Fingo is a Finnish NGO platform and an expert on global development that represents approximately 280 civil society organisations as members. Its aim is to bring together people and organisations across the globe in transformative collaboration structures that support civil society’s role in implementing the Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs).
With the increasingly complex challenges of transformative SDG implementation, the © Collective Leadership Compass has been identified by Fingo as a key methodology for its future. Specifically, Fingo envisions the tool supporting the organisation’s strategic advancement. The Compass will act as a guiding structure that supports Fingo’s mission and help them navigate complex settings and transformative change in collaborative ways.
Project time: 2021-22
Sector(s): civil society
Main SDG: 17 Partnerships
Stakeholders: 14 change agents within Fingo’s organisation
Outcome: The systemic approach of the Collective Leadership Compass is understood, what Collective Leadership means in Fingo’s practice is defined, concrete action plans for bringing Collective Leadership into the daily work have been developed.
CLI Project Managers: Elisabeth Kuehn, Martin Fielko
In the beginning of June 2020, CLI started the project “Platform for Civil society Dialogue” with a three-day Kick-Off Workshop in cooperation with its Belarusian and Russian partners. The project focuses on the development of a dialogue platform between representatives of Russian and Belarusian civil society organizations who are engaged in the social sector, particularly in inclusion and strengthening rights of marginalized social groups such as women, persons with disabilities, and senior citizens.
Project time: 2020-22
Sector(s): civil society
Main SDG: 17 Partnerships
Stakeholders: CSOs from Russia and Belarus who are active in the social sector, for each country one partner NGO
Outcome: Increased opportunities for cooperation and partnership between the organizations’ representatives, a constructive dialogue and cooperation structure among civil society organizations in Belarus and Russia, promoted discussion of values, scaled network collaboration and dialogue.
CLI Project Managers: Alina Gruen, Martin Fielko, Theresa Kuschka, Andi Shehu 
UNV mobilizes volunteers for the UN system, including for humanitarian and post-conflict situations, as well as promotes volunteerism globally. For their international Communications and Partnerships teams (based in Bonn), CLI offered an intensive, two-day workshop. The teams received a heavy dose of Collective Leadership with exposure to both the Dialogic Change Model and the Collective Leadership Compass. The participants worked with both tools to better understand their teams, how to collaborate better across teams, and how to begin to enliven their wider stakeholder systems.
Project time: 2019
Sector(s): public sector
Main SDG: 17 Partnerships
Stakeholders: 10 team members of the UNV communications and partnerships department
Outcome: Better understanding of UNV’s teams, how to collaborate better across teams, and how to enliven the wider stakeholder systems.
CLI Project Manager: Douglas F. Williamson
CLI has begun to introduce its core methodology into the formal academic sector. The intention is provide Collective Leadership concepts to learners at younger ages. In 2017, CLI started its academic partnerships with the University of Applied Sciences in Neubrandenburg and in 2019 with the University of Applied Sciences Konstanz. CLI is attempting to integrate the Collective Leadership approach into lectures and curricula to support youth and young adults to create the future they want.
Project time: start 2017, ongoing
Sector(s): public sector
Main SDG: 4 Quality Education
Stakeholders: University of Applied Sciences in Neubrandenburg, University of Applied Sciences Konstanz
Outcome: Lectures with workshop character are offered at the universities, started to build capacity in using the CLI methods to train multipliers within universities so that these lectures can be held by lecturers and professors themselves.
CLI Project Manager: Alina Gruen
CLI entered into a year-long partnership agreement with Engagement Global’s Mentoring for Education for Sustainable Development Leadership Programme. The programme is for twenty young professionals from Germany, India, Mexico and South Africa working in the field of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). As part of the programme’s offering in competencies in the areas of project management and ESD-Leadership, each mentee is partnered with an ESD Expert mentor for support in the realization and implementation of the mentees’ sustainability projects. CLI facilitates online and offline Project Management and Leadership learning sessions.
Project time: 2019
Sector(s): civil society
Main SDG: 17 Partnerships
Stakeholders: 20 young professionals from Germany, India, Mexico, South Africa in the field of education for sustainable development
Outcome: Mentees develop an understanding of leadership in the context of social change, strengthen their personal development, develop leadership skills at individual-, process-, and systems level; and successfully apply CLI methodologies in practice.
CLI Project Managers: Alina Gruen, Lulekwa Gqiba
CLI facilitated two workshops that introduced both core methodologies, the Dialogic Change Model and the Collective Leadership Compass, with a focus on SDG 17. The participants of a conference on the Sustainable Development Goals in St. Petersburg, Russia, saw the need to collaborate and build partnerships in order to proceed with their projects. CLI’s seminar inputs gave them an impression of how this could be achieved in practice. Furthermore, the conference fostered a lively and active exchange between the Russian and EU NGOs. This is the start of a collaboration with the EU-Russia Civil Society Forum.
Project time: 2019
Sector(s): civil society
Main SDG: 17 Partnerships
Stakeholders: > 170 civil society organisations from Russia and the EU
Outcome: Awareness for SDGs in Russia and the need for partnerships is built; basic competences for collaboration are built among 40 multipliers
CLI Project Managers: Alina Gruen, Martin Fielko
The Ukrainian heath sector is challenged by ineffective service, poor health outcomes, and dissatisfied workers at many levels. In order to revitalize the sector and address the systemic challenges and lead to positive health outcomes for the larger Ukrainian citizenry Collective Leadership Institute became GIZ’s cooperation partner for the project GIZ Support Decentralization Reform in Ukraine – U-LEAD with Europe. By providing series of trainings CLI supports involved parties in becoming Collective Leaders, equipped with several powerful tools to begin to steer the health care sector in a sustainable direction.
Project time: 2018-2019
Sector(s): public sector
Main SDG: 3 Good Health and Well-Being
Stakeholders: 24 change agents in the Ukrainian Health Sector Decentralization initiative
Outcome: 24 participants become Collective Leaders, equipped with several powerful tools to begin to steer the health care sector in a sustainable direction in Ukraine.
CLI Project Managers: Douglas F. Williamson, Alina Gruen, Maryana Zaviyska (CLI’s Associate)
In order to implement Georgia’s national commitments for the implementation of the Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change multi-stakeholder collaboration is essential.
Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH has been supporting several processes, including “processes, methodologies and instruments for long-term decarbonization planning and the integration into national targets to fight climate change while also considering economic transformation targets and enhance the capacities of public decision-makers and institutions for the application of necessary integrated and inter-institutional planning processes.”
In this context, the Collective Leadership Institute was asked by GIZ to facilitate a tailored three-day stakeholder engagement workshop for 23 people from the national and provincial levels in September 2018 in Borjomi, in close collaboration with the Climate Change Unit (CCU) in Georgia and the New Climate Institute (NCI) in Germany.
Project time: 2018
Sector(s): public sector
Main SDG: 13 Climate Action
Stakeholders: 23 persons from the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, Climate Change Unit (CCU) in Georgia and the New Climate Institute (NCI)
Outcome: 23 people from the national and provincial levels participated and exchanged information and experience to jointly understand current challenges and opportunities for climate change action in Georgia. The participants started to jointly define priorities and inter-sectoral and inter-disciplinary engagement structures for the development of a Climate Action Plan roadmap for the next months
CLI Project Managers: Krisitane Schäfer, Sabine Heckmann
In July 2018, CLI finished its cooperation partnership work with GIZ on the “Vocational Integration of Internally Displaced Persons in Ukraine” project, focusing on “Support for Innovative Multi-Stakeholder Projects”. CLI’s involvement entailed a specially-created format of three three-day workshops that relied on the Collective Leadership Compass as a primary methodology, but was also heavily reliant on the Dialogic Change Model (DCM).
The objective of the larger GIZ project was to generate innovative Multi-Stakeholder Partnership project ideas to address the chronic issue of employment integration challenges of internally displaced persons due to the conflict in Eastern Ukraine in 2014. Agenda 2030 was always in focus and CLI brought its expertise on SDG No. 17 Partnership for the Goals to the forefront. However, there were project ideas that touched on many of the other SDGs including SDG No. 1 No Poverty, No. 8 Decent Work and Economic Growth, No. 9 Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure, No. 10 Reduced Inequalities, No. 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities, and No. 16 Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions.
The prospect for the larger GIZ project was significantly advanced by CLI’s powerful collaboration ecosystem and Collective Leadership approach.
Project time: 2017 – 2018
Sector(s): public sector
Main SDG: 17 Partnerships for the Goals
Stakeholders: >170 people engaged in the processes (GIZ members, ministries, stakeholders from the central and Oblast level)
Outcome: Training of and empowering 36 persons from six Oblast-level teams to create and prepare innovative Multi-Stakeholder Partnership project ideas to address the chronic issue of employment integration challenges of internally displaced persons in Ukraine
CLI Project Managers: Douglas F. Willamson, Alina Grün
CLI supported the successful launch of the project “Countering Serious Crime in Western Balkans”, a project that aims to strengthen the fight against serious organized crime in six Western Balkan countries with a collaborative approach uniting police and prosecution. CLI combined its Dialogic Change Model with the Collective Leadership Compass to plan and facilitate both a regional planning workshop and six individual kick-off workshops with the countries’ respective project teams and representatives from national partners.
Some words from our client:
“Thank you very much for the report and all the energy you have invested into our project. Sometimes much more than you can expect from a consultancy, I would say, and we have been profiting very much not only from your expertise, but also your personalities and the way you work and communicate with the people around you.” – Christopher Will, GIZ Project Manager, IPA Countering Serious Crime in the Western Balkans.
Project time: February 2018- March 2019
Sector(s): public sector
Main SDG: 16 Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
Stakeholders:
Outcome: National and regional collaboration and communication agreements were reached. , as well as a regional team spirit for a collaborative and bottom-up approach to launch the project with local partners. The kick-off workshops of the project in each of the partner countries were planned.
CLI Project Managers: Douglas F. Willamson, Elisabeth Kühn
Navigating and implementing high-quality partnering processes, a prerequisite to implement the SDGs, provokes the question, “What does it take to unleash the collaboration potential for achieving the SDGs?” The Promoting Effective Partnerships Initiative (PEP), of which the Collective Leadership is one of five partners, will promote clarity in language and concepts, signposting through the spectrum of different partnering approaches, tools, and support offers. PEP further aims to engage and exchange with practitioners and experts in order to co-develop the professional field of partnering and build impact networks of practitioners.
Project time: 2016
Sector(s): civil society, private sector, public sector
Main SDG: 17 Partnerships
Stakeholders: 5 pioneering organisations in capacity building for partnerships
Outcome: A website effectivepartnering.org has been developed with plenty of resources for practitioners and researchers in the field of partnering.
CLI Project Managers: Dr. Petra Kuenkel, Douglas F. Williamson
Establishing effective government structures for cross-cutting issues such as gender equality and women’s empowerment is inherently complex. The challenge in Georgia is augmented by low public awareness and minimal political initiative. Using the Stakeholder Dialogues approach, especially Phase 1 of the Dialogic Change Model (DCM) “Exploring and Engaging”, UN Women managed to create a container for change. The success worth celebrating thus far is the appointment of advisory positions for gender equality and women rights by the Georgian Prime Minister.
Project time: 2012-2013
Sector(s): public sector, civil society
Main SDG: 5 Gender Equality
Stakeholders: 20 high level representatives from the Georgian government, UN organisations, international and local NGOs
Outcome: A high level stakeholder event was organized by UN Women Georgia, a ‘container for change’ was created to lobby for gender equality and human rights at all government levels, a new position of an assistant to the Prime Minister dealing exclusively with gender equality and women’s rights issues was established.
CLI Project Manager: Andrew Aitken