About Square Circle

About Square Circle

Square Circle is a global development consulting company headquartered in Brisbane, Australia.Working at the intersection of theory and practice, Square Circle offers services in leadership and policy; governance; institutional strengthening; program design and management;digital storytelling; research; monitoring and evaluation; and conflict, peace and development. We work critically, adaptively and creatively with development partners to facilitate a more inclusive development process that enables sustainable and equitable impact.To do this, we partner with communities, governments, civil society, the private sector and development partners to connect policy and capacity to better serve diverse communities.A key part of our approach is how to best work with cultures, politics, environments and institutional norms to enable knowledge and skills to take us into a more sustainable, inclusive future.

Our clients include The World Bank, The International Finance Corporation, The United Nations Development Programme, Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT), The University of Queensland, The Government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, The Natural Resource Governance Institute, Transparency International, PNG Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative and The Intergovernmental Forum on Mining, Minerals and Sustainable Development, amongst others.

Square Circle works to ensure that the insights our research and analysis produce leads to action ‘on the ground’ that can create impact for the people and communities that are the intended beneficiaries of development programming and policies

Insight

Insight through critical reflection and participatorymethodologies to develop a relational understanding of contemporarydevelopment challenges and pathways for change.

Square Circle derives insight through critical reflection and participatory processes that seek to understand the content and quality of social relations—from the local to the global—through which people and communities reproduce social life. Such perspective is informed by a critical historical approach to the contemporary challenges and opportunities of development.Our approach seeks to understand key questions: ‘where have we come from’; ‘how have we gotten here’, and ‘where do we want to go’?We do this by bringing people’s everyday lived experience into dialogue with commonplace assumptions and abstractions of development theory and practice.As such, people, everywhere, are seen as holders of knowledge with important insights for realizing the opportunities afforded by the contemporary politics of development and social change.

Action

Action that is knowledge-based, sustainable, and connects people, places, and ideas.

At Square Circle, we have a deep commitment to ensuring our programs and activities are informed by local context and knowledge, as well as local conceptions of the ‘good life’. Because of this conviction, we take a strengths-based approach where we value local capacities and understandings of the challenges of development.We also bring a keen awareness of the inter-connectedness of our world, and the possibilities for action that such connectivity brings.It is through the building and strengthening of ties within and across geographies, scales, cultures and ideas that we ensure programming and activities that are meaningful,sustainable and inclusive.In essence, we seek to foster an environment for action that is locally grounded and globally informed for maximum impact.

Impact

Impact across local, regional and global scales through adaptive change that embraces a dynamic and diverse world.

Sustainable and inclusive impact for a dynamic and diverse world is at the core of all of Square Circle’s research and analysis, policy advice, program design and implementation activities.One of the reasons we do what we do is to have an impact on some of the diverse development challenges found in an increasingly complex global environment.By fostering an exchange of knowledge, experience and practices, our work seeks to ensure that impact is felt at every level of our approach—from the local, grassroots level, through to national, regional and global levels. Such an exchange allows governments, communities, institutions, and private sector partners for development to continuously learn and adapt towards more equitable and inclusive outcomes.