Lina Tangarife, TerritoriA (Colombia)

Ever since I was a little girl, I have been very concerned about how to deal with the many considerable challenges to which humanity is yet to respond. I started volunteering at the age of eleven. I have had the opportunity to meet wonderful people who live in quite difficult circumstances. To me, poverty, hunger, and the lack of opportunities have always been complex problems, and they make me wonder who the decision-makers of the world are, and how we can effect real and profound structural changes for those in difficult socio-economic conditions.

With these questions, I continued to connect with people and communities in different parts of Colombia, Latin America, and the rest of the world. Always seeking to produce real change, I dedicated myself to understanding why organizations did not grow or scale, or had serious resource mobilization challenges, always lacking or operating with a dearth of possibilities.

I therefore conducted a research study where I observed and interviewed more than 2,000 entities. I wrote a report about the nature of social organizations in Latin America — identifying their challenges and opportunities — to maximize their impact. Power lies in leaderships that transform themselves over time; leaderships that are informed by learning and based on trust. Latin American people are resilient and resourceful. They do a lot with very little, and this is a quality, not a challenge. This is what I have always noticed and heard and how I have worked with and for the people in many different places and spaces.

I love my country, I love my region, I love this planet. I am convinced that in order to achieve meaningful change we must do, think, and act differently. Definitely, the development sector must be transformed in order to deal with the challenges that so far, we, human beings, have not been able to overcome. The logics of economies must be transformed so that we can survive as a species. I am the CEO of Azaí, an organization dedicated to: (1) Building impactful organizations; (2) Consulting in impact measurement and management and the development of lasting organizational cultures; and (3) Azaí Regenerativa, through which we contribute to solving the greatest challenges facing humankind.

As a co-founder of TerritoriA, I am motivated by long-term bets, which allow us to jointly envision what we can achieve. That is why I believe that the creation of TerritoriA has been a very important milestone for Colombia. In December we will be at the epicenter of the meeting of the #ShiftThePower movement, and not only am I excited because of the opportunity to meet up with colleagues, allies, and friends but also for what this implies for the region — the possibility to demonstrate the capabilities that we have developed over decades to articulate efforts and make visible the power of our ideas, of the people who live in these territories, and of what we can teach the rest of the world. Today the power to transform is in us, in all those who intend to achieve a transformation and manage to translate their intentions into actions.

I believe that in order to achieve the changes we want, we must transform the way we see our challenges, the way we deal with them and contribute to their solution. We need visions that are more comprehensive and that systemically engage different actors and all those facing challenges so that we can jointly build visions that we as civil society can leverage.

Let us keep playing the “pirinola” (a traditional spinning top game), where we all contribute and we all win. And let us continue transforming realities.