My personal development led me to realise that knowledge is a source of power. In order to use this kind of power to its potential and contribute to the goodness of humanity, knowledge creation must be a sustainable process towards empowerment of individuals, organisation and the world at large. Furthermore, collectivity and sharing of knowledge is crucial for long-lasting effective knowledge creation and empowerment.

With this background, studying international affairs at the University of St. Gallen, I was not fully satisfied with the knowledge acquired since I was only memorizing the obsolete subject matters. I felt a strong disconnection between the issues of our time and the teachings intended to solve those problems. Thus, for the final paper of my bachelor’s degree, I did not only want to write a paper for the bookshelf, but rather create a thesis that can be used.

Having been introduced to the integral development approach developed by Trans4m, in a very special university course by Alexander Schieffer, I was eager to apply and further develop the approach. Soon after the course, in 2015, I embarked on a journey of integral development, thereby also starting off Trans4m’s partnership with CORO India.

As a Junior Fellow of Trans4m, I spent three months with CORO in Mumbai, India. I thereby used my Bachelor Thesis entitled “CORO’s Integral Approach towards Collective Social Knowledge Building and Community Empowerment” as a transformative tool for organisational renewal, which allowed me to genuinely contribute to CORO’s continuing success and long-term sustainability.