Send us Fan Mail In this episode, our co-hosts explore how the smartest move for engaging in global alliances in child welfare, health, and economic development might be asking a better question, not funding a bigger fix. We talk with David Peter Strohl, internationally recognized systems thinking expert and author of *Systems Thinking for Social Change*, about why entrenched challenges in child welfare, global health, and international development can stay stuck even when everyone means well. David is a founding partner of Bridgeway Partners (www.bridgewaypartners.com), a consulting firm dedicated to helping mission-centered leaders reframe and resolve intractable social and environmental problems. He is also a founding director of the consulting group and informational website www.appliedsystemsthinking.com and a member of the systems thinking faculty for the Academy for Systems Change. David was previously one of the founders of Innovation Associates, the consulting firm whose pioneering work in organizational learning formed the basis for fellow co-founder Peter Senge’s management classic The Fifth Discipline. We start with the basics: what a system is, why it keeps producing the results it produces, and how interdependence and time delays can trick us into pushing harder or quitting too soon. From there, we get honest about unintended consequences, including “better before worse” dynamics where short-term wins can set up long-term losses. David breaks down the iceberg model so we can move beyond events and trends into system structure: policies, practices, relationships, power dynamics, perceptions, and purpose, which is where real leverage lives. Then we make it practical with vivid examples. We examine food aid through a systems lens and walk through a clean-water project in Togo where wells failed because the surrounding maintenance system never existed. We also map how a child welfare organization can align prevention, stabilization, development, reunification, evaluation, fundraising, and advocacy by seeing the whole rather than optimizing one part. Along the way, we confront the role of mental models and donor narratives, including the question that stings in the best way: do you want the credit or the results? If you care about sustainable social change, humanitarian response that builds resilience, and collaboration that strengthens families and communities, this conversation will give you language, frameworks, and questions you can use right away. Subscribe, share this with a friend who cares about impact, and leave a rating and review so more people can find the show. Think Global, Do Justice Website Passionate about your faith and making a difference in the world? Check out this podcast! ________ Travel on International Mission, meet local leadership and work alongside them. Exchange knowledge, learn from one another and be open to personal transformation. Step into a 25 year long story of change for children in some of the poorest regions on Earth. https://www.helpingchildrenworldwide.org/mission-trips.html ****** ____ Organize a Rooted in Reality mission experience for your service club, church group, worship team, young adult or adult study. No travel required. Step into the shoes of people in extreme poverty in Sierra Leone, West Africa, Helping Children Worldwide takes you into a world where families are facing impossible choices every day. Contact support@helpingchildrenworldwide.org to discuss how. ___________ Family Empowerment Advocates support the work of family empowerment experts at the Child Reintegration Centre, Sierra Leone. Your small monthly donation, prayers, attention & caring is essential. You advocate for their work to help families bring themselves out of poverty, changing the course of children's lives and lifting up communities. join Support the show Helpingchildrenworldwide.org
