thank you, very kind!

Very much agree. We are beginning to invest more heavily in bringing a gender lens to our work here at R4D for precisely these reasons.

thank you!

> Much of black youth culture in South Africa celebrates constant self-invention, and is built on the gospel of entrepreneurship.

Also the ideal of the “Ted Talk genius”, which so reminded me of this article when I read “TED talks matter more than randomized control trials.”

> It aspires to the casual intellectualism of the Ted Talk genius and the easy generosity of the mega philanthropist.

Read it here: https://africasacountry.com/2017/12/the-new-testament

+1,000 to this: “a multitude of entities addressing some part of the greater challenge will, without appropriate incentives and mechanisms, self-organise themselves into effective, efficient, and scalable solutions. This is dangerously and wilfully naive.” Thanks so much for the thoughtful comments. – Nathaniel

Each year in Colombia millions of people work in hundreds of thousands of organisations, and deploy billions of dollars in an effort to solve the most pressing challenges of our time.

Yet despite this vast commitment form local and international organizations there remains an estimated $60 billion funding gap required to address the peace consolidation process and billions more for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs, or Global Goals) – the most comprehensive, cohesive and coherent description of these wicked problems to date.

We believe that the existing approach to a sustainable peace process or any other development challenges presumes that a multitude of entities addressing some part of the greater challenge will, without appropriate incentives and mechanisms, self-organise themselves into effective, efficient, and scalable solutions. This is dangerously and wilfully naive. The same can be said about the situation in Colombia, from the Peace Consolidation process, to the refugee crisis, reparation to more than 8 million victims, and mitigating some of the global highest level of inequality.

The bottom line is depressingly simple – there is no single entity with either the cash or the capacity to invest or deploy the requisite capital to achieve one, let alone all, of the Global Goals and the cost associated with the peace consolidation process. And there are currently no incentives rewarding outcome over effort, or mechanisms for collaboration at the scale necessary to actually solve these challenges.

The sector use the patronising language of ‘beneficiary’, or the mercenary language of ‘customer’ to define the human individual that they are seeking to serve. An obvious failure to acknowledge that every human person is a citizen of the world – saturated with fundamental sovereignty and agency – we perpetuate the Industrial age metaphors, models and missions that got us into this mess in the first place.

Further, we believe that the primary impediment to their resolution is rooted not solely in resources, technology, or intent, but primarily in a combination of ineffective systems design, and intransigent human behaviour driven by short-termism, fragmentation, and counterproductive incentives.

We are working in partnership with a number of organisations who agree that systems change, underwritten by a digital and financial infrastructure, is the missing element necessary for not only the resolution of the Global Goals, but for each successive wave of global issues that Colombians will continue to face as we continue to evolve.

Keep up the good work ….lets hope the sector unites!