Since June 2020, UNDP has been partnering with the Presencing Institute to build and sustain architectures of learning and connection for the cultivation of transformation literacy and action confidence within the UN system and beyond. A series of Summer Dialogues was co-hosted by the two organizations between June and September 2020, aimed at building capabilities for awareness-based collective action.

As progress toward the SDGs has been reversed by the change wrought by COVID-19, the UNDP has realized that the "tectonic shifts and blind spots surfaced by our current moment have underscored the need for new capabilities to navigate the Decade of Action and seize emergent opportunities for systems transformation" and an urgent need for integrated solutions that go beyond merely optimizing the status quo. Deep systems change starts with fostering collective capacities to situate the ‘self’ in systems, to operate from a place of connectedness between our minds, hearts, and hands and between each other, and to move from ego-system to eco-system awareness. 

Drawing on the energy and insights from the initial dialogues, the partnership between the two organizations continued with a global Transformation Dialogue Series from January to June 2021. These virtual gatherings and learning spaces invited the UN staff into a unique space to understand and apply approaches from Theory U to the complex challenges at the core of their work. The sessions took the core questions of the 2020 Human Development Report on Human Development and the Anthropocene as a point of focus for co-inquiry into mechanisms for systems transformation.

Following the Dialogue Series, a 4-month Action Learning Lab for UN practitioners has recently been launched for them to dive even deeper into the process of honing their action confidence, by applying transformation literacy approaches to problems of their choice.

The recordings of the dialogues have been shared on the UNDP-powered online community engagement platform, Sparkblue, where you can also browse through the various resources offered and contribute to the discussions (if you register as a user on the platform).