Stories & Insights

On January 22, Root Change’s Rachel Dickinson joined a networking call with members of the IAC Berlin community to offer an introduction to Social Network Analysis (SNA)— what it is, why it matters, and how network coordinators can put it to practical use. The session was designed as a hands-on

In 2023, Root Change, with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, launched the Community Power Learning Initiative. This global coalition unites  organizers, and community leaders from diverse backgrounds—both from the U.S. and abroad—who are committed to leveraging community power to transform societies and advance equity and justice. Grounded in

Root Change launched the Community Independence Initiative (CII) in 2022 in New York as a pilot program in collaboration with The Child Center of New York. CII empowers families by recognizing their capabilities and fostering mutual support networks through a phased approach consisting of  start-up, baseline, investment, and virtual networking.

Youth Excel’s Issue-Based Collaborative Network (ICON) activity is engaging 11 youth organizations in Kisumu, Kenya. Through the ICON, organizations have been practicing Implementation Research, in which they develop learning goals for improving their program implementation. Root Change has been supporting the ICONs by helping to build a collective mindset, tasking

From 2017-2019, the Capacity 2.0 consortium supported two district level social labs in Malawi with a grant from USAID Local Works which brought together over 60 representatives from district government, civil society, and citizen groups. Participants diagnosed systemic problems with how development was conducted in their district and co-designed solutions

In 2019, Root Change collaborated with the Nonprofit Finance Fund (NFF) to integrate systems thinking and practice into the Vanguard for Financial Capacity Building Initiative. The Capacity Building Initiative supported six Philadelphia-based early childhood education programs to strengthen financial resilience and program delivery through a combination of funding and capacity-building

Pando Localization Learning System (LLS) is a new set of measures and an approach that helps projects and practitioners track progress towards strengthening local systems to own and lead initiatives that address development problems. The heart of the LLS is a dynamic online platform called Pando that collects social network

The social labs are part of a 2-year action learning initiative in Malawi, funded by USAID Local Works. This overview introduces the concept of social labs, the listening tour from which the social labs emerged, and the process of carrying out the social labs in two districts in Malawi.

Root Change worked with Chemonics and the USAID-funded SACE program in Nigeria to support 18 clusters of advocacy organizations using a Collective Impact approach. The following overview introduces Collective Impact principles and other approaches that were used to strengthen Collective Impact initiatives in Nigeria, including social network analysis, constituent voice,

Since June 2016, Root Change has collaborated with the Aga Khan Foundation’s SESEA program in Kwale County, Kenya, to explore how interactions between school actors and external support agencies influence student and school achievement. This initiative aims to uncover the role of social capital in educational success and inform future

ChildLinks Uganda, an initiative aimed at strengthening child protection services across the country, is a comprehensive system designed to improve communication and coordination among key stakeholders in child welfare, including community support workers, referral agencies, and local government entities. Root Change played a pivotal role in the project, partnering with

The Innovation Scouts program, developed by Root Change, leverages a global network of practitioners and web-based tools to identify and support promising investment opportunities in the social enterprise sector in countries such as Vietnam and Tanzania. These “Scouts” are business development service (BDS) providers and indigenous social investment funds trained

Root Change, in collaboration with Capacity for Disaster Reduction Initiative (CADRI), developed and piloted a program to support the Government of Jamaica in assessing and strengthening its disaster risk reduction (DRR) plans. This initiative led to a two-day workshop on DRR , designed to enhance the capacity of national and