2023 Social Impact Leadership Accelerator Program

Deadline: 7-Jul-23

Join a transformative Leadership Development Program designed by Acumen Academy for social impact leaders tackling the complex challenges of poverty and inequality in Vietnam.

The Social Impact Leadership Program, Vietnam is an 11-week hybrid leadership accelerator designed to equip you with the tools and framework needed to lead your organization well through uncertainty as you tackle complex challenges of poverty and economic inequality. Throughout the 11 weeks, you will have the opportunity to gain crucial adaptive leadership skills alongside a dedicated cohort through practical assignments, real-life case studies, weekly virtual learning labs, an in-person seminar, and consultation from seasoned experts.

This program facilitates deep introspection around your leadership purpose and journey, cohort building with like-minded leaders across Vietnam, and an exploration of leadership concepts that are especially useful for those trying to tackle the complex problems of poverty and inequality.

You’ll learn how to see a problem more clearly, understand how to engage powerful stakeholders, explore your personal philosophy on what it takes to build a good and just society, and more.

The experience is further enriched through a diverse cohort. You’ll join leaders from the social enterprise, nonprofit, corporate, and public sectors to explore what it takes to build a more inclusive economy for your community in Vietnam.

Benefits

Identify your leadership gap
- Diagnose your adaptive challenge, identify stakeholders and their priorities and learn how to move them towards your ideal.
Learn to navigate the grey
- Manage the tension between your competing priorities and learn how to engage difficult stakeholders who benefit from the status quo.
Reflect on freedom, justice and equality
- Study the work of great thinkers and question your assumptions and approach to building a more equitable economy.
Join A Lasting Community
- Build meaningful relationships with cohort members that are based on shared values and a common purpose.
Foundry members gain exclusive access to:
- Community: A diverse regional and global community of social innovators
- Early-stage funding: Early-stage catalytic capital through Acumen Angels
- Mentoring: Expert coaching and consulting from the partners
- Visibility: Opportunities to reach more ideal customers, talent, and funders
- Learning Hub and Training: Revisit concepts covered through your leadership program and refresh your learning. Access additional tools of business to grow and scale your organization.

The Leadership Accelerator Experience

Hybrid 11-week program with nine weekly virtual Learning Labs and one in-person event
Weekly consultations with peers or the facilitator
Weekly assignments to put your new learnings into practice
Curated readings that cultivate a richer understanding of your social change work
Frameworks for leading social change and for holding values in tension
Reserved space for reflection and journaling your learnings.

Learn How To:

Understand your role as a social innovator by examining your identities, values, and choices that have shaped your current journey and cultivate a deeper understanding of yourself and your work in a broader context
Learn from Acumen’s flagship leadership curriculum developed from the multi-national Fellowship program
Improve your leadership capacity to innovate and drive change within your organization by practicing essential adaptive leadership skills
Gain diagnostic and decision-making methodologies to bridge opposing views and find new opportunities in opposing tensions
Apply new learnings from the program directly back to your work and community to further increase your impact
Join a diverse cohort and connect with like-minded social leaders driving social change in Vietnam.

Program Curriculum

The core curriculum is made up of three key components:
- Adaptive Leadership
  - Based on the work of Ron Heifitz, Adaptive Leadership is a practical leadership framework that helps organizations and individuals adapt and thrive in challenging environments. The content supports your ability, both individually and collectively, to catalyze and embrace the gradual and meaningful process of creating change.
- Managing Polarities
  - Developed by Barry Johnson, Polarity Management empowers you to embrace competing goals and navigate the tensions between them, a crucial skill in an increasingly interconnected world.
- Good Society Readings
  - The Good Society Readings explore the meaning of a just society and the moral and historical foundation of social change through a series of curated readings by thinkers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Nelson Mandela. You’ll reflect on core human values, seek common ground, and cultivate a richer understanding of your work by situating it in a broader historical context.

Eligibility Criteria

Participants come from all walks of life. They are building radical new solutions that ensure economic prosperity is shared by all. Solutions range across new business models that serve the poor, corporate initiatives to disrupt traditional industries, innovative public sector programs, and nonprofit livelihood solutions.
Participants are typically on one of the following paths:
- Social Entrepreneur: Scaling innovative business models that use market-based solutions to tackle poverty and inequality
- Public Sector Leader: Leveraging the government machinery to create a more inclusive economy
- Nonprofit Leader: Building solutions to ensure those most in need are equitably included in the economy
- Corporate Intrapreneur: Driving initiatives within large corporations to create inclusive and sustainable corporations
To be eligible for this program, you should:
- Demonstrate a long term commitment to tackling issues related to poverty and economic inequality in Vietnam, including 5+ years of work experience in the sector
- Be in a position of leadership where you work; the capacity to influence change
- Demonstrate self-awareness and the ability to challenge yourself to grow as a leader
- Have access to consistent/adequate telephone and internet coverage so that you can actively participate in an online learning environment
- Have the ability to read and write texts of medium complexity in English and basic handling of social platforms (e.g. Whatsapp)
- Available and willing to travel for a 3 day event during the week commencing 27th November (The location will be in Vietnam and travel and accommodation costs will be covered. Exact details will be communicated at the offer stage to selected participants).