One Family Foundation
Driving lasting change across the globe
"A river starts at the head of a mountain and it knows it has to reach the sea. But it goes this way and that, turning until it reaches its destination. That’s what systems change is about. You go slowly and negotiate your way through."
Jeroo Billimoria​ Co-Founder One Family Foundation​​​​​​​​
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How can we achieve lasting change together?
Introducing the Circle of Change
To achieve lasting change, we must fundamentally transform the way we think and act. It’s no longer enough to ask, "What’s in it for me?" We must shift to a mindset that asks, "What’s in it for all of us, and for our planet?" This shift requires us to draw from the wisdom of ancient cultures, empowering the Global South with a platform to voice their needs and drive the changes they wish to see. Only through this collective, inclusive approach can we hope to address poverty, restore our planet, and ensure true financial inclusion.
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At the heart of this transformation lies poverty alleviation and financial inclusion. By empowering local communities, social entrepreneurs, and governments to collaborate and drive solutions together, we can create systems that address the root causes of poverty and ensure that marginalized populations have access to the tools and resources needed to thrive. True financial inclusion means providing individuals, especially in underserved regions, with access to services and opportunities that foster economic empowerment and long-term prosperity. This is not just a development goal—it is a call to action for a more equitable global society.
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One Family Foundation's approach is centred on collaborative systems change, where communities, social innovators and governments work together to create lasting impact. These three groups are not isolated; they are interconnected and mutually reinforcing. One Family Foundation's expertise lies in bringing these groups together to collaborate, and creating an ecosystem where these collaborations can flourish.
The Community -
Empowering Local Voices
In traditional development models, communities are often seen as passive recipients of services, with little say in identifying their own needs or priorities. The Distributed Development Platform aims to flip this dynamic by using advanced AI technology to facilitate collaborative development. This platform gives communities the tools to actively participate in identifying and solving their own challenges, ensuring that development is driven by actual needs rather than external agendas. By reducing development costs and focusing on need-based solutions, the platform makes sustainable development more accessible and cost-effective.
Initial feedback from our Minimum Viable Product (MVP) launched in India has been overwhelmingly positive. Based on this success, we plan to expand and initiate dialogue in Africa in June 2025 together with our partners. This will be a key step in broadening the platform’s reach and impact across the Global South.
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The Enablers -
Strengthening Social Entrepreneurs and Innovators
The enablers of change are social entrepreneurs and innovators—individuals and organizations who serve as the bridge between communities and solutions. The One Family Foundation incubated Catalyst Now (formerly Catalyst 2030) to create a strong, unified movement of social entrepreneurs. Over time, Catalyst Now has grown into a powerful, independent network that continues to drive social change globally. In 2025, it will formally transition out of One Family Foundation to operate independently.
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​​Recognizing that the Global South's voice was insufficiently represented within Catalyst, One Family Foundation launched Africa Forward. This initiative seeks to shift funding and decision-making power to African social innovators, empowering them to shape the solutions that directly impact their communities. Africa Forward also works to strengthen the social entrepreneurship ecosystem in Africa, creating jobs and fostering local innovation. Over the next year, Africa Forward will transition into an independent entity, similar to the path that Catalyst Now has taken.
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Inspired by Africa Forward, other regional movements have gained momentum, each strengthening the voice of local entrepreneurs and social innovators in the global development conversation. These include:
MENA Manhara: A regional initiative aimed at empowering social entrepreneurs across the Middle East and North Africa, providing them with the tools, resources, and networks to create meaningful change in their local communities.
Asia Rising: A movement focused on social entrepreneurship across Asia, fostering innovation and creating solutions that address the unique challenges faced by communities in this diverse and rapidly evolving region.
Latin America Avanza: A collective of social innovators in Latin America working together to create sustainable and scalable solutions to the region’s most pressing issues.​​Through these regional initiatives, the Foundation amplifies the voices of local entrepreneurs and contributes to a more inclusive, decentralized approach to global development.​
The Government
Creating Supportive Policy Frameworks
A key learning from our experiences with Catalyst was the realisation that, to sustain and scale social innovation, government policies must be restructured to support the social sector. In response, One Family Foundation launched the Government Council for Social Innovation, a platform led by governments for governments. This Council aims to help governments learn from the experiences of social entrepreneurs, impact investors, academics, and businesses to design policies that nurture and support social innovation ecosystems.
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The Council works to create a regulatory and policy environment that empowers social entrepreneurs to thrive, fostering a sustainable, inclusive development model. By closing the loop between grassroots innovation and policy change, this initiative ensures that the voices of the people shape the policies that govern them.
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Learn more about the Government Council for Social Innovation
Collaborative Systems Change
​Collaborative Systems Change is an approach to transparently mobilise a diverse set of actors to collectively imagine and create positive, systemic change. This change can occur in existing systems, or it can be used to create new, more inclusive systems where they do not exist otherwise.
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Collaborative Systems Change seeks to counteract the dominant paradigm for development, which focuses on top-down solutions implemented through hierarchical institutions. Rather, collaborative systems change recognises that there is no one big answer to complex problems, but instead a plethora of smaller efforts working in harmony that culminate the widespread adoption of new ways of thinking and doing.
Collaborative Systems Change organisations are "honest brokers" who build networks of invested players that, with integrity, move forward a common agenda to tackle persistent, large-scale social problems.
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The concept of collaborative systems change is derived from the experience of Child & Youth Finance International (CYFI), an organisation that concluded its role in December 2019 after succeeding to ensure full economic citizenship for children and youth in 175 countries, reaching more than 40 million children and youth and collaborating with 63 000 organisations.
​​Please read their case study on systems change.
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A Glimpse of the Past
Jeroo Billimoria, Co-Founder of One Family Foundation, founded the following organisations and has collaborated with many others to help grow their impact and strengthen their stratagy
Previous Projects incubated by One Family Foundation
One Shared School is an online platform that aims to encourage and facilitate sharing and twinning between schools across the globe, thus developing global citizenship and improving the quality of education. One Family Foundation aims to encourage everyone to share a little of what they have. We aim to create a more equal playing field and by doing so, tip the balance towards equality. Shared change is about the coming together of likeminded people who care about change and believe it can come about one action at a time. ​ Shared change is the philosophy behind One Shared School, a website conceptualized and created by kids for kids and facilitated by adults. ​ Children are inquisitive, love to learn and share experiences and technology has made it possible to do this across our cities, countries and across the globe. Through, web-based technology, social media, automated language translation, webinars etc, we can break down traditional barriers and get children and youth to discuss and learn from each other. One shared school aims at a shared world, which includes sharing  education, sharing blackboards, books, sharing knowledge, culture and experiences. Together with a group of young website developers from Cupertino High School in California, One Family is presently in the process of developing the Schools Sharing website, a safe environment where children can get in contact with their peers around the globe and share their wealth, their wealth of ideas, education and culture. Shared schools seeks to ensure a quality education for all by 2025. ​ ​
Child helplines are on the front lines of responding to children in crisis. With well- publicized short-code telephone numbers (similar to 911 in the United States), child helplines in more than 140 countries are taking urgent phone calls about children suffering from neglect, violence, abuse, mental health challenges and more. The challenge: Globally, child helplines receive more than 30 million calls annually, and those helplines are struggling to fully meet the needs of children in crisis. Millions of phone calls go unanswered. And most helplines face challenges from outdated technology and limited channels of communication – relying almost solely on voice calls. However, more people – especially children – increasingly use social media and text messaging as their primary means of communication. Today’s young people often feel more comfortable discussing serious or delicate issues on text or chat functions, instead of a voice call. The pandemic has created another issue – the lack of space to make a private call. What’s needed is a modern cloud-based contact centre that makes it possible to both connect with children on the platforms they use, as well as improve the productivity of human counsellors. ​ Co-creating the next generation of helpline contact centres To address these needs, One Family Foundation collaborated with Child Helpline International and Tech to developAseloTM, an open source, cloud-based contact center platform. Aselo is being created in partnership with Child Helpline International (CHI) and its more than 160 members in nearly 140 countries. With CHI’s help, we chose 10 national child helplines representing the diverse global membership. These 10 helplines have been testing each new prototype release since late 2019, with the goal of deploying a child-ready platform in early 2021. CHI’s membership saw a real benefit in joining together to build an innovative common platform, rather than having each helpline pay for individual tech solutions. ​ Aselo’s design Provides a completely integrated modern contact center system for children to reach counselors through phone, SMS, webchat, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp; Is cloud-based, making remote work by counselors possible; Implements the new CHI unified data framework, allowing easy data aggregation across countries, providing powerful tools for advocacy for children and laying the groundwork for greater use of evidence-based practices; Is customizable to address the needs and languages of individual helplines; Includes chatbots to be more responsive to children and save time for counselors; Provides extensive contact center reports and dashboards for managing operations and analyzing trends.
Embracing an all inclusive Europe​ The global movement of people has escalated over the last few years, with 244 million international migrants – persons living in another country than they were born – reported by the UN in 2015. Many are looking to find a safe haven and make better lives for themselves in Europe . Europe has welcomed immigrants for many years. Their contribution to the workforce was seen in a positive light. But Europe is now witnessing a backlash of individuals who are afraid their societies are changing in the wake of mass immigration. Systems change is inevitable and One Family, in partnership with stakeholders such as academics and government agencies will collectively develop and create positive, systemic change, so that integration in Europe can be embraced and made inclusive for all. ​ Unfortunately, One Family Foundation could not find the support and partnerships needed to bring this project to fruition.
Who We Are - Not 'I' but 'we'
The One Family board and team are not seeking organisational or personal gain, but rather are striving for the maximum social impact and transformational social change. This fundamental working ethos guides us in our day to day and keeps us on track, holding us accountable to our promise of collaboration and change. As honest brokers, our aim is to bring those actors together who can play an instrumental role to ensure the change the communities envision is made, and those who can shape and implement the policy this change requires. The role of One Family Foundation is to guide and support this process. Collaboration is key and links us back to the 'we' of of our work together.
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The Board
Bertjan Janzen
Co founder and
Chair of the board
Jeroo Billimoria
Co Founder and Secretary to the board
Koen Vermeltvoort
Strategist and Advisor
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Kristine Kohlstrand
Treasurer
The Team
Bram van Eijk
Executive Director of
One Family Foundation
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Paula Conaghan
Operations & Communications Lead
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Yesha Oza
Intern
Lauryn Terry
Intern​
Susan Elkholy
Intern
Ismail Garba
Intern
Annual Reports
Please find our annual reports for the last three years
Annual Report 2021
Annual Report 2022
Annual Report 2023
One Family Foundation has annual reports and financial statements dating from 2018. Please get in touch with us if you would like a copy of the reports not published on this website