In times of crisis, practicing active hope is a survival strategy. This collection is designed for those who believe in this everyday practice of imagination, collective agency, and mutual care, capable of keeping the possibility of change alive.
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In a time marked by fear, cynicism, and the feeling of permanent collapse, we seek to advance a different story: one that recognizes the darkness without paralyzing us and reminds us that we can still transform the world. One that affirms that hope is neither naïveté nor evasion, but a collective practice capable of transforming fear into fuel, rage into political energy, and critique into compost for new futures.
This narrative is not only told; it is rehearsed every day. It invites us to identify the cracks where other forms of life are already germinating, to imagine irresistible horizons that guide our path, and to recognize that deep change can only happen in community.
Our Executive Director Mónica Roa puts it this way:
“Active hope does not ignore pain or soften it: it recognizes it, processes it, resignifies it, and turns it into fertile ground where new worlds can germinate.”
In this video, our Executive Director Mónica Roa López shares with us why we need an everyday practice of imagination, collective agency, and mutual care, capable of keeping the possibility of change alive.
Get inspired by her words and share them with your colleagues.
We are living through multiple crises that generate anxiety, uncertainty, and deep questions about the future. That is why we know we need alternatives that allow us to resist cynicism and inaction.
Active hope is proposed as a survival strategy: a way to be clear about the starting point, visualize where we want to go, and move forward collectively, step by step, keeping the search for possibilities alive. It is a powerful and mobilizing idea. Its strength lies in acting, not in waiting.
Talking about active hope in a context where we see the rise of authoritarianisms and climate, social, humanitarian, and ethical crises is uncomfortable but necessary. Naming it before those who live these realities in all their harshness demands honesty from us.
In these complex contexts, questions like these will surely arise: How can we call on hope without making it sound naïve and without making it seem like an insult to our pain? How can we talk about hope without diminishing the seriousness of our struggles? That is why we must remind ourselves that hope is not a passive feeling, but a discipline. A commitment to collective action sustained over time, one that requires recognizing fear and vulnerability, but also courage and collective agency.
We need a hope that practices political composting: one that takes the rot of the world, processes it, and turns it into compost for dignified futures. A hope that sustains spaces where we can meet, imagine ourselves, and accompany one another as we drive change, even when we do so from fear, exhaustion, or joy. Practicing it is a radical act of care and possibility.
In the face of crises that generate anxiety and uncertainty, active hope emerges as a strategy to move step by step toward what is possible, acting instead of waiting. It rests on four keys: recognizing the unbearable reality, imagining an irresistible vision, activating collective agency, and practicing the search for possibilities every day.
Talking about active hope amid authoritarianisms and deep crises is uncomfortable, but indispensable, because it is not about naïveté, but about a discipline that combines vulnerability, courage, and collective action. In the face of fear and pain, we need a hope capable of transforming the world’s problems into compost for dignified futures, sustaining spaces of encounter, imagination, and accompaniment.
Soothing placebo
Hope as a fantasy that calms anguish without transforming reality. If it is built by denying fear, it falls into forced optimism.
Anxiety over immediate results
Believing that hope only exists when there are clear signs of victory.
Empty or incomplete declaration
Naming hope without practicing it in everyday life turns it into rhetoric. Active hope must be rehearsed in the present.
Created by Thomas Coombes and shared in the Inspiratorio, our training space in narrative power, this manual is a practical tool to plan and facilitate hope-based communications workshops. It is designed to accompany organizations and collectives as they build their own approach and strategy from hope.
Here you will find the foundations for introducing the five hope-based narrative shifts, with guidance to put them into practice in spaces of training, reflection, and strategic design.
By sharing this manual, we seek to help more change agents strengthen the narratives they want to advance and integrate them into their communication plans.
Share it with other people who are also looking for new ways of narrating.
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Let's keep imagining other possible futures.
