Inspired by a 6 month imaginaries journey in 2021, that offered glimmers of a bigger potential, an invitation to reimagine in community was drafted by the future co-hosts and inspired us to step into this space.

Some of us stepped forward and became Designers working in service of the Community. Together, we started exploring the purpose that was bringing us together,  what we wanted to do over the next 2 years, and how we might organize and collaborate to bring our ideas to life.

Designers and Hosts met face to face for the first time. During a week in Malawi we worked together to explore the roles for the coming months and started co-creating our working culture.

We shared our dreams, interests and ideas as a community. The Designers weaved them together and created: a map of the Reimagine Community land, the first version of our Manifesto, an outline of the potential actions to shape the future of peacebuilding and a proposal on how to continue building our collaboration.

This was our first time coming together as a Community in real life! During a week in Türkiye we endorsed our Manifesto, imagined alternative scenarios for the future of our translocal collaboration, created storyboards of how our actions could take shape in the next 2 years, and started exploring how to make decisions as a group of 25.

We endorsed a Task Force of four members to take on technical roles in service of the Community. Their focus was to develop a vision for a self-managed Community Fund, propose a values-based decision-making approach, and imagine what relationship-centered accountability could look like.

Over three days in Istanbul, with support from our Hosting team, we defined our collaboration approach as a working group, learned from each other's experiences and sense-maked together. We drew inspiration from alternative decision-making methods and tools and began exploring values-based approaches to governance. Discussions about radical transparency helped us to envision a model of relationship-centric accountability. We imagined what we could achieve as a community with our own fund, and sketched an overview of our proposal.

As a Community, we participated in further developing our proposal for a community fund through a process facilitated by the Task Force. It began with brainstorming sessions where we shared our ideas. This was followed by lab sessions during which we provided input in more specific proposals. Finally, we made a collective decision by testing different methods, such as supermajority voting and consensus.

We agreed on a fluid and shared model of leadership, where we are collectively-led as a community, participating in decision-making and sharing power. We decided to create a participatory funding mechanism for experimentation where the entire community will decide on fund allocation.

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We presented our proposal to Humanity United and secured our first direct resources as a Community. We also received support from the Robert Bosch Foundation to fund Community members to broader and intensify the leadership roles they play in service of the collective.

The Shift the Power Summit 2023 was our first event as a Reimagine Peace community. We participated in a global discussion that examined the existing international funding system and provided a platform for communities to share how they are shaping their own futures. We explored new approaches to community governance and were inspired by the lived experiences of those at the event.

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We are grateful to Peace Direct, Robert Bosch Foundation and Humanity United for inviting us and sponsoring us in this event.

We facilitated two parallel workshops during the Shift the Power summit, where diverse stakeholders engaged in dialogue and imaginative discussions about the challenges facing the peacebuilding system. This was our first opportunity to connect the voices of our translocal community with grassroots organizations from Latin America, along with various stakeholders at the international level.

In the sidelines of the Shift the Power Summit, we held a dinner with representatives of both of the foundations to reimagine funder-activist partnership in the pursuit of peace. The event took place in Casa de la Paz, a venue with deep meaning for peace in Colombia.

During our second face to face gathering with the full Community, we focused on how we wanted to organise ourselves as a collective and decision-making. As part of our commitment to the power of the translocal experience, we immersed ourselves in Sri Lankan experience of peace & peacebuilding, and shared personal stories about our journeys in peacebuilding. We agreed how to be and participate in the Reimagine space and experiment over the next six months with a collective leadership model. This focused on the concept of "Caring for the Whole" as the leadership approach to support our community. Additionally, we created smaller groups, referred to as Pods, that focused on specific experiments aimed at building our community and exploring pathways to peace.

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We established clear mandates for both the "Caring for the Whole" group and the Pods. Each of us selected a Pod based on our personal passions and interests.

Each Pod selected a link person to join the Caring for the Whole group. We also welcomed the Hosting team in this leadership formation, to share learning from their experiences in facilitating and leading the space for the first two years and to support an effective transition.

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During this leadership phase, the primary focus was on understanding the governance needs of the community and addressing emerging issues. The team explored a model of shared accountability, managed a process to select who would design the participatory funding mechanism, and developed a proposal for the next phase of community leadership. They documented lessons learned and successfully transitioned operations from the hosted space fully to the community.

At the heart of the Pods structure was a desire to translate reimagination into action. We aimed to self-organize into smaller groups that could sense opportunities for the collective to evolve while promoting the spirit of reimagining peacebuilding. We wanted to elevate our profiles as members, build on our expertise, and have fun!

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During this phase, we experimented at different levels. Each group came together with a specific purpose for experimentation. We had the freedom to start activities while committing to learning and sharing this knowledge with the community. This phase also served as our first attempt to collectively make decisions about fund allocation. Each pod had access to resources, and we had the autonomy to decide how to allocate those funds, what they would be used for, and how we would hold ourselves accountable within our pods.

Two of our community members took on the role of designing a participatory funding mechanism to support our processes of experimentation. They reconnected us with what "reimagine peace" meant for us as individuals, and created 4 scenarios to help us visualize how different funds could support different types of experiments. They finalized their work by delivering a proposal with three alternative funding mechanisms: The Collective Vision Fund, The Collaborative Initiative Fund, and The Transforming Together Fund.

We selected a participatory funding mechanism that supports bold and innovative approaches to peace through prototyping ideas that reimagine and transform peacebuilding paradigms. This translocal fund focuses on experiments that connect across global local contexts. All community members take part in fund allocation decisions. The Transforming Together Fund enables collaborative experiments both within our community and with external peacebuilders.

The Community selects a temporary 5 person group, including the two catalysts, to learn the lessons from the community experience so far and put forwards proposals for the future governance of the Community.

Our five person team gathers for a face to face meeting to Morocco to build a collective picture of the lessons so far and potential paths forward. Together, we look in detail at the different prototypes and experiences of community leadership and we discuss tensions and trade-offs in the community’s structure and ways of working. By the end of the meeting, we have co-created a set of core principles and values and have a template of a 2 year vision for our governance.

The transition group holds discussions with the Community to help unpack together our collective journey and agree a roadmap for the future.  Our first session allows us to reflect on our learning from our first experiences in organising collectively and conducting experiments. Our second session puts forward proposal for the principles and values at the core of our governance approach. In the third and fourth sessions, we explore options for community membership and leadership.  At the end of March, the Transition Group’s mandate ends. As a Community we start a self-facilitated phase to understand what full leadership looks for us and collectively shape the path forward.

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Simultaneously, the hosted space comes to an end., We invite Adriana and Elise to become Community Members as we did with Maria-Elisa, the Host Operations Lead, in September 2024.

Reimagine Peace is now fully collectively led by the Community. This means we hold full ownership and responsibility for the space, including designing and facilitating Community meetings. But what does that look like, in what shape and in what form?

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As we recognize that our collective leadership is emergent, a group of 8 volunteers steps up to hold space and discuss our paths forward. We are inspired by drumbeaters and paddle together as one, without a captain, moving forward in harmony, guided by our shared rhythm—a Common Beat.

The Drumbeaters facilitate a series of 8 sessions to explore what collective action could mean for us across highly diverse contexts, roles, and levels of engagement. We hold the assumption that we need a clear, shared purpose that can function as a "big tent", capable of holding our distinct struggles, questions, and horizons. 

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But we cannot reimagine what we cannot name; we start by naming our common challenges, then position ourselves within the system, and finally name ideas and curiosities that emerge from the conversations. After we reflect on the process and outcomes, the Drumbeaters hand back leadership to the full group and prompt us to consider which operations and governance models will best support the exploration and experimentation of the identified ideas and curiosities.

We agree to focus on care and relationships. Two members volunteer to create a space for collective reflection on tensions and questions that have emerged through practice. In the dialogues, we explore experiences of burden and uncertainty and acknowledge them as part of our collective process. We examine our diverse ways of participating, reflect on our relationship to shared financial resources, explore the role of in-person gatherings, and grapple with the opportunities and challenges that come with being a collectively led initiative.

We co-create and endorse a community membership model that clarifies what it means to belong to Reimagine Peace, defines differentiated modes of engagement, articulates shared values, and establishes rights and responsibilities to support sustainable collective ownership. We hope that this will strengthen our ability to plan, organize, and develop governance practices that are realistic, flexible, and grounded in our lived realities. In endorsing the new model, we commit to assessing our capacity and deciding whether we can show up for the community as active or supportive members for the first 6 months of 2026.

We start the year with Community members in 2 different roles: 13 as active members and 10 as supportive members. Active members are endorsed to move the Community forward and make decisions for the following 6 months. We focus our care and attention on planning the next community gathering; harvesting, documenting, and sharing learning; grounding the operations required to move forward; maintaining relationships with donors and grant management; and facilitating our community calls.

We explore what collective leadership means when there are no clearly defined roles. 2 active members gather lessons from our past collective decision-making processes and articulate them as a proposal to enable us to make decisions as we figure out how we want to contribute as individuals. We test the process out and decide to move forward with it.

We practice consent decision-making. Consent creates co-ownership. It is a proposal-based process centered on an agreement we have as a community: “Go with good enough for now, safe enough to try.” We believe that wisdom is distributed, and that the group can sense risks, possibilities, and blind spots better than any individual. We commit to moving from preference-based decision-making to responsibility-based decision-making, and to shift our proposal culture from convincing to listening, from control to trust, and from ego to purpose. We present and endorse a total of 13 proposals, with 11 community members contributing to steering the community.