Coaching to Promote Social Progress | ICF Foundation Partners With Many Hopes
Coaching for Social Impact | The Project
We believe it's our responsibility as strategic advisers, coaches, and facilitators, to serve leaders so they may liberate themselves from the barriers that prevent them, and their organizations, from reaching their fullest potential. Coaching has a central role to play for a society to thrive. As practitioners we too are leaders, needing to constantly liberate ourselves through learning and personal development. One way we assure this development is through our ongoing membership with the ICF Foundation, providing pro-bono coaching and supporting charity organizations.
We are proud to support the launch of the pilot project “Coaching for Social Impact” between the ICF Foundation in collaboration with our client, Many Hopes, brokered by Gumball Enterprises. Along with six of its partner organizations in Bolivia, Ghana, Guatemala, Kenya, Malawi, and Peru they will offer pro bono professional coaching services to their leadership teams. Each month, Many Hopes will be taking you to a new country. In May 2021, they are taking you to Ghana. Here you can see their projects:
Going Global from Many Hopes on Vimeo.
Gumball played an instrumental role in bringing organizations together for the sake of global social impact. Ann Dorgan is the treasurer of the ICF Foundation and personally coaches Thomas Keown, CEO of Many Hopes. As she heard that Many Hopes was expanding to six new countries and, as she is a trustee on the ICF Foundation board, she connected the shared vision of both into one project. After a short negotiation phase, all involved parties saw the benefits of igniting social progress, coaching and providing a liveable future for children in developing countries.
As the ICF Foundation states in their blog post: “[The] ICF Foundation believes that globally, the effectiveness of social system change organizations increases through professional coaching. Coaching builds capacity in organizations and has a ripple effect when applied to its leadership. While we know the efficacy of coaching in for-profit entities, we believe the same to be true for mission-based organizations. [...] The value of this project for the partner organization lies in the transformation that coaching can bring to professionals and organizations. Because of coaching, people worldwide have been able to surpass their limitations and achieve their personal and professional goals. Coaching can shift your organization’s culture by moving away from a command-and-control leadership style to collaboration and creativity.” - Coura Badiane, Vice President, ICF Foundation.
Thomas Keown adds: “For each of our partner leaders in Africa and Latin America, this ICF Foundation partnership is the first time they have received coaching. Leadership anywhere can be lonely and stressful but the nature of our partners’ work dials this up many multiples. This partnership with ICF Foundation is helping all of us flourish. ICF Foundation has been so valuable in their finding of local, culturally appropriate coaches in each country and early reports from coaching sessions have been positive and provided valuable insight.”
About Many Hopes and the ICF Foundation
Many Hopes rescues children from poverty and abuse and raises them with an imagination for justice and the tools to act on it. They educate local children to solve the problems that charity alone cannot. The Many Hopes Justice Framework is a template for sustainable, replicable justice globally. Their conviction is that lasting change comes from within. Children born into poverty are not a problem to be solved, but a solution waiting to be unleashed. By partnering with high-impact local leaders and organizations, they aim to rescue and equip children to become changemakers in their communities and beyond, walking with children through six stages of the arc from injustice to influence. They rescue children from injustice and equip them to be adults of influence
The ICF Foundation works to make a positive impact on the world through coaching and giving back to our communities. It was established in 2004 by passionate coaches to exclusively support education, research, and charitable purposes. While a separate nonprofit entity from the International Coach Federation, the ICF Foundation is bonded in partnership with ICF Global. As a Foundation, they aspire to nurture the innate desire in coaches to give back to their communities.
We are looking forward to seeing the amazing results this partnership will bring and keep you updated here. If you want to support the ICF Foundation or Many Hopes, please visit these links.
- Support ICF Foundation: https://foundationoficf.org/support/
- Donate to Many Hopes: https://manyhopes.org/donate/
