Sprout Up Philippines

Officially titled “Innovation Community Builders Unconference 2024”, this event name is due to be improved upon in future editions.

Overview

On October 13, 2024 we held the first instance of the Community Leaders’ Retreat. Attended by 20 community leaders from Bohol, Cebu, Pampanga, and Davao, the activity aimed to enable these grassroots leaders to ideate, connect, and collaborate on how they could nurture their local communities.

The anchor for this years topic proposals was “Roadblocks or challenges you’ve faced as a grassroots community leader“. The anchor phrase was kept ambiguous enough to allow for a variety of ideas to emerge through the Open Space framework.

To conclude the event, participants were encouraged to share notes and updates with each other post-event through a Facebook group chat where they could continue to discuss action plans they’ve formulated for their own communities.

Top-of-mind challenges

Below are the key challenges identified by the participants. The order of priority was determined through voting where each participant had 3 votes that they could allocate however they want to influence the priority of topics to be discussed.

Through conversation, the participants found themselves gravitating towards the common question of sustainability both in terms of financial need and succession in leadership. This topic has been identified as the key concern of the participants.

Next Steps

The 2024 event achieved an average NPS score of 9.5 and so a 2nd instance of the event was proposed for 2025, possibly in Davao City or nearby the area, and is expected to gather a group of 50 community leaders.

A reflection of how the event can be better organized can be found in this blog post, but below are some key insights:

• Retain the connection with nature through thoughtful venue selection.
• Invite a speaker who could impart knowledge and set the tone for the retreat.
• Have a more focused topic anchor now that a key concern has been identified.
• Give participants the option to have an output artifact, like a worksheet, for example, that they can take home after the retreat.

This event was supported by GeeksPH, the non-profit organization behind one of the Philippines’ most awaited technology conferences, Geeks On A Beach.

Do you want to get involved for the next retreat? Send us a message at hello@sproutupbohol.com