OurLinks

Weaving humanity.

OurLinks was about creating and facilitating collective experiences, thoughtfully designed to be magical and inclusive environments for people with powerful hearts, brilliant minds and change-makers to feel safe co-creating, collaborating and dialoguing together while building meaningful connections.

Anastasia Savelieva, Catalina Maldonado and myself, Valeria were the three empowered women, based in Barcelona, Spain, who decided to join forces in an effort to enhance the type of communities and humanity we were willing to see in the world, starting with our own city, cultures and ecosystems.

The project started in 2018 as a social research about the possibilities of design and its impact when it was focused on Social Impact through collectivity. Anastasia and Catalina joined one year after (2019) and it became a beautiful and life changing journey that explored and combined our biggest passions: humanity, creativity and connections. We focused on ideate and produce life changing experiences through social and corporate events, workshops and networking.

The philosophy of the original people of South America, the thinkers of the Andean wisdom, those who were present on the continent before colonization, highlight from a cosmological view of reality that the connection between beings alive, Mother Earth and the cosmos, is the essence of life. We felt that this idea combined with design and its possibilities could be a powerful mix when used as a tool for building social fabric and links of transformation through collective experiences of participation, collaboration and dialogue. Spreading ideals of human union, knowledge exchange and social construction is crucial, at a time when the conflict has gripped many indigenous communities, a situation that inevitably weakens these ideas and social systems as references of wisdom for future generations.
OurLinks was born with the intention of exploring this connection and the possibilities of its own power as a force for social change. We decided to boost the humanization of collaborative practices in processes of socialization and collective ideation at a corporate and educational level. To encourage empathy and the exchange of knowledge in processes of participation and social reflection. And finally to facilitate spaces and experiences that promote collaborative social ecosystems with common themes and objectives, generating synergies between generations, nationalities, opportunities, knowledge and ideas.
OurLinks was constantly used as an excuse to explore infinite ways of how design, combined with people and connections, could be used as a power for good in a world with an infinite amount of social, cultural and economical issues.

The nature of each of our experiences was inspired by the Andean Ethos, its philosophy and practices, in which cosmovision is the protagonist, along with concepts of exchange, collaboration and reciprocity. Promoting the union of knowledge and talent, as tools for social construction through collective empowerment and common goals.

We linked concepts from different social systems and communities to combine emotions, ideas and actions that promote the strengthening of the human social fabric. OurLinks was finding physical, economical and philosophical partners and ambassadors on each one of its stages; from teachers, journalists, activists and indigenous leaders, entrepreneurs and students, as well as ideas from authors as Victor Papanek, William Ury and Otto Sharmer.

“Generating safe spaces where people could feel part of a collective. Moments where everyone could share their knowledge and experiences”

— Catalina

Experiences

Corazón

This collaborative experience seeks to represent the essence of Munay, the principle of the Andean worldview that highlights emotional knowledge, strengthening what unites us as humanity to weaken what separates us. In this specific experience we compiled more than 200 images of hearts from different parts of the world to join a group of strangers from different generations, nationalities and professions to represent a version that combined the essence of all.

Discover Corazón

Origen

Calixto Suarez, speaker from the indigenous Arhuaco from the Sierra Nevada, Colombia collaborated with us to host “Del Origen al Horizonte”. An event where he talked about the development of education and individual growth in his community. Giving all the attendees powerful tools about how to live in harmony with themselves and Mother Earth.

Discover Origen

Changemakers Lab

Changemakers Lab was a collaborative event co produced by OurLinks, Learning by Helping and Akasha Hub Barcelona with the main objective to reunite 4 agents of change in the city with a diverse audience in terms of generations, background, nationalities, etc. To create sessions of impactful dialogues about certain social issues that affect Barcelona and Europe in general, like refugee humanitarian crisis, sexism, social leaders assassinations, etc. With a ‘‘hug a stranger’’, an open mic to opinions and a safe space to share thoughts through collective challenges, the event created beautiful synergies whose impacts remain until today.

Discover Changemakers Lab

Diálogos

OurLinks used to be an events “in person experiences based business”. When the global pandemic crisis started around 2020, we believed we needed to innovate urgently our ways to create awareness and empower all those topics we were already doing through the “in person events”. That’s when Diálogos started, first as a series of interviews that set the basis for virtual events to happen without losing our humanist core.

Discover Diálogos

Visual language

Feel it.
Dream it.
Build it.
Communicate it.

While OurLinks was living its best moment, producing numerous workshops, events and experiences, very challenging times were ahead for all of humanity. Throughout 2020 we need to overcome different kinds of obstacles, make big decisions while embracing lots of changes as a team, which includes an international zoom wedding, childcare closures and the crisis of the events industry. Unfortunately, in the middle of the pandemic crisis we saw ourselves forced to make a pause to our beloved platform for social change (OurLinks) but before taking such a big decision, we decided to join all our efforts for a cause that we believed in: Empowering love as a tool to enhance a more empathetic, compassionate and kind society. We facilitate a virtual course called Amor, Empatía y Compasión: Herramientas del Siglo XXI (Love, Kindness and Compassion: The tools for 21st Century), with this course we were able to build an international community connected by the community meetings, group exercises and academic content.

“If these values were the ones that moved the world, the Earth would dance instead of twisting. Congratulations on this course! It is a great contribution”

— Tamara Sanchez