SideKick

We Really enjoyed spending time with the young leaders from SOL’s Impact Leaders Program today. The session was only a couple of hours, but honestly it felt too short. The energy in the room was great — everyone was engaged, curious, and full of questions.

What we really appreciated was that they didn’t only ask about communication or social impact, but also wanted to understand the business side of doing meaningful work. How do you build something sustainable? How do you turn passion into practice? How do you keep going in this field?

We also touched on AI and the changing job market — what it means for young people entering the workforce, what skills will matter, and how future leaders can use new tools without losing the human side of leadership: empathy, judgment, creativity, and the ability to understand people. Those are exactly the kinds of questions young impact leaders should be asking.

We hope we can keep the conversation going beyond today.

Big thanks to SOL: School of Leadership for the invitation and for creating such a warm, thoughtful space for the next generation of changemakers.

Wrapping up our time in Chiang Rai.

Over the past few days, conversations with farmers, community leaders, and partners — kept circling back to one simple question:

What actually makes change stick?

From a social and behaviour change perspective, the answer is rarely technical transfer alone.

Academic knowledge matters.
Training matters.
But adoption spreads when people see someone like them making it work.

This is where positive deviance becomes powerful.

In both lowland and highland communities, change accelerated when trusted community members diversified crops, adjusted land practices, or participated in forest rehabilitation — and others could see the results with their own eyes.

Not theory.
Not instruction.
Proof.

When upstream and downstream farmers recognise their interdependence — water, soil, forests, markets — the landscape approach stops being abstract. It becomes practical.

The photo here is of a community forest that was rehabilitated by the community itself.

No one forced it.
People saw benefits — and followed.

That is how behaviour shifts.
And that is how landscapes recover.

Proud to have explored this through our ISRL work with GIZ.