Our new site is live - November 2010
The inner activist program is designed to help change makers, social entrepreneurs, leaders and activists be radically more effective in their life-serving work.
Our programs are not for the faint of heart - they are a life changing opportunity to develop the essential emotional and psychological skills to be a transforming influence in the world.
Click here to find out more
Our Chronicle of Progress is Available
for You to Read
After three years of research and writing, we are proud to publish the Chronicle of Progress: Research Guiding the Launch of a Personal Development Program Supporting Social Change – The Relationship between Inner Experience and Actions for Change.
Click here to download the full document.
Project Summary
The Contact Project was founded in March of 2006 to explore the concept of delivering a personal development programme to social change activists and innovators in Canada. This website chronicles our learning progress from founding to programme development. Our mission statement written at the inception of the Project was based on our belief that leading effective social change requires a deep understanding of, and congruence between, one's inner experience and one's actions for change in the external world.
This multi-year project is the pre-planning process for establishing the mission and initial goals and strategies for a larger sustainable charitable activity.
The focus of this project will be to identify a specific charitable personal development programme that would foster social change. Initial research will be looking for models or modalities in the personal growth field that would well serve the social change movement. In addition, the project will research what personal growth activities are taking place in the social change movement, and what significant gaps or enhancements exist which could benefit from a charitable personal-growth programme.
We started by conducting an anecdotal research inquiry, at first interviewing twenty-one prominent social activists in Canada and the US to determine the concept's resonance. Encouraged by a very positive reception, we then interviewed fourteen social change funders and conveners. Based on these thirty-five interviews, we are confident of the need and interest in the social activist community for a programme focused on personal growth.
Seeking input for our programme, we then interviewed fourteen individual practitioners and organizations who provide personal development in a variety of ways. Currently, we are using that information to design our programme, starting by constructing a high-level programme structure and collaborating with some of the activists and practitioners we interviewed. May 2009 is our target completion date for the initial high-level programme structure. In late 2010, early 2011 we plan to be delivering our programme to activists. We continue to research organizations and leaders in personal growth and intend to remain open to input and influence from an ever-increasing network of activists and personal development practitioners.
