By Meghann Gunderman, TFFT’s Founder and Executive Director

What is your ideal world?

That is a BIG question. Even if you stop to think about it, it’s hard to put into words, but this is what our facilitators challenged us to articulate during our three-day stakeholder workshop. Representatives from our partner schools, TFFT scholars, heads of our partner orphanages, the TFFT Team, private sector donors, civil society organizations, and other interested parties were all present. Everyone had to sit and think/meditate about what their ideal world would look like.

We then got together in small groups to physically draw what we thought this world looked like. We were all working within the education and orphan/vulnerable children sphere, so in a sense there was a lot of overlap with regards to THAT ideal world–free from stigma, equal opportunity, families, social services, governments, NGOs all working in collaboration, education for all. These were all themes that ran deep.

To give you an idea, the illustrations looked something like this:

When each group presented their ideal world, we finally saw that the facilitators were, in fact, trying to get us to articulate our vision for TFFT. It was idealistic and lofty, yes, but that was the purpose. This collective vision took us all to a place where we hope to one day be:

“A world where orphans and vulnerable children are free of exclusion, disadvantage, and vulnerability and contribute as empowered and active citizens of a just society”

This stakeholder workshop was the second step towards developing our strategic plan, and we spent three jam-packed days sharing opinions, discussing our work, and debating how we can advance our impact over the next three years. We even invited the media and received coverage from the national station TGA.

The sessions took us down many interesting paths, which included tons of diversions, philosophical discussions, what if-s, and how to-s. With all this, though, we were able to truly hunker down and devise a plan for progress—a way to move forward—to make our mission more succinct and strategic, setting us apart from other non-profits working in our arena.

A main conclusion from the initial phases of our strategic planning was that, in order for the TFFT scholars to reach their full potential, we need to focus on securing quality education AND the appropriate psychosocial guidance/support. That will be the priority with everything we do moving forward. They will go hand in hand.

What does your ideal world look like?