The power of meeting in-person: how collaboration can deepen when distance fades

This article was written by Ashoka, our partner for the Dela programme, and first appeared on Medium. 

While many social entrepreneurs and co-workers' teams worked exclusively online, others had the chance to meet during the Dela Summit or even travel to each other’s home countries throughout the course of five consecutive one-year accelerator cohorts. And, when they did, something shifted: collaboration deepened, empathy grew, and connections became even more personal.
  
Take the story of Soumya Parvatiyar, Joanna Cymbalista, and Sandal Kakkar, IKEA co-workers who traveled to New Delhi, India, to visit Ashoka Fellow Rajendra Joshi and the Saath team. As Rajendra shared, “Talking and describing is one thing, but meeting in person, interacting, makes a big difference.” For Joanna, the biggest aha moment was seeing how Saath’s work created pride and ownership in communities. “This touching, feeling, being, listening, and experiencing… it was amazing.” 

This face-to-face connection brought unexpected learnings, too. Joanna, Project Engineering Manager at IKEA, spoke about becoming a better leader through observing Saath’s grounded, impact-first mindset. Sandal, working in Business Expansion, captured it with the “Three Ps” - Passion, Persistence, and Perseverance - qualities he saw embodied in Saath’s decades-long commitment to systemic change, and the ones he hopes to carry into his own work at IKEA. 

That sentiment echoed across the programme. Martin Otahel, an IKEA co-worker based in Vietnam met the Ashoka Fellow he partnered with and founder of Save Philippines Sea, Anna Oposa, during the Dela Summit, realizing that what started as a structured collaboration, turned into something far more personal and lasting. As he puts it, “The level of trust, openness, and curiosity we built in-person helped us go much deeper, much faster.”  
 
According to her, “Working with Martin and the rest of the Dela thought partners was life changing. Martin always came to meetings with curiosity, kindness, and encouragement. Though it’s been two years since the programme, my teammates in Save Philippine Seas and I continue to refer to Dela as having a major ROI, which typically stands for Return On Investment but for us it also means Ripples of Impact. The outputs and mindsets we gained from the program impact how we design our projects and scale our programmes."

Similarly, Christina Enocson, Retail Equipment Manager at IKEA with more than 30 years of experience at the company, emphasised how meeting her Dela Fellow’s team face-to-face during the Dela Summit gave their work “a human texture”, something that video calls alone simply couldn’t replicate. 

In some cases, proximity has made it even easier to collaborate with each other. IKEA co-worker Lars-Erik Fridolfsson and Dela Fellow Thorkil Sonne, living just a few hours apart (in Sweden and Denmark respectively), used that closeness to run in-person workshops. Lars-Erik described how this enabled a special bond, “There was a spark in the room, one that you can’t create through a screen. It helped us see each other not just as collaborators, but as people.” 

Thorkil Sonne added that the Dela programme gave him a unique opportunity “to pivot my mission from inclusive employment programs to address the root causes for the lack of inclusion and diversity in companies and communities around the world. It gave valuable inspiration to how can promote neurodiversity in minds by promoting beliefs that everyone is different, everyone is important, and everyone is good at something, and it opened for neurodiversity in systems by enabling squares in our environments where we can be different and together. I value the very close collaboration with Lars-Erik and Fanny and our shared ambition to thrive for a world where everyone belongs regardless of the way our brain is wired.” 

And even in the early editions of Dela, as in this feature from Dela I, in-person work left long-lasting impressions. The collaboration between two women, an IKEA co-worker and a Bolivian Ashoka Fellow, blossomed thanks to travel, shared meals, and long days working side by side. Their connection laid the foundation for expanding entrepreneurship in Bolivia. “It’s not saying ‘help us’,” Ashoka Fellow Allison Silva and founder of Fundación Emprender Futuro explains, “It’s saying ‘let’s work together and let’s build better solutions for the world’." 

These stories offer one clear message, when people and teams step into each other’s worlds, the work becomes more grounded, the impact more visible, and the connection more human. 

While online tools will always be a part of global collaboration, creating opportunities for in-person interaction, even once, can be a critical accelerator for systems change. It’s where trust is built not just through shared goals, but shared experiences.