We bring a holistic and critical lens to our evaluation and research work. We consider ourselves to be decolonizing ethnographers. We believe in the power of stories and the complex intelligences encapsulated in the narrative form. Stories expose the intersectional ways that peoples, communities, and organizations experience change. Engaging through story lays the groundwork for more complex renderings of the contexts and issues we try to understand.

We curate and cultivate civic dialogue and design civic engagement strategies. Impactful and sustainable forms of dialogue and action demand that we engage the psychological, emotional, social, political and spiritual dimensions of everyday life. We offer methodologies and tools that aim to engage and transform the whole instead of the parts.

We design popular education tool kits and curriculum that can help citizens and communities weave together their understandings of, and insights into, the social & structural systems that shape their life trajectories. Knowledge is power and we believe that all peoples and communities have access to powerful knowledge that can be drawn upon for sustained change and transformation. Our tools and curriculum aim to ignite the dynamism of endogenous and local ways of knowing so we may collectively apprehend the world in new, deeper, and more actionable ways.

We design policy development processes that move beyond the bounds of participation and consultation. We aim to co-cultivate and co-design citizen led policy development process that subverts the dominant framework of “expert” driven policy development. We develop processes that strike a balance between the skills and experience of policy makers and citizens that are often relegated to anecdotes or case studies. The democracy that we need depends on citizens taking up and occupying greater space in policy decision-making processes.

We design strategic planning processes that are deeply inclusive and put the perspectives of those the strategies aim to affect first. We approach inclusive strategy design as a methodological, cultural, and power issue. As a result we apply methodologies that promote a culture of inclusive strategic planning by addressing the way power imbalances can affect who is heard and who drives strategic planning.