Jose Antonio Gordillo Martorell is the founder of Cultural Inquiry, and Catalyst from the Catalyst Lab cohort 2023–2024. With this blog post, he shares his personal experiences that have brought him to where he is now, and how the Catalyst Lab has empowered his personal growth along his journey towards change.

Zusammen mit Impact Hub Zürich und One Planet Lab hat collaboratio helvetica den Changemaker Workshop Bundling Forces organisiert.

Plastic pollution in oceans is an urgent and visible problem, but merely cleaning up won't solve it. Our co-founder Nora Wilhelm touches upon this topic and the importance of paradigm shifting during her latest article with Forbes Magazine.

Nora Wilhelm and Diana Oser from collaboratio helvetica traveled to Alpbach in Austria to give speeches and workshops on the topics of transformation and systems change at the Convention4u 2023.

The iceberg model reveals deeper aspects of social and environmental challenges. Take plastic pollution in oceans: cleaning is crucial, but without addressing the root causes, we're stuck in a cycle. We must question the structures, laws, and mindsets that perpetuate this issue. Read our insightful blog post on understanding and addressing the iceberg model. Let's avoid repeating history and move beyond surface-level fixes to create lasting change.

Le HUB de l'Université de Lausanne organisait mercredi 3 mai la deuxième édition du Forum de l'Innovation Sociale. «Ensuite, nous devrions réfléchir de manière systémique. Les personnes qui ont un même but restent souvent dans une logique de compétition, de combat, alors qu'elles pourraient avoir une logique de collaboration. Il faut trouver de nouvelles manières de penser et de procéder pour adresser les défis sociaux et écologiques complexes» - Nora Wilhelm

The term social innovation has become a buzzword, but it’s important to keep in mind that there is no one single definition that everyone using it agrees upon. Put simply, social innovation is about addressing the challenges humanity is facing, such as climate change, biodiversity loss, poverty, and gender equity - just four of the many challenges contained in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Social innovators are the people deploying different types of strategies to address these challenges.

Funders typically go through a cyclical process when fulfilling their purpose. They strategise and make key decisions about what should be funded and how, to what end. Then, those who choose to be transparent communicate about this strategy and the process that enables it, for example with a call for applications or a page on their website explaining their funding approach and who is eligible…

Collaboratio helvetica has been on a journey since its foundation in 2017. A journey with many obstacles and stumbling blocks. A journey in which experimenting, being bold and leaving the beaten track are key. A journey whose destination is unknown. On such a journey, the so-called failures and defeats were obviously numerous - both at the project level and at the organisational level.

More and more people agree that we need to work towards systemic change. But how can we define it, and where to begin? Systemic change can be understood as a change in how a system operates from the inside out. Besides deep shifts in the underlying paradigm(s), this includes changes in the Rules, Roles, Relationships and Resources that govern a given system (USAID, 2016).

I like to start with a story that impressed me when hearing it the first time, and I am still inspired when re-watching the video footage. It gave me a metaphor and scientific “evidence” for how subtleties can have huge and unpredictable ripple effects:

Both practice and a growing body of research show that the complex challenges we are facing, such as climate change and inequality, will not successfully be addressed with current thinking. Indeed, no single organisation nor sector can hope to reach one of the goals set in the Agenda 2030 alone.

Die Art und Weise, wie wir kollektiv auf die Corona-Krise reagieren, sagt viel über unser Denken und unsere Kultur aus, über die Art und Weise, wie wir gewohnt sind, Probleme zu definieren und eine Lösung für diese zu suchen. In den letzten Jahrtausenden der Entwicklung unserer westlichen Kultur haben wir gelernt, uns selbst als Menschen als getrennt von allem anderen zu sehen und zu erleben - getrennt von der Natur (wie es im Wort Um-welt zum Ausdruck kommt), getrennt von anderen Menschen und getrennt von einem grösseren Ganzen.

Instead of fighting the symptoms and clinging to old systems that don’t work anyways, let’s use this time to reflect and address the root causes to shape the Switzerland we want to live in. Staying in a state of busyness and jumping to (re)action may be comforting but if that’s what we focus on, we will never be addressing what got us into this situation in the first place. We are kicking off a series of blog posts as exploration around what these times are calling us to be and do

On the occasion of their 20th anniversary, Biovision Foundation offered our Catalyst Nora Wilhelm the challenge of holding a Laudatio, expressing her vision for the next 20 years. Amongst her conclusions were: