10 June 2017: In a three-day workshop, Trans4m worked with Sekem on setting up a 12-months organizational development process to further evolve the Human Development Approach of Sekem. At the same time, and partly overlapping, a transformative process was designed with and for SESC – the Sekem Environmental Science Center.
Sekem’s organizational development process is led by Trans4m Fellow Maximilian Abouleish, who employs the Integral Worlds approach to integrate a set of cutting-edge human and organizational development tools. The forthcoming 12-months process, strongly aligned with Abouleish’s PhD, is geared to bring a higher level of employee responsibility and self-management capacities into the Sekem businesses, but also responding flexibly to diverse consciousness levels among Sekem employees. The initiative will also involve parts of Heliopolis University, in particular the business and economics faculty, to accompany the process, but also to use respective learnings to further develop its own curricula. Furthermore, the newly evolving Integral Human Development approach of Sekem seeks to mirror and contribute to the holistic design of Sekem as a whole – seeing itself, since its foundation in 1977, as an integrated development initiative that simultaneously engages in economic, cultural, ecological and social renewal.
From the very same spirit a new educational initiative has recently been seeded within Sekem – spearheaded by Soraya Abouleish. Using the SESC Sekem Environmental and Science Center as vehicle, this new initiative aspires to bring about an “educational revolution” in Egypt. Spearheaded by Soraya Abouleish, a team has been formed, that works simultaneously on the establishment of a permaculture learning garden, new educational curricula serving to bring about a nature-based learning experience, translated into concrete educational offerings, that will start already this July. During the workshop a design for an organizational development process has been developed, building on Trans4m’s 5C Journey – beginning with the organizational Call of SESC, and working itself through the phases of understanding Context, evolving Consciousness, engaging in Co-Creation (towards a new knowledge base and curricula) and resulting in Contribution in the form of concrete educational offerings. This 5C process is accompanied by Trans4m Junior Fellow Anthony Dharan, who is spending six months on the ground with SESC and SEKEM. The workshop included team members of both initiatives.
While at Sekem, and true to the Sekem spirit, numerous complementary meetings took place, allowing a rich diversity of perspectives influencing the creative outcome of the workshops. That included guiding inputs by Sekem’s founder Dr. Ibrahim Abouleish and Sekem’s CEO Helmy Abouleish.
