Learning for individual and collective wellbeing
At Shoshama, we see education as being more than simply academic learning or preparation for a vocation - it’s a lifelong journey toward purpose, connection, and collective wellbeing.
We believe learning can unlock human potential, restore hope, and lay the foundations for peaceful, empowered communities. Whether we're working with young people, families, educators, or grassroots leaders, our mission is to reimagine learning as a relational, transformative force for personal and social change.
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"Regard man as a mine rich in gems of inestimable value. Education can, alone, cause it to reveal its treasures, and enable mankind to benefit therefrom."
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These beliefs shape not only what we do, but how we work. They led us to develop the Shoshama Model as a practical framework for learning alongside communities and continually strengthening our work. They also shaped the Shoshama Group, an organisational structure designed to support this work and help us pursue our vision over the long term.
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The Shoshama Model
Learning through inquiry, action and reflection
The Shoshama Model is the framework that guides how we approach community change. It recognises that meaningful solutions are rarely developed by a single person or organisation, but emerge as community members, practitioners, researchers, organisations, businesses and governments learn together over time.
Rather than treating community development as a collection of separate projects, the model provides a practical way of exploring important questions, testing ideas in practice, learning from experience and continually strengthening the way we work. The model is organised around three connected streams: Lines of Inquiry, Lines of Action, and Lines of Reflection.
The Big Questions
Lines of Inquiry
The Shoshama Model is built around what we call Lines of Inquiry: big-picture questions about the challenges affecting people and communities.
Rather than trying to answer these questions through a single project or organisation, we bring together communities, organisations, businesses, researchers, governments and other partners to explore them over time through connected projects, partnerships, services and research. Together, this forms what we call a Collective Impact Initiative: a collaborative effort to better understand a complex challenge, put ideas into practice, learn from what works and continue improving over time.
Each Collective Impact Initiative creates a long-term process of learning through action, allowing us to test ideas, strengthen relationships, and continually improve our understanding of the questions we are exploring.
Although every initiative focuses on a different challenge, they all draw on the same underlying framework, bringing together community leadership, enterprise, participatory research, intercultural dialogue and community placemaking in different ways depending on the context.
Exploring Ideas and Refining Our Model
Lines of Action and Reflection
Every Collective Impact Initiative continues to evolve through two connected streams of work that allow us to explore new ideas while continually strengthening the model itself.
The first is through what we call Discovery Projects. These are short-term or pilot initiatives where we work alongside communities and partners to respond to emerging needs, test new ideas, strengthen partnerships and learn from real-world experience. We refer to this as our Lines of Action because it is where we explore our Lines of Inquiry by putting ideas into practice, learning from experience and building a deeper understanding of the challenges we are addressing.
The first is through what we call Discovery Projects. These are short-term or pilot initiatives where we work alongside communities and partners to respond to emerging needs, test new ideas, strengthen partnerships and learn from real-world experience. We refer to this as our Lines of Action because it is where we explore our Lines of Inquiry by putting ideas into practice, learning from experience and building a deeper understanding of the challenges we are addressing.
The second is through our Flagship Programs. As we tested ideas through Discovery Projects and Collective Impact Initiatives, we identified models, methods, and ways of working that consistently proved valuable beyond the individual project in which they emerged. Rather than redeveloping these within every new project or initiative, we established five standalone Flagship Programs to continue developing, strengthening, and sharing them across our work and that of our partners. Together, these programs form the evolving infrastructure of the Shoshama Model. We refer to this as our Lines of Reflection because it is where we step back from individual projects to strengthen the model itself.
These five Flagship Programs form the evolving infrastructure of the Shoshama Model:
- Changemakers Collective develops community leadership and participatory governance
- Enkindle Enterprise develops community-owned enterprise and independent funding
- Knowledge Workshop develops participatory research, evaluation, and shared learning
- Bridge Under the Same Sky develops intercultural dialogue and social cohesion
- Changemakers House develops welcoming community spaces that strengthen connection, collaboration and belonging
Together, our Lines of Action and Reflection ensure that every project contributes to something larger than itself, while every lesson learned strengthens future projects, partnerships, and Collective Impact Initiatives across our work.
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The Shoshama Group
Three entities, one purpose.
The Shoshama Group brings together three complementary entities, each with a distinct role in supporting our work. Together, they allow us to operate as a for-purpose social enterprise, combining commercial enterprise, consulting, philanthropy and community partnerships within a single purpose-led structure.
Originating in Singapore and based in Australia, Shoshama has grown through a global community of students, families, practitioners, organisations, and partners spanning more than 50 countries. This international perspective enables us to learn across cultures while supporting communities to develop locally relevant solutions.
Shoshama Institute for Collective Wellbeing
The Institute is our purpose-led business. It develops and delivers education, wellbeing and community development initiatives while generating independent income that supports the work of the Shoshama Empowerment Fund and its community partners. This helps communities pursue their own priorities with greater independence and long-term sustainability.
Shoshama Innovation Practice
Shoshama Innovation Practice works alongside individuals, organisations, businesses, and communities to build knowledge, strengthen capability and develop new approaches through bespoke consulting, facilitation, curriculum design, training, leadership development and innovation projects.
Shoshama Empowerment Fund
The Shoshama Empowerment Fund is our Australian not-for-profit organisation. It supports community-led initiatives, develops long-term partnerships, and provides the charitable, governance and funding infrastructure needed to steward Collective Impact Initiatives over time.
Together, these three entities enable us to combine enterprise, consulting, philanthropy, and community leadership in a way that builds long-term independence, strengthens our community partners and supports lasting community-led change.
Meet our founder
Say hi:
Preethi Vergis is an educator, facilitator, and community engagement specialist with 20 years of experience in curriculum development and 15 years in the not-for-profit and international community development sectors. She has worked across Australia, Southeast Asia, and East Africa - partnering with families, educators, youth, and grassroots leaders to create learning experiences that are inclusive, purposeful, and transformative.
Beginning her career in human rights and international development settings, Preethi was drawn to issues surrounding the rights and wellbeing of children. But it was through her work on the ground - in classrooms, communities, and cross-cultural settings - that she came to recognise education as the most enduring and empowering path to social transformation, for children and communities as a whole.
Her experience spans formal classroom teaching, community-based learning, curriculum and program design, facilitation, capacity building, and systems-level thinking - always with a focus on learning as a tool for both personal and collective growth.
Preethi founded Shoshama to help reimagine education as a lifelong, relational process - not just a means to personal success, but a foundation for community wellbeing and societal progress.
She holds a Master of Education from the University of Melbourne, along with a Bachelor of Arts (International Relations), Bachelor of Laws, and a Diploma in Arabic. She also completed her teaching qualifications with the University of Moreland in Washington, D.C.
In addition to leading the development of the Shoshama Model and Group, Preethi currently serves in an interim role leading the governance work of the Empowerment Ecosystems initiative, and is actively launching Return to Genius initiatives as Principal Coach. She is also a Community Fellow at the University of Melbourne’s Melbourne Social Equity Institute, where she is developing an Accountability to Affected Persons (AAP) framework for community organisations working with migrant and refugee communities, as part of a broader effort to support inclusive governance, community-led development, and systems change.
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The story Behind Shoshama
LOOKING TO OUR PAST to DESIGN OUR FUTURE
"When I think about what education needs to look like in the future, my mind is inevitably drawn back to a distant past, when education was still seen as the complete training of a mind - a way to prepare a person, not just for a vocation or exam, but for a purposeful existence in which they could fulfil their responsibilities to the communities they were a part of and take their place in our shared responsibility to advance human civilization.
I think back on the wisdom offered by the diverse knowledge systems and faith traditions of our world - all of which saw education as needing to be holistic, and tied to the notion of contributing to the betterment of their communities and societies.
I think back to my paternal grandparents, both of whom were respected teachers, and to my maternal grandmother, who took it upon herself to make sure that her children and grandchildren were armed with the fundamentals of literacy and numeracy from an early age. I also think back to my maternal grandfather - whom I never met, but who I know through the stories I have heard - and of his insistence that girls enjoy the same opportunities for education as boys, at a time when many around him did not share that belief.
Shoshama (pronounced SHAW-shah-mah) was the given name of one of my grandmothers, and the baptismal name of another. It is a name which embodies a commitment to education and learning as the key to our future and our collective wellbeing."
Preethi Vergis
Our work is carried out through the Shoshama Group, comprising the Shoshama Institute for Collective Wellbeing, Shoshama Innovation Practice and the Shoshama Empowerment Fund.
© 2026 Shoshama Institute for Collective Wellbeing. All rights reserved.
© 2026 Shoshama Institute for Collective Wellbeing. All rights reserved.
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