This session will explore one international nonprofit’s journey to deepen organizational impact by digging into the complex history of Sierra Leone and the development industry’s colonial ties. We will discuss what decolonization means to our organization and actions we are taking to address this.

This session will be a practical one. We have had both successes and challenges so far in our organizational journey, and we hope others might learn from what we have done. Some examples that we will share are: Having these conversations with a Board of Directors and what we have tried to bring them along with this work; updating pay scales and recruitment techniques – and considerations in these – across multiple country offices, and building a pipeline of BIPOC and community-based leaders for the staff and Board. The session will include a brief presentation to ground participants in historical context and our organizational make-up, but will be largely small and large group discussion based to create a dialogue among participants to learn from one another.