Connect: GRID-Arendal Annual Report 2017

Connections/leadership

This GRID-Arendal Annual Report is taking a different approach. Rather than a list of our programmes and everything they’ve accomplished this year (and with over 80 projects between seven programmes, there are a lot of results), we are looking at two themes that connected a lot of our work last year – water and waste .

All of GRID-Arendal’s work is premised on the pressing need for new thinking and global solutions, related to more regional circumstances. New thinking requires transformation – in the way we make individual choices, the way governments make decisions and how we live on this planet. As you’ll see later in this report, GRID-Arendal helped organize a “transformational leadership” project in Central Asia last year. Aimed at younger decision makers the idea was to develop an understanding that

transformational leadership is about personal and collective initiative aiming for a greater good. It means being able to think and act creatively. And it means being empowered to make change happen. That’s GRID-Arendal’s goal: to helpmake change happen. It requires commitment and passion. In the words of the English essayist E.M. Forster, Only connect! … Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted…

GRID-Arendal’s staff comes from 18 countries.

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