Kindness and Friendship

Our residents panel teach us so much every day about the importance of kindness, respect and friendship as the foundation for doing more challenging work together. Andy, Aala and I are so incredibly grateful to this group of residents for stepping up into this important and sometimes challenging role as the group who are collectively making decisions for the Regenerative Futures Fund 10-year cohort.

Andy and Aala have worked very closely with the residents since spring 2025 when the group were recruited, onboarded and as they moved into a decision making role. We have so much to share about this whole process, their experiences in their words, our learning - all this is to come and we know it will be rich learning for others thinking about resident decision making.

This post is not about process but about kindness and friendship and quite simply, last week, in the midst of us handling a range of complex challenges, our workloads and a juggling like crazy we were taken aback by the thoughtfulness of our residents group gifting us three gorgeous plants and three separate hand-written cards for the three of us. We are going to pin the cards on our desk to remind us daily of why we are working this way. The gift and the cards filled our hearts and our cups right up with hope, love and friendship.

Thank you to the special people in our residents panel who thought to do this and made it happen💖

I can’t wait until we can share more about our residents panel after their decision making stage is done in spring 2026, and I’m excited to see how the group grow into their new role around oversight, learning, accountability and more, post-decision making.

Here we are, happy with our new plant friends and beautiful handwritten notes 🪴🪴🪴

Andy, Aala and Leah and our new plants friends gifted to us by our residents panel

Our new plant friends on the window beside our desk at Edinburgh Futures Institute