Applications for the 2019 GATHER Fellowship are now closed and we have officially kicked off planning next year’s programme. We kicked it off by hosting a breakfast briefing at Norrsken House on Tuesday with a focus on peace, entrepreneurship and conflict transformation.

Our Interim ED Thomas Kanestad welcomed current and potential partners, as well as members of our Impact Team to a morning of inspiration and brainstorming. Our Programme Director Fiona Hazell gave a brief introduction to our work so far with our US partner Seeds of Peace and our Programme Assistant Oscar Ohlström shared our thinking and ideas for 2019’s edition of the programme.

Next step in the process is to review applications, do interviews and select Fellows in January 2019. We’re once again hosting an incubator here in Stockholm and we’re aiming for 5-10th of April. This week’s brainstorm was mainly focused around the incubator week and we had some great discussions around potential content, collaborations and focus areas.

An opportunity of peace and entrepreneurship

The topic of conflict transformation has got many levels and hosting the incubator in Sweden means we have the opportunity to involve Swedish people, organisations and companies working within this field. But as the programme is about social innovation and entrepreneurship there is also the opportunity of bringing in positive and sustainable business practices into the mix.

The breakfast briefing participants highlighted the benefits of shared learning as well as the importance to also show that Sweden does not have the solutions to everything. There are many challenges to overcome and bringing in these aspects and creating dialogue around potential solutions, could be beneficial both for our Fellows as well as Swedish organisations taking part in some capacity.

We were thrilled to have such a mixed group of people in the room and very much appreciated the suggestions and great ideas that came from the discussions. We’re still in the early stages of planning the 2019 edition but we’d love to hear from you if you have any suggestions on content for the incubator week or potential collaborations. Please get in touch with Oscar at oscar.ohlstrom@se-forum.se for any thoughts or ideas!