Four-Day Workshop Generates New Projects + Partnerships

Twenty-five Kellogg Fellows from across Mexico gathered in Bacalar, Quintana Roo for four days in August 2017 with an ambitious plan. They wanted to greatly strengthen their network, increase their leadership skills and collaborate even more on innovative projects for their communities. So far, they are off to an excellent start.

The gathering — called Jornada (day of work) — was the first of its type for these Kellogg Fellows. There are 81 Fellows in Mexico, which is home to the largest number of Kellogg Fellows in Latin America. But this was the first time Mexican Fellows had hosted a Fellow-driven collaborative “working session” for other Kellogg Fellows, according to Carmen Villa, (KPFL-02) who helped organize this event for Kellogg Fellows Leadership Alliance (KFLA).

“A design team of Mexican Fellows created a space for knowledge sharing to facilitate effective collaboration among the Mexican Kellogg Fellows,” explains Carmen. “This workshop was based on what Mexican Fellows determined was useful for their work and communities. By partnering with excellent NGOs and other facilitators, these Fellows received helpful feedback from experts in leadership, crowd-funding, social change and other valuable methodologies.”

The Jornada event was designed to:

Strengthen leadership skills of Kellogg Fellows in Mexico.
Generate strategic alliances for project collaboration among these Fellows.

Encourage project proposals that leveraged and supported collaboration in KFLA’s network.

During the multi-day workshop, the KFLA event was divided into three key focus areas:

The first focus defined the collective value of KFLA’s Mexican network.

“We know our Fellows are even stronger and more effective when working together, so we wanted to support them in building this collaboration,” explains Carmen.

The second focus was on capacity building among the Fellows.

There were five workshops offered:

• Self-care: Evaluation and management of stress, and compassion fatigue
• Participatory methodologies for community work
• Project + promotion + personalization: three “Ps” of collective funding
• Social change through technology
• Social impact and documentary film

The third focus was on empowering existing community-driven work with new collaboration among the Fellows. In fact, 12 programs were enhanced with new partnerships between Fellows for greater impact.

Along with these learning programs, there were multiple opportunities for Fellows to dialogue and network. Participation methodologies encouraged new alliances and collaboration projects through the KFLA channels. As a result, four new potential Mink’a Talent Exchanges have already been proposed.

There were two main reasons why participant Darwin Pereyra (KPFL-02) found this gathering different from ones in the past.

“KFLA gave us specific tools to improve our projects and make them more suitable for different funding models,” he says. “Now we actually know the different ways to engage within the KFLA network, such as with Mink’a, and we are taking advantage of these opportunities.”

Look for more stories in the upcoming months on how these new collaborations are stimulating community-driven solutions throughout Mexico!