About
One Family Foundation is a small family foundation which began its operations in the summer of 2018. Our open door policy and collaborative working methods have quickly led to high network individuals and social entrepreneurs joining forces with us to create a network enhancing and growing impact across all regions of the globe. One Family Foundation focuses on incubating and scaling projects based on the principles of Collaborative Systems Change and Social Franchising.
The founder of One Family Foundation, Jeroo Billimoria, has been working with Collaborative Systems Change and Social Franchising for more than 25 years and has founded several organisations that have devoted themselves to these two concepts. Read more about them by clicking the organisations' logo below.
Collaborative Systems Change
Collaborative Systems Change is an approach to transparently mobilise a diverse set of actors in order to collectively imagine and create positive, systemic change. This change can occur in existing systems, or it can be used to create new, more inclusive systems where they do not exist otherwise.
Collaborative Systems Change seeks to counteract the dominant paradigm for development, which focuses on top-down solutions implemented through hierarchical institutions. Rather, collaborative systems change recognises that there is no one big answer to complex problems, but instead a plethora of smaller efforts working in harmony that culminate the widespread adoption of new ways of thinking and doing. Collaborative Systems Change organisations are "honest brokers" who build networks of invested players that, with integrity, move forward a common agenda to tackle persistent, large-scale social problems.
Below are the five tactics for Collaborative Systems change.
Convene
The first tactic of brokering collaborative systems change is to democratise the playing field and convene the actions who are invested in the outcome of the systems change. The point of this exercise is to invite all actors who have a stake in the process - both individuals and organisations - to join in a network which will embark on a journey of continual sharing and learning.
Connect
The second tactic is to connect the players in the system through identifying common interests and sharing relevant knowledge. Convening and connecting together convert a system into a network. Through convening, the broker actively brings many different stakeholders together into the same space, while through connecting, the broker ensures that the stakeholders are brought into relationships.
Co-Create
The collaborative systems change broker helps to co-create an overall strategy toward a "North Star" goal, a seemingly unattainable goal that motivates a group of diverse actors to work together. The broker also co-creates programming at national and local levels, always emphasising that partners' and stakeholders' ownership over their own change efforts.
Celebrate
Traditional change efforts save celebration to the end of the process; collaborative systems change brokers use this powerful social tool to not only celebrate milestones, but the process itself. Brokers of collaborative systems change create ongoing celebratory activities - such as award ceremonies and customary events - that move the process forward and keep participants motivated and involved.
Calibrate
Collaborative systems change involves many different change efforts, adapted to various contexts, happening concurrently. Collaborative systems change brokers therefore play a vital role in supporting efforts to research and measure the impact of change efforts so that local adaptions can maximize their impact and learn from one another.
The concept of collaborative systems change is derived from the experience of Child & Youth Finance International (CYFI), an organisation that concluded its role in December 2019 after succeeding to ensure full economic citizenship for children and youth in 175 countries, reaching more than 40 million children and youth and collaborating with 63 000 organisations.
Please read their case study on systems change.
