Civil society comprises a powerful constituency of change agents contributing towards the creation of an enterprising Nepal. They are key in bridging youth’s access and influence into key policy processes and interventions addressing socio-economic challenges. To strengthen the impact of civil society actors, we engage them in various workshops, courses and dialogues curated towards sharpening their skills in leading collaborative campaigns. Our target group ranges from individual change agents and change networks to civil society organizations. Our service expertise lies in supporting such agents with narrative building skills, relationships building skills for sustainable alliance formations, and strategizing skills for effective formation and implementation of campaigns tackling urgent societal challenges.
i. Leading With Your Story
Stories are critical to successful leadership, whether in the public, business, or social spheres. They provide you with simple yet powerful ways to connect with each other and tackle the most challenging issues together. Crafting a narrative founded on shared values and emotions is a leadership skill that enables you to listen to your inner calling, empathize with key stakeholders, and act collectively on an adaptive challenge. Leading with Your Story enables participants like you to craft your Story of Self to connect yourself with your team; your Story of Us to connect your team members with each other; and your Story of Now to mobilize your team to a call to action.
USYC, 2014-2016
From 2014 to 2016, 103 civic actors selected as United States Embassy Youth Council received training in crafting the public narratives of their civic engagement projects, serving various demographics across Nepal.
Nepal Peace Building Initiative, Jan 2020
In January 2020, NLA collaborated with Nepal Peacebuilding Initiative in training 18 former child soldier combatants to craft their advocacy narratives. Using the public narrative framework, participants verbalized experiences of their struggles and called for action commitments towards securing justice.
ii. Leading From Within
DFID Youth Advisory Panel, 2017
In December 2017, NLA conducted this session for the Youth Advisory Panel at UKAid, Nepal.
Daayitwa Innovation Leaders program 2015
22 leaders from the civil society, bureaucracy, private sector and politics were chosen as part of the 2015 Daayitwa Innovation Leaders program where the participants received the “Leading from Within” course that enhanced their leadership capacity such that their contributions to the society through their work was amplified.
iii. Workshop on Building Intentional Relationships
Successful civic organizing is based on relationships and creating mutual commitments. This short workshop coaches you to approach relationship building and networking with such purposeful intentionality. Participants learn a simple but effective framework to build relationships rooted in commitments to each other, rather than commitments to just an idea, task, or issue; as a result of one-on-one meetings.
Asian Youth Summit by MasterPeace Nepal, March 2019
In March 2019, NLA collaborated with Nepal Communitere to strengthen relationship building skills of MasterPeace Volunteers ‘Nelsons’ from various SAARC countries at the Asian Youth Summit 2019. Participants benefited from conducting meaningful one-one conversations with each other, and identified professional avenues where the learnt skills could be translated.
iv. Leading Collaborative Action
The need for collaborative action in ushering and sustaining meaningful change is ubiquitous. Collaborative action founded on the art of organizing requires the mastery of five key leadership practices. This course coaches participants like you to build intentional relationships as the foundation of purposeful collective action. It teaches you to articulate a story of why you and your team must take urgent action. And it builds on with teaching you to create strategies for turning your resources into the power needed to achieve clear shared goals; translate strategy into measurable, motivational, and effective actions; and structure your team with the shared purpose, norms, and roles for effective leadership.
Charmisson, China, January 2019
In Jan 2019, NLA provided this course to 23 team members of Charmission Travel, wherein the participants learnt fundamentals of adaptive leadership and intentional relationship building, and used those learnings to devise department specific SMART goals for accelerated company growth.
WildBound, China, 2019
As part of the Wildbound Himalayan Environmental Change Course for 11 high school students from Dalton Academy, Beijing, we conducted a short workshop where the students learned to recognize the differences between technical and adaptive challenges and the mindset required to navigate said challenges; learned to build intentional relationships with people as a foundation for transformational leadership teams; and understood core practices of transformational leadership teams by clarifying team purpose, norms, roles and responsibilities.
v. TOT on Leading Collaborative Action
Adaptive leadership depends on understanding yourself and others: your and your team and stakeholder’s values, motivation, and stories. The foundation of this kind of leadership lies on the relationships built with others, with whom we can share leadership. In addition, the art of organizing the power collected through such relationships becomes crucial. This training of trainers workshop (TOT) enables change agents to effectively transfer their leadership learnings from “Leading With Your Story” and “Leading Collaborative Action” through a singular seamlessly integrated toolkit.
YUWA, June 2019
In June 2019, NLA organized a TOT for 10 YUWA facilitators gearing to implement a civic engagement project on “Youth Leadership and Data” across 3 Provinces, under Nepal’s Data for Development program. During the TOT, participants learnt the practice of, and the methods to teach the skillsets of distinguishing adaptive challenges from technical, building intentional relationships, and formulating SMART strategies to mobilize stakeholders.