Leadership Development in Latin America 2024

In 2024, The Kairos Project partnered with the Ford Foundation to deliver the Latin America Programme, supporting 79 participants from 34 organisations across 10 countries. The programme was designed to equip leaders with practical tools to strengthen their organisations and navigate leadership transitions effectively, while addressing challenges at both personal and organisational levels. It also fostered a strong peer learning community, encouraging collaboration, shared insight and mutual support across the region.

• Programme Structure: Divided into four main routes:
  1. Leadership Leaps
  2. Facilitating the Transition
  3. Supporting Others’ Growth
  4. Adaptive Leadership

Each route combined forums, workshops, leadership circles, and elective series on:

• Balance and self-care
• Team coaching
• Collective leadership

• Participant Engagement:

• • 68% joined peer circles
  • 42% joined collective leadership series
  • 34% attended team coaching
  • 28% participated in balance and self-care sessions

• Challenges Identified:

• • Organisational: financial sustainability, team management, and effective transitions
  • Personal: time management, burnout, difficulty in delegating, and self-care

• Participant Feedback (Ex-post evaluation, 2 months post-programme):

• • Usefulness: 4.3 / 5
  • Confidence in facilitators: 4.7 / 5
  • Likelihood to recommend: 4.1 / 5

• Testimonials: Participants praised the programme for building confidence, encouraging reflection, and offering valuable tools for leadership development.

The programme successfully responded to a clear and pressing need among BUILD organisations for leadership development during periods of transition. Participants found the tools both timely and relevant, and the opportunity for peer support emerged as one of the most valued aspects of the experience. The programme reinforced that leadership development is most effective when leaders are given safe, reflective spaces in which to think, connect and learn together. At the same time, it highlighted significant barriers to sustained engagement, particularly burnout and time constraints. The experience also surfaced the persistence of a “culture of sacrifice” within the sector, underlining the need to actively promote balance, boundary-setting and wellbeing as core components of effective leadership.