Stone Soup Consulting’s Post

"Storytelling is deeply ingrained in human DNA as a crucial element of communication. It serves to establish emotional connections, share values and beliefs, inspire actions, and contribute to the exchange of knowledge." 🤝 In a remotely working community, storytelling is essential for creating connections, building trust, confidence, empathy, a collaborative spirit, and fostering feedback and love. 💜 Our Communications Coordinator, Alexandre Pereira, shares his insights on cultivating a successful Stone Soup culture in our latest article titled 'The Power of Brand Storytelling'. 

Impact projects: the case-study of Anti-House Association “Mães d’Água” 🎨 Together with anti-house association we are carrying out an Impact Assessment of the Anti-House Association's ‘Mães d'Água’ project in the Zambujal neighbourhood, in Amadora, Portugal with the support of the Fundação Manuel António da Mota. 🇵🇹 This project is part of a larger initiative, ‘Zambujal 360’, aimed at the social, cultural and artistic development of the neighbourhood. Last week Founding Partner Rosa Matos and Principal Consultant Patrice de Santos had the privilege of spending time in the vibrant Zambujal’s neighbourhood in Amadora near Lisbon to understand the impact of an artistic project. It really was an experience. In contrast, just a few hours earlier, on their way to the fieldsite, they saw the ongoing wildfires still burning across parts of Portugal. These images were taken while traveling on the highway, where the smoke and flames on the horizon were a stark reminder of the environmental challenges we are facing. ☀️🌧 Patrice writes: “This experience reminds me how fieldwork, even in places we might perceive as less challenging, can expose us to such contrasts—between the danger of wildfires and the hope of such projects for communities in Zambujal.” 👨🏻👩🏽🦱 Stay safe, everyone, and let’s continue to appreciate and support the communities that keep thriving despite the challenges they face.

Artigo: ‘Ecos da comunidade: o processo de escuta’ É bem conhecido daqueles que trabalham nas áreas de impacto ambiental, social ou de sustentabilidade que as estratégias de implementação de projetos muitas vezes negligenciam o diálogo com as comunidades e indivíduos diretamente afetados pelos projetos.  Segundo Daniel Mendes, Consultor Principal da Stone Soup Consulting, devemos perguntar-nos: quão eficaz é a nossa abordagem na recolha de feedback dos utilizadores dos projetos? Utilizamos o processo como forma de confirmar percepções anteriores ou tomar medidas em novas direções?     Leia o artigo completo ‘Ecos da comunidade: o processo de escuta’ (em português) do Daniel Mendes e conheça melhor a sua opinião sobre estas questões. https://lnkd.in/dMFvgdBa #StoneSoupConsulting #Comunicação #EscutaAtiva #ImpactoSocial #Sustentabilidade

WE ARE NOT CELEBRATING 😮our 16th anniversary... Instead, we prefer to celebrate the positive impact generated by the 350+ projects we've collaborated on over the years.🫶 🗣We are happy to announce our new social media channel - INSTAGRAM, another space for Stone Soup Consulting to impact, build community, and share stories. 👉🏽FOLLOW US!

We were founded on the premise that if you work with organisations and entrepreneurs from all fields and sectors, with people truly invested in systemic change, we could enhance the solutions and help them scale up and develop. 😃 16 years later our Managing Partner Claudia Pedra  shares her reflections on our commitment of enhancing systemic change in our newest article ‘Eyes on the distant future’. 👀 “We can easily understand that a long-term focus and commitment to social change can help us be more aware of the consequences of our actions, the positive and negative impacts of them and makes us design more efficient and intertwined solutions.” Read the article 👇🏼

We are not celebrating our 16th anniversary! 😱 Instead, we prefer to celebrate the social and environmental impact generated by the hundreds of projects (more than 350) on which we have collaborated over more than sixteen years. 1️⃣6️⃣ Only just two days after our creation, on September 28th 2008, our first client appeared. The Ashoka Fellow Jean Claude Rodriguez-Ferrera Massons showed trust and commitment, and believed in our potential. 📈 The impact has been generated in favour of the community, sustainability, social cohesion, diversity and inclusion, on 5 continents. It is the greatest of all reasons we have to celebrate. At Stone Soup Consulting we are celebrating the positive impact of our collaborative projects throughout our short but intense history. 😊 So, for the next weeks we are sharing stories from key projects we have worked with along our 16 years of existence.

At Stone Soup we learn from each other and take everyone’s opinion into account. We ask our internal community for feedback and opinions on most aspects of the company activities and we hold regular meetings to update the community on what is going on. Every month we also ask our consultants to evaluate their wellbeing at Stone Soup. Here are a few pieces that we thought might be interesting to share with you from a recent meeting. 👉🏼 We currently have 46 consultants (67.6 %) out of 74 that are active in at least one project, working on 2,9 projects on average. 👉🏼 We are now working on 47 active projects in 12 countries and have been active in 68 projects with 55 clients since the beginning of 2024. 👉🏼 Stone Soup consultants have an average satisfaction of 8.2 out of 10, and the emotions more shared are: active, enthusiastic and happy. 😃

In 2021 and 2022 we worked on 168 projects and supported 117 organisations worldwide. 💪🏼   Out of these organisations.     👉🏼 84% of them found that we improved their ability to deliver impact.   👉🏼 86% found the above effect to be relevent to their organisaton.   👉🏼 70% found that the above had direct impact on their beneficiaries   👉🏼 30% found that it could not have happened without Stone Soup.   Check out the full Honesty Report 2021 – 2022 at the link! 🌟

The Planetiers World Gathering 🌍 is an important accelerator of sustainable change. Gathering the most innovative social and environmental impact startups, communities and cities, day-to-day sustainable projects and some of the most inspirational change-makers of the world.  🌍 Stone Soup’s Managing Partner, Claudia Pedra , will take part as a speaker at this year’s gathering in late October in Aveiro, Portugal.  🇵🇹 Pre-register for the 2024 Planetiers World Gathering and become part of this movement! https://lnkd.in/dgFxzq7t #PWG24 #PlanetiersWorldGathering #Sustainability #Regeneration #ESG #VisitPortugal #Aveiro