A WEEK IN OXFORD: WHAT RESONATED AT MARMALADE FESTIVAL
At the end of April, some of The Social Change Nest (SCN) team went to bright and sunny Oxford for the Marmalade Festival. From conversations on deliberate democracy and civil society, to panels on creating global systems that put vulnerable adolescent girls in Sub-Saharan Africa first, there was no limit to the inspiring, bold and creative ideas shared.
At the heart of the festival was a clear commitment to social impact and an approach to systems change that puts the people most affected first. As a flexible, trauma informed, people led organisation working to amplify the work of unincorporated groups, we resonated with many of the key messages shared, especially:
- Ensuring that our team is emotionally, psychologically and physically equipped to work with those on the frontline.
- Scaling in a sustainable way that continues to put our groups first.
- Collaborating with funders and other stakeholders across the sector, because the world’s greatest challenges cannot be solved in isolation.
In this blog, we’re sharing some of our reflections from a few of the events, discussions and forums we attended throughout the festival.
Democracy is Possible through Deliberation
Hosted by Democracy Next, this forum explored the need to transition from traditional representative models (where elected officials are viewed as agents for their constituents) to a ‘deliberate wave’ of democracy, spearheaded by citizen assemblies. The core argument was that current political systems fail because they rely on self-selection and assertiveness, which naturally exclude those living in poverty, migrants, people with disabilities or those with language barriers.
Democracy Next expressed sortition as a possible solution, whereby organisations can purposefully curate a ‘mini-public’ that reflects the true diversity of society. This structural shift would ensure that decision-making power is not in the hands of the few but is instead redistributed through learning, rotation and deep deliberation.
A key component of this model is the ‘learning phase’, in which participants are briefed by both technical experts and individuals with lived experience. This helps to empower citizens, many of whom may not have much prior knowledge on a topic, to make informed decisions on complex issues.
The transition to a political model where democracy is a deliberate part of the citizen assemblies raises critical questions regarding their design. If participants are given access to information and expert teachings that the average citizen does not have, there is a risk of creating a new gap between the assembly and the public that they represent. Furthermore, the pre-planning phase remains a controversial point. Mapping and identifying marginalised communities requires a high degree of transparency to ensure bias doesn’t shape who is included in conversations.
To be truly democratic, the mapping and planning of these assemblies must be as rigorous and inclusive as the deliberation itself. This is something that we actively work towards at The Social Change Nest, hosting groups such as Our House, who build public awareness of and demand for democratic systems change, incubating Brent Giving, who operate a Participatory Grant Making community program, and supporting the Participatory Grantmaking Community, who we hosted a dinner with during our time in Oxford.
Girl Centred Care Systems across Sub-Saharan Africa
The Audacious Project was joined by Tiko, an organisation working to strengthen the resilience of girls across Africa, and Ipas, who work with partners around the world to advance reproductive justice, to claim the importance of girl-centred care systems across the African continent.
Millions of adolescent girls between the ages of 15 and 19 face overlapping barriers to health, education, safety and economic opportunity. To support their families financially, these girls are often forced to drop out of school to marry early. This also exposes them to the ‘Triple Threat’ – sexual violence, HIV/AIDS, and unintended pregnancies, narrowing their chances of having productive and good livelihoods.
Unfortunately, responses from funders, organisations and even governments are disconnected from the realities faced by these girls. Although there is attention on supporting them, it is often quite short-term and characterised by fragmented funding, siloed policies and disconnected services. As a result, it’s the symptoms of the challenge that are addressed, rather than the root causes, making long-term and profound change superficial.
The three organisations ended the discussion by emphasising that if we want to create long-lasting impact, we need to move towards more integrated, feminist, and girl-centred care systems.
Through the Urban Movement Innovation Fund (UMIF), we have supported youth climate groups whose impact extends across communities, advancing opportunities for women and girls throughout the Global Majority. To date, we have distributed over USD 1.5 million to individuals, organisations and groups worldwide. This includes Garima from Nepal and Chido from Zimbabwe, both of whose projects centre on creating safer spaces for women and girls. We spoke with them as part of our blog series on the UMI Fund.
Poverty Solutions and Evidence
Hosted by the Foundation for International Community Assistance or FINCA International, this discussion focused on the importance of adapting, trialling and testing solutions to poverty before they are used on the ground. With over 40 years of experience in microfinance, FINCA International has supported nine million people across 26 countries, working to end poverty through sustainable and scalable solutions inspired by the insights and needs of the communities they serve.
They highlighted how effective solutions to poverty need to be based on human-centred designs (HCD), and how, without them, you risk missing the needs of the people you aim to support. In 2024, they created the Poverty Eradication Lab to push innovation strategy towards transformative change across the sector. This lab has aimed to pursue three key things:
- Test different ideas.
- Make mistakes and fail, both of which are key to true innovation.
- Enable and expand co-creation to ensure that it is truly competitive.
In an interactive session, we were split up into groups to explore the story of ‘Amina’, an archetype of a young, pregnant, small business owner navigating poverty, entrepreneurship and financial burdens simultaneously. Each group was given a set of ‘speed’ and ‘evidence’ cards to represent competing priorities in produce and programme design, which we had to give away depending on different real-world challenges such as policy changes or shifts in external environments.
This exercise provided us with a glimpse into the work that the Lab does, and allowed us to trial and test our own solution to poverty for an issue which affects millions worldwide.
The rigorous and exhaustive techniques that this lab has provided have been key in enabling FINCA International to fill in gaps in research, along with assessing what is important for them to continue their impactful work. By grounding the work in the communities that are being impacted, the true success of initiatives can be measured and experimented with further.
We officially launched the Community Nest last year as a wraparound support system for our community of 700+ groups. We aim to further group impact, weave networks and sustainably increase capacity. To ensure that it was truly helpful to those in our network, we have spent the last year trialling, testing and adapting, which we will continue to do as the ecosystem changes.
Making a Case for Those Off the Grid
Another event hosted by the Audacious Project united Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT), Last Mile Health and Thorn in a panel discussion addressing the importance of ‘counting the uncounted’, referring to individuals in rural communities and those most vulnerable to humanitarian and climate disasters.
HOT is a global non-profit using open mapping to support humanitarian response and community development. They have mapped over 1 billion people in low and middle-income countries using WhatsApp and drone imagery, aiming to empower local communities to do the mapping themselves, and to train them to be a key part of the local structure.
HOT’s maps have been used by other humanitarian organisations, including Last Mile Health, which supports more than 23,000 community health workers to provide access to primary care to over 33,000 people in Liberia, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, and Malawi. In Liberia, they have used mapping combined with satellite imagery and machine learning to identify remote and isolated communities for health service planning.
Lastly, Thorn, an organisation dedicated to fighting child sexual exploitation, uses data mapping and AI to identify victims and map the digital infrastructure of abuse. Through their Spotlight tool, they also help law enforcement officers map online footprints of perpetrators.
The panel concluded by emphasising the significance of humanitarian mapping in making the ‘unseen seen’ so that those living in the most vulnerable areas can access the services needed to thrive. There was also a shared focus on ethics, with all three organisations agreeing that those contributing to mapping work should have control over what they share. They also highlighted the importance of recognising the divide between public and private imagery in their work.
Conclusion
Despite the Marmalade Festival showcasing a variety of events on different topics and interests, the core ideas across the board were the same. Systemic change, long-term sustainable actions and making sure that the most vulnerable are heard and considered.
At The Social Change Nest, we work to make sure that those on the frontline have the support they need to keep doing the impactful work that we heard about at the festival. Although we focus primarily on groups and funders in the UK, we resonated a lot with what was shared, especially messages on:
- Collaboration so that solutions to the world’s biggest challenges can be made from different perspectives.
- Prioritising the emotional, psychological and physical needs of our team.
- Sustainable growth which puts our groups first.
Ensuring that everyone is addressed regardless of their background and the communities they support, and can access the services that they need, is a vital part of the work that we do. Our place as a fiscal host has been instrumental in enabling us to help connect grassroots groups to funders and larger organisations in strategic ways.
Do You Think We Can Support You?
If you’re a group who thinks we might be able to support you, please reach out to rufaro@thesocialchangenest.org. We’d be happy to chat!
If you’re a funder and this has got you thinking about how you could make your funding more inclusive and aligned with how impact shows up in practice, please reach out to aroa@thesocialchangenest.org
