Adriana Sahagún Martínez

Discover and learn from the Solidarity Playbook on cybersecurity

26th April 2023 by Eva Gondor

Strengthening cybersecurity

With increased digitalisation (international) civil society organisations – (I)CSOs – have faced an increase in digital threats and cyberattacks carried out by malicious actors interested in financial gains and access to sensitive data or identifiable personal information.

In recognition of this growing challenge, we captured case studies on how (I)CSOs responded to cyberattacks and collected lessons on how to better protect organisations online.

Solidarity Playbook case studies on cybersecurity

The latest edition of the Solidarity Playbook features four case studies of how (I)CSOs dealt with actual cyberattacks. We partnered with the CyberPeace Institute to showcase these case studies and provide insights into how (I)CSOs can prevent and mitigate similar incidents.

Regaining access to a social media account

Resisting six weeks of sustained phishing attacks

Deflecting a sophisticated brute-force and phishing attack

Retrieving access to a hacked IT server

Cybersecurity needs to be a shared responsibility – it requires attention across the whole organisation and cannot be borne only on the shoulders of IT staff.

Facing cybersecurity challenges: Lessons learned and opportunity areas

Visit the Solidarity Action Network Webpage to find out more about the aims of the Solidarity Playbook and all the case study content.

For more information or feedback, reach out to Eva Gondor, Senior Project Manager

Eva Gondor

Senior Project Manager

International Civil Society Centre

Eva leads on the Centre's civic space work - the Solidarity Action Network (SANE) aimed at strengthening resilience of and solidarity among civil society actors, and the International Civic Forum (ICF), our annual civic space platform to network and identify opportunities for collaboration. Prior to joining the Centre she worked at the Robert Bosch Stiftung (Foundation) in Stuttgart where she managed the foundation’s projects focusing on civil society and governance in Turkey, the Western Balkans, and North Africa.

What trends did we miss and why do we miss them?

30th March 2023 by Paola Pierri, Rachel Wilkinson, Will Garrood

Spotting emerging trends at an early stage is key for the international civil society sector to be able to adapt and respond to those trends before they could have a negative impact or in order to make the most of an emerging opportunity.

Trends and early signals are not always easy to spot and futurists and strategists within ICSOs are always looking for new ways and methods to get better at anticipating future scenarios in order to make the sector more resilient.

Last Autumn during our Scanning the Horizon annual community meeting, Will Garrood from WaterAid ran an inspiring session to map, together with other key players and (I)CSOs, what trends we missed from 2022 and reflect together on why we missed them.

Scanning the Horizon is the only collaborative trend scouting and analysis platform in the civil society sector. Members include leading ICSOs, national CSO umbrella organisations, philanthropy and development consultancies. It is a cross-sector community of experts and practitioners that gets together to share insights, explore key trends and develop relevant strategies.

Here we are sharing our main learnings looking back at the trends we missed, and – more importantly – trying to unpack why we missed them.

What trends we missed

We were thinking a war was probably likely, but no one anticipated there would have been one in Europe! (a Participant)

In a group exercise we mapped a series of trends that by that time had become visible but that no one in the group had anticipated before. Below is a selection of the missed trends.

Conflict in Europe: this was something that no one in the group had anticipated as an imminent risk and that has profoundly impacted the sector, including through a diversion of funding towards supporting the local population after Ukraine’s invasion.

‘Weaponisation’ of Energy: one of the after-effects of the war in Ukraine was that the use of energy sources and access to them became an additional ‘weapon’ used by Russia to put pressure on countries to not intervene in the conflict.

Cyber and Digital Security and cyber conflicts: (I)CSOs have generally a good awareness of the possible impact of digital advancements as well as digital threats to their work, for example in the ways in which digital tools and media could exacerbate misinformation/ disinformation and malinformation but the large rate of increased attacks and risk to cybersecurity and the huge leap in large-language AI models, such as ChatGPT took many by surprise. The Centre recently published a study sharing useful practical insights on how can (I)CSOs better protect the communities they serve and their own work against cyberattacks.

Why did or do we miss trends?

The second part of our exercise with the Scanning Community focused on why people and organisations had not seen these trends coming or underestimated them. This is an even more important question to ask because if we reflect and identify the reasons why people usually miss these trends, then we can at least attempt to not fall into these traps again.

Below is what we learnt.

Trend Overload: for those who are not full-time futurists (and even for those who operate in this role full-time) keeping up with all the trends, publications, signals are not an easy task. ‘Trend overload’ might become a problem as we are not sure which one to consider and which one to prioritise. Getting trends scouting to become a regular exercise may help with that and learning to prioritise our sources for trends mapping and foresight will also help.

Between Black Elephants and Black Swans: Some events are of course simply unpredictable (so-called Black Swans) but others are known and understood and yet not addressed. These phenomena are described as Black Elephants and they describe events that people tend to ignore, like global warming or the risk of more pandemics going forward. Ways to mitigate the impact of these Black Elephants are various, including calling these ‘elephants in the room’ by their name, celebrating the mitigation stories that help us remember that black elephants can still be avoided or breaking the silos of different organisational departments that stop important knowledge about trends and risk to circulate more widely.

Elephant and Swan in continuous line art drawing style.

Disconnect between communities and language: When many people in (I)CSOs, corporates and governments don’t share language and discussion spaces, this is likely to mean things are missed. It may also be about who in (I)CSOs is thinking about these issues. There may be areas where government-facing teams are talking about issues a lot, but it isn’t percolating into the wider organisation. We talked about Ukraine in the discussion, but China/Taiwan may be another useful example.

Unconscious bias: when we observe the trends that are emerging we cannot avoid bringing with us our unconscious bias, the things that we assume to be true based on what happen in the past and that help us orienting ourselves in the future. Unconscious Bias (e.g. confirmation bias or affinity bias) are associations we all hold and that we might not be aware of but few techniques are available that can help are people to break their Bias habits. Opening up the future scanning exercise to a more diverse group and bring into our future thinking new and different perspectives might be another way to address this issue. To deal with unconscious bias we would need to make sure we get the right information first, but then we have to make sure we don’t discount it!

The unpredictability of global trends and the challenges of mapping and noticing the new trends emerging makes it very difficult for civil society organisations, in particular those with an international remit, to better use the future in order to deal with the present. Coupled with the busyness of everyday workload it seems increasingly difficult to take the time to pause and think through where organisations are potentially vulnerable or how to be more prepared and proactive to make the most of future trends and opportunities. However, it is incredibly important for civil society organisations to be planning for the long-term and taking the time to ensure we are fit for purpose and able to meet the challenges and embrace new innovations in our work. This will help (I)CSOs to respond rapidly when these events do happen as they will not be starting from scratch.

At the Centre we are collaborating with our members and other partners to develop a stronger future literacy in the sector and work together in mapping as well as anticipating the emerging trends. The Scanning the Horizon Community brings together peers from across multiple sectors to share learning and expertise and collectively learn and trial new future methodologies. If you are working on foresight in your organisation and would like to know more about the Community feel free to contact us we would like to hear from you.

Paola Pierri

Co-Programme Manager – Futures and Innovation

International Civil Society Centre

Paola co-leads the Futures and Innovation programme with Rachel Wilkinson. Prior to joining the Centre, Paola was Director of Research at Democratic Society and a Fellow at the Weizenbaum Institute, working on the impact of emerging digital technologies on the public sphere. Paola comes with more than 15 years of experience working in between Academia and Civil Society Organisations providing analyses of emerging trends to support the sector achieving greater impact in complex and uncertain times.

Rachel Wilkinson

Co-Programme Manager – Futures and Innovation

International Civil Society Centre

Rachel co-leads the Futures and Innovation programme with Paola Pierri. Rachel is jointly responsible for managing the portfolio of projects and events as well as leading and developing the Scanning the Horizon strategic peer learning platform. Rachel has more than 15 years of experience working in the third sector, on a national and international level, working for various ICSOs in international development and human rights in both London and Berlin.

Will Garrood

Strategy and Transformation Director

WaterAid

Will is the Strategy and Transformation Director for WaterAid. Previously, Will held strategic and policy roles at the BBC and Ofcom and trained at LEK, a strategy consultancy. He holds degrees from the University of Oxford and King's College London.

Official reference to our work in the UN Secretary General’s recent SDG progress report

13th February 2023 by Chandani Lopez Peralta

The United Nations (UN) Secretary-General’s report, “Work on the review of progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)” recognises the usefulness of citizen-generated data (CGD) and the UN’s interest in exploring new avenues to make better use of such data in SDG processes and beyond. The report also underlines the key role of civil society actors and community-based organisations in advancing CGD to make SDG processes and public policies more inclusive and equitable. The close collaboration between the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) and the International Civil Society Centre (in its role as the global LNOB secretariat) has been explicitly mentioned in the report, emphasising our mutual role in fostering collaboration between civil society and national statistics offices at the national level.

The report recognises CGD, such as community-driven data and citizen science, as useful data sources, both for filling gaps to inform policy and decision-making and as complementary information by citizens, civil society and community-based organisations in order to better reflect the realities of less visible and marginalised groups more broadly.

The report also highlights that national statistical offices are increasingly exploring mechanisms and tools to engage and connect with citizens and communities throughout the data value chain to make data more relevant and better utilised.

The Secretary General’s report refers to the expert group meeting on the topic “Harnessing data by citizens for public policy and Sustainable Development Goal monitoring: a conceptual framework”, which was held in Bangkok on 10th and 11th November 2022 to discuss concrete ways to involve civil society in all steps of the SDG process. At the meeting, it was concluded that there would be a new UN-anchored collaborative co-led by UNSD and a network of partners, bringing together diverse stakeholders, including national statistical offices, CSOs, academia and regional and international organisations. The goal is to share knowledge and experiences in leveraging citizens’ contribution to data and to inform further normative work required in this area.

For additional information, download the full report.

Chandani Lopez Peralta

Project Manager

International Civil Society Centre

Chandani joined the Centre as a Project Manager in May 2022. She supports the Leave No One Behind Partnership that promotes the collection and use of community-driven data to give voice and agency to marginalised communities. Prior to joining the Centre, Chandani headed communications and outreach at TolaData. In addition, Chandani has coordinated many projects for local and international NGOs, working closely with refugees, individuals with disabilities and other marginalised groups in Nepal, Germany and the US. Chandani holds a master’s degree in International Development and Social Change from Clark University, USA and a B.Sc. in Mass Communications with an emphasis on PR and Advertising from Minnesota State University Moorhead

New – 2023 events and programme flyer, find out what’s on and what we are doing

2nd January 2023 by Adriana Sahagún Martínez

You can download the flyer below to find out about what we plan to do this year and how you can get involved.

: Got a question? Email us: mail@icscentre.org

Download 2023 Flyer

Communications Manager

International Civil Society Centre

Adriana is responsible for developing and implementing the Centre’s communication strategy. Prior to joining the Centre, Adriana worked at ShareTheMeal, an initiative of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), where she developed and implemented multiple global marketing campaigns. Before that, she worked for six years in the private sector, where she held various positions in Corporate Social Responsibility and Integrated Marketing Communications.

Accelerating Inclusive Power Shift: An aggregated benchmarking study

20th December 2022 by Myriam Ciza Gambini

Following four years of Power Shifts Labs, the Centre wants to build on all of its collective work through analysis and deeper engagement around progress made. In February 2022, it commissioned a benchmarking study where its members were invited to discuss what shifts are currently underway within their organisations, as well as their challenges and next frontier ambitions.

The study’s results were discussed and shared with study participants in the hope that it would feed into their future exchange and learning while allowing them to benchmark their progress over time and with each other. The Centre is presenting an aggregated version of the Power Shift benchmarking study as it believes that it will be both relevant and interesting to a much wider community outside of its member base.

Download Report

Learn more about the project

Myriam Ciza Gambini

Project Manager

International Civil Society Centre

Myriam coordinates the “Accelerating Inclusive Power Shift” project, which aims to foster equitable partnerships and more inclusive governance models in the development and humanitarian sectors. Prior to joining the Centre, she worked on EU development policy in Brussels for CONCORD and Humanity & Inclusion and with CBM in Italy.

Five takeaways from Global Perspectives 2022 

14th December 2022 by Miriam Niehaus

Global Perspectives 2022 brought together over 360 people from around the world on 30 November to participate in a range of panel sessions looking at transforming civil society futures. While we missed being able to meet in person, we found it even more rewarding that our free online format made it possible for so many of us to connect. These are some of the key takeaways that we still carry with us two weeks after the event and will take to heart in our work moving forward:

1.Anticipation-mode is a necessity for all, not a luxury of the few

Several sessions highlighted how CSOs are usually caught in – or even depend on – a perpetual sequence of crises. As current and future trends take hold, it is absolutely vital that organised civil society is both ready for different scenarios but equally holds a strong vision for the future. But being futures-ready (and -relevant) does neither come by itself nor should it be confined to an elite academic exercise by the few or a single department with an ICSO. Instead, we need to embed futures thinking widely and recognise that we’re all capable of the necessary signal scanning and building futures narratives. As our panellist, Barbara Weber from Amnesty International advised: Let’s build that anticipatory muscle by treating it like brushing our teeth – do it every day if you want to stay healthy.

2. Digital inclusion simply cannot happen if we don’t have internet infrastructure

Access to a data-driven world and data-driven development is key in a digitally transformed world and therefore, specialised CSOs are relied upon heavily to ensure inclusivity is taken into account when building digital tools for development. Many actors are lobbying heavily to make sure this is mainstreamed better across (international) CSOs so that organisations are pulling into the same direction, especially when it comes to the digital inclusion of Persons with Disability. But while there is a lot of focus on building capacity for digital inclusion, the most important ingredient is still called internet infrastructure!

3. Let’s reward experimentation!

Part of the puzzle of futures-readiness is innovation. It was claimed that there is little to no room for failure in our sector and that this is keeping us from learning – as it is only through failure that we learn the most and from each other. We need to create organisational cultures where experimentation is rewarded so we can challenge ourselves, find new ways of working and explore different scenarios to imagine and build the world we want. The third edition of our Innovation Report again shows us how civil society organisations reinvent themselves and experiment if the context requires it. They can be a great inspiration for all of us!

4. Transformation requires bravery and humility

As many organisations are seeking to become more locally led, it is imperative that they adopt a southern identity, and being a global organisation is no longer synonym for being a northern organisation. This is no small transformation for many organisations and thus requires taking bold steps and risks. Professionalised civil society organisations should be in the business of working themselves out of a job, so a certain risk is built-in anyways.

Equally, in the panel on south-south cooperation, Cecilia Milesi reminded the audience that the decolonising journey has been travelled by civil society in (formerly) colonised countries since independence and not since the Grand Bargain, realising southern chapters fair well independently during Covid, or Black Lives Matter. While all of this rightfully motivated many northern organisations to change, humility is still called for.

5. We’re the best in collaborating and we can make this count – if we stay connected

All sessions highlighted in one way or another civil society’s (perhaps not so) secret weapon: collaboration. Think Power Shift: Taking a route less travelled and partnering with local actors both as experts and interlocutors makes the difference and can produce different kinds of conversations and outcomes. Think Digital: only through collaborating with tech firms will we be able to both influence the tools generated for digital development and complement our capacities. Think Civic Space: by coming together as small organisations but in larger numbers, we are able to challenge powerful institutions, just like the example of the CSO alliance influencing the powerful Financial Action Task Force has shown.

But all of this can only work if we stay connected with the people in our communities, the (non-)citizens that make up civil society. It is to them that we are accountable. Only with them can we work towards the futures we want!

Miriam Niehaus

Head of Programmes

International Civil Society Centre

Miriam leads the Centre’s programmes. She started at the Centre as Executive Assistant in 2014 and then, as Project Manager, developed and implemented the Centre’s projects on civic space between 2016 and 2019. Prior to joining the Centre Miriam worked for VSO International and GIZ in the Palestinian Territories. She holds a BA in Islamic Studies and Social Anthropology from the University of Freiburg and an MA in Near and Middle Eastern Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies.

Whose future is it anyway? Civil society and strategic foresight

12th December 2022 by Ben Holt

This blog is based on a keynote speech delivered at the International Civic Forum 2022 (ICF 2022), the Centre’s annual civic space platform to network, build trust and identify opportunities for collaboration on emerging issues. The ICF 2022 focused on “Anticipating Futures for Civil Society Operating Space”. It kicked off a three-year initiative to strengthen anticipatory capacities and future readiness of civil society professionals working to defend civic and civil society operating space.

Every one of us wants to change the future.

That could mean making a difference to the life of one person, altering the entire course of history through revolution, or stopping the rise of the oceans as our climate crises deepens.

We’re all here because we want to make an impact on complex, messy issues, and that takes time. So, every day we make decisions, we implement plans, we deliver services. We move forward.

Understanding possible futures

All of these actions are intended to influence the future. We’re working to create something new or to prevent something worsening, to change somebody’s life or to remove injustices that affect us all.

But how well do we understand the future? How often do we explore the possibilities? When do we visit plausible future worlds to understand the challenges and the opportunities?

Or is ‘the future’ obscured, a grainy, opaque continuation of today with a bit more technology, a change in government, new fashions and a flying car or two?

Something that happens to us, rather than something we actively shape.

Connecting to the future

Part of everyone already lives in the future; a little corner of your brain and a collection of emptions is always there.

You might never have noticed but they are. Listen to them now.

I want you to put yourself on this grid. Move yourself up or down, depending on whether you are optimistic or pessimistic about the future. Move left or right depending on whether you think you can make a difference or can’t make a difference.

When I do this exercise with humanitarians, activists and civil society organisations, I always see lot of green and blue…

We tend to have a relatively pessimistic – or maybe realistic – view of the future but feel we can make a difference, which can give us hope. We wouldn’t be here if we didn’t.

But not everyone feels like that… because people don’t all have equal access to the future.

Entire groups of people are down there in the bottom left; disempowered, scared, angry, ignored and excluded by the system that is shaping the future they will have to live in.

Participants at the International Civic Forum share their feelings about the future.

Who shapes the future?

So many people are not asked or involved in reimagining the future, even by the people who say they’re here to support them. They are just expected to exist in it once it arrives. They are stripped of power now, and they are denied power over the future.

What can civil society do? We can give people a path to other side of that grid, where they feel they can make a difference, where they have the power to imagine a world that has a place and protection for them. (That means involving people, amplifying their voices, championing their perspectives).

And the institutions we run have to constantly navigate and shape that future. They have to become better at anticipating shocks and considering the implications of emerging trends. It has to be part of our daily operations, the mechanics of how our organisations function.

How do we do that? Thankfully, all humans have an amazing ability to time travel….

Storytelling and strategic foresight

Storytelling is deeply human. It is part of who we are as a species. We tell stories as individuals, as families, as organisations, as sectors and societies.

And that is what gives us this amazing ability to time travel; we can project ourselves into possible futures and tell others about it.

We all do it, all the time. It is how we make plans to meet at the weekend, how we set ourselves goals, how we organise our communities to take on a new challenge, it is how we mobilise people in politics and it’s how we ferment revolutions.

We tell stories about different visions for the future and ask for help to make it happen.

All the people who make real change in the world are futurists, whether they call themselves that or not; they have had the courage to question things and imagine something which is not yet visible.

Strategy and possible futures

Organisations already tell stories about the future all the time. We create visions and strategies, growth trends and budget projections.

We tell the story via formal documents and spreadsheets (to make it seem rational and reliable), but it is still a story about how we want the world to be, and how we will work to make it happen. And they are full of assumptions about what the future will be like.

But how many organisations consider what the world might be like when that strategy is supposed to thrive….? How many create different versions? And how many keep an eye on the weak signals and emerging trends that will shape the world tomorrow?

A nice strategy or vision is not enough. Our organisations need to be constantly engaged with possible futures, constantly anticipating risks and moving fast on opportunities, and we need to shift to anticipatory governance models to enable that.

Anticipating the future

This is critical because, left to their own devices, humans are actually not great at anticipating the future.

There are lots of psychological reasons – from optimism bias to data blindness, shifting baseline syndrome to an overreliance on past experience – so we need a more systematic way to explore the future, to add evidence to our imaginations, to create, examine and explore different possibilities.

Strategic foresight is a useful set of ideas, tools and methods that can help with this.

Emerging trends and change

Where do we start?

The world constantly changes. It can seem overwhelming. We are already living in a pretty dysfunctional dystopia. How do you start to make sense of today, let alone things that haven’t even happened yet?

There are some forces which shape human history and society, and always will. So, mapping some of those big drivers of change is a helpful starting point.

For example, politics shapes our lives and the history of our country and communities. It will continue to be a powerful force even as the personalities change, the institutions erode, and new movements emerge.

Gathering evidence

Civil society can act as a sensing network to spot things early and understand their impact in different places.

We must gather evidence, add detail, identify emerging trends and layer on different types of information. Add anthropological research and consultation to the mix, asking people about their changing world and hopes or fear for the future.

All of these elements help us to start spotting patterns and see the connections between seemingly random issues – they let us start to make sense of that overwhelming change.

And from this we begin to structure different possible futures and detailed scenarios. These artefacts become really useful tools for discussion; they open space for people to connect, talk and challenge assumptions about the future and imagine different possibilities.

Using strategic foresight

What do we do with it? Strategic foresight can be used in several ways.

We have already mentioned strategic planning: by expanding the range of alternative futures we plan for we are better prepared for the challenges we face.

Foresight also helps us deal with uncertainty and complexity by improving our understanding of emerging risks, issues and their potential implications.

In a sector well known for being risk-averse, this can only be a good thing.

I think that considering the future is a critical element for good innovation. Plausible, powerful scenarios are useful places to innovate in because there are new opportunities and challenges there.

It is also critical to consider the world any innovation will grow into – is your latest product or service ready for the future? Can you build anything into it as it grows which will make it stronger tomorrow?

And it is not all about speculation and innovation. You can use strategic foresight to stress-test decisions that have to be made now.

When you are choosing between option a and option b, you can walk them into the future and see if they will cope with a changing world or if they need to be rethought or refined now.

Critically, strategic foresight allows you to bring people together, to explore and negotiate a better world. It can create a shared vision that generates new energy, enthusiasm and hope.

All of this means we become better at anticipation: “identifying and preparing sooner for new opportunities and challenges that could emerge in the future” (UN) and we can bring people with us to face them, we can redirect finances, and we can mobilise resources.

I look to the future because that’s where I’m going to spend the rest of my life. – George Burns

Anticipation, surprise and action

Why is it important?

Strategic foresight is not about predicting the future. It is about avoiding surprise and shocks, about having more time to respond, and about actively working towards a future we believe to be better than today.

Because if we – as Civil Society organisations – don’t do that, we’re carrying the inequities of the past into the future and accepting that the injustices and inequalities that we’ve inherited from the past will inevitably be part of the future. We can do better than that. We can imagine a more hopeful future, and we have the power to deliver it, or at least fight for it.

Shaping the future

A lot of futures and foresight work is currently carried out by governments, corporations and the military. If they are deciding what humanity’s future should look like, it will reflect the biases and privilege of the people with power in those institutions.

Remember, Civil societies great strength is its reach and its diversity.

As my friend and futurist at the UN Aarathi Krishnan says: “Being more anticipatory necessitates being more participatory”.

We can surface new information and new stories. We can challenge the fact that not everyone gets an equal say in the future.

Done well, futures and foresight work can bring very diverse groups together and open up new options for action.

It can be a radical approach as it challenges short-term interests and hierarchy. It can create a new space for debate and a new horizon – beyond the election cycle or the next shareholders meeting.

Start by changing today

Good futures should challenge the world to consider different perspectives, different impacts, different needs and hopes so we can create new futures with new power structures, new representation and inclusion, and new ways to deliver powerful change.

We can imagine and champion these different futures.

It will take time to make them real. And that is why we need to start today.

Ben Holt

Global Lead for Strategic Foresight

International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC)

He works for the IFRC’s Solferino Academy, helping the Red Cross Red Crescent network to explore possible futures and learn the skills needed to make them useful to decision-making and delivery. He regularly collaborates with the Cambridge University Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER).

Discover the ‘Anticipating Futures for Civil Society Operating Space’ report

10th November 2022 by Eva Gondor

This report contributes to the Centre’s multi-year initiative Anticipating Futures for Civil Society Operating Space to strengthen the anticipatory capacities and future readiness of civil society professionals who are working to defend civic and civil society operating space. It is intended to provide a basis for further activities, especially in identifying gaps that require collective sector commitment.

The report is the outcome of an exercise to map the current landscape: the issues impacting civic space, the strengths and weaknesses of civil society organisations’ (CSOs) responses and their reflections.

Download Report

Eva Gondor

Senior Project Manager

International Civil Society Centre

Explore the Centre’s ‘Civil Society Innovation and Digital Power Shift’ report

7th October 2022 by Adriana Sahagún Martínez

Civil society organisations are innovators. They test new approaches to both traditional and emerging problems. Rapid digitalisation is one of today’s most prominent and influential global drivers of change, but decisions on how future digital development and data use proceeds still sit almost exclusively with the governments and businesses already powerful and privileged enough to influence and receive its benefits today, further growing the equity gap to the half of humanity who remain unconnected.

While civil society organisations have achieved some success in shifting power around these challenges, there is a significant opportunity for organisations to learn and benefit from the lessons others have encountered.

The report will share effective and inclusive innovation approaches, solutions and new ways of working which are helping to shift power in the digital ecosystem, and achieve more people-centred or nature-positive outcomes enabled by digital technology, by showcasing eight case studies from international and national CSOs around the world. Get inspired by real-life examples of new approaches.

Plan International – Equality Tech

Code for Pakistan – Fellowship Program

Internet Society and Murambinda Works Community Networks

Listen to our Futures and Innovation Podcast – an audio series streaming on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Soundcloud – and hear the stories of their inclusive innovation approaches to advance people-centred digitalisation, to either address system power imbalances or capitalise on emerging people power and technological capabilities.

Visit our Innovation Webpage to find out more about the aims of the report and all the case study content.

Adriana Sahagún Martínez

Communications Manager

International Civil Society Centre

Inclusive Data as a Strategic Tool for Building Back Better After the Pandemic.

29th August 2022 by Chandani Lopez Peralta

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to deepen inequalities around the globe and threaten the overall progress of the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development, this year’s High Level Political Forum (HLPF) brought together contributors from diverse backgrounds and geographies to highlight different impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic across all Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and reflect on the actions required to build back better from the pandemic.

On July 12, the Centre co-hosted a virtual side event at the 2022 HLPF together with the German Development Agency (GIZ), with the support of the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) to explore inclusive data practices in communities (which are mostly overlooked in high level policy discourses) as a strategic tool for building back better after the pandemic.

The insights from the speakers and panellists not only reaffirmed the fact that there is a massive lack of high quality and relevant data on Persons with Disability (PWD) and other marginalised groups, but the discussions further highlighted the important role Organisations of Persons with Disabilities (OPDs) and other Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) can play in filling the existing data gaps, especially during emergency situations like COVID 19. Through Community Driven Data (CDDs) and other forms of inclusive data, CSOs and OPDs help bring innovative perspectives on certain population and their needs, issues and trends.

Read reflections from the LNOB Partnership’s virtual side event at the 2022 HLPF

Chandani Lopez Peralta

Project Manager

International Civil Society Centre