Bopa DiPeo Fellowship
2025-26 Insight Report
What we learned about growing capacities to catalyze collaboration and shift systems, and our vision for cultivating leaders who navigate complex challenges and co-create collective flourishing.
A look into our collective learnings.
This is a collection of stories of what we learned in the first Bopa DiPeo Fellowship. Powerful stories about relationships advancing social learning, inner work that enables outer stewardship, and intentionally creating ripple effects from one to many.
In 2024, Nono inspired Small Foundation with her dream of making apprenticeship style mentorship available for network leaders across the continent. She knew what it took to transform her leadership and she wanted that same growth for more leaders like her. We brought that experience to 12 fellows, and now they want to see this continue.
The experiential learning journey strengthened essential capacities and capabilities for engaging participants, facilitating learning, and coordinating action through relationships. Fellows shifted their focus from producing outcomes to tending relationships. They recognize that leading in complexity is an art. Stewarding conditions for emergence in a living system is learned in practice and honed through sharing with others.
Circle Generation is devoted to growing capacities of network leaders to catalyze collaboration. We see networks as relational infrastructure — the invisible connective tissue that underlies collective change and adaptation. With a global majority lens and practice based in Africa, the roots of our relational approach run through deep time. We’re proud to share this tapestry of learnings, and invite you to continue weaving the future with us.
The pathway is clear, the methods are here. Let’s make more possible!
How We Evaluated the Results
We practice Regenerative Evaluation using a rigorous mixed-methods approach developed in collaboration with Unity Effect (link). Bopa DiPeo’s Impact Garden Theory of Change includes four change pathways: individual, peer, network/organizational, and field of practice.
We designed a Holistic Data Collection Plan employing a variety of instruments to capture a holistic view of fellows’ experience integrated into the natural rhythm of the 10-month journey. These include: Baseline, Midpoint & End-of-Journey Assessments; Professional Development Plan & Advising Logs; Guide Notes; Most Significant Change & Ripple Effect Mapping; and Unsolicited Story & Insight Harvesting. We developed custom rubrics for the assessment of capacities and capabilities specific to network practice which were used alongside validated measures.
Key Insights & Findings
Description to lead into 6 findings
What Fellows Are Saying
“Their attention to detail and commitment to quality truly stood out. We’ve already recommended them to others.”
Former Customer“Communication was top-notch and the final outcome was even better than we imagined. A great experience all around.”
Former Customer
“Every detail was thoughtfully executed. We're thrilled with the outcome.”
Former CustomerWe see that our multiple human-planetary crises are entangled.
We know we cannot address them one at a time, but our ability to respond is limited by our capacity to collaborate. And collaboration moves at the speed of trust. To move forward, we need leaders who can facilitate trust building, collective learning, and coordinated action.
Our challenges live in the relationships between sectors and systems–in the intersections of government, education, health, economy, agriculture, and many other domains. Addressing relational challenges requires emotional and relational skills. True cross-sector collaboration requires stamina for difficult conversations, especially across power differences, cultural paradigms, and generational perspectives.
When problems amplify each other and we’re in new territory with old maps, we need skillful navigators. Inner capacity matters when finding our way through uncertainty, loss, and systems failures. We need leaders who can hold steady while hosting spaces where communities can engage, learn, combine ideas, and contribute to collective actions.
Bopa DiPeo’s depth education develops grounded, caring leaders who are capable of orchestrating collective responses to meet the moment. We build practical skills to see relationships and coordinate adaptive action in a changing world.
Networks are the infrastructure behind our collective capacity for navigating change. Relational leadership is the missing capacity of our time.
Let’s invest in leaders who can bring people together across differences.
Let’s cultivate capacities to help communities learn their way through, together.
Let’s multiply mentoring until relational practice becomes relational culture.
Let’s diffuse relational culture as coordination capability and experience collective flourishing.
It’s time. Let’s go!
Find Your Place
Whether you have a question, an idea, or just want to say hello, feel free to reach out—we’re here to help.
We do this together.
Next cohort…
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Who will be next?
Thanks to our inaugural cohort partner Small Foundation and fellowship advisors.