Relationships are the Infrastructure: Reflections from our Social Impact House at SXSW EDU
We tried something new at SXSW EDU this year. For our Social Impact House, co-hosted with Deloitte, we didn’t have a stage or a formal program. Instead, we invited four social entrepreneurs to come as they are and speak honestly about what it actually feels like to lead right now. We called them “firestarters,” imagining that whatever they shared might light a match in the rest of us.
We got even more than we bargained for. Across all four reflections, one thing kept resurfacing: relationships. Too often, we hear about relationships as an abstract concept, or worse, a “nice to have” beside the “real work.” These firestarters reminded us that relationships are the structural foundation of social change.
Iloba Nzekwu of Found Village said it plainly: “In very easy times, it’s easy to trust in systems.” But when things get challenging, relationships are all we have—and, he argued, they’re what make everything else work in the first place. “They’re the foundational infrastructure for transformation,” he noted. “Often we rely on the systems, but I think it’s more important that we rely on people.”
Dr. Wenimo Okoya of Healing Schools Project brought something different: a list. Things she’s holding onto (love, play, joy, science, high expectations, her people) and things she’s working to release (doubt, fear, self-sacrifice). She spoke about moments of scarcity and listening to the inner voice that reminds her, “You have your people. You have everything you need.”
“I feel more clear in this moment than I did a year ago,” she reflected. “And in some ways, I feel like the pruning that this moment has made us do has made me really clear on the problem that we’re trying to solve, who we need to do it, and why we need to do it, and that’s also that we need to sustain in this work.”
Andrew Frishman of Big Picture Learning opened with a text message he’d received that morning from a former student, sharing a picture of their college diploma, an accomplishment 20 years in the making.
“ We’re talking so often about outcomes,” he said, “but I think that right now, we need to be thinking about what people are becoming and what they are helping the world to become. Andrew Frishman of Big Picture Learning
Nicole Jarbo of 4.0 closed with a challenge: don’t let this moment shrink your imagination. “In this work, there are two paths people take. One path is solely focused on the problem: the constraints in front of us, the risks, the scarcity, the lack of funding. But then there’s another path and another direction that folks can take, where they’re solely focused on what’s possible.” She traced a through-line from hope to innovation to ideas to imagination, and asked us to consciously shift from fixating on what’s broken to envisioning what’s possible, even when it’s hard.
We’re grateful to Deloitte for co-creating this space with us, and to Iloba, Wenimo, Andrew, and Nicole for their honesty and leadership. We hope these firestarters fanned the flames of your own work and hopes for the future – they certainly did for us.
