Our understanding of the world is rapidly changing. From an abundance of data allowing us to gain new insights, to a technological revolution transforming our daily lives; processes and theoretical thinking that has for many years stood the test of time, now needs to be updated to keep pace with society’s evolution. If we don’t adapt, we will remain behind and hinder progress.

Since Fondation Botnar started a new phase in our operations just over three years ago, we have been funding pioneering innovation, co-creating new approaches, and enabling transformational research to improve the health and wellbeing of young people around the world. As a foundation with a strong entrepreneurial spirit, we put learning, evaluation, and adaptation at the heart of everything we do; recognising the value of such an iterative approach both internally and externally, to guide our mission and approach. The authors of the book What philosophy can teach you about being a better leader speak about strategy as a form of discovery. This is an approach to strategy development that we very much agree with as over these three years we have learned a lot from young people, partners, grantees, researchers, and entrepreneurs. To become more efficient in delivering on our mission, we have taken these learnings on board and recently refined our strategic approach, focussing on three areas: how we understand the concept of wellbeing, our funding instruments, and our governance mechanisms.