning

Common themes

Trust & relationships resonated throughout

Everyone is feeling tangible/significant movement

Decolonising language and using the right language - as a political project

Language justice - eg disability rights activists and sex workers

Centering who needed to be centered

Finding peoples strengths and leaning into it

Spaciousness and courage

Keeping the ‘why we do what we do’ at the back of our minds in everything we do

Give people time

To value the space to prepare well

Trusting and letting go

Our ability to articulate the work and its impact on what we need and how to sustain the work.

Letting idle space exist so we can innovate without pressure

Articulations for how we experience the work we do and our needs