Every year, hundreds of people from around the world make the trek to Cortes Island’s idyllic Hollyhock retreat centre, brought there by the Hollyhock Leadership Institute to advance the project of social change. HLI runs events on Cortes and in Vancouver that build leadership and social change capacity, including co-sponsoring the well-established Web of Change conference for people working at the intersection of technology and social change. If you haven’t had an opportunity to attend a Hollyhock workshop, find a way to get to one soon: your soul will be nourished and your mind will be blown.
The Social Change Institute (SCI) is a new HLI initiative aimed at building the capacity of the community and social change sector. As part of the first SCI retreat in May 2006, HLI undertook a pilot e-learning project that aims at supporting the SCI community while also exploring the potential opportunity for extending HLI’s reach through online community tools. HLI retained Social Signal to advise on its e-learning strategy, and to set up a conference blog as part of its e-learning pilot.
That pilot gave us a chance to work with the terrific HLI team that we met at the previous year’s Web of Change. Karen Mahon, Darcy Ridell and Natalie Fitz-Earle are a powerful team of women who bring their whole selves to the job of social change – a holism that was reflected on the blog, right down to the pictures of Darcy hula-hooping on the Hollyhock lawn. The blog was able to capture some of the highlights of a truly transformational event that gathered a remarkable group of people for a conversation about how to work together as a movement. That conversation had a particular resonance for us, involving Social Signal in two new collaborations with fellow SCI attendees PLAN and CLI.
Last month, 
