Reos Partners is a social enterprise that effects change on the most important and extractable issues across six thematic areas relating to international development. The company’s services include the design, facilitation and guidance of processes and platforms. These services enable governments, companies and civil society organizations worldwide to conduct new experiments, initiatives and movements, thereby permitting them to solve the complex challenges and issues they face. Reos Partners' innovative approach begins with the creation of diverse coalitions that bring together multiple stakeholders and ultimately lays the foundation for crucial systemic transformation. Reos Partners generates revenue through their consulting services, through which they regularly partner with foundations, governments, intergovernmental organizations and NGOs on a project basis. They received a capital investment from the EPFL Innovation Park, an accelerator that provides funding and other support to innovative companies and start-ups.
Theory of Change
Progress can be made in addressing complex social challenges by applying transformative facilitation techniques that bring together diverse participants and coalitions to develop forward thinking scenarios that lead to systemic change.
Activities
Reos Partners develops a custom approach for each of their projects. The organization’s work begins with a complex social challenge, with the aim of supporting a transition toward a transformed situation. These challenges span all of the Sustainable Development Goal areas, including issues relating to democracy, education, governance, health, land, peace, and security. Reos Partners typically employs a combination of two tested approaches: transformative scenario processes and social labs. Initiatives can last from a few days to multiple years. The organization also offers training and coaching to build capacities and skills.
Results
Since their founding over 25 years ago, Reos Partners have worked on more than 43 projects and their efforts have supported groups addressing complex challenges in over 33 countries. In 2011, Reos Partners was approached to address a systemic health crisis among the Aboriginal peoples of New South Wales, Australia. Reos Partners worked with the regional Ministry of Health and local Aboriginal leadership to create a 10-year strategic plan that addressed entrenched, social inequalities, cultural differences, and tensions. The initiative included a series of eight one-day labs around New South Wales that broke down silos separating the two communities and helped forge insights and cultural alliances that continue to inform and shape the regional health system. In a particularly expansive initiative, their ‘Possible Mexicos’ project has grown into a network of more than 100 leaders from across the political, geographic, and socio-economic spectrum in Mexico. The development of this pluralistic group of stakeholders has led to key outcomes including a coordinated response to the 2017 earthquakes in central Mexico, a Supreme Court ruling that declared it unconstitutional for household workers to be denied social security benefits and a democratic appointment of the country’s attorney general.
