In many ways, the whole NOS story has its roots in co-founder Alejandro Robles’s quest for creating organizations flexible enough to meet the continually evolving realities of complex change settings like the Ensenada de La Paz bay. This orientation enabled NOS staff to gradually grow beyond their technical knowledge as expert marine biologists and grow as systems change leaders, community organizers, and now architects and shepherds of a still more complex change process.
Supporting NOS in this evolution, we at the Academy for Systems Change have been guided by a ‘mandala for systemic change,’ which encompasses four elements embedded in deep change: capacity building, community building, research, and practice.
The work of NOS over the past five years has been shaped by all four of these elements.
Capacity building
How are we seeking to learn and grow?
As described above, NOS staff members have taken advantage of a broad array of capacity building opportunities within SoL, the Presencing Institute, M.I.T., and most recently the Academy for Systems Change, initially through short, 3-4 day deep-dive workshops and ongoing coaching. From this, they have recently started to develop their own internal capacity building processes.
Community building
We are not alone
The core work of NOS has come to center on community building in El Manglito and its neighboring communities. It is important that organizations do not feel alone on their developmental journeys, that they feel a part of larger learning communities in which they can learn from other organizations embarking on similar journeys—even ones working in very different contexts. For example, NOS has connected with three other Mexican organizations involved in the Academy, like dia [developing intelligence through art], which uses programs oriented around the visual arts to transform pedagogies in Mexican schools, Enseña por Mexico [Teach for Mexico], and Via Educacion, which focuses on civic engagement in schools throughout Monterrey. “We have always known that education is crucial,” says Academy for Systems Change Fellow Christian Liñán-Rivera, himself the co-founder of a Montessori school in La Paz, “but often the parents are disengaged in schools, maybe because of their own bad experiences as students. While our particular focus is quite different, in a sense it is not all that different. It is all about the children, whether you work with them in schools or in the sorts of out-of-school programs NOS runs. Certainly, we all know that it is the well being of our children that animates the work of OPRE.”
NOS staff members have also collaborated with Academy for Systems Change Fellow Jenny Menke, who works on large scale ecological restoration in the Osa Peninsula of Costa Rica, Scott Pankranz, founder of Ecology Project International, and Kim Kita, who is developing a new campus for Colorado State University in nearby Todos Santos, Baja California Sur.
In addition, all of this work has been guided relentlessly by the demands of restoring the fisheries of the Sea of Cortez (Practice) and trying to build practical know-how that can help others doing similar work in areas outside of La Paz (Research). “The mandala for systemic change has become a kind of compass for us, continually reminding us of the larger field we are operating within as well as helping us orient ourselves within our immediate work,” says Academy for Systems Change Fellow and NOS co-director Liliana Gutiérrez Mariscal.