(By Martin Modlinger)
To date, our Leap Ecosystem has brought forward a Climate Justice Experiment, a Decolonising Philanthropy Experiment, and is developing a Radical Care Experiment and a Migrant Justice Experiment.
The reason I am talking about the „Leap Ecosystem“ and not just Leap is twofold: First: Leap is fluid. Some of the experiments emerged in the current Leap Facilitation Group, some are carried by former Leap members with just some support by the current group, some have developed halfway externally, but are now anchored in the current Leap Team. And second: Leap would be nothing without this ecosystem. It is Leap’s undeserved but huge privilege to have personal links and relationships as well as organisational connections and collaborations with, for lack of a better terminology, the activist world, the funder world and the world of social entrepreneurship. Most of the ideas we have in Leap are not actually radically new – we just have the time and resources to pull them together.
And speaking of time: we have discovered and keep re-discovering that things take time. Oh wouldn’t it be nice to have a philanthropic experiment ready in two weeks and just try out things! But in each and every case there is the need for reflection, for building trust with and in new environments, for finding new partners, and for development of the Leap team itself. A group of informed, well-connected and „dedicated changemakers“ (to for a moment use the buzzword bingo we so abhor but sometimes use to our advantage) does not automatically translate into a decolonial practice internally or externally or even to a shared understanding of justice. We have a lot of work to do, as a group and individually. In this regard Leap itself is an experiment.
Image by JamesDeMers from Pixabay