Inside Catalyst — 6 February: celebrating our new Co-Director, exploring paternalism and open decision making
Weekly reflections from the Catalyst team.
Celebrating Hannah
: This week I’m celebrating Hannah Ndapandula Turner-Uaandja joining Catalyst Network as a Co-Director.
We’ve been working with Hannah since September as Participatory Engagement Lead. She’s been leading the exciting Tech Justice Roadshow along with her amazing fellow circle members.
We couldn’t imagine Catalyst without her as we continue our transition to realise our new vision. So the Directors (Sheeza Shah, Ellie Hale, Kate Swade and myself) invited Hannah to join as an Executive Director, and she accepted 🥳
Unlearning paternalism
I really enjoyed attending the latest session in the Beyond White Supremacy unlearning programme from New Ways. I’m on the course with Catalyst friends Abi Handley, Jo Morfee and Ellie Hale. Today we were looking at paternalism, which really resonated giving what’s going on in the world right now, particularly but not only in the US.
Reflecting on open and transparent decision making
I was reflecting on the need for openness and transparency in decision making — being really clear about who is making which decisions, and why, and being open to challenge on this — as an antidote to paternalism. I was also able to share some of the questions coming up for us as my colleague Hannah works with the Tech Justice circle to embed decolonial evaluation approaches into that project, and what that means for the evaluation of Catalyst as a whole.
Activity Leads meetup
: I really enjoyed our activity leads catch up this week where we heard more about the brilliant work that is happening across the network, including the brilliant tech justice circle work, thinking about diversity and inclusion in digital agencies, the forthcoming Charity Digital Skills Report and the interesting ideas people have come up with to evaluate their own work.
It’s so great that Hannah is now a director, this is very exciting news!
On a more meta level, I’m very pleased to be part of an organisation that is actively planning to decelerate in order to build back up more intentionally — it will be a really interesting journey and I suspect more people will be taking this path in the next few years.
