{"id":9237,"date":"2026-04-27T16:10:37","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T16:10:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staging.openvaluefoundation.org\/?p=9237"},"modified":"2026-04-27T16:10:38","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T16:10:38","slug":"blog-post-41","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/2026\/04\/27\/blog-post-41\/","title":{"rendered":"Blog post 41"},"content":{"rendered":"

We have not wanted this testimony to remain solely among Fellows because, in order to generate the change pursued by Acumen and the organisations that support the programme in Spain, namely the Open Value Foundation, Camilo Jos\u00e9 Cela University and Arcano Partners, what makes this community great must be transmitted and shared: Humble individuals who have the audacity to see the world as it is, but also possess the moral imagination for how it could be.

<\/strong>Letter from the Fellows who attended the Acumen TED Talks in Vancouver:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a gift, and we wanted to bring you each a summary of it all. We thought the best way to do this would be by writing this letter together, the 20 Fellows who were awarded this opportunity to represent all the Fellows from the community we are a part of in Vancouver. And the first thing we would like to highlight is that all the Fellows were very much present with us during the experience.

It is very difficult to put into words all the emotions and learnings from this meeting. Talent-spotting@TED.<\/a> Many people in the organisation told us that the first time you experience it is something you'll never forget, and it's true. But if you add to that, that it's also the first time you spend five days with Acumen Fellows from other regions, the first time you meet the founder Jacqueline Novogratz, who has deeply inspired us all for years, and even participate in a global Good Society reading session led by her and Bavidra... it definitely becomes a unique and unforgettable experience that will bring a tangible impact to the community.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just before the first TED activity, we had a formal Acumen session with Jaqueline, reliving it later with some perspective leads us to see that it was the perfect start to the whole experience Talent-spotting@TED.<\/a> The session got us all off to the best possible start for the days ahead, because we reflected on questions like: What is my big idea? Where am I now? What gifts can I bring to the world? What is it the world needs, to align with what I believe and what can I offer? Who can I do this with? What do I need to learn continuously to grow and succeed in the way the world needs me to? What are the challenges facing me and how can the Acumen community help me? 

The session gave us the opportunity to learn about the challenges other Fellows face (how to transition from founder to CEO; maintaining the culture and values we believe in while scaling projects; or managing and measuring impact whilst growing our businesses) to realise that they are very similar to those we all have and that This community is a goldmine for helping each other, listening, supporting and pushing each other to keep going. And a community where we can give back the same.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Jeannette Winterson\u2019s beautiful and unsettling talk, to Al Gore\u2019s anger and struggle, Garry Kasarov\u2019s passion and resilience, and even Elon Musk\u2019s humanity, which definitely surprised us and taught us that vulnerability connects us all, even billionaires with the rest of us. We navigated several feelings together over five days. The conversations among us after sessions helped us deal with all those mixed feelings: fear, awe, hope. Fear of what climate change or the metaverse could impact humanity if we don\u2019t design moral technology or rethink capitalism; concerns about how disconnected a part of the world (privilege is a complicated state) is from the global challenges the Acumen Fellows are facing (like the concept of poverty maintenance; we realized how many narratives and mindsets promote it and how some of the ideas made us feel some discourses tone-deaf to the struggles of disadvantaged people, which made us wonder how can we foster \u201cdifferent\u201d conversations in these kinds of spaces?); hope, as many of the conversations are already happening and the big ideas laid out are doable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We were very impressed by some of the TED Fellows and especially the projects funded by the project of The Audacious Project<\/a> from TED, addressing challenges such as breaking the cycle of poverty for smallholder farmers or digitising the US electoral system to make it inclusive and secure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Key takeaways from the experience<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our ideas are big because the scale of the problems we face is enormous.<\/strong> We need to lose our fear and take more risks and be ambitious. We all very much agreed with what one of our colleagues brought to the conversation on the first night: \u201cWe have to make peace with climbing,\u201d to which Jacqueline encouraged us all by reminding us that \u201cwe can't stay small.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

TED has definitely brought clarity to the meaning of ambition for our work. It takes a lot of belief and a dash of madness to do something incredible. And TED reminded us that we are already on that path. As the Acumen team told us the first night (when we all felt a bit \u201csmall\u201d), we were at TED because we deserved to be. Just as every member of the Acumen community deserves to be. It allowed us to better visualise the bigger picture of our work, drawing inspiration from others, and it helped us feel the purpose of our big idea for change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We learned the importance of storytelling. Good storytellers are the ones who get standing ovations, not necessarily the ones with the best ideas. So, how do we become amazing storytellers to fulfil our missions? How do we connect from the heart with real stories, being authentic and passionate? Our stage may be different from the TED stage, but can we ensure we take our stories and messages to the communities where we work too?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And finally, by sharing quality time among colleagues, we had the opportunity to experience and remember that Discipline, perseverance, purpose, kindness, compassion, humility, and love are universal values that continue to be key to making a great impact in our world.<\/strong> Learning to live beyond recognition, focusing on embracing true and genuine change that generates a positive and real impact on the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is the next step? What can we bring back to The Foundry to increase the impact following this experience?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next step begins precisely with a first step. And this letter, written by 20 of us and translated into all the languages spoken by our community, can be that first step. <\/strong>Let's grow together this sense of belonging to an incredibly rich global community that can bring much light to the world in these times when it is so needed, and when we all need it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


With much love,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abu Musuuza \u2013 East Africa
Andrea Escobar \u2013 Colombia
Andrea Gonzalez \u2013 Colombia
Arancha Mart\u00ednez \u2013 Spain
Benje Williams \u2013 Global (currently in US)
Eshrat Waris \u2013 Bangladesh
Hafsah Jumare \u2013 West Africa
Hemakshi Meghani \u2013 India
Jawad Aslam \u2013 Global
Marcellus Baz \u2013 UK
Mina Shahid \u2013 Global
Natalie Grillon \u2013 Global
Norah Magero \u2013 East Africa
Olivia Onyemaobi \u2013 West Africa
Saad Hamid - Pakistan
Sabrina Habib \u2013 East Africa
Sahar Jamal \u2013 East Africa
Steph Speirs \u2013 Global
Zubin Sharma \u2013 India<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No hemos querido que este testimonio se quedara s\u00f3lo entre Fellows porque para generar el cambio que se persigue desde Acumen y las organizaciones que apoyan el programa en Espa\u00f1a, Open Value Foundation, la Universidad Camilo Jos\u00e9 Cela y Arcano Partners, se ha de transmitir y compartir lo que hace grande esta comunidad: personas humildes que […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-post"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9237"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9237\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9239,"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9237\/revisions\/9239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}