Bridging Leadership is an approach that enables practitioners to initiate and nurture multi-stakeholder collaborative processes in society. Such processes can lead to changes in citizens’ attitudes and enhance institutional capacity building. As a result, this exercise can consolidate democracy, establish tolerance as a common practice, and speed up human development at community level.
Under such premises, Esquel has structured its Bridging Leadership Program (BLP) to train a new breed of Ecuadorian leaders who are encouraged to use their competences and skills for the benefit of society as a whole.
The BLP aims at the enhancement of human capital, by developing people’s abilities and skills and by providing them with technical tools (such as case studies, technical support, monitoring, internships and exchanges). The idea is to increase social stakeholders’ managerial skills in order to generate responses based on their potential. Likewise, the BLP strives to promote consensus because it considers alliances as an important means to support the implementation and progress of socially efficient and economically sustainable programs.
The basic Bridging Leadership course contributes to strengthen organizations, institutions and communities that can work to eradicate poverty, protect the environment, fight corruption, support local governments, and promote young people’s involvement in politics.
The BLP fosters consensus building, agreement and dialogue processes, all based on support provided through training, advisory and consultancy services, mentoring and internships.
The Bridging Leadership Program proposes a new form of understanding leadership: i.e. leadership with capacity to initiate and uphold cooperation processes in order to achieve significant changes through effective multi-stakeholder collective action. This kind of leadership is built upon: INCLUSION, RESPECT, INTEGRITY AND COOPERATION. BLP activities and training have changed the lives of individuals, organizations, and communities.
Within the civil society capacity building component, the Bridging Leadership Program has developed training courses and workshops jointly facilitated and implemented with several institutions.
