OSF NETWORK GRANTS – EMERGENT LEARNING GATHERING
Finding Each Other on Shifting Ground
August 24–28, 2026 | Tulum, Mexico
The meeting will be hosted by Vanessa Machado de Oliveira and her team at MRT.
OSF Network Grants – Emergent Learning Gathering | Finding Each Other on Shifting Ground
About the Gathering
What this gathering is
A five-day gathering bringing together partners from across the Open Society Network Grants at a time when the conditions shaping civil society work are shifting in ways that are not yet fully understood. The gathering is designed for honest engagement with what is actually happening: in your organisations, across the sector, and in the wider systems we all depend on.
The design reflects what we have heard across approximately forty in-depth conversations with partners, intermediaries, and regional actors over the past several months. It is built around the recognition that participants are navigating different kinds of pressures, hold different analyses of the current moment, and need different kinds of spaces to engage with what they are facing. Rather than offering a single format, the gathering creates a portfolio of spaces, each designed for a different quality of conversation and a different scale of inquiry.
What this gathering is not
This is not a space for pitching, competing for funding, or performing alignment. Participation will not influence funding decisions. There is no upstream audience. The gathering is explicitly separated from any funding process.
It is not designed to produce forced consensus, polished communiqués, or outputs that claim to speak for the group. It does not carry the promise that what is discussed will lead to specific changes within OSF or the wider philanthropic sector. What it does offer is a space for honest conversation that may inform how participants, including OSF colleagues, think about and approach their work going forward. What emerges will belong to the people in the room.
Throughout, the emphasis will be on supporting forms of coordination grounded in honest understanding of the shifting terrain, and creating conditions where what is real can be named. This requires a different quality of encounter than most convenings allow: one in which participants are willing to sit with discomfort, to name what is actually happening, and to resist the pull toward premature reassurance or resolution.
OSF Network Grants – Emergent Learning Gathering | Finding Each Other on Shifting Ground
The Streams
The gathering is organised around four streams, each engaging the current moment from a different vantage point. Rather than topics, these streams represent different scales of experience and inquiry. You will be invited to choose two streams, each running for approximately six hours across 1.5 days. Choosing a stream means committing to its full arc. This is a condition for the depth and trust these conversations are designed to support.
Stream 1:
Carrying and Being Carried
Individual level
For those carrying the personal weight of this moment: fatigue, responsibility, uncertainty, and the relational strain of sustaining yourself and others under pressure. Held by practitioners drawing on Indigenous and Afro-descendant traditions. Includes somatic and embodied practices.
Stream 2:
Organizations Under Pressure
Institutional level
For those grappling with what is becoming unsustainable inside their organisations. A space for peer-to-peer exchange about real conditions, with NG team members present in some sessions as listeners.
Stream 3:
Civil Society in Transition
Sector and philanthropy level
For those who want to engage with what is shifting systemically: how money moves, how solidarity is structured, what the relationship between funders and civil society may need to become. OSF colleagues with institutional and operational perspectives will be present.
Stream 4:
The Shifting Ground
Systemic and global level
For those who want to engage with the wider dynamics reshaping the conditions for civil society: the erosion of the rules-based international order, the concentration of power in new configurations, and the implications for strategies, coordination, and theories of change.
Each participant will choose two streams. Each stream runs for approximately six hours across one and a half days, structured as three sessions. Choosing a stream means committing to its full arc: the kinds of conversations these streams are designed to hold require time, trust, and continuity.
OSF Network Grants – Emergent Learning Gathering | Finding Each Other on Shifting Ground
The Rhythm of the Gathering
The gathering is designed around spaciousness. Days will run no more than approximately four and a half hours of programmed time, with later starts, earlier finishes, and longer midday breaks. Rest and care are not add-ons. They are built into the design as a condition for the kind of engagement the gathering asks of participants. The opening establishes the shared conditions and relational ground for everything that follows. The closing is where the threads of the gathering are woven together.
August 23 (Sunday)
Arrival day. No programmed activities. Space to settle, rest, and adjust after travel.
August 24 (Monday)
Whole group opening. Shared orientation, relational mapping, moving constellations exercises, establishing shared conditions and expectations.
August 25 (Tuesday)
Stream participation begins. You engage in your first chosen stream.
August 26 (Wednesday)
Morning continues your first stream. Midday transition to your second stream. Braiding session.
August 27 (Thursday)
Your choice of second stream continues.
August 28 (Friday)
Whole group integration sharing insights across streams, reflecting on shifts, identifying forward-looking threads.
August 29 (Saturday)
Departure day. No programmed activities. Space for final conversations and travel.