2025-08-14

August 14 (the second Thursday of the month) is the 134th meeting for Systems Thinking Ontario. This will be an in-person session. The registration will be at https://guild.host/events/systems-social-66cyiv

Interconnected Interventions and Systemic Resilience

Interested in systems thinking applied in the field?  We have a program update (as of August 6)!  We received word that Martin Bunch is available to attend ST-ON in person.

This month is a rare opportunity to have Martin Bunch share his expertise on systems thinking methods and research in international projects.  Academics will know Martin as a Professor in the Faculty of Environmenal and Urban Change at York University, and a leader in the Network for Ecosystem Sustainability and Health (NESH).  He's also a Captain with the Queen's Own Rifles of Canada, recently serving as a Primary Reserve logistics officer supporting Mobile Training Teams in Lebanon.

(For those anticipating more casual conference updates, plan to join the group to continue conversations over dinner).

Interconnected Interventions and Systemic Resilience: A Comparative Analysis of Development Programming in South Sudan

This presentation applies a systems thinking lens to assess the effectiveness of two international development projects in South Sudan: Fortifying Equality and Economic Diversification for Resilience (FEED II – World Vision, War Child Canada, CARE) and Asset Creation and Livelihoods (ACL – World Food Program, UNICEF). Both programs use resilience as their Theory of Change.  Drawing on the conceptualization of community resilience as an emergent property of complex adaptive systems, we explore how system structure and inter-program linkages influence community resilience outcomes. The analysis contrasts outcomes when these projects operate in isolation versus when they are intentionally co-located and coordinated—emphasizing the systemic value of programmatic synergy.

To support this assessment, we developed and applied the Resilience Analysis using PCA and Regression Techniques (REPART) framework.  REPART is a quantitative method that we used to explore the dynamic interplay among a large number of variables related to absorptive, adaptive, transformative, and community-engaged resilience capacities.  Such capacities range from household gender dynamics to engagement with agricultural improvement and governance. These dimensions reflect both internal system capacities and external interactions, shaped by feedback from shocks such as conflict and flooding, stressors like inflation and access to credit and markets, and development interventions. This quantitative work was paralleled by qualitative methods applied by partner NGOs and Juba University researchers in the field in South Sudan.

Survey data was analyzed to generate resilience indices across the above dimensions, revealing that households engaged in both FEED II and ACL programs experienced synergistic effects and nonlinear improvements in resilience—particularly in absorptive and adaptive capacities, and more systemically in transformative and community-engaged resilience. These findings highlight how interconnected program design and implementation can strengthen system-wide resilience, reinforcing the value of coordination and feedback-aware planning in complex development contexts.

Featured Speaker

Martin Bunch is a Professor in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change at York University and is active as a member of the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research. A human geographer by training, his research interests fall in the areas of applied international development, environmental management, systems theory and methodology, and environment and health. The integrating theme among these is coupled human and natural systems, social-ecological systems and community resilience.

Prof. Bunch has methodological expertise in resilience assessment, adaptive management, soft systems methodology, ecosystem approaches, and geographic information systems (GIS) and brings these together in the application of ecosystem approaches to human health and well-being (the ecohealth approach).  

Bunch’s recent projects include the comparing community resilience outcomes in the Fortifying Economic Diversification and Gender Equality for Resilience (FEED II – World Vision, War Child, CARE) and Asset Creation for Livelihoods (ACL – World Food Program and UNICEF) projects in South Sudan, and the Ecological Footprint Initiative at York University. Bunch also collaborates on the “Las Nubes” Project in Costa Rica, where he works with University partners and local stakeholders to develop a biological corridor and improve human well-being in a watershed near San Isidro. Past work includes applied projects in Chennai, India related to urban environmental management and poverty alleviation that informed the ecosystem approach using soft systems methodology and participatory action research and environment and health projects with Ontario Conservation Authorities using agent-based modelling and geomatics tools.

Venue

• Thursday, August 14, 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm (option to continue conversation at a restaurant nearby)

• OCADU Graduate Studies, 205 Richmond Street West, Room 510

• Restaurant TBD

Suggested pre-readings / audio / video

Bunch, Martin J. and Waters, Brian Mahayie and Ganguli, Nilanjana and Adhanom, Maereg and Nyuon, Abraham Kuol and Christine, Bwogi and Badhane, Hailu, Comparing Resilience Outcomes in Feed II and ACL Projects in South Sudan Using the Repart Framework. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5243454 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5243454

• FEED II is at https://care.ca/projects/feed-ii-fortifying-equality-and-economic-diversity-for-resilience/

• Food Assistance for Assets is at https://www.wfp.org/food-assistance-for-assets

For those who were interested in dinner conversation, the following sources are available.

• Metaphorum 2025, July 3-5 at Manchester Business School had a theme of "Collective intelligence, agency and resilience".

  • Allenna Leonard and Juliana Mariano Alves led "Team syntegrity taster".

  • Allenna Leonard, Angela Espinosa, Jon Walker and Ayham Fattoum discussed "Beer’s legacy – its impact on organisations, education and society: 'What do we tell the grandchildren?'”

  • The Metaphorum channel on YouTube is at https://www.youtube.com/@metaphorum

• International Society for Systems Sciences 2025, July 11-15 with the University of Birmingham Leadership Institute had a theme of "Advancing Together: An Invitation for Systemic Collaboration"

• See the Conference Agenda.

• Video recordings have been released on Vimeo.

• TEDxOCADU May 16, 2025, folllowed two days of the SFI Innovation Forum at the OCADU Waterfront Campus.

  • Twelve talks are available on a YouTube Playlist named 2025-05-16_TEDxOCADU.

Agenda

Post-meeting artifacts

Bloggers are encouraged to write about their learning and experiences at the meeting. Links will be added to this page.