A note from inHive’s new chair, Dan Keyworth
Throughout my life, I have seen the awesome power of the people around us to shape our lives. Two alumni changed my life in 2000 with a scholarship, in turn made possible by others lobbying government to widen funding. Across my career I have seen transformative networks for engagement, fundraising and outcomes. Despite most young people globally not having access to strong networks today, research shows that inspiring alumni and leaders in their communities want to help and be connected.
Whilst COVID-19 put up some new physical boundaries, it has also broken them down virtually, and we have opportunity to make young people around the globe more connected in 2021 than at any point in history. Through my career I have seen huge benefits to focused collaboration. In my past role at the University of Oxford, the collegiate University deepened its development partnerships between departments and colleges to better serve a global audience of alumni, donors and friends. In my current role at social good software leader Blackbaud, I see the power of a connected social impact ecosystem every day.
But, without intervention, networks can disproportionately serve the elite: the most powerful and most connected become more so through the connections they get access to. It is thus our responsibility as social good advocates to ensure networks are a tool to reduce inequalities, rather than widen them. We need to be intentional about not creating spaces that exclude, and to ensure that the networks we support are accessible to groups and individuals sometimes silenced. This will take time and a lot of listening, and self-awareness on our part.
Now as the new chair of inHive, I am excited to bring my personal experiences to help deliver our charity’s 2021-23 strategy. We look not only to build and strengthen networks to directly support more marginalised youth, but to convene and steer global collaboration toward collective focus on networks, underpinned by evidence of impact and shared knowledge. We are continually learning more about the transformative power of networks for young people, yet to date, networks continue to be under-researched and often underfunded.
This is why inHive’s strategy is compelling: we work with local partners around the world to ensure every young person can benefit from relatable role models, transforming life chances and building more inclusive societies. We are global experts in this field, and our mission depends on empowering a thriving network of brilliant partners around us. Addressing inequality and improving young people’s life chances through relatable role models takes a commitment of many organisations and individuals, and that’s why we’re committed to driving thought leadership, awareness and discussion around networks to unlock more partnerships, funding and impact together.
Networks can drive systems change.
We’ve spent a lot of time at inHive learning about how networks can serve its members. This year, we’re going to be investing more to learn how networks can serve a collective agenda. Whether that be a group of alumni leaders in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa driving localised advocacy campaigns promoting girls’ education, young leaders working in agriculture across sub-Saharan Africa driving technology innovations, or displaced youth raising awareness of the challenges around education and employment.
But it will take strong collaboration across social good organisations to bring about more inclusive societies. That’s why we are convening and steering global networks to drive increase in awareness, impact and investment in this field. There is growing evidence of the need and desire to harness relatable role models to empower young people, but a number of barriers remain to this happening organically on a global scale in marginalised communities. We must work at multiple layers to remove those barriers in order to enable growth in both the quantity and quality of networks supporting youth and other marginalised people around the world.
Specifically, funders will need to commit new funds to helping strengthen young people’s access to networks, whilst partners proactively engage those around them including former students and past programme participants. All these approaches involve working in partnership.
That’s why I would love to hear from you: together we can amplify the global conversation about networks to unlock youth potential and build a better world.