GEN PARTNERSHIPS

Jachuka Rete, speaking at the Flourishing Diversity Summit.

Our partnerships are informal collaborations, of mutual support, learning and exchange between GEN members, the GDF team and our wider community. They involve projects and initiatives that are aligned with the overall mission and values of GDF. This includes building and consolidating sustainable partnerships with universities, nonprofits and other transformation-oriented organisations, collectives and individuals.

Our strategy with partnerships involves the team providing support and engaging in collaboration with individuals and organisations whose values and missions are aligned with GDF’s. These partnerships help broaden the Network’s outreach, scope and membership.

WOW Film Festival 2022, From Chaos to Hope: Radical Responses to the Anthropocene.

From Chaos to Hope: Radical Responses to the Anthropocene. 7 March, 2022. GEN partnered with the WOW film festival to nominate Kendi Borona (GESA 2015) to speak at this panel. She was in dialogue with Minni Jain and Fergus Drennan, responding to the themes raised in the films, ‘Reflection: A Walk with Water’, ‘Aya’, and ‘The Mushroom Speaks’. Minni is Operations Director of the Flow Partnership, UK, working globally on community driven decentralised catchment and landscape restoration water projects. Fergus is a wild food experimentalist and educator who runs total immersion foraging courses. Watch the recording here.

JourneyMan UK

Since May 2021 and until now, GDF co-director Emily Caruso has been providing organisational mentoring and team coaching to the operational team of Journeyman UK. Journeyman is a registered charity dedicated to supporting boys aged 13 to 17 in discovering their potential as they navigate the choppy waters of adolescence and are taken through the rites of passage necessary to become fully mature adults. They enable communities to skillfully take responsibility for supporting their boys and young men become the adults they want to be.

Creating Resilient and Thriving Learning Communities workshop

In partnership with the University of Cambridge, the GEN team lead a workshop for Conservation Leadership MPhil students on Creating Resilient and Thriving Learning Communities. This interactive workshop taught students about the comfort-stretch-panic zones and how this impacts their learning; tools for self-regulation and community care; and how to co-create a set of group agreements for a brave, mutually supportive, respectful learning and growing environment.

Observations on Being

A series of newly commissioned and existing immersive landscape installations which took place throughout August 2021 set in London Road Cemetery, Coventry, the UK, by Marshmallow Laser Feast in collaboration with artists Natan Sinigaglia and James Bulley. GDF advised the Marshmallow Laser Feast creative team (from March – June 2021) on cultivating these ecological meditations.

IUCN World Conservation Congress

4 September 2021. GDF co-director Nessie Reid co-led a session on Resilience in Conservation Leadership with partners from BirdLife International, Fauna & Flora international and Wildlife Conservation Society. The online campus session invited participants to share the challenges they face as leaders and to suggest ways that conservationists could be helped to become better leaders.

Seat at the Table, SilverBack TV and YouTube.

A 2-part documentary exploring the effects of climate anxiety and what can be done to help those experiencing it, meeting a host of inspiring contributors and experts along the way. In Episode 2, Nessie led Climate Justice Activist Daze Aghaji and Jack Harries of Eathrise Studio. through a grief workshop and explored tools for personal resilience and transformative justice, based on GEN’s Grief Toolkit #1. This episode has 1,327,602 million views and can be watched in full here.

Alleviating malaria in Venezuela

Alleviating malaria in Venezuela, which GEN established in 2018 with GEN resource person Eglée Zent is an ongoing partnership growing in strength. In this collaboration we provided institutional support, networking, mentoring and fundraising support for the project to achieve its aims. With catalytic support from GDF, project leaders recently received significant grant funding in early 2022 to expand their work in the Venezuelan Amazon. Donate to the project here.

Urboretum’s Virtual Symposium on the Future of Cities

Resilience and Adaptation panel, 5 February 2021, hosted by the Urboretum’s Virtual Symposium on the Future of Cities. The symposium brought together leading thinkers from fields including philosophy, urban ecology, anthropology, art and design as we tease out common perspectives and policy applications for resilient and meaningful smart green urban futures. GDF co-director Nessie Reid was invited by GEN Member Meredith Root-Bernstein (MERA 2018), along with existential risk expert Lara Mani, to talk about GEN and GDF’s work, along with what resilience and adaptation looks like in practice. A recording of the workshop can be found here.

BMotion Festival

21 August 2021. GEN was invited to join artist and dramaturge Tyrone Isaac-Stuart and GEN Resource Person Mama D Ujuaje (Food Journeys) to speak at an online workshop on Engagement, Resilience and Conflict: how to keep engaged? A recording can be found here.