#PowerLab is underway
Our 4th peer group has set out on their Learning Marathon. As ever, each participant brings their Learning Question. But this time there’s a connecting theme of ‘power’.
Over the next 6 months they will be exploring their questions and how a deeper understanding of power might help to answer them — personally or societally. As each member of the group explores their Learning Question and develops a response, they will collectively pool their learnings about power. How to understand it more deeply? How to play at the edge of your sphere of influence? What to let go of? And how to unlock more of the power in us all?
The Learning Questions span topics of social media, grief, health, women’s communities, energy healing, collective action, learning experience, social impact, storytelling, leadership and more. Read on for the full questions and an introduction to those posing them…
Sharmin Ahammad
Sharmin is a Freelance Digital Marketer and Copywriter who is interested in how technology can work for us, instead of us working for it. Having spent most of her professional life working on websites and social media, she is looking at ways people can achieve a life-tech balance, have a value-led approach to what they do online and improve their digital wellbeing. After years of self-experimentation, she set up Digital Cooldown, a project that’s all about helping people find practical ways of getting technology to work for them.
Her Learning Question is ‘How can I help people have a healthier and more balanced relationship with the internet and their devices?’
Amber Dobinson
Lived experiences are the heart of Amber’s interest to create better-fitting wellbeing support for isolated families who don’t have a typical parenting story — perhaps caused by healthcare needs for mum or dad, coping with severe childhood illness or the heartbreak of baby or child loss. With a diverse project and events background Amber currently works with Shoreditch Trust’s Bump Buddies and Hackney Museum on the exhibition “Mothers of Hackney”.
Her Learning Question is ‘How might we help improve the support for parents of babies or young children who are dealing with severe childhood illness and/or bereavement?’
Ellie Osbourne
Ellie is an ethnographic and strategic researcher, curious about culture and the things that make people tick. Last year she spent 6 months with The School of System Change exploring her personal role in co-creating change for a world where people and planet can flourish. She continues on this quest, most recently facilitating at the UNLEASH Innovation Lab in Singapore, guiding an international group of young people to find solutions to the UN’s sustainable development goals. In her spare time she is a swimmer, globe trotter, day dreamer and collaborator with Dignity Platform, poised to change the way we fundraise for our favourite causes.
Her Learning Question is ‘How might a deeper understanding of what it means to be human enable me to live a more meaningful life and help others to do the same?’
Stella McKenna
Stella is an International Development consultant and coach. With an MA in Peace Studies & Development, she is currently working on projects aimed at establishing networks of relatable role models for young people, predominantly in East Africa. A personal project in which she decided to read only books written by women in 2018 has led her to thinking more broadly about how she can use her skillset and knowledge to create and shape learning and social spaces for women, specifically those in the development sector.
Her Learning Question is ‘How might a community of women support each other to maximise their individual and collective impact on social issues (without creating another networking event, Facebook page or conference)?’
David Heinemann
David Heinemann is a facilitator, coach and social activist who supports people to grow themselves, transform systems and improve societies — preferably in that order.
David’s recent projects include founding the Freedom of Expression Fellowship, a global award for leading human rights defenders, launching a UK/US series of mental heath retreats with Sunday Assembly, and training 60 young men from council estates across England and Wales in politics and arts activism.
Diagnosed with Ankylosing Spondylitis in 2008, David is also a disabled endurance athlete and qualified personal trainer.
His Learning Question is ‘What can living with the failings in my body teach me about living with the failings in my society?’
Maya Ris
Maya currently work as a project coordinator organising wellbeing activities and learning for people experiencing mental health conditions and helping them improve their health and wellbeing . She has worked as a self employed energy healer and teacher for over 10 years.
Her interests are in making energy healing acceptable and desirable to the mainstream health services and in empowering people to learn the tools and ways for prevention and self management of their wellbeing in natural ways that do not damage our biology and our psyche.
Her Learning Question is ‘How can I format, present, package and promote energy healing so that it can be successfully used within mainstream health provision?’
Un Jeong, Ko
Un Jeong is a social designer, with a particular interest in how design and innovation can drive complex social change that improve people’s health and wellbeing. She currently works at Innovation Unit, a social enterprise that creates new solutions to complex social challenges.
As a design consultant, she uses various design methods in her practice such as storytelling, data visualisation, co-design, prototyping and coaching.
Her Learning Question is ‘What can I learn from exploring health related social innovation and service design practices in the UK and South Korea?’
Mila Aliana
Mila is currently exploring and experimenting as a community volunteer in collaboration with several groups and communities to help them self organise, self develop and self sustain. This is informed by a background of multiple professional hats including consultancy, entrepreneurship, project management and development work in various industries and sectors across a couple of decades.
Her Learning Question is ‘How might we motivate, enable, and mobilise community to sustainable self-reliance?’
Adrien Fabre
Adrien is curious and determined; from studying vocational electronics, he progressed to a Masters in Business Engineering; from hospitality jobs he moved to big corporate and start-up environments; from a small town in south of France, he moved to Moscow and London.
Adrien is now deeply involved in the social impact and food sustainability ecosystems where he leads events with the global community MakeSense and helps social enterprises to tackle their challenges using design thinking methodologies. Adrien is an emerging social entrepreneur and a facilitator; he created itakepart.org in order to pursue his passion to cultivate social impact leadership; using the playfulness and creativity of design thinking as well as the inclusivity and systemic approaches of food sustainability initiatives.
His Learning Question is ‘How might we cultivate social impact leadership?’
Berta Rojals Pons
Berta started out her career as a Primary School teacher, continued her journey studying a degree in Anthropology and, most recently, immersing herself in user experience design. Since 2014 she’s been part of ELTjam, an EdTech agency based in London. Her current role is Learner Experience Designer, where she works to create delightful learning experiences through bringing together pedagogy and UX. She is very excited about the future and the new routes she might take.
Her Learning Question is ‘How can my amazing school experiences help me create delightful learning experiences for others?’
Edith Whitehead
Edith cares about stuff, and gets stuff done. She is a strategist, facilitator, researcher and storyteller, with a focus on social innovation.
Her Learning Question is ‘How can storytelling best be used to challenge unequal cultural power?’
Kalliste Kuhn
Kalliste Kuhn is Head Coach at Freeformers. In a past life Kalliste worked as a psychologist specialising in community interventions but since then has taken up creating and delivering world-class workforce transformation interventions. Alongside this Kalliste manages the personal development and quality assurance of her team of digital coaches. She is passionate about people, purpose and empowerment with an almost unhealthy obsession with continuous learning and explaining South Africanisms to unsuspecting Londoners.
Her Learning Question is ‘How might international mental health practitioners, living but not registered in the UK, continue to use their skills to meaningfully contribute to their communities?’
Fancy a Learning Question of your own? Have a play with our Learning Question Generator.
Interested in becoming a future participant? Leave your details here to be the first to know when applications open.
Want to connect to one of these awesome folk? Start up a Learning Marathon in your local area? Get in touch at hello@enrolyourself.com for a chat.
