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Partnership and Events

Scotland’s IDG Hub

IDG Events

On Monday 20th February 2023 we ran our first online Scottish IDG Hub event - you can read the report of the event here.

This first event was primarily an opportunity for those interested in engaging with the IDGs across Scotland to come together and meet others with similar thinking – and then see what emerges. Following a short introduction to the core team, we presented some of the work of Scotland's IDG Hub with the goal of kick-starting wider engagement.

Read the event summary here

The Inner Development Goals

The Inner Development Goals (IDGs) provide an essential framework of transformative skills, not just for sustainable development but for everyone looking to achieve complex outcomes collaboratively.

The IDGs framework consists of five dimensions, organising 23 skills and qualities of human inner growth and development. The framework has been developed by a team of international researchers after an extensive outreach consultation involving more than a thousand people. There is now also a free-to-use, open source IDG field-kit on how to develop these skills.

Read more about the IDGs here and read on to see how SLI has been working with the IDG team since its inception - and why we are so excited to be launching the Scottish IDG-Hub.

We will be running a series of online and in-person events through 2023 which will be open to anyone who wishes to attend, to bring people together and stimulate IDG activity and progress in Scotland.

This website will also host short case studies of IDG initiatives, activities and ideas to encourage, catalyze and promote further IDG activity here in Scotland.

creating a more accessible space

The Scottish Leadership Institute has been collaborating with the team behind the Inner Development Goals since before it launched!

It is now time to create a more accessible space for Scottish IDG enthusiasts to be able to come together and share their ideas, passion and energy and find others to collaborate with and help build new initiatives in Scotland and further afield, that incorporate and amplify the IDG framework.

SLI has always been focused on the practical application of good theory – and it is the same with the IDGs.

We will be running a series of online and in-person events through 2023 which will be open to anyone who wishes to attend, to bring people together and stimulate IDG activity and progress in Scotland.

This website will also host short case studies of IDG initiatives, activities and ideas to encourage, catalyze and promote further IDG activity here in Scotland.

SLI and the Inner Development Goals – a brief history

The SLI co-founders, Jim Mather and Roddy Millar, began their conversation with Tomas Björkman (the founder and chair of the Ekskäret Foundation and 29K, two of the founding organizations behind the IDG movement) and Jan Artem Henriksson, now Executive Director of the IDGs, in mid-2020, when the IDG project was known as MindShift. We participated in the early discussions and surveys that established first the long-list and then the short-list for the IDG Framework.

In November 2021 SLI ran a conference at the RBS Conference Centre during the COP26 fortnight, where we had Tomas Björkman and Åsa Jarskog, now the IDG Global Director of Programs, present the IDG concept before it had been formally launched.

And in April 2022 we ran the first Scottish IDG Hub event at Airthrey Castle on the University of Stirling Campus, in tandem with the initial IDG Global Summit in Stockholm.

IDG in Scotland

The Airthrey Castle event catalyzed a number of initiatives, particularly within the College Development Network. The IDGs were mapped against the leadership lessons learnt from the pandemic, showing remarkable overlap. You can read this here

In parallel, Sarah-Jane Linton, Vice-Principal at West Lothian College, has led the development of an IDG based module to be taken by all students that was launched in October 2022.

There has been a growing awareness of the IDGs across the leadership development community and the wellbeing economy sectors throughout 2022.

SLI / IDG Purpose–Way–Impact Statement

Context

Many people are resolved to address social and environmental challenges of our time – such as climate change, biodiversity loss and growing inequalities – in their daily lives, work and businesses. But we still have much to do, both individually and collectively.

In 2015 the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) gave us a comprehensive plan for a sustainable world by 2030. However, we are far behind in delivering against these 17 goals. We must accelerate our policy commitments, investment and actions to deliver a world where people live in dignity within planetary boundaries.

What’s stopping us from making the changes we need to ensure thriving people on a thriving planet?

We need to cultivate the mindset and skills that help us live purposeful, sustainable and productive lives.

The Inner Development Goals (IDGs) provide a framework and toolkit to help us develop inner capacity and mindset to address the challenges of our increasingly complex world.


As the Scottish hub of the Inner Development Goals (IDGs), our purpose is to champion the IDG’s framework as a movement for change in support of the delivery of the SDG’s. We bring IDG thinking to a wider audience, inspiring others to adopt them in their work and daily lives whilst connecting Scotland to the global network of IDG knowledge, best practice and change makers so we can all play our part in creating a fairer, sustainable future.

Through our collaborative and inclusive approach we are a supportive community who want to learn about, practice and integrate the IDG framework into our work in Scotland, building new partnerships and knowledge to be shared.

We offer a space to share experiences, a melting pot for ideas, giving energy to the practical application of the IDGs through events, workshops, co-creation of programmes and the dissemination of knowledge drawing in experts from academia, policy makers, industry and civil society.

We seek to amplify the work already happening on the IDGs across Scotland so that the IDG narrative becomes mainstream in purpose-led businesses and organisations, supporting them on their journey to address the problems of people and planet in a just and compassionate way.