UFacilitate | Multistakeholder Convenings & Event Facilitation

Grounded Movement: A UFacilitate collaborative partnership

A Grounded Gathering is a three-day working retreat for 50 to 100 key decision-makers. We bring the right people together to stop talking and start acting, building trust and clarity around a shared vision. The goal is to identify immediate, practical collaborations and define next steps that begin right away.

Grounded Movement is UFacilitate’s approach to catalyzing coordinated ecosystem action on complex social challenges. Inspired by the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio model, it brings curated, issue-specific gatherings directly into the regions where change is needed most, supporting locally led, inclusive, and sustainable systems transformation.

What is Grounded Movement

Grounded Movement is a strategic initiative inspired by the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio model and reimagined to be regional, inclusive, and catalytic.

Each edition focuses on one issue area and one region, and is designed to:

Break silos across institutions and sectors

Align incentives and roles early

Identify champions and shared leadership

Create momentum that continues after the gathering

Rather than large conferences that often go nowhere after picking up momentum, Grounded Movement is designed where the right people can do real work together and leave with a committed group of champions to work forward. It’s one part conference, one part working group.

Why this model exists

Across regions and sectors, we see the same pattern:

Duplication of efforts
Misaligned incentives
Strong ideas that stall after convenings
Too much talk, too little coordinated follow-through

Grounded Movement addresses this by combining intentional facilitation, ecosystem-level design, and clear next-step ownership so collaboration can actually hold.

What a Grounded Gathering looks like

A Grounded Gathering is typically a 3-day, issue-specific convening designed for depth over scale.

It’s not just a conference. It’s a working gathering curated to bring together people who each hold a key piece of the ecosystem where key champions can be identified

Typical size of 50–100 participants

The design balances structured working sessions with space for relationship-building, reflection, and informal dialogue—because systems change is as much about people as it is about plans.

Grounded Movement is designed for:

Foundation and funders

seeking coordinated, regional impact

Multilateral and public-sector

actors navigating cross-country systems

NGOs and ecosystem

builders working across silos

Partners

who want momentum, not just conversation

Example edition: Delivering Change

Delivering Change is a Grounded Movement edition focused on maternal and infant health and wellbeing in East Africa.

Its goal is to help organize a locally led, innovative, inclusive, cost-effective, and sustainable health systems transformation, building on lessons from over a decade of system-wide change in Latin America through the Salud Mesoamerica Initiative.

This edition explores:

Regional collaboration across East African Community member states

Results-based financing and accountability

Policy dialogue and technical assistance

Experience-based learning across countries

Why UFacilitate

Facilitation is at the heart of systemic transformation.

UFacilitate specializes in helping groups navigate the “messy human stuff” that gets in the way of collaboration across cultures, institutions, and power dynamics. With a global network of facilitators across 40+ countries, we support alignment, trust-building, and action in complex systems

Partner with us

Grounded Movement editions are co-created with aligned partners. If this vision excites you, challenges you, or feels incomplete—we want to hear from you. If it doesn’t resonate for you, but you know someone it might, please share it.