In a time when so many are grappling with division and polarization in their communities, where does one start to build connections to better understand when and why do you feel like you “belong” in your community?
In this new podcast conversation, we talk with Anjum Rahman and Atarau Hamilton-Fuller from Inclusive Aotearoa Collective Tāhono, based in Aotearoa New Zealand. In the aftermath of the horrific Christchurch mosque attacks in 2019, their collective’s work focused on visiting communities across the country to foster understanding, empathy, and a sense of belonging by encouraging participants to share personal experiences of inclusion and exclusion.
Anjum and Atarau share about the unique, culturally grounded approach that they developed as their group hosted and facilitated “belonging conversations” across 46 cities and towns. These conversations, created with three simple yet revealing questions, helped create spaces where participants felt safe to be truly heard, learned the power of deep listening without judgement, and helped understand each other’s shared humanity.
As part of this discussion, we also demonstrate the conversation, exploring the three core questions to help understand why these discussions have been so powerful for participants.
This discussion is essential listening for anyone seeking practical ideas for how to build understanding and foster genuine connection across different groups within the same community.
Ways to listen: You can listen below or on your preferred podcast streaming service, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Simplecast, iHeartRadio, Amazon, and other podcast apps.
Please find a transcript of this talk further down this page.
Resources and Footnotes
- Inclusive Aotearoa Collective Tāhono
- Resource: What does belonging mean to you?
- Resource: How to Hold a Conversation on Belonging
More on Collective Impact
- Infographic: What is Collective Impact?
- Resource List: Getting Started in Collective Impact
Music
The Intro music, entitled “Running,” was composed by Rafael Krux, and can be found here and is licensed under CC: By 4.0.
The outro music, entitled “Deliberate Thought,” was composed by Kevin Macleod. Licensed under CC: By.
Listen to Past Episodes: You can listen and subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Simplecast, iHeartRadio, Amazon, and other podcast apps.
Podcast Transcript
Welcome to the Collective Impact Forum podcast, here to share resources to support social change makers working on cross-sector collaboration.
The Collective Impact Forum is a nonprofit field-building initiative that is co-hosted in partnership by the nonprofit consulting firm FSG and the Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions.
In this episode, we’re exploring how conversations can build a feeling of belonging, and why that can be so important, especially for communities experiencing polarization and division.
To learn more, we talk with Anjum Rahman and Atarau Hamilton-Fuller from Inclusive Aotearoa Collective Tāhono, based in Aotearoa New Zealand. After the Christchurch mosque attacks in 2019, their group traveled across the country, sparking powerful “belonging conversations” in 46 towns and cities. With just three simple questions, they helped community members open up, listen deeply, and connect across difference. We’ll hear their story and try the conversation ourselves to see what it feels like to participate. If you’re looking to explore more about how to build real connections, this is a conversation you won’t want to miss.
Serving as interviewer today is my Collective Impact Forum colleague Cindy Santos, who is senior associate the Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions. Let’s tune in.
Cindy Santos: Thank you so much for joining us here today, Anjum and Atarau. I really want to first start with learning about you and your work. It’s always really wonderful to hear about what’s happening globally in this work. We hear a lot of national voices but having a global voice in this space with us is really so special to us. Of course, we want to get to know you before we want to get to know your work. If you would share just a little bit about yourself and your role that would be really wonderful. Anjum.
Anjum Rahman: Tēnā koutou katoa. He uri tenei nō Īnia. Ko Qamar Shamim rāua. Ko Anisur Rahman ōku kaumātua. Ko Kirikiriroa tōku whatu manawa. Ko Waikato te awa e mahea nei aku māharahara. Kei Kirikiriroa ahau e noho ana inainei. Ko Anjum Rahman tōku ingoa. Nō reira, tēnā koutou katoa. That was just a Māori way of greeting and talking about place and connections. I talk about how I’m from the city of Kirikiriroa or Hamilton, as it’s known out in New Zealand. I got my parents’ name and the river that’s closest to me which is the biggest river in our country. I came to Aotearoa, New Zealand as a five-year-old child. My parents migrated here with me. I did all my education here, my kids were born here, and earlier this year my granddaughter was born here so that was really exciting. Most of my life I worked professionally as a chartered accountant but I was also deeply involved in community governance and setting up and volunteering and supporting community organizations and then after the Christchurch Mosque attacks where a killer shot 51 people and injured 49 in two mosques in the city of Ōtautahi, Christchurch, I had a bit of a shift in focus and when I started to work on this project. That’s a short summary about me.
Cindy Santos: Thank you. Atarau, we welcome you into this space.
Atarau Hamilton-Fuller: Kia ora. Ngā mihi ki a tatou katoa. *Atarau says his pepeha (Māori introduction), referring to his family, Iwi (tribe), and homelands.* I’m very much in support of what Anjum said. Just doing a bit of an acknowledgement of the country in our native tongue so acknowledging the vastness of the Motu, of Aotearoa, but also acknowledging those who are the landowners where I currently reside which is in Christchurch, Ōtautahi, Christchurch in New Zealand. I hail from a few of the different tribes here in New Zealand. Unfortunately, I live in the South Island but all my tribes that I’m aware of come from the North Island here in New Zealand. Ngati Kahungunu, Ngarauru, Ngati Raukawa. I’m part of the kaupapa, the work that Anjum does with Inclusive Aotearoa Collective Tāhono, and I have been for about three years so I’m feeling really privileged and really honored to step into this space alongside hers as I seem to do as a good little sidekick or wingman, as it were. Kia ora.
Cindy Santos: Thank you so much for that. Part of what I appreciate is (a) you bringing your culture into this space, because of course, we always honor that, and also that your work is really grounded in your culture and who you are as people. I would love for you to talk a bit more to our audience about the work that you’re doing in the Aotearoa Collective Tāhono, both how this initiative got started and what it means to you for this work to really be grounded the way it is. Anjum, I was hoping to start with you.
Anjum Rahman: Thank you. I referenced the Christchurch Mosque attacks and really it was the first time that we had that kind of attack here in this country and it was very much an expression of hatred born out of someone being influenced from a young age and certain ways of thinking. I think in the aftermath of that, thinking about first of all the work that we had done prior in engaging with government and asking them to take Islamophobia seriously, asking them to take the kind of attacks that we were seeing in our community and particularly from Muslim women because we’re much more visible and not really getting anywhere. So as you can imagine there was a lot of anger and rage around that.
I was in a community conversation and talking about this experience and how we had said to the government that they should do a national strategy for basically the—we use the words diversity and inclusion, and the fact that the things that we were asking for is community were solutions that would actually help all communities and so that they should broaden it and have the strategy. Someone in the group said what if we just did it outside of government? That is essentially how the project was born. Like, oh, OK.
And over the next six months stood up this project from writing a proposal to presenting it at a funders’ conference and to media to recruiting people, setting up the project in so many ways. I had a lot of help from a lot of lovely people as always, if it’s always collectively first. I don’t believe that individuals achieve alone. They achieve because there are people around them or people who have gone before them that have paved the way. That’s what our project does is truly try to lean into power of collective, of building community networks. We try to build understanding and belonging and understanding when belonging doesn’t happen.
We wanted to hear—we went out in 2020 to 46 towns and cities and asked people about their sense of belonging and what their aspirations were for the community. From that is how we built our community network so we have one around better media representation, one around supporting women leaders working in systems change, one on dealing with online harm, and we also input into various other projects over the years.
We also do training and advice and I think the last thing that I’ll say is we’re always thinking about the project and our vision of building belonging. I knew that that couldn’t happen without indigenous rights and ensuring that we had honored indigenous rights and the treaties that the government had signed back in—well, it was the British government that signed them and the Crown, back in 1840, also 1835, thinking about the history of colonization in this country and the disposition, the displacement, all of the things that came with it.
So for me, it was a critical part of setting up the organization was thinking about how we could honor indigenous rights and indigenous voice input in the way that we work. That’s how I see it. Anything that you’d like to add?
Atarau Hamilton-Fuller: No, I think that’s just—I’m probably leaning into that conversation about belonging. New Zealand’s quite a small, quite a new, and interesting quite a new country. Belonging is a really key conversation and I think that when Anjum pulled me into this work we looked heavily at what belonging means from an indigenous people of Aotearoa perspective and I think that was one thing that really tied me into the power in which we were having these conversations that we’re about to go into is this concept of what is (tūrangawaewae) and how actually just because it’s an indigenous Māori concept doesn’t actually mean that it doesn’t relate to many people. So acknowledging (Te Tiriti o Waitangi) or the treaties that were signed gave people the ability to be here but actually it doesn’t give the people the right to belong. They have to feel that in themselves and this was a really cool way of doing that in those conversations. As we explore hopefully people will be able to see just the power and impact that comes through in these questions.
Cindy Santos: You know there are a lot of powerful things that you just said and one of the things that really stuck out to me is that you moved this work forward despite barriers so that the project was really led by the voices of those most interested and those most impacted. You know it does really create the sense of ownership, right, the sense of inclusivity and the sense of belonging that you’re talking about, that is it a solution that’s brought forward by those who really are most interested in bringing it forward and have a passion for it. A lot of times it’s you know, that’s how you get the work started and bring others along in a lot of ways because they see the impact of the work that you’re doing and you know the work that you’re doing around belonging it’s so vital, in particular, not just, I think, in the current context, right, the way that we’re seeing everything in the world, right, we’re experiencing individually, we’re experiencing it collectively, right, because we all are touched and we’re all part of this broader collective and the work that you’re doing in New Zealand seems like such a reflection of what’s possible, right, when we open up our hearts and our ability to really be in relationship with each other. I want to talk about the tool of community conversations and how that does create the sense of belonging and for you to share a little bit more. What have achieved? How does this achieve a sense of inclusion and belonging? I was just curious. I wanted to open it up to you to talk to us about that.
Anjum Rahman: Sure. Back in 2019 when we thought, you know, you can’t do a strategy on the diversity and inclusion without understanding where people are at and what was going on with them. So when I first talked about the project I started talking about marginalized communities and vulnerable communities and then when we actually started doing the mapping of which communities we wanted to reach out to it soon became apparent that we actually needed to reach out to every part of the community and we wanted to think about diversity in the broadest way possible so often countries will have legislation which outlaws discrimination on various bases like gender, disability, sexuality, those kinds of things, but we also wanted to go beyond that to look at socioeconomic diversity, rural versus urban, all the various different ways that people live their lives. So we went on mapping out what that might look like and then mapping out where we might find all these different kinds of people. We literally heard all sorts. We even talked to a men’s rights advocate group. We talked to people in the evangelical Christian community. We talked to postpartum mothers that had suffered medical misadventure, all sorts of people. And what we found was that the conversations themselves became a tool for binding the group. It’s not what we had initially intended. Initially what we thought of this is a way for us to understand where people are at, but what we found is that when we asked people the third question, what need to change, a lot of them said we need more conversations like this one, and that they found the process itself something that was really important. So we created an environment where people felt really safe to be vulnerable and where the group supports each other. Through sharing of personal experiences each person in the group is able to get a greater understanding of the different things that people are facing. We found after the sessions, many of the sessions, people would share numbers and keep in touch after the sessions, or they’d tell that they had shared something that they had never shared before. Yeah, I think you could see a change in the room as the conversation progressed and ended, that people had been on a journey.
Cindy Santos: So I wonder because what it sounds like is that folks were able to actually see their commonalities versus what some of these distinctions might be. And I know a lot of folks like usually are able to really align around their values and I’m curious what it looked like maybe when you brought all these people together in the beginning of the conversation versus what that progression was towards that mutual understanding and desire to really know each other in a different way. I’m curious what that looks like when you first step into those spaces.
Anjum Rahman: It was really interesting. It wasn’t, actually it wasn’t about the commonalities. It was really about, oh, he’s someone who’s had some experiences that are really different to me and I can see and understand how this impacts them and that builds my own understanding of the way the world is. So I think what you got was some eye opening of, oh, I don’t realize that this is what life is like for them and that sense of empathy when someone is telling their personal story. There is really where the connection happens because we can talk theoretically. We can talk policy or we can talk big numbers and statistics but the power of just hearing a person’s experience and them describing it and what it means for them just has the biggest impact. So sometimes they came and not knowing what was going to happen. Sometimes they knew the people in the room, sometimes they didn’t. But as the conversation became deeper, they connected or they found out that someone was doing something that would help them so they wanted to connect on that. Yeah, it was really lovely.
Cindy Santos: Atarau, is there anything that you want to add about your experience and what you saw?
Atarau Hamilton-Fuller: I think just touching on you know the values piece and people sitting in these spaces where vulnerability is nurtured, I think not often are they given this opportunity and I’m reminded frequently of the conversations because we tend to get so busy in our lives and we have- everyone in Aotearoa, I say everyone, sorry. Most people in Aotearoa usually know how to respond quite quickly and with brevity to just keep people at bay and at distance and I think these conversations actually separated that version of whatever they were masking and gave them an opportunity just to acknowledge pieces of their past that maybe they hadn’t before but also pieces of their past that actually had listens and learnings for them and who they were and their identity, and I think that in itself wove in the beauty of what we were trying to achieve. So really it was quite easy. I mean it wasn’t easy at the time but once the conversations started flowing it was quite simple for everyone to just keep together and for it to allow its natural progression and I think that was one of the key things. We downplayed probably the impact. It was incredible. Some of the tables, some of the stories you’d hear and if you lived a sheltered life, you probably were surprised by some of the things that came up. It was just quite a privilege to sit and share with all of those people, and I think unique, very unique.
Anjum Rahman: And actually for the people in the room that knew each other we would often get comments around, oh, I did not know this. I never realized that happened to you. So it actually connected them more. While we do the belonging conversations we’ve used these techniques for other pieces of our work. So we use (it for our) training. We use it for our Bridging Cultures program and I’m just wondering, Atarau, whether you just wanted to quickly talk about Bridging Cultures as well.
Atarau Hamilton-Fuller: Good question. I think Bridging Cultures was an opportunity to pilot something a bit different. Because we bit on this journey of being a Tiriti-based organization and we might talk about that a bit more as we go on or we may not what that means. But being a Tiriti-based organization is about how we allow the treaties that were signed in the 1800s between Māori and the British Crown kind of what it allowed and what was upheld and how we agreed to engage with each other. Bridging Cultures is a way in which we utilize the frameworks of (te ao Māori) or the concepts of (te ao Māori)) to create safety around conversations between communities and cultures. So what that means is that we have it on traditional marae or meeting houses that belong to particular and that are prominent in particular areas of the country and we bring in everyone and they go through the process. And throughout that process we see it keeps us safe. For some it’s the first time stepping on to a meeting house. For some it’s their first time and recognizing that they have a marae in the area but what that does I think through that process we give them that safety and that blanket as we protect them going to what would be somewhere full of deep conversation and allow them to just experience, and through that experience I think gives them the understanding of what richness the land actually holds here in New Zealand, but also their connection to the land. So bringing that, probably threading that piece that weren’t aware was unthreaded, you know that some say you can tie yourself to the land but actually only if you choose to tie your thread to the land will it actually be binded and so we do that. And then create these conversations where (mana whenua) or indigenous Māori are allowed to participate and be a part of that in any way they see fit. They can participate in the conversations. Most of the time they just like to hang out in the kitchen and make sure that we’re looked after, but they share about the history of the place as well, and again, if we’re tying that through this it’s just another band that brings it together. And we sit around tables and we use this format for the questions, you know. What is it about particularly this place, and what are you bringing with you into the room that people should know so that your experience of this one place where your (whakapapa) or your genealogy can connect us? I suppose under the guise of the culture that is Māori culture we just use that as a protection and it does, it does. I don’t know, Anjum, is there anything else that kind of isn’t coming from me? Those are the experiences that I’ve seen.
Anjum Rahman: Yeah. With the Bridging Cultures that was very much a focus on antiracism and having people talk about their experiences with racism because we wanted to bring people of color from very different communities into the room because we knew that we had different minority communities, people from various Pacific islands and then (our own tangata whenua, or indigenous people of the land. These communities were mixing a lot so it was an opportunity to bring them all together in a cultural framework and obviously we got (pākehā) or European ancestry people as well because I wanted to join in and we weren’t going to turn anyone away. But, yeah, that was really great the way that they came through the progression of getting some knowledge and then were ready to bond and share these stories and their aspirations. So it was a seminal model. We tried to keep them to work together in their local communities around antiracism work as well.
Cindy Santos: Yeah, so as you were talking about bringing all of these folks together and I really appreciated the point that you brought up about empathy and actually looking at differences, right. I had approached it from we can align around our shared values but I really appreciate you pointing out that it’s those differences that often can allow us then to have empathy for each other because we don’t realize how distinct our experiences might be. So I really appreciate that you brought that into the conversation. And I know that a part of it I appreciate that you brought up the diversity of experiences, and I’m wondering if you also were able to talk about power, right. Who’s holding power in that particular room? Is that something that you’re able to bring up and have honest and possibly hard conversations around? So I’m curious how power showed up and how you really were able to control for that or allow space for that to be something that comes up.
Anjum Rahman: Yeah, so I think the first thing that we thought about when we designed the conversations was that the people working in the organization at that time, we’d been to so many government consultations and we knew that what we wanted to do was not a consultation because you could immediately feel when you’re in a consultation that it’s the government spokespeople that have the power. We often found that they talked for at least half of the time available for the meeting and we didn’t feel like we owned the space as participants so that’s the first power dynamic that we thought about as we shared the power in the room and we wanted it to sit with the participants because this was their time to speak and the conversations weren’t about giving information. So in a 90-minute session, we tried to make sure that we spoke for no more than 10 minutes to seed the space, put on some ground rules, and then get people going and giving them the maximum time available for them to speak. We had the three simple questions and those kind of formed the boundaries of the conversation but within those boundaries people could self-direct. We just let the conversation flow and go to where people wanted to speak. We found that we had to be really careful to not be judgmental about anything that was said and that was really tough because sometimes people say things like—that was in 2020 and they were like why does it have to be Black Lives Matter? Why can’t it be All Lives Matter or, you know, why couldn’t we march about women or child abuse. Inside I’m thinking there was this whole thing called women’s marches, clearly forgotten about those, some of the biggest marches,but we had to just not challenge what was said. What happened in doing that because people would say these things that I personally sometimes found really confrontational but then as the conversation progressed, then they started talking about some of their experiences which were really valuable and which could not have come out had they been challenged when they said those initial things, right? And so we have a particular group here that is based—it’s an evangelical group and they do various things and it’s been controversial so this person turned up and he said this stuff and really promoted his church and the program and whatever and we don’t challenge him in any way, and towards the end of the conversation he started talking about his severely disabled daughter and the experiences that he had with her through the education system and the fact that she wouldn’t leave the house except to go to church on Sunday, and I was like, oh, is that because places don’t exist though because it was a small town, and he said, no, not at all, it’s because people would laugh at her and point at her and make comments at her to her face and it feels so hostile that she won’t leave the home. So we would not have got all of that if we hadn’t sat through the first part, right? Luckily that was a conversation where it was only him in the room so we were also free to not have to put any boundaries around what he said. Suddenly, when we had the men’s rights activist group, I literally don’t sleep for two nights after that I found it so confronting but being nonjudgmental, when they started talking about the lack of social services for men, how they had no place to go when they were feeling things weren’t going well, mental health supports, all of those things rang true like they were genuine issues, and again we wouldn’t have got there if we hadn’t set through the other stuff so sometimes we did have to separate people into groups, and be really careful about who we were putting together to make sure that there wasn’t harm being caused and also, that’s when the facilitation if it was a group setting, actually the facilitation needed to be strong but we found that actually the group also would self-regulate and other people would chime up so it was really interesting.
Cindy Santos: It has to be so hard when you are potentially sitting in these conversations and someone might be challenging what your lived experience is, and I can only imagine that you have this sort of trigger and you have to really take a step back and think about how might I be open, how might I be judgmental, how might I make space for someone else, and it made me think a bit that this work is really heart-to-minds work, right? We can challenge with facts. We can confront but it’s almost about calling people in versus calling people out. I want to move into the questions because this is such a powerful—this is a really powerful conversation and the questions I think will demonstrate to our listeners the power of the questions that we are going to be discussing. Atarau, I want to make space for you. Is there anything else that you want to add before we move into the questions?
Atarau Hamilton-Fuller: No, the questions are the meat of this conversation. I think let’s just go on to it so people understand.
Cindy Santos: Let’s go into the questions.
Anjum Rahman: I’ll start. We spent a lot of time on the questions in 2019 so some of the things that we thought about most importantly was accessibility of language knowing that people in our communities might have literacy issues, they might have English not being their first language so we kept the language very simple but though they were simple, they really opened up the space for deep discussion. So basically, they were when do you feel like you belong, what stops you from feeling like you belong, and what needs to change for you to feel like you belong. So, the biggest word in that is the two-syllable belong. Everything was—so it was that simple but the concepts themselves and sometimes people would say, well, what do you mean by belong, and we’d be like what do you mean by belong? What does that mean for you and let them really explore but I think the important part is that we didn’t jump straight into the question. The first thing we did was a round of introductions and was based around the Māori concept of (whakawhanaungatanga) which is really about, as I mentioned, it’s a start talking about your connections to people and place, talking about your experiences rather than what you do because what we know as the thing that people are most expert about is themselves. That’s a space where they can speak with confidence because they have the knowledge to speak about that. Once you’ve built on that confidence and the ability for them to speak about something they’re familiar with, they’ve built the confidence for the rest of the conversation as well. I don’t know if you want now to go into trialing the conversation which I’m happy to do so just quickly before I get into it, as we always start by making our own selves vulnerable because then that gives permission to people in the room to be vulnerable. I welcome you into the space. I would have told you a little bit about our organization and what we’re doing with these conversations, and then I would start with the introduction process and I will introduce myself and let people know that I’d like them to introduce themselves in a similar way. Often the question that we ask is how did you come to be in this room today? What was your life journey or history that has brought you to be here with us today? My journey is that I was born in a small village in India, and my father had left for Canada I think the day before I was born where he got a scholarship to do a master’s and Ph.D., and then when I was just under two years old, he asked my mum to sell her wedding jewelry so that they could afford the air fares for me and my mum to go and join him in Canada. So around the age of two we landed up in Canada. He finished his studies and then was applying for roles all over the world and got an offer from the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries in Aotearoa, in New Zealand for a two-year post doctorate fellowship so they made the decision practically overnight to come here. So I arrived in this town as a five-year-old and when I went to school, I really was the only person who wasn’t Māori or of European descent or what we call Pākehā here, and especially at the second school but both primary schools so that would be age 10 and under. I was really ostracized and I was teased a lot for differences and the fact that I couldn’t eat what everyone ate, that I dressed differently, that I wore long sleeves and pants even in summer. I was a different color. It was a whole different experience, and I think the next school here which is sort of 11- and 12-year-olds, maybe 13, which we call intermediate school was even worse in terms of the shunning and ostracization both in primary and intermediate, spending lunchtimes on my own because I just had no friends and how hard that was. I think things got a little better in high school and it wasn’t until university that I found my people which is the children of parents who had migrated here when they were young which was quite specific cohort but it’s where I feel I felt understood. They were all different ethnicities but it was that common experience. I did become a chartered accountant and that was mostly because it was the easiest thing rather than because it was not like I really love accounting as what I want to do with my life, and then I got married straight out of university. That was an interesting journey but I ended up getting divorced three years later and got involved in a whole lot of community organizations because around that time was World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks had happened a couple of years before that and suddenly shined this extremely negative spotlight into our community. The level of harassment and racism just was exponential and I felt this real sense of fear for my children and I didn’t want them to grow up in a world where they had to feel ashamed or afraid of who they were, their own identity. So that’s when I started moving out into the community, got involved in setting up a woman’s organization, various other things. I tried politics and then the Christchurch Mosque attacks happened and I ended up starting this organization which is basically how I ended up coming to the room here today because of some powerful work we do and we reached out to your organization to run a session so this is me and how I came into the room today. So I’m going to hand over to you, Cindy, for you to share how you came to be in the room today.
Cindy Santos: Thank you. It’s really wonderful to learn more about you. It does open up space for me to be able to share my story as well. I’m Puerto Rican and my parents grew up on the island so I’m first-generation mainland-born American, and so it’s a distinct I think opportunity to really connect in a different way. I know folks that are here in the United States are maybe second or third generation but I felt actually that I had a connection back to the island in a way that was really unique, and so I got to spend summers at my aunt’s house. I got to see where my mom grew up. I got to learn the language, and it was something that was really important to me. My mom came to the United States and didn’t speak any English even though Puerto Rico was a United States territory, and there’s an assumption potentially that you would, and so at the age of 21 she had to learn English and know how to live in this new community in this new place. I always really admire I think her resilience and tenacity to learn the language and be able to succeed here and have children who are where they are in terms of just contributing to the world.
Anjum Rahman: Can I just ask you how did it impact you in terms of how she learned to speak English fully by the time you were born or were you growing up with her still learning, maybe struggling sometimes? What was that like?
Cindy Santos: It’s incredibly impressive. She learned the language in a year and I never—there was never a moment where I felt that she struggled. Interestingly, we were in an intergenerational household and so my grandparents were with us and they never learned to speak English. Because I was connected to the language, that was perfectly OK so I did see in some ways she was able to really speak the language and be comfortable, and then I saw the struggles that my grandparents had with having to have a translator in the way that they moved in the world so those are very two distinct experiences that I was able to observe and sort of be part of my lived experience.
Anjum Rahman: Carry on so what happened after that.
Cindy Santos: Yeah, I think I—it was a unique community because I lived for, I would say from the time I was born to middle school which as you were saying is intermediary school in a Puerto Rican community where it really wasn’t a diverse community. It was a tight-knit community but I hadn’t really interacted with folks with different cultures until I was 12, 13, 14, so for me it was just being able to understand new cultural and social norms, what it looks like to be Puerto Rican in spaces where there weren’t many other Puerto Ricans. I think I was able to adapt really quickly which also for me is interesting but I think that you learn to adapt, right? You learn what’s acceptable and not acceptable. You learn how to be one person when you’re in spaces that maybe aren’t culturally yours, and you kind of have to code switch and I think that gives you a certain amount of (a) emotional intelligence, the ability to sort of understand people but also you don’t fully feel yourself in spaces, and so I think that in my life just being able or having to sort of understand where those norms are difference, understand where certain words or certain vernacular can be used or not used, what it means, how people respond to it, I think in particular I think about professionalism in language. When I’m with my family and friends I have a whole different way of being so it’s almost like you create two different versions of yourself, and I think I’ve been able to sort of navigate the world in that way.
Anjum Rahman: Did you have different accents at home? Like my sister does this home accent and a not-home accent.
Cindy Santos: Absolutely, and I find I’m thinking about a lot of my friends here. I live in New York City. A lot of my friends here are Black and Brown, and so when I’m with them we just have a whole different way of communicating with each other that isn’t—that doesn’t—and one of my friends is a dean at a university and obviously I’m working at the Aspen Institute and it really doesn’t matter. Positionality doesn’t matter. It’s a comfort in culture and identity and connection that seems to matter the most.
Anjum Rahman: Awesome. Just looking at time so I’ll move on to Atarau, and we can come back to the questions.
Atarau Hamilton-Fuller: Well, I’ll keep mine quite brief. I suppose it highlights my journey, a little bit of the duality so what people maybe can’t see about me. I grew up Māori but I am very much a White person, and so a lot of my childhood was about that and my upbringing so I was brought up in total immersion Māori until the age of 13 so Māori language was really—I knew English language but growing up I only had a full grasp of (te reo) and Māori language, and I shifted when I was 13 to a mainstream school so went from a school that went from pre-K all the way up to high school, the later years of high school which was about I think about 200 people across those different age groups, age range. Then when I went to mainstream school, high school, 500 students across five different year groups which was a huge shock in recognizing I was just one person in this sea of difference I think was something I wasn’t used to. I learned a whole range of listens in those five years of high school and then I guess I didn’t travel as much as I would like. I know this country pretty well but I haven’t traveled the world so I’m not as worldly as I intended to be but I got to see a lot of different parts of New Zealand and working in different spaces and communities where different issues affect different communities. I did youth work which was, well, the term we use here is they call them the hardest of the hard. They are so much disengaged but I hear that and it sounds like a really fun challenge and so I did that for about four years working with them and then transitioning a number of them into employment but throughout that time walking in my own two worlds, I tried to be a good role model for these individuals who had shared a similar experience to me but also the ones who had no idea about their identity. They knew they were Māori but had no connection and no ties so that was where my focus drew me. I guess fast forward a few years, you know, trying to be indecisive I guess about which side of the line I’m carrying, I started doing some work for our people and what that means was things like constitutional transformation and being part of conversations that are around our treaties. Then I was fortunate enough to spend a lot of time reworking with my grandfather so again that intergenerational, an intergenerational impact I think, Cindy, that you spoke about is really, really key and shapes us in a way that I think we underestimate a lot, and I see it a lot now even with Anjum and her relationship with her parents and her daughters as well. It’s always there and I think brings great power but Anjum met my grandfather who brought me into the room to the work that I do, and been on this work now, this boat, this journey for three years, four years in February with Inclusive Aotearoa, and it was just experiencing all these—meeting all these different people along the way and knowing my piece of the puzzle I think led me to do this work and to hopefully do it really well, and be fortunate enough to be presenting now last year—was it last year or was it earlier this year? I feel like it was—anyway, and then now to be given this opportunity again to come back and record a podcast so that’s what called me into the room. There’s a few other elements like I didn’t have a father. My biological father left when I was quite young as well so I share in that sentiment and a few other things that happened along the way but really that was my journey into the room today so thank you. Thanks for calling me.
Anjum Rahman: I do have a follow-up question for you but first I do want to say Cindy’s face when you said the school had 500 people, and I can see she’s like 500 people isn’t that much. You kind of brushed over the being White person and what that meant to me. What did that mean to you, sir? Only if you feel comfortable. Would you like to talk about that a little bit more?
Atarau Hamilton-Fuller: Maybe just briefly. So one—they’re not scars but they are very significantly etched into my brain as experiences with I was the White kid’s X in the Māori school so I didn’t fit in there, and then I wasn’t quite White enough in the mainstream school but I also wasn’t Brown enough to hang out with the Brown people and so I—there was this first combat between—I suppose between identities or around academics as the way to go because maybe some of your friends will be amenable or as a culture that you need to follow and is there a middle ground. I look back and I laugh now because I think, man, I was—it strengthened my resilience muscle I think having people who saw you as different no matter where you walked but still trying ever so hard to push yourself into these spaces. I still do it now but I’ve grown up and what I do is when I speak in a—I’m going to give my secret way but when I speak in certain environments, people are often surprised by the level of eloquency and articulation in which I speak the language (of te reo) Māori and we have very profound orators here who can speak for hours but I think the shock in that first couple of minutes, of, oh, we didn’t expect him to be who he is, you know, it’s people don’t know your identity beyond the surface until they have that conversation with you. That was my kind of experience and what I took away from it, I think. Good question, Anjum. Thank you, and 500 is very small.
Cindy Santos: Actually I made that face because my middle school was really small so actually my mind was like, 500 people, but I went to a really small middle school compared to most people so that’s really funny. I think I made a face that was like, oh, man, that seems like a lot.
Anjum Rahman: OK, we’ll let you go because my high school was 1,300 so I certainly was like 500, what are you talking about. Never mind. If we move on to the questions, Cindy, you talked about some things around belonging came through as you introduced yourself growing up within a Puerto Rican community, and then having to move out so when you think about that feeling of belonging, what is it that makes you feel like you belong?
Cindy Santos: I think it goes back to my—obviously my life here in New York. My family doesn’t live here and so I’m here alone and obviously among chosen family with my friends that are my chosen family. I find this sense of comfort with them, my Black and Brown friends, again to what I was saying earlier where you can just fully let loose and be your entire self and share experiences that we’ve had in the world. My brother is more Brown skinned than I am so he’s had a different experience in the world. One of my best friends here is a Black gay man, and hearing about his experiences in the world, and the ability to really, to your point, both empathize with some of his experiences but also relate to a lot of the ways that he’s experienced the world and my brother has experienced the world and even experiences that I’ve had so just that opportunity to be I think in community with each other around shared experiences, both negative and positive shared experiences, and to really appreciate our culture together like our music and our food, to me it creates this sense of belonging and the ability to just completely let loose or to completely unwind. I think for me that’s so important.
Anjum Rahman: Atarau, what about you? Where do you feel your sense of belonging most?
Atarau Hamilton-Fuller: You know, there must be something about how people love food because we are drawn to sitting around, having a meal. That would be it, and I think about the Christmases that our family would put on and we would call people, people who didn’t necessarily have family in the area, call them on to share in Christmas with us, and it was always laughs, and I think you’re right, Cindy, that ability to just break out of this every day, nine to five normality and go actually this is who I am and his is who I’ve been missing out on. On the (marae) you know, we have a role for everybody on the (marae), no matter who you are, no matter where you’re from, (manuhiri (guest)) or whether you’ve been there forever. There’s a role that you play and while I actually find a lot of comfort in being back on any (marae), usually mine but I can pick up a tea towel anywhere and help dry dishes so I feel like that’s quite an easy thing to do, and yeah, usually there, that’s where my people are.
Anjum Rahman: Awesome. I really get it about food. Whenever I go to my parents’ place, oh, my God, here’s this, try this, what will you eat. Last night I went to see my mum because she’s had a sore leg, just went to see how she was but, no, ended up staying for dinner because my dad insisted. No, no, whatever we have we can share it so that is I think—food is often a language of love, isn’t it? We’re just going to break here. I’m not sure how much time you want to spend on the conversations. Just gauging. I’m happy to go to the next question and then sort of start there. Yes, Atarau?
Atarau Hamilton-Fuller: I was going to say maybe if you two just do the next two questions. So you brought me into room, maybe if you two just continue and go back-to-back that will save time. Maybe if you do that for the last two.
Anjum Rahman: Yeah, OK, sure. Happy to do that. So, Cindy, what stops you from feeling like you belong? What are some times where you felt like you really haven’t belonged and what’s going on there?
Cindy Santos: I’m going back to what you talked about in terms of sometimes people saying things that they don’t realize or they do realize really push against your identity and who you are and having those moments when you either have to respond or retreat, right? There aren’t always opportunities to respond to when someone says why is it so important to have a Black Lives Matter march for instance or for that to be something that we center. There are times when I want to engage and times when I just don’t, right? And what I think about that is that whenever we’re engaging in the world outside of our own culture, outside of our own comfort zone where we have to be resilient, that takes emotional energy. It takes emotional energy to be able to show up in a way that’s open and emotional energy sometimes to do the work, to explain to folks why, the why behind the work that we do and why this is so important. So I think those are the spaces where I most feel that sense of belonging just isn’t there because there isn’t that commonality, and sometimes I think it’s—I walk away feeling like you’re not seeing me in my fullness. You’re not seeing my dignity as a person, and I think those are the times when I—where that belonging I think is missing.
Anjum Rahman: Can you give me some examples like some real practical examples of situations or things that happened to you or things that you’ve heard because you’ve talked about your Black gay friend or your brother, and to just give us a picture of what that looks like in practice?
Cindy Santos: Interestingly, when you talked about socioeconomic status, I think that’s something particularly, you know. I have a master’s degree. I’ve been in spaces with folks that come from different socioeconomic status. They didn’t grow up in an inner-city neighborhood like I do, and there have been times when I hear comments about the city. I’ll say where I’m from and people will say isn’t that really dangerous or like how did you make it out of there or things like that where I have to—I don’t necessarily feel the need to have to explain this but it does create that tension to understand that their life experiences were very different than mine or my parents paid for my entire college, well, that’s not my experience, right? So I think that those types of experiences where you’re realizing how different both people’s life experiences are but then also the perceptions that people have about difference. For me it was I made it perfectly fine out of my neighborhood and I go back, right? So that’s one of the things that comes to mind.
Anjum Rahman: It’s a lot of assumptions that are made about you the minute you say where you’re residing. It must be like this. You must be like that. These are the experiences you must have had.
Cindy Santos: Yeah, absolutely, just some other comments. I think particularly with being Latina also there’s some assumptions that come with that about family, about—I think just more broadly about everything. I think it’s interesting both to be Latina, to have grown up where I grew up and then to have to interact with folks that have all these perceptions that aren’t necessarily—don’t align with my lived experience.
Anjum Rahman: I’m not Latina and I haven’t grown up there so you’ll have to explain. I remember someone saying to me—she was Jewish and she said, oh, I was with a Jewish person, I said I have a Jewish mother, they’d just nod but whereas with you I’m going to have to explain what that’s like, and then she did and I’m like, oh, I get it. So what does that look like for you, some of those assumptions?
Cindy Santos: I’m thinking in the context right now of some of the rhetoric in this country, some of the very polarizing messages that folks receive. It’s interesting for me because (a) I think in this country in particular, Latina becomes such an umbrella term for people who are—it’s not a monolithic group of people. You can be Puerto Rican, you can be Dominican, you can be Mexican.
Anjum Rahman: It’s like, oh, you’re from Asia or you’re from Africa.
Cindy Santos: Yeah, exactly. There isn’t this—I don’t think the nuance is there but I do think that that identity piece around being Latino, it’s sometimes also weaponized, right? I think you can see that in the most recent election where we have words like illegal people, and a lot of times they might be referring to people from Central America or people who are migrating or seeking asylum, and I think even within the Latino community even creates this division about who’s here legally and who isn’t. I’m using legally with air quotes for folks who can’t see me. Obviously, no one can see me but I think that experience both being polarized from other Latinos because of those differences and because that’s weaponized but then also folks not really taking time to understand the cultural nuances of who we are more broadly I think for me is an experience that I’ve had that sometimes feels both really frustrating and also makes me feel like it’s really necessary to be in solidarity with other folks who identify the way that I do.
Anjum Rahman: Thank you for that. So just moving on to the last question, what needs to change? What would help to make that sense of belonging increased particularly in these types of situations do you think?
Cindy Santos: I think it’s what you talked about earlier, is understanding lived experience. I would say if folks took time for instance, and I’m going to go back to really polarizing conversations that are happening in the U.S. right now around migrants and what they contribute to this country and why they come here. I would say if we were to sit down and talk to some of the folks that do come here for seeking asylum, seeking a better life for them and their children that we would have a much different response to who they are as humans, and I go back to the word of dignity. I think it’s making space to listen. Making space to listen, honoring different lived experiences, honoring different culture. I think if we did approach each other with that sense of empathy where—and it goes back to what we talked about earlier where you were saying that those differences really do bring those lived experiences and that empathy forward, and then once that happens, what are we actually aligned around. I think a lot of times we find that we’re aligned around our values. Most people love their families. Most people want to be good humans and I would say that opening up that space.
Anjum Rahman: So how would you go about opening up the space? What are some practical things again that you might want to see happen?
Cindy Santos: This is hard one practically because I think in my mind it almost lives theoretically right now because I keep thinking back to how polarized our country is. I think it is about—I live in New York City. I mentioned this and it’s very easy to almost create a bubble for yourself where you don’t have to talk to anyone who has differences. We have some of the same political leanings. Some of us have the same lived experience but what would it actually look like to seek out spaces where it isn’t an echo chamber so I’m wondering for myself, what are those spaces? What do they look like? So maybe seeking out opportunities to both engage, to learn, and to listen I think would be one of the things that is something very practical that I think I could even learn and engage from so that I can listen, and when I talk about polarization, I’m guilty of it, right? I’m guilty of having ideas around what folks that don’t have the same leanings that I do possibly what they’re thinking, what they’re feeling, what they’re experiencing, and that’s creating that space and putting myself intentionally into spaces where those conversations can happen but also using self-care obviously because I think that’s a really important piece of this is really caring for self while you’re having these conversations. For me it’s really, I’ve thought a lot about harm, and thinking like how could you vote this way potentially or how can you believe that? It’s causing me harm but I’m working to really shift from it’s causing me harm to it’s causing all of us harm when we’re experiencing each other in this way. So that was a really long answer to practically say that I think it’s seeking out opportunities to actually be in space with people who are different.
Anjum Rahman: Yeah, and yes, as you said, having those protective layers in order to be able to do that because it’s not always easy to go into those spaces so I can imagine then that there would need to be some prep work before you went seeking, yeah?
Cindy Santos: Absolutely.
Anjum Rahman: All right, I’m just going to wrap it up here but if we had five or six people, we generally try to keep the group sized between six to eight people, then you would also be interacting with other things that people had said in the conversation. I’m going to hand it back to you, Cindy, to ask any further questions that you like.
Cindy Santos: I mean I have so many questions and I have—my reflection is that even though we’re on Zoom recording this podcast, it really feels like why are in community with each other. It doesn’t feel like this distance exists, and my heart is really full for being able to be in space with you. I’m curious as you’ve been doing this work, you talked a little bit about the space that you’ve had to create and how intentional you’ve had to be. What have you learned from inception to where you are now? What have you learned in leading these conversations and working with folks so closely?
Anjum Rahman: The learning has progressed. The first thing we did in 2019 was run test conversations. We tested running the conversations for 60 minutes, 90 minutes, and two hours, and that’s how we landed on 90 minutes as the least time, two hours was a bit too much. Initially we didn’t start with the (whakawhanaunga) so we did introductions in a very—what can I say? In a Westernized-context? In a Westernized context, when you introduce yourself, it’s very much, you know, this is who I am, this is what I do. You might say, “I am a mom,” or whatever, and it’s not a deep connection and so once we started adding that part and spending the first, sometimes it would be 25 minutes of the conversation just doing these introductions. As I said, it’s from a Māori concept of a very different way of introducing yourself that we saw that the way that the conversations went really changed. Often even in the introduction, people giving us so much information about the sense of belonging even though we were not using the words belonging at all, and we’d be talking about the experiences and place, often they’d be telling us where they belong and what didn’t work for them as well, and then that ability to just do the follow-up questions because some people like you’re ready to talk, right? You came and you’re ready to talk and obviously people coming into the room know they’re coming into a conversation but they might still feel awkward and so they’re still stilted in their introduction so they’d just be like, oh, me and my family moved to Australia, blah, blah, blah, and I’d be like hang on, so why did they move to Australia. What was going on there? How did you find that shift? Was it good for you? Just asking the questions and get them into that feeling space and into that, yeah, this was how I experienced it rather than this is what happened. I think that was a really important learning as well because that really changes the nature of the conversation. It opens up the space and ability to talk about things. I think my deepest learning because as I said, I was involved in a whole lot of community stuff. I tried politics unsuccessfully and I spent 10 years on that and so was going to really diverse spaces hearing policy from a lot of different perspectives, and so sat back and was a little bit like, oh, yeah, I know some things. I feel like I understand diversity. I feel like I’m well placed, and then I went through this process of 46 towns and cities, over 870 people and what it showed me is how little I knew my country and how little I knew of the reality of people’s lives, and I think that is the most powerful thing is just getting us into their space of thinking, wow, other people have all these experiences that I have no idea about, and the biggest gift I think of people is to allow them to talk about it and to understand it and to be more careful and intentional in the way that I engage with them knowing that they will have gone through these serious things. So I think that is the biggest power and that’s what we highlight. If we never interact with these people again and we do try to, we ask them to sign up to our newsletters, we invite them into other work that we’re doing but if we’ve had no other interaction with them except this conversation, we hope that it was given them that ability to take the time with people, to learn to know them, and even in weird places. As I said, I do governance work, I’m on the boards. On one of the boards I just ran of these (whakawhanaunga) sessions and you could just see the shift in relationship within the board. The senior management team was there and the process itself just does so much so, yeah, that’s why we talk about it and why we want to share about it because we feel like that power of conversation and a facilitated keyhole conversation that creates an open space is incredibly powerful.
Cindy Santos: Yeah, it seems that what you’re saying, well, one of the things you’re saying is approaching people with curiosity, and so rather than, you know, face value what might seem easy to say this is my story, this is where I grew up but then having the curiosity to dig deeper seems to be a lesson that you’re applying to the work.
Anjum Rahman: Can I just say—I’m sorry. It doesn’t often happen naturally. People often will not let the—you have to create the space so they’re able to do it, right? And you have to have the intentionality as well so maybe a one-on-one interaction. If you suddenly came into someone and if I started asking you all these questions about yourself and we hadn’t created the space, you’d be like, no, see? Why should I tell you anything? You know?
Cindy Santos: Yeah, absolutely. I really appreciate that those follow-up questions might create some discomfort for folks but creating the right space might also—creating a safe space for folks to be able to share and see that other folks are being vulnerable seems to be key in these conversations. Unfortunately I wish we could talk forever. I’m loving this conversation. Again, I said my heart is so full. I’m curious if there might be folks who are listening to this conversation who might want to replicate what you’re doing and so for folks who are interested in hosting similar conversations, are there any resources that you would recommend, anything in particular concrete that you would say this is something, this is some advice that I might give from our experiences?
Anjum Rahman: On the resources page of our website which is inclusiveaortearoa.nz, we’ve put out how to run a belonging conversation and we put in all the tips and talked about all the things that need to happen and how you can run one well and what you need to be careful about so that is a resource. Obviously, this is a resource and the session that we did at the summit is a resource so those are available. You’re always welcome to contact us if you just want to have a quick chat and say we want to start running these and here’s where we’ve got to and any further advice, anything we need to watch out for, we’re always happy to share because for us it’s more about getting the work out there and getting the conversations and building that community that as you say globally, I mean it’s feeling very fraught right now. Some of the work that we do that I haven’t talked about actually is the online harm space so being deeply involved now. I said I was involved in the Christchurch Call to Action which is about terrorist and violent extremist content online and how to deal with it but a whole lot of associated issues with online safety so, yeah, it’s even more important now than it ever was to be doing this kind of work so we do encourage people.
Cindy Santos: Is there something that’s next for the work? Is there an evolution of the work that you’re really thinking of doing? It sounds like you were super responsive obviously, conceptually responsive to what was happening in your country and with your community. What’s next? What have you been thinking about?
Anjum Rahman: We try to do another round of conversations every two to three years so we’re planning for our 2025 conversations but also do some work around treaties and what’s happening at the moment locally. Atarau, did you maybe want to talk about some of that work?
Atarau Hamilton-Fuller: Yes, as we move into our considerations of belonging conversations, and we do try and contextualize it with what the foundation has done, and some of you may or may not have seen probably the haka that’s going around the world done by one of our young politicians in the House maybe a week and a half, two weeks ago, and just the wave that it created so what we’re doing I suppose in our little corner of the world is we’re trying to ensure that people who are impacted or impeded by maybe the fear that sits behind what a haka is but actually giving a little bit of education so we do all sorts of things. Currently running a book club on one of the, I suppose, a greater expansion of constitutional transformation conversations, a significant report that was compiled by the independent monitoring group here. We’re also looking at how we continue to strengthen our relationships with a lot of the places that we’ve already been to to have these conversations so a lot of (mana whenua) and just really giving people enough to make educated decisions on what’s going on. Like I said in the beginning, we’re a very young country comparatively and I think we’re just going through some teething problems that we’re not so used to, and so giving people just the right information while also giving them that sense of belonging because one thing that (Te Tiriti o Waitangi) sets out and I always say this to people is actually we as Māori have a responsibility to take the best possible care of any of our guests, and still deeply in our values. So that’s just an expansion of from where we started our belonging conversations to now and it’s been quite exciting so just continuing with that mainly, and the online harm stuff is growing hugely. The interest in the online space is huge and obviously for us what that means in terms of data sovereignty and keeping our most marginalized (whānau) safe in particular at this time as well so we’ve got a lot to do and we’re only a small team of four. I think what Anjum forgot to mention is we came in hot and heavy with about 10 to 12, 10 or 11 team of us at the beginning and now we’ve kind of reduced and gotten to a really concentrated group of four people so very much like the belonging conversations, we’ve shifted and changed over time but with the intelligence and the incredible tenacity that Anjum has has led us to keep fighting for whatever we’ve done.
Cindy Santos: Thank you so much. Before we close, I was wondering for our audience, if you could repeat the three questions again as we’re ending so what are the three key questions that you ask during this conversation?
Anjum Rahman: They are on our website on the research page but it is when do you feel like you belong? What stops you from feeling like you belong and what needs to change in order for you to feel like you belong? You notice we’re no putting the onus on the person to do the work. We’re just asking them to say what needs to change because it’s not the victims of discrimination that should have to do all the work to remove it.
Cindy Santos: Well, thank you for being in space with us today. It’s such a gift to be with you and I really look forward for folks to hear this conversation because it really is so powerful and I think applicable in all of our communities so we really appreciate you for making the time and working with us across time zones. It’s been such a pleasure. Thank you.
(Outro) And this closes out this episode of the Collective Impact Forum podcast. If you are interested in learning more about what was discussed, you can find links to resources in the footnotes for this episode. And if you’re enjoying all that we share at the Collective Impact Forum podcast, we encourage you to rate us on your preferred podcast platform, and share your favorite episodes with colleagues.
We would like to acknowledge that this episode was produced and edited on the unceded, traditional lands of the Coast Salish people, including the Duwamish, Suquamish, Stillaguamish, and Muckleshoot tribes. We honor with gratitude the land itself and the past, present, and futures of these tribes.
The Intro music for this episode was composed by Rafael Krux and our outro music is composed by Kevin Macleod.
In Forum news, we’re excited to share that registration is open for our 2025 fall workshop series titled “Essentials for Collective Impact.” This is an online workshop series that covers core practices to support collective impact and place-based collaboration, including what it means to serve as a backbone, how to do systems change work, and exploring tools to better engage your partners.
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This is Tracy Timmons-Gray, Associate Director here at the Collective Impact Forum, and your podcast producer. I want to say thank you so much for listening, and we look forward to connecting with you more in our next episode. Until next time, let’s keep working towards collective impact.
