This article was written and published by social impact camp participant, Tomas Nores from Argentina.
You can find all his contact information on the bottom of the page.
What it was intended to be and what it really was.
Spoiler, I loved what happened in Sardinia.
But before telling you more about this amazing experience let me share my perspective around Social Impact. What is it? How can be done?
Are we already doing a social impact?
It can be complex to understand, so I will give a simple explanation, far from definitions. Those who know my professional path know that I have been working in this line for many years.
Social Impact is what happens when a project or action is carried out for a particular community. The consequences can be both positive and negative, since they generate changes in that group of people.
If we contemplate effects that promote an improvement in society, taking into account environmental, social and economic impacts, we can probably observe a positive social impact. Social impact is a continuous and dynamic process, precisely because it is centered on people and adapts according to evaluations and results.
Encouraging development in a responsible way requires communities committed to changing their reality, promoting local integral development in a conscious and sustainable way.
When a person or group works from a social impact perspective, it requires the following:
- observe, inquire, understand and comprehend the local reality
- working together with the community for the community
- reflect together to implement targeted actions towards their needs
- reviewing the results and defining next steps
- keep iterating, measuring impact, and collaborating with the people involved
For two weeks I was in a village of almost 1700 inhabitants called Laconi, in the center of Sardinia, Italy. The reason was a Social Impact Program together with Treballu, a rural co-living and co-working space. 🏡
I really recommend it, although is not for everybody, you should know what you are getting into. They are lovely people, but that’s not enough for you to have a great time.
There we met 8 professionals from 6 different nationalities, each with unique backgrounds. Food and good talks always in the table.
The experience turned out to be quite different from what we expected, but that made it even more interesting!
Just think about the diverse perspectives we had with an Argentinean, a Serbian, an Australian, a Belgian, a Canadian, and 3 Italians all together!
The richness of those conversations were part of the table. However, co-creation takes time and organization, among other things, and the oppressive heat of 44º Celsius without air conditioning was a determining factor for several people to make decisions regarding their way forward. Yes, big surprise, climate change is real and not everything lasts forever.
During one week we did as many shared activities as possible, reinforcing in a comprehensive way what we need to consider to work from the perspective of social impact. We reflected on the specific theme, understood what angers or saddens us in our society to direct our efforts, rethought the values that define us, strengthened our conscious leadership and learned areas to promote social impact projects. We also discussed and confronted.
We made ourselves heard. Up to that point we achieved a first milestone: to raise awareness, to inspire us, to reflect collectively and to nourish us from the common and the diverse. In week 2, being only 4 people, we managed to give continuity to what we started. We set a goal and accompanied the process so that Treballu could make its manifesto on the social impact it wanted to generate. The second milestone was that, the manifesto that Treballu achieved after the joint and conscious reflection.
The third milestone was connecting the dots, that moment of glory, that feeling of satisfaction when you manage to see the journey, take perspective and be grateful for the lessons learned. By visualizing all the actions, dialogues and questions that mobilized us as a group on the subject, we were able to see how we got involved and what we have achieved throughout the shared experience.
And thus, closing a cycle to open a new one, which is still unknown, but will come.
Once again, the process was the wonderful thing. It is difficult to transmit: what happens right there, the gestures, the looks, the emotions, the low moments, the lows, the plateaus, and the highs, the groupness, the collective intelligence at the service of something common.
In this images you can see some of the actions we did as part of the experience in social impact. By connecting the efforts we managed to make visible the path, the dialogues and questions that were mobilizing us as a group on the subject.
In one way or another, those of us who went through Treballu took something with us. I can sense that this experience did not go unnoticed, there was internal mobilization. 🎈
I’d love to hear your thoughts too! What motivates you?
How are you making a difference in your immediate community?
Let’s talk more about this, let me know what you think.
Thank you Tomas for sharing these two weeks with us and helping to create a small starting point for the future of Treballu and our social impact project.
You can find Tomas Nores’ contact information below:
Linkedin
Facebook
Instagram