We are living through a moment that defies the usual languages of crisis and opportunity. Across every geography, the systems that social innovation was built to improve are not simply underperforming - they are structurally changing in ways that render many of our existing tools, frameworks and assumptions inadequate. At the same time, some of the most dynamic, determined and imaginative responses to these conditions are emerging from precisely the places that global conversations about social innovation have historically talked about rather than listened to.

This is the context in which EdelGive/SIX (Social Innovation Exchange) is convening a global gathering in Nairobi, Kenya, in November 2026. We will bring together approximately 100 ecosystem builders: the innovation practitioners, researchers, thought leaders, funders and policymakers who are trying to build the conditions for social innovation in their geographies. These are not newcomers. They are sophisticated practitioners who, in the words of our London roundtable in 2025, are sitting with a real question: are we being ambitious enough?

The convening takes place ten years after the original SIX Wayfinder - a gathering of 160 leaders from 34 countries that asked what the social innovation community should achieve by 2027. A decade on, we are not looking back. We are looking forward, with honesty about what the field has and has not done, and with urgency about what it needs to do next.