Introducing oikos Impact Matrix: Our innovative way of tracing and presenting oikos impact!

From world crisis to all sustainability challenges that are close on the horizon: Our times ask for greater agility and transparency in what we do as an organization and a community of changemakers, and how we tell the stories of the impact we create. This need of sharing a clearer & more tangible picture of our work is what moved us during the last few years to create the oikos Impact Matrix.

The Impact Matrix is a real-time reliability and accountability tool for oikos International. It helps us to plan and to track & trace the milestones of our work in real time, while giving insight into the broader impact we have – both, regarding our international activities and the work of our community. Anyone can easily understand our priorities and achievements as we walk the talk by browsing through the different elements.

The story of the Impact Matrix started all the way back in 2019 with the formation of a working group which wished to explore new and innovative ways of tracing our impact. After initially finalizing the concept online, the project was continued by our co-presidents Darija & Sophie for the past 1,5 years, working on the existing outline, refining it and making it more accessible and user-friendly.

With back and frontend infrastructure in place, the user & field guides followed along with the creation of the necessary databases and the website platform, including the mechanisms for chapter integration into the Impact Matrix. Initially the concept was introduced to the oikos international Team earlier this year and finalized at the Team Days in Spring of 2022.

Now we are excited to finally launch the Impact Matrix for the entire world and see it become one of the key tools for evaluating and presenting our impact both within and beyond the oikos Community!

Tracking & tracing our international impact 

oikos is running several international initiatives with the aim of tending the oikos Community and supporting them in their missions and visions. The matrix creates an overview over all of these initiatives, their developments & strategic focuses and simultaneously it serves as a continuous impact dashboard for our community work. Both ongoing and one-time projects use the tool to plan and report back on their milestones and achievements. 

On top of that, the Impact Matrix is also meant for tracking and tracing the impact of our work in strengthening and reinventing oikos as an organization. It opens the doors to evaluate and showcase not only our main initiatives tending the oikos Community, but also seemingly intangible elements of our organizational development, like organizational culture, information flow, collaborative fundraising etc. 

The Impact Matrix is a single tool to present all innovative actions we take in fields like organizational evolution, fundraising, communications, IT etc. 

The Structure

Visualized, on the horizontal axis, the matrix covers the fields of leading, learning, living and organizing as metaphors which are following oikos’ main initiative focuses. The vertical axis shows a distinction between movements on the international level, collaborations with and from the community and last but not least flagship activities of our chapters and community. Merging all these perspectives helps us and the world to get a better insight into the full range of our impact.

How it works?

Each oikos sub-circle is responsible for an initiative or a project, and should ideally have a member with the dedicated role of maintaining the Impact Matrix. As an Impact Matrix Coordinator, this person is tasked with supervising and hosting quarterly check-ins, as well as clean-ups, however it is still a team-coordinated effort, nourishing the self-organization.

The process of creating and maintaining Impact Matrix is fairly simple and straightforward divided into three stages. Feel free to find more details in the FAQ section at the bottom of the impact & orientation web-page on our website.

Stay tuned for more information about the oikos Impact Matrix! 

Over the upcoming weeks we will be discussing elements relevant to the process in more depth, storyline, values and structure behind it, as well as the Community Impact Contest.

The Impact Matrix is already up on our website! Check it out by clicking the button below! 

Impact Matrix
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oikos International

posted November 30, 2022

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Support our impact – Giving Tuesday

Today is Giving Tuesday which GlobalGiving marks with matching donations to crowdfunding campaigns.

Crowdfunding through GlobalGiving has become an important alternative way of raising funds to support our projects and programs financially, allowing us to keep them free for everyone and open to more participants.

Today is also the first day of our individual campaign for LEAP, meaning our generous supporters can donate to the program directly and in turn support one or multiple students’ responsible leadership journeys in the next LEAP YOUth cohort starting in 2023!

Giving Tuesday and similar events by GlobalGiving are incredibly valuable for our campaigns as they help boost the donations therefore increasing the impact of individual donations.

If you wish to donate you can do so through the links below, but you can also support our work by helping spread the word about our campaigns by sharing them in your network.

Click here to support oikos Leadership Program LEAP.

Click here to support oikos International Team.

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oikos International

posted November 29, 2022

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Evidence based Co-creation Masterclass and Guidelines

Fancy trying co-creation but don’t know where to start?

Interested in working collaboratively with others to co-create a product or service?

Wondering if you can trust the co-creation process?

We’re here to help!

The Health CASCADE team is delighted to announce the launch of our Co-creation Guidelines and will celebrate this with an online Co-creation Masterclass on 23rd November, 14:00-16:00 (CET).

Join us to:

1) hear about the work of Health CASCADE, a European-wide research project aiming to make co-creation trustworthy

2) get first look at our evidence-based co-creation guidelines and tools

3) reflect on the most common co-creation mishaps

4) share your co-creation project

5) build confidence in co-creation methods through our Step by Step Masterclass

Our event is part of #CoProWeekScot22

Visit our website to find out more about Health CASCADE.

Join our network to receive newsletters and updates.

Health CASCADE is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement n° 956501

Join here.

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oikos International

posted November 21, 2022

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Framework for Climate Neutral Events by oikos St. Gallen

This framework seeks to help all event managers, especially the ones from student associations at the University of St. Gallen, to organise and host climate neutral events. Therefore, it suggests a three-step guide to follow, including an extensive list of CO2 reduction measures & practical examples of how to compensate for the unavoidable emissions to eventually make events climate neutral.​

It contains relevant information about the sources of emissions and how to identify them, many carbon reduction measures to make events more sustainable and finally a step-by-step guide on how to offset the unavoidable emissions to reach climate neutrality.

The framework arose from a collaboration between oikos St. Gallen and START Hack St. Gallen. Following the ambition of START Hack to become climate neutral, oikos offered their support on how to achieve this ambitious goal. The outcome of this collaboration was not only the first successful climate neutral event at the University of St. Gallen represented by START Hack 2022, but also an extensive document written by oikos to help all other student associations at the University to organise their own climate neutral events following the pioneering example of START. The project also won the prize of the SHSGxECOnnect Challenge 2021 and thereby received the precious support of ECOnnect and SHSG for the development of the framework.

If you wish to learn more you can click here.

Get to know everything you need about the framework and how to organise more sustainable events in the oikos Conference 2022 workshop ‘Organizing sustainable events‘ which you can also join in online on Wednesday, 23rd of November, 10:15 CET!

Make sure to register in time: https://www.oikos-conference.ch/

Let’s make oikos events and all events around the world climate neutral.

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oikos St. Gallen

posted November 18, 2022

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Collaborating – LEAP YOUth Module 4

During a 10-month journey, participants at LEAP YOUth experience the Inner Development Goals framework in 5 modules to explore the main dimensions of conscious leadership: Being – Relationship to Self; Thinking – Cognitive Skills; Relating – Caring for others and the world; Collaborating – social skills and Acting – driving change. Besides input webinars and workshops, they are supported by 1-1 coaching sessions, peer groups, are invited to engage in personal reflections and can enjoy 2 main onsite meetings.

Continuing our LEAP journey, from September to October participants went through the COLLABORATING MODULE – social skills. In this module they explored how to develop trust and constructive communication, and to mobilize and engage others with an inclusive mindset in co-creation. 

During these 2 months they could dive into different tools and/or frameworks that supported learnings towards building fundamental skills to positive and win-win relationships.

The first webinar was held by Yannick Wassmer, introducing his work with Social Labs. The Social Lab is a model that supports groups to put collaboration at the center of problem solving to drive impact on complex challenges. While applying it, people can design, facilitate, and guide processes that enable different stakeholders—even those who don’t understand or agree with or trust one another—to make progress on their toughest challenges. They are an excellent way to work in our VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) world, since it: a) follows a systemic perspective, identifying leverage points for change; b) fosters collaborative processes that enable genuine dialogue and collaboration, and c) allows generative experimental solutions applying innovative and creative responses.

Participants could get a better understanding of why it is important and how to mobilize different groups in this kind of process facing our complex sustainability challenges, what are its main characteristics and steps and to learn and practice listening skills, one of the key methods used within the Labs to build trust and deepen communication between people.

For the COLLABORATING workshop, participants continued learning to deepen listening and communication skills gifted with the facilitation of our LEAP founder Adriana Troxler. Adriana is a professional coach and Trainer of Non-Violent Communication (NVC). She hosted the session around the NVC topic with the aim of guiding others in building trust and managing conflict.

Following a very interactive and dynamic process, Adriana first shared about the process of how we connect with each other and how conflict arises and then presented the method of Non Violent Communication and guided the audience in an internal investigation for dealing with personal triggers practicing the 4 levels of NVC. A simple, yet powerfully transformative model for cultivating conscious leadership as it strengthens self and others awareness, connecting us to our own needs and those of others and stimulates compassion, through its emphasis on deep listening and to awaken our common humanity.

Some thoughts of participants during this module were:

“Every time coming back to the LEAP session is like a breeze of fresh air. You get inspired, you get warm inside seeing beautiful people learning, you get open space to share your thoughts and to ask questions. I’ve never been a person to speak up – but when it comes to LEAP, I am fully there, present, curious, so I ask questions and speak up. In this module I learned the importance of diversity and the value of different perspectives everyone brings!” – Patricija, participant

“This module provided me with a lot of knowledge and had surprisingly many impacts on my personal and professional life. It affected me to see change as possible when we put it in pieces and combine these really unique pieces together in order to create the most sustainable solutions for different challenges”. Nea, participant“I really loved the insights I got from the workshop with Adriana! We had to think about a certain phrase that triggers us (a phrase that some other person(s) said to us) and how that makes me feel and why. Talking about those sentences within the breakout rooms was awesome and it really encouraged me to show honest empathy and understanding”. –Antonia, participant

“I found the Collaborating Module very interesting. I learned to develop skills that help me to understand the relationships in my personal and professional life. I learned a lot about opening to other people, listening carefully and having a feeling of being in a safe space, to develop trust, and tools to learn avoiding and managing conflicts. I now have a deeper understanding about the five social skills and will apply my knowledge at oikos Graz where I am working and in the program that I currently lead there, “chapter LEAP”,  and in my daily life. I see and love that all LEAP modules are very connected”. –Noemi, participant

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oikos International

posted November 11, 2022

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Newsletter October 2022

Welcome to the October edition of our newsletter!

As universities worldwide get into the new semester, our Community is growing with new members and hard at work in driving change at their campuses. The month behind us was quite an active one, bringing exciting news like the election of the new oikos International Board and the full chapter status to two highly engaged chapters.

oikos Academy is in full swing at the moment, and there’s still events to come that you can join, including the oikos Conference in St. Gallen this November, along with some of our parters’ opportunities. Read about the progress of the current LEAP YOUth cohort and what was the oikos Camp 2022 like. There’s also a new opportunity to engage at oikos International for eager volunteers!

Read here Subscribe

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oikos International

posted November 1, 2022

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PRME Carbon Literacy Training November 2022

The PRME Climate Literacy Training for Business Schools, led by Professor Petra Molthan-Hill is taking place for four consecutive Wednesdays in November, beginning 9 November – all sessions will be from 5pm – 7pm CET. Upon attending all four sessions and completing an assessment form, participants have the opportunity to become certified climate literate and trainers themselves.

If you have any questions, please reach out to clt@unprme.org.

The Climate Literacy Training for Business Schools (CLT4BS) was developed by Nottingham Business School (NBS), Nottingham Trent University, UK in collaboration with the PRME Champions, the PRME Working Group on Climate Change, oikos International, and the Carbon Literacy Project.

Click here to register.

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oikos International

posted November 1, 2022

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