Adeso’s New Look is in Parallel with Our Evolution towards a Social Enterprise
By Rachel Roseberry
Uncover the story behind our new look and how it is shaped by our own evolution
The Journey
Over the last year, Adeso has gone through a profound rethinking of how we operate and, within that frame, we have developed a fresh look.
A deliberate part of this journey is moving from a traditional African non-profit organisation into a social enterprise, with the intention to become financially autonomous.
This journey is towards decolonisation of our organisation. This change is showing up not only with a fresh new look, but in our growing global team, as well as our internal processes – such as re-evaluating our policies that were shaped by bilateral funders into policies that function with today’s Adeso – backed by philanthropic capital and with plans to generate our own revenue.
Adeso will still have a fully-functioning non-profit component. This piece will keep us humble and grounded in our work; whether in Somalia co-designing community driven programming, or on the Global Stage, through the Pledge for Change and other advocacy efforts that are working to fundamentally reimagine the international development system.
In addition to our non-profit arm, we now have a social enterprise side, with ventures in Somalia that serve local communities and Kenya that have a global reach. This piece is our innovative side, unleashing a suite of solutions to eliminate existing funding barriers and influence the wider sector. Our global enterprise – Kuja – aims to enable these same funders and partners to gain traction for their localisation targets, while working side-by-side with local and national civil society organisations (CSOs) to be more visible, helping build their credibility and help move more funds directly to them.
In addition, it is also the disruptive side and our commercial side. Durdur Water Enterprise provides clean, affordable and reliable water in a sustainable manner to community members in water scarce parts of Northern Somalia. Finalizing its pilot water network, Durdur plans to replicate these networks across rural Somalia, directly reaching tens of thousands with clean and affordable water. You can watch Durdur highlighted on the BBC’s Red Nose Day here.
Embracing and Being the Change
Our slogan for the last ten years: “Changing the way people think about and deliver aid,” is still very much in our DNA and a big piece of what we do, but we are doing so much more than that now. And to stay true to that piece of our work, we need to evolve ourselves.
Instead of having the same conversations in the same ways – we are transforming ourselves and hopefully in this metamorphosis, we will show a Proof of Concept of being the change we want to see in this space.
We are envisioning a world where people thrive through their own resourcefulness and tenacity. And in the process, we are working in partnerships with intention to shift the power while reshaping the future system to one that is formed on the principles of solidarity, self-determination, and equality.
New Look Explained
Watch this transition clip to see the intentional refresh of Adeso’s new look.
With Adeso’s new logo, we have taken our former logo with intersecting arrows and evolved it, moving from three 3 arrows to two. These two blue arrows remind us of our past (light blue) and future (royal blue), with a key shape in the white space.
The key shape in the white space of our logo helps tell Adeso’s purpose: Unlocking opportunities for all to thrive.
We now have a lower case “a” for Adeso, reminding us that this is a journey and to be humble venturing onto new paths and into new relationships. We want to be elevating and amplifying our partners and local and national civil society leaders and organisations in the Global South. We want all of our partnerships – whether partners in the Global North or Global South – to be based on mutual respect and accountability.
Adeso’s Brand
A brand is a promise. Our promise is to lead by example. And many times great examples of leadership are through devolving power and through partnership. Being intentional about our approach in co-creating, co-designing, un-learning together and implementing in sync with others in this movement.
Adeso is a leader in this space, but we are also always learning from many: reflecting, adapting, pivoting and evolving. In this journey towards social enterprise, we are venturing into new terrain and are ready to stay flexible and shift when change needs to happen.
We welcome you to join us on this journey of decolonisation. It’s a journey of unlearning and reimagining.