In-Sight Collaborative is a global grassroots organization that focuses on education for humanitarians and activists. What is one word that can describe their work? “Co-learning,” says executive director, Madi Williamson.
Founded in 2016 by a group of friends volunteering in refugee camps in Northern Greece, In-Sight Collaborative began as a response to the often inaccurate narratives in Western culture regarding migration. Williamson and her fellow founding members recognized the incongruence between the media’s representation of refugees and the actual experiences of the people they met.
“We realized one of the most important things we could do to truly help the people we met in displacement was to help change those narratives. In an acute humanitarian crisis spanning acres and acres of farm fields, train tracks, and spreading to gas station parking lots and abandoned hotels, our founding members recognized that the current lens we had grown up viewing the world through was dangerously misleading. We saw a need for more collaboration, for more inclusion of the affected populations calling these camps home; for more platforms where the experiences of the displaced could be magnified rather than told on their behalf.”
The COVID pandemic was a critical turning point in In-Sight’s evolution.
“Like most organizations at a grassroots or global level, we were dependent on international volunteers to help with our programs and partnerships. COVID significantly limited the ability of travel and added the extra concern about incoming volunteers bringing the virus to new communities. The restrictions on mobility helped us recognize the power of localized, community-directed initiatives and ways to cultivate them.”
What they also recognized was that the key resource they could offer was education. “The most impactful thing we could be doing during these periods of lockdown was to reach out and share what we had learned with other sector participants who felt the same way we did about the mainstream narrative of humanitarian aid,” recalls Williamson. With that philosophy, In-Sight launched their first education program in the summer of 2020.
But when the world reopened a couple of years later, many new challenges arose, including heavily policed borders, crackdowns on migration, and a shift in global sympathy for migratory communities. Once again, the In-Sight team saw the need to re-evaluate their work and steer themselves in a new direction to continue to effectively serve the migrant community.
“In the non-profit and humanitarian sector, you see lots of projects fail rather than adapt. Fortunately, this period of rest and growth was the best thing we could have done for In-Sight and for our team.”
As a result, In-Sight has refined their mentorship program and other educational initiatives to provide something extremely powerful that had been missing from the sector: accessible, decolonized, and wellness-based approaches to humanitarian education and humanitarian assistance.
