By Meg A. Warren, Ph.D., and Annie Crookes, Ph.D.

Across the world, NGOs are tackling some of the most challenging and complex problems. Many situated in vastly different cultural contexts are nevertheless addressing similar issues (e.g., gender inequity, poverty, climate crisis), facing similar barriers (e.g., inadequate infrastructure, resistance), and struggling under similar resource constraints. Yet they feel isolated. They want to scale up, reignite creativity, and find connection and support. Yet, despite similar missions and goals, collaboration can feel hard. What if the solution isn’t another conference or toolkit, but a different kind of conversation?

This is the question we found ourselves asking recently. As a cultural psychologist who studies allyship, particularly men as allies for gender equity, I (Warren) try to immerse myself in various cultural environments to learn what allyship looks like within their contexts. During one exploration, Crookes (my co-author of this article) and I (Warren) interviewed Nisha Khan, the CEO of Building Innate

© Psychology Today