Institute for Alternative Futures

A free toolkit for communities, countries, and regions to explore their own futures
IAF has developed a free "pro-poor scenario toolkit" for use by communities, countries, and regions to develop scenarios of their own futures that explicitly include poor and marginalized populations.

Pro-Poor Scenario Toolkit: Workshop Materials and Global Forecasts for 2039

A sheet of "ground rules" for the scenario workshop can be found here.






How can the poor participate in shaping our global future? While many corporations, organizations, and government agencies frequently apply foresight methods, poverty is rarely included as an explicit issue for consideration.  To change that, the Institute for Alternative Futures, with support from the Rockefeller Foundation, has developed an approach to applying foresight methods to expand social and economic opportunities for poor and marginalized populations worldwide.

As part of this effort, IAF convened a workshop of leading foresight experts at the Rockefeller Foundation’s conference facilities in Bellagio, Italy on March 16-20, 2009.  The meeting, which was co-chaired by Leon Fuerth and David Jhirad, highlighted the rationale and practice of pro-poor foresight in accelerating and enhancing “smart globalization” and in gaining a better understanding of foresight in relation to a set of key issues that are relevant to the global South.

The full report on the 2009 conference:  Foresight for Smart Globalization: Accelerating & Enhancing Pro-Poor Development Opportunities

Institute for Alernative Futures: Mission & Vision

MISSION AND VISION

The MISSION of IAF is to help communities and organizations more wisely choose and create the futures they prefer by:

• providing techniques for organizational and social transformation that will instill vision and integrity;
• sharing insights gained from leading-edge futures research and a constantly expanding body of integrated knowledge;
• creating networks of relationships among leaders for more strategic, systemic, global and humane decision-making;
• developing practices that sustain organizational success in the present while consciously investing in endeavors that expand opportunities for futures generations.

Our VISION:

The Institute for Alternative Futures leads in the discovery and creation of preferred futures. People in organizations, communities and governments benefit from our drive to constantly think beyond the edge. We develop and teach our methods and processes. We plant the seeds for endeavors which will be sustained beyond our lifetimes.

Our staff, individually and collectively, are recognized and respected as catalysts for transformation. Our staff and clients are partners in a journey. We are guides and advocates, not for the destination, but for the search. Evidence of our work is abundant and clear. Leaders inspired by our work are more inclined and more capable of thinking in a futures context. Their decision-making is recognizably more strategic, systemic, global, and humane. The organizations they serve reflect the health instilled by vision and integrity.

We are idealistic and enterprising. Our creative adventures at the margins are anchored and supported by financial and systemic strength at the core. We are driven by compassion, fulfillment and service. We are constantly and wisely investing in our people, our infrastructure and our alliances. Quality of life matters. We live and perform in the moment while consciously creating alternative futures and expanding opportunities for future generations.

http://www.altfutures.org/vision_mission