In October 2010, a group of ten integral practitioners working in international development gathered in Istanbul. This meeting was designed to be a small, in-depth gathering between mentors, in which we could share notes from the field, bring our most pressing questions into discussion, and work together to hone our praxis in our respective areas of engagement.
Practitioners came from various sectors, including the private, public and non-profit sectors, and thematic areas, such as poverty alleviation, micro-entreprise, community resilience, water management, sustainable business, and leadership development.
This 'mentoring meeting' was held at Emine Kiray's house in the center of the city; a perfect oasis for encouraging each other to take our thinking deeper and to stretch our ideas of what is possible, as well as for sharing great food together.
Since the meeting, participants have further advanced their initiatives. For example, one person has further refined a way of engaging value chains for large-scale business which ethically accounts for the social development of producers' villages, the environmental protection of wild areas, and the production of goods for sale on the international market. Another group continued to deliver the final year and a half of integral leadership programming in West Africa, culminating in the launch of the continent's first African Integral Development Network. And one participant completed a handbook on Community Resilience with many of it's core ideas having come from the IWB mentors meeting.