The foundation
A quiet record in difficult contexts.
Community planning with First Nations, seaweed, and international development, across ten countries and some of the hardest places in the world to work.
20 yrsA community owned model, still running
10+Countries and complex contexts
$36M+In programs designed and delivered
8International agencies, incl. 2 UN
Selected partners & clients
Halfway River First Nation
IOM
UNESCO
Oxfam
Internews
Al-Quds University
Academic affiliation and collaboration
Al-Quds University of Jerusalem
North Island College
Northern Lights College
Queen's University
Selkirk College
St. Lawrence College
University of Calgary
University of Waterloo
Selected earlier work
The programs behind the numbers.
Complex programs across digital learning, education, economic development, and humanitarian response. A few that still shape how the practice works.
Community learning
Community-Based Learning & Action Model
Born from flipping a culture of waiting for handouts into one of local action. The model mobilized untapped human and social capital and put communities in the driver's seat, spreading from Palestine to Jordan, Lebanon, Yemen, and Morocco. Twenty years on it still runs, self reliant, with full community ownership.
20 years · 100% community owned
Digital learning
Netketabi
A national digital learning program built from nothing: original content, the systems to deliver it, and the digital skills young people need to become builders and problem solvers themselves. The point was never the technology. It was opening a pathway for a generation growing up in a fragile context.
$10M contract · $500K raised
Education systems
Model School Networks
A replicable model linking model schools to community learning and development centers, so that what a school learned, its community kept. Digital skills are not built only in a classroom. They are built in the community too.
Design & technical lead
Refugee education
Remedial Education for Refugee Children
Remedial learning for refugee children in host communities: meeting displaced children where their schooling was interrupted and building the footing they need to catch up and rejoin the classroom.
Host communities
Local economic development
Empowering Municipalities
Local economic development built at the municipal level, putting the tools of economic growth in the hands of the level of government closest to the ground.
Municipal LED
Livelihoods
Micro-Finance for Youth Entrepreneurship
A microfinance facility that paired lending with enterprise support, so youth led ventures and small businesses got the money and the capacity to use it. Either half on its own quietly disappoints everyone in it.
Small business & youth
Humanitarian
Emergency & Recovery Programs
Emergency response run alongside long term development across seven programs at once. In a fragile setting, the crisis and the future refuse to take turns, so the programs cannot either.
Seven programs
Higher education
Innovation Curriculum Suite
Four university courses on creativity, design thinking, innovation leadership, and financing for innovation. Teaching innovation is a useful discipline for anyone who advises on it.
4 courses designed