How to deliver effective responses to complex challenges?
Learning by doing: Gigatonne Challenge, an example of a strategic response to the climate crisis
Join us for Lab Stories - a series of online meetings with practitioners of various novel systemic & participatory approaches - also known as Social Laboratories or Innovation Laboratories (Labs). In an informal conversation, we inquire deeper into the practice, ask provocative questions and seek lessons and inspiration for our own work.
In June, our guests from Complexity University will share how to navigate complex challenges and what are some practices of effective responses. They will share this through their programme “Gigatonne Challenge”, a hands-on, bottom-up approach to tackling the climate crisis. Since October 2020, over 700 citizens from 18 countries formed 47 teams and abated 77.4 tonnes of CO2 through this learning-action programme. With their team of faculty, coaches and practitioners, we will:
learn about practices for an effective strategy used in Gigatonne Challenge: strategy as storytelling, strategy as inner game, and strategy as action
learn what rapid prototyping looks like in practice
explore how does this approach relate to your work and context
Our guests
Tara Rao has over 30 years of experience working with governments, bilateral and multilateral organisations in social development and environmental issues. Tara’s experience includes working as Senior Policy Advisor - Emerging Economies and a member of the Global Climate Change Team, WWF; Programme Director, Amnesty International India; Director, Good Pitch Karnataka. Her more recent work relates to social entrepreneurs, media-making, and social change, working with empathy as a skill for problem-solving with a design thinking approach, facilitating a mix of processes, outcomes, and mentoring. She is a faculty member, coach, and fellow with Complexity University.
Bashar M. Zeitoon collaborates with institutions and community groups to heighten awareness of the global climate crisis and elicit policy responses. Over the past two years, he advised the Government of Jordan on climate change policy. He co-developed the country’s climate change by-law, prepared a climate change action plan, and authored a report assessing the country’s climate change policy. Bashar has delivered multiple capacity-building workshops on climate change to youth, professional, and community groups and decision-makers. In his interventions, Bashar advocates commitment to systems thinking, leadership, governance, and stakeholder collaboration. Bashar is a convenor and coach with Complexity University.
Grace Saji is passionate about environmental justice and social development. She has worked with Greenpeace India and Denmark as a digital communications consultant and a web analyst. She has worked on a range of policy and action-oriented campaigns in India and has mobilised people across India. She is currently working as a senior marketer with Asia and Middle-East Insurance Review— publishing houses. She is also associated with a community-based digital project for school dropouts in Kolkata’s slums. At Complexity University, she is a faculty member, coach, and fellow.
Shipra Agarwal leads workshops and projects at Skrap, a sustainable social enterprise. She loves working with children, making art, and finding new ways to reduce waste. She is part of a Gigatonne Challenge team in Bangalore, India. Their prototype involves diverting tender coconut waste away from landfills and sending it to a local farm that uses it as mulch or to create raised beds thereby having a double benefit of preventing coconut waste from releasing GHG emissions and helping provide soil nutrients. The team has so far abated 21.25 tonnes of CO2 since November 2020.
Barbara Falcon holds an MSc in Environmental Science and is a passionate horticulturist. She has been involved in community-led initiatives to reforest and grow organic food in Spain and the United Kingdom. In 2016 she moved to Brussels to work as a project manager in technical assistance and innovation projects in agriculture and rural development. She currently lives in Gran Canaria and is involved with the Gigatonne Challenge in the Canary Islands team.
About Lab Stories
Lab Stories is part of Collaboratory where we explore the power of experimental multi-stakeholder processes and the Social Labs methodology for addressing complex (wicked) social, environmental, and business challenges.
The conversation will be in English and the timing is in Eastern European local time (EET).
At Collaboratory we apply the principles of the Sharing Economy and we invite you to pay as much as you can. When you add a little bit more, you open up the events to more people and support our mission to raise awareness of novel participatory ways of working.