About us
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was agreed by world leaders in September 2015. The Agenda offers a clear vision for the future for the world’s people, for the places where they live and for the planet.
Our purpose: To enable changemakers to be effective for equity, justice and regenerative futures in a complex, fast-changing world.
Our approach: We seek to make collective action a reality, fostering connections between actors and sectors – notably in the areas of food, nutrition, climate, nature and health.
By working with a wide range of people, including local and national governments, civil society, farmers, companies, academia and international agencies, we are able to:
We attach great importance to continuous cross-fertilisation and cross-learning among these activities and put a special emphasis on sharing our learning and insights openly as a public good.
In all we do, we weave four threads together:
Skills
We help leaders make best use of emotional intelligence and know when and how to trust instincts
Systems
We foster effective leadership in the context of complex, living systems – what we call Living-Systems Leadership
Synergies
We encourage honest collaboration, because leaders are most effective when working in synergy
Sustainability
We work to urgently advance sustainable development and global agendas for humanity and the planet.
Who is a changemaker?
Changemakers accompanied by 4SD cultivate mindsets and behaviours that significantly increase their ability to be effective in a complex, fast-changing world. Specifically, they are better able to operate within their professional context to:
• inspire others, build confidence and capabilities;
• weave together different strands across disciplines;
• establish connections and dialogue among diverse actors;
• and ultimately to embrace complexity, achieve coherence across multiple actors; and enable their organisation or the multi-actors processes in which they are involved to be able to achieve greater social and environmental impact.
To multiply our impact and engage more people on systems leadership, we also:
Work with training entities and consultancies
Create, test and refine multicultural systems leadership materials and workshops
Offer opportunities to high-potential, hyper-connected leaders from low-resources settings, practicing equity as much as possible
Engage with and influence human resources and the culture of organisations and networks
Collaborate with associations and multi-stakeholder platforms
