How evolving mission expression and practices create a ripple effect of continuous change.

Unsurprisingly, balancing our alliances with existing collaborations in Sierra Leone caused other organizational expression and practice changes. We recognized there was a better way to conduct any joint mission collaboration, and we began to work to balance responsibility appropriately with all alliances, to share power equally with our friends in Sierra Leone, and have local leaders chart the course for local work. We formalized these changes in stages, moving more and more into balance in our approach to one another.

We still spend 80% of our time and energy focused on working with our allies on direct program improvements in Sierra Leone, but we are paying greater attention to how we can maximize the ripple effect of alliance and collaboration throughout the country, and into the world at large.

Distinguishing mission partnership from mission alliance is one way that we have been shifting expression and fueling practices to exponentially increase collaborative impacts.

We believe that change is essential for implementation of sustainable, permanent solutions to the big problems we are all trying to address.  

This is why we changed our language in 2024 with respect to our relationship to institutions we support, defining those as alliances, rather than partnerships.

We reserve the language of “partnership” for those who are joining us in linking resources to needs.