Our impact field requires complex internal and external development strategies and pathways, where personal and professional growth is being understood as a fundamental element of sustainability and adaptive learning culture we need for dynamic ecosystems we work in. We always consider our work through the loop of 3 main interconnected dimensions: individual (me); organisational (my team, group, structure) and planetary (globe, ecosystems around, incl. other actors in different sectors). Therefore personal and professional development, aligned with the lifelong learning concept, is integrated into our long-term strategy and action plan, where we systemically assess individual learning goals, organisational and structural needs as well as learning needs of our partners. These needs served as a baseline to identify the main goal of this project: building capacities of employees to be more efficient in responding to the changing needs of our target groups, to increase capabilities to evaluate, strategise, share knowledge and innovation within a community of learning organisations, reflect on the impact of our work and ultimately adapt and build innovative organisational model, which will serve for more sustainable work in the future.
This project was planned as a complementary mechanism to strengthen the personal and professional growth of our staff members, facilitators and volunteers. During the application process, we scanned the results of a systemic evaluation of the needs, necessary skills and competencies of our organisation and identified the focus area for our capacity building, which could on one hand meet our development needs, on the other hand, reflect global and European trends for life-long learning of professionals as well as the demands of changing labour market (in the NGO sector) in new hybrid and digital reality. Following up on the mentioned evaluation, we implied that being providers of transformative learning experiences and implementers of educational programmes requires continuous improvement of strategic management, leadership skills, intercultural and conflict management competencies, as well as skills to coach and facilitate various international and cross-sectoral partnerships in our programmes. Seeking potential for innovation, we needed to connect to other organisations to learn and share our successful professional practices and exchange innovative tools, methods, approaches we apply in the international ecosystem we work with.