13 Inspiring SSIR Articles From 2023

(Illustration by Raffi Marhaba, The Dream Artistic)

Your inbox might be filled with year-end lists: the very best of this style or that. SSIR’s editors wished to transcend our “high performers” of the 12 months and share tales from 2023 that impressed and inspired us with inventive examples of problem-solving and collaboration. These articles cowl revolutionary approaches to management, social enterprises bettering folks’s lives, therapeutic approaches to social harms, inspiring views on the way forward for social innovation, and extra. We hope you learn these tales and are available away feeling extra optimistic as this 12 months ends, and we stay up for persevering with to work collectively on social change within the subsequent.

“Creating methods change lies not in trying to a single particular person however in partaking folks to attach and lead collectively via the unknown.” Sida Ly-Xiong of Nexus Neighborhood Companions examines how connecting folks can construct essential mass for change inside and throughout methods.

“Shouldn’t philanthropy be within the enterprise of offering David a megaphone and a minimum of a slingshot within the battle in opposition to Goliath?” Crystal Hayling, retiring govt director of the Libra Basis, places forth a imaginative and prescient for philanthropy with new practices that transfer towards a extra simply future.

Chicago Journey Remedy helps younger folks and households in high-crime communities to heal by connecting with nature. (Open to nonsubscribers for a restricted time. Subscribe right here.)

Shunned by conventional monetary methods, intercourse employees in Asia’s largest red-light district began their very own financial institution. Now it’s empowering different marginalized teams. (Open to nonsubscribers for a restricted time. Subscribe right here.)

“Inventive tasks have a singular capability to empower communities to check a world completely different from their current actuality. Certainly, the inventive course of could be significantly helpful in contexts of poverty and hardship, the place it may be troublesome for folks to suppose past their rapid alternatives and constraints, and picture different futures.”

Civil activists in Pakistan banded collectively in response to social and political deterioration and determined schooling was the essential lever to constructing and buttressing a secure civil society. They based The Residents Basis in 1995 and have constructed a coeducational faculty system and a popularity for delivering high quality and inexpensive schooling. (Open to nonsubscribers for a restricted time. Subscribe right here.)

7. Constructing Youth Energy
by Veronica Terriquez & Kahlila Williams

Over the 2010s, the variety of youth organizing teams in California grew from 10-15 in 2010 to 171 by 2019. Primed by the undocumented youth motion at the start of the last decade, and drawing vitality from the allied Motion for Black Lives within the latter half, these teams have interaction rising numbers of adolescents in addressing native, regional, and even statewide points.

“By strolling inside this panorama, honoring the constructive instruments of the tradition slightly than attempting to steer or coerce folks out of it, we are able to foster change.” The authors discover the best way to use customs and tradition to level out the injury that dangerous gender norms may cause.

“We’re a nation of innovators; we all know the best way to accomplish transformational leads to the face of immense challenges. We’ve achieved highly effective methods change earlier than. Now we should obtain it for everybody.” Michael McAfee, president and CEO of PolicyLink, shares a imaginative and prescient for the way forward for social innovation.

OneVillage Companions is reworking the which means of partnership by shifting from providing community-led packages to changing into a community-led group: “The nonprofit realized that community-led tasks didn’t equate to community-led management at an organizational degree.”

“As we rework trans communities with our sources, our discipline also needs to be open to being reworked by trans communities’ fashions of sharing energy, creating inclusive and accessible areas, and shifting with self-awareness and conviction.” Aldita Gallardo of the Fund for Trans Generations at Borealis Philanthropy shares recommendation for constructing partnerships with trans communities.

“What would occur if we leveraged the collective energy of philanthropy to enhance the lives of a particular group of individuals slightly than enhance outcomes inside a particular program space?” Susan Thomas of the Melville Charitable Belief shares classes from launching the funder collaborative Funders for Housing and Alternative.

“What can particular person buyers do in the event that they search to ship each good returns and impression? A superb first step is to contemplate the place you might have particular data and distinctive entry. For many particular person buyers, the reply might be at dwelling. Solely you realize concerning the insulation of your own home, your heating system, your automobile issues, or the academic wants of your kids. And your cash is nicely positioned to make these investments. It alone will make the distinction between constructive change and enterprise as regular.”

Learn extra tales by SSIR Editors.