Well Grounded facilitates transformational processes with organisations and leaders, often resulting in profound shifts of mindset, culture, and effectiveness. These changes can take years to bed in, take effect and for the results to be felt and understood.
Alongside our regular and ongoing monitoring, evaluation, accountability and learning processes, Well Grounded has embarked on a process to check in with longstanding partners and gather their stories of the changes they have witnessed connected to their collaboration with Well Grounded. This document presents the first collection of these stories, gathered through interviews with representatives of a range of organisations that we supported during our first decade of existence. We will continue to build on these and share further stories over the coming years.
We want to be very clear; we will never try to claim an organisation or leader’s results or their impact as our own. We are facilitators. We hold space and ask good questions to allow the organisations and their leaders we work with to take charge of their own development. In gathering these stories, we are aiming to better understand how change happens, and where our contribution was most appreciated, while also building the case for investment in this kind of process, and for the essential role of experienced facilitators.
We would like to thank our partners for their time and support in sharing their stories with us, and for their inspirational work and engagement to safeguard the environment and people of the Congo Basin.
The author
The authorThese stories were collected and written by Jimm Chick, an organisation development and communication specialist, based in Yaounde, Cameroon.
STORIES OF CHANGE: EVARISTE MBAYELO
Supporting an Emerging Civil Society Leader in the Central African Republic
Evariste Mbayelo is a dynamic civil society leader in the Central African Republic. We accompanied him on his journey by providing leadership development support, as well as organisational development support with his former organisation Initiative pour la Democratie et le Développement Durable (I3D). In this story, Evariste shares how working with Well Grounded over the years has propelled him forward in his career, while enabling sustainable organisational growth, and even inspired him to become an organisational development practitioner himself.
Evariste Mbayelo has become a household name among civil society organisations working in the conservation and environmental protection sector in the Central African Republic.
STORIES OF CHANGE: CAMGEW
How Strategic Focus Helped CAMGEW Translate Vision and Passion into Impact
Cameroon Gender and Environment Watch (CAMGEW) works with communities around the Kilum Ijim montane forest in Northwest Cameroon to preserve the forest ecosystem while developing local livelihoods and empowering women. Well Grounded began working with CAMGEW in 2015 and accompanied them over two years, enabling them to develop a clear strategy, and strengthen their internal structures and systems.
In this story, dynamic co-founders Emmanuel Wirsiy and Ernestine Leikeiki share how working with Well Grounded enabled them to focus and achieve more impact, while growing and maturing as an organisation.
STORIES OF CHANGE: CFLEDD
Catalysing Efforts to Enable Women and Men to Play Key Roles in Natural Resource Management in the DRC
The Coalition of Female Leaders for the Environment and Sustainable Development (CFLEDD) is a network of women and women’s organisations that seeks to promote the representation of women in environmental protection efforts in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Well Grounded facilitated organisational development processes with CFLEDD between 2017 and 2019, enabling them to develop a clear organisational strategy while strengthening their governance, operations and administration. In this story, Vice Coordinator, Chouchouna Losale describes how this work led to the network being more effective at ensuring women’s participation.
STORIES OF CHANGE: CHOUCHOUNA LOSALE
The Making of an Outstanding Female Civil Society Leader in The Congo Basin
Chouchouna Losale, as Vice Coordinator with the Coalition of Female Leaders for the Environment and Sustainable Development (CFLEDD), is a prominent leader championing women’s participation in the management of natural resources in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In this story Chouchouna shares how taking part in Well Grounded’s ecofeminist leadership programme gave her greater awareness of what leadership means, and equipped her to balance multiple competing demands on her time and energy.
STORIES OF CHANGE: FLAG
Strategic thinking and planning boosts FLAG’s organisational growth
The Field Legality Advisory Group (FLAG) is a regional organisation working to promote good forest governance, and supporting forest resource monitoring in the Congo Basin. Well Grounded worked with FLAG from 2012 – 2014 focusing on organisational strategy and resource mobilisation, and they are now also participating in the Canopy leadership programme. In this story, Horline Njike, FLAG’s Secretary General reflects on how working with Well Grounded enabled FLAG’s founders to dream bigger, and move beyond a ‘project mentality’ towards building a sustainable organisation and expanding their reach and impact.
Currently operating as a well-structured and coordinated organisation, FLAG was founded by a team of three civil society actors who brainstormed on establishing a project to promote forest governance in Cameroon in 2012. From a project idea, the group of three have worked assiduously to transform the project idea into a civil society powerhouse in the forest governance sector in Central Africa.
With a current staff capacity of 17 full-time personnel, FLAG has fixed its sights high, aiming for bigger transformative goals within the region.