THEORY OF CHANGE
Due to a lack of investment in local leaders, communities worldwide are not able to adapt to address their own challenges. Mountaintop proposes the "Community Flourishing Model" to turn the tables.
The Community Flourishing Model proposes that, for a community to reach its fullest potential, a community should invest in strengthening the "human infrastructure" of their community: right abilities, right mindsets, right relationships, right activities, right places, and right power.
To this end, Mountaintop cultivates human infrastructure that promotes community flourishing through fellowships, education and training programs, policy advocacy, field building, media campaigns, and academic research.
Mountaintop is a proud member of the People First Community, which is a community of exceptional organizations prioritizing collective leadership as a path for sustainable development.
Mountaintop credits Isata Kabia, a former minister and parliamentarian in Sierra Leone, for the term "human infrastructure" and for much of the related framework.
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THE CALL FOR HUMAN INFRASTRUCTURE
Across the globe, our wisest voices are calling not for more technocratic solutions, but for investing in human infrastructure and transformational leadership.
Hoesung Lee
Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change
"We cannot embrace indifference or be discouraged by the scale of the challenge. We have the tools and know-how required to limit global warming. It is time to put them to use with far greater urgency."
Maria Ressa
Journalist and 2021 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate
"Democracy has become a woman-to-woman, man-to-man defense of our values. We’re at a sliding door moment, where we can continue down the path we’re on and descend further into fascism, or we can each choose to fight for a better world."
Beatrice Finn
International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)
"No nation today boasts of being a chemical weapon state. No nation argues that it is acceptable, in extreme circumstances, to use sarin nerve agent. No nation proclaims the right to unleash on its enemy the plague or polio. That is because international norms have been set, perceptions have been changed."
Mountaintop cultivates human infrastructure by helping individual leaders, NGOs, governments, and other institutions to develop talent and deepen systems change. See Mountaintop's theory of change, logic model, and long-term goals here.