United Edge Services LTD

It started in 2007 when we met in the desert at the opening of an environmental center for the Bedouin people, unaware that a journey had begun that would spread from the Middle East to all corners of the globe. Both of us had already been involved in social change efforts for a number of years but were starting to see intractable dilemmas.

For the next ten years, we worked with organizations and movements trying to help people out of poverty, injustice, and disaster. We supported local organizations and youth groups in the Middle East on human rights projects. Together and separately, we became involved with large international organizations and brand-new networks. Across the world, we delivered courses, designed projects, and measured the effectiveness of development programmes and humanitarian responses. We experienced the dedication, vision, and progress made by inspiring people, communities, organizations and movements. But we also saw that working within the system wasn’t working.

We have seen that justice is a product of the systems we live in. Seeking justice from broken systems is an incredibly frustrating and almost futile approach. The greatest signs of change we witnessed have come from the outside. We have seen workers uniting to take ownership of their business. We have seen young people learning about and claiming their rights for themselves. We have seen NGOs changing their business models to become led by the people they serve. We have seen international organizations coming together to create alternative solutions for the outdated aid system.

All of these solutions had three things in common. They advocated system change. They created alternative models or applied existing models in new ways. And they came from the people that were affected by the challenges themselves.

The seeds planted in the desert a decade earlier had grown and were now ready for harvest. In 2016 we decided to dedicate the next chapter of our lives to power-shifting projects and investing in changemakers around the world. We formed United Edge, and the timing couldn’t be better: human rights and the environment have reached a critical breaking-point in history, and a radical approach may just be the only solution. We are standing together on the edge of change.