Purpose
Purpose & Ideas (P&I) is committed to helping identify and activate the potential that exists in people and in groups to address the challenges they face and better serve their purpose. We bring in +20 years of experience in the knowledge and policy field. We create spaces and facilitate processes that awaken collective intelligence.
Our approach is eco-logical: our rationale is being as ecosystemic as possible: we invite our partners to llok at the field, the quality of soil that emerges from the interactions in the research and policy ecosystems. We believe we need new conversations that can reflect the complexity of views, interests and needs and at the same time identify how we can nurture for our shared ground.
P&I was born in 2012 as Politics & Ideas, a joint initiative of researchers and practitioners to co-produce and share innovative knowledge and support evidence-informed public policies in the Global South. Based on what we learned by working with diverse stakeholders in the evidence and policy ecosystem we have decided to expand our focus to complement research with other types of knowledge, including the knowledge of each one´s experience, and the knowledge from the heart and the body. We believe that including more internal and external voices we can generate ideas that can inspire new actions for the good of all.
Team
We are a small core team but we see P&I as a larger network of organisations and people that are increasingly interested in finding co-creative ways to address shared challenges. We have worked at CSOs, think tanks, international organisations, government agencies, and universities. Our diverse backgrounds enrich our approach and strengthen our service.
Clara Richards
Associate
Clara is a curious development practitioner, eager to understand how public good can be achieved for all. For years she has been exploring the interface between knowledge and policy and more recently she started working to learn how innovation can solve wicked problems by integrating the use of evidence with systems and design thinking.
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Leandro Echt
Associate
Leandro is curious about power dynamics within organisations and processes. He likes to support organisations that work to address the problems of the most vulnerable groups of our societies, with a focus on equity and inclusion. He is also passionate about fostering organizational learning through evaluations of multi-year and multi-country interventions.
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Vanesa Weyrauch
Associate
Vanesa is the proud mother of Uma, Teo and Félix and is committed to paving the way for their growth by doing work that is meaningful for her and others. She feels that her purpose is to help unravel the potential of persons and organisations that can lead into a new working and living paradigm that builds on collective intelligence and the integration of mind, heart.and body.
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Julia
D´Agostino
Associate
Julia is a yoga and skating lover. She excels at organising processes, is very detail-oriented and always has some caring words to create a great team environments. Based on her extensive public service experience, she is committed to devising more efficient ways to manage knowledge within large organisations. She loves developing big databases that can feed into the public policy decision process.
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Partners and networks
We have strategic partnerships with Southern Hemisphere (South Africa), INASP (UK), Capability
(Finland) and Using evidence (Canada) with whom we have worked together for a long time now. We are grateful to have found partners who share our spirit and working ethos: we complement each other, share opportunities and what we learn, and continuously nurture our relationships.
We have worked with and for: Global Development Network, International Development Research Centre/Think Tank Initiative, Open Society Foundations/Think Tank Fund, ILAIPP (Latin America), UNICEF, FAO, United Nations Evaluation Group, Rimisp (Chile), CIPPEC (Argentina), ASIES (Guatemala), Grupo FARO (Ecuador), PACKS-Africa, On Think Tanks, Ministry of Education (Trinidad & Tobago), Ministry of Modernization (Argentina), and many other international organisations, CSOs, think tanks and consultancy firms.