The Collaborative Unlearning Labs

The Collaborative Unlearning Lab is PRA’s flagship learning space for transforming how development and philanthropy are practised. It brings practitioners together to examine the assumptions, power dynamics, and institutional habits that shape everyday work, including inherited ways of working that can limit trust, equity, and local leadership. Through guided reflection and practice-based dialogue, the Lab helps participants reframe relationships, shift behaviours, and strengthen more equitable, locally led practice.

Why Unlearning matters

Because systems do not change through policy commitments alone. They change when people and institutions examine the assumptions, behaviours, and power dynamics that shape practice.

What the Labs do

The Labs help practitioners surface hidden patterns, reflect on power and partnership, and identify practical shifts toward more equitable, locally led development.

How They Work

A facilitated learning journey using guided reflection, peer dialogue, practice-based discussion, and collective sense-making.

Who the Labs Are Designed For

The Collaborative Unlearning Labs are designed for practitioners and institutions ready to move beyond equity commitments and begin changing practice.

PRA offers audience-specific and cross-ecosystem streams:

◆ Funders: From Grantmaking to Solidarity Stewardship
Examining how funding, risk, accountability, and decision-making can shift power.

◆ INGOs & Intermediaries: From Gatekeeping to Accompaniment
Reframing the role of intermediaries from control and access management toward solidarity, support, and local leadership.

◆ Sub-Grantees & Locally Led Organisations: From Survival to Agency
Strengthening voice, confidence, sustainability, and agency within unequal partnership systems.

◆ Open Stream: Unlearning Together Across the Ecosystem
Bringing funders, INGOs, intermediaries, local organisations, CBOs, and practitioners together to surface patterns and reimagine better ways of working.