In a world where voices grow louder, it becomes harder to listen – and harder still to hear.
As we step into 2026, The Impact Trust’s Open Dialogues turn from the question of what kind of world are we in towards something more intimate and demanding: how do we speak and listen within it?
Last year, we anchored our conversations in Senterej – the Ethiopian chess variant where both sides open with a chaotic flurry of simultaneous, seemingly disconnected, movements until the first capture. Only then does conventional turn-taking begin. It was a fitting metaphor for a world shaped by polycrisis: many actors moving at once, rules in flux, outcomes determined by adaptive strategy rather than linear plans.
Senterej offered a lens to frame and explore this complexity. Through dialogues on aid, trade, philanthropy, and debt, a clearer view emerged: the opening flurry doesn’t determine the game, and patient positional play matters more than dramatic moves.
But as those conversations unfolded, a quieter challenge surfaced: the difficulty of speaking truthfully when truth itself is constrained – by politics, by institutions, by fear, by the very language we inherit.
Senterej named the condition. Now we need a practice for navigating it.
This is where an older Ethiopian tradition becomes generative: Sem ena Werq, literally “Wax and Gold.”
Rooted in Ethiopian poetic and rhetorical practice, Sem ena Werq describes a form of layered speech. Sem (wax) refers to the surface meaning – what is said openly, safely, conventionally. Werq (gold) refers to the hidden layer – the deeper truth, critique, or moral insight embedded beneath.
What makes this tradition distinctive is not simply that meaning is layered, but how responsibility is distributed. The speaker may choose not to reveal the gold. The listener assumes responsibility for discovery. Meaning is co-created, not simply transmitted.
This is not evasion or deceit. It is a relational practice of truth-telling shaped by power, care, and survival – a way of speaking that acknowledges that not all truths can be spoken plainly, and that listening well is itself a form of ethical action.
Across the spaces our Open Dialogues inhabit – humanitarian systems, governance, philanthropy, civil society, public discourse – truth is increasingly mediated by confusion and fear.
People are often unable or unwilling to speak freely. They navigate asymmetries of safety and authority. They find themselves constrained by institutional language that rewards compliance over integrity, where sincerity can be weaponised or misread, and strategic ambiguity becomes the norm.
The consequences are visible everywhere. Jargon replaces honesty. Euphemism obscures. Complexity becomes camouflage. Dogwhistles and coded speech manipulate shared meanings. And fake news mimics the form of gold while remaining hollow at its core.
Sem ena Werq offers a vocabulary for this condition – not to resolve it, but to navigate it with greater care. It helps us discern when layered language protects vulnerability and when it conceals intent. It invites us to attend with curiosity rather than suspicion, to interpret generously before judging, and to tolerate ambiguity without collapsing it into false certainty.
As we carry this theme through 2026, three dimensions invite exploration.
Truth under constraint. How do people speak when directness carries risk? When institutions reward performance over honesty? When the very act of naming something accurately can be dangerous? We want to understand the conditions that shape what can and cannot be said – and what wisdom emerges from those who have learned to speak within such constraints.
Listening as ethical responsibility. In Sem ena Werq, responsibility migrates toward those who hear. This challenges us to ask: Am I listening for what is actually being said, or only for what I expect to hear? Am I distinguishing truth from irony, sincerity from misdirection? What does it mean to listen well in an age of deliberate confusion?
Language, power, and concealment. Speech is always shaped by unequal power. Sometimes language protects dissent and safeguards dignity. Sometimes it obscures harm beneath progressive rhetoric. Sem ena Werq helps us trace these dynamics – to ask when concealment serves the vulnerable, and when it serves those who would rather not be seen clearly.
Sem ena Werq does not replace Senterej – it extends it.
Where Senterej illuminated entanglement and rupture, Sem ena Werq illuminates layering and concealment. Where Senterej addressed structural polycrisis, Sem ena Werq addresses linguistic and relational constraint. Where Senterej revealed systems breaking and binding, Sem ena Werq attunes us to meaning hidden within speech.
If Senterej offered a way to understand what kind of world we are in, Sem ena Werq asks how to speak and listen within that fractured world – where every utterance may carry both wax and gold.
As we begin this new chapter, we carry a set of questions:
Our invitation is simple and open: speak softly, listen deeply, and hold truth together -even when it cannot be spoken plainly. This means legitimating partial, careful, and unfinished speech. It means respecting contexts where not everything can be said aloud. It means centring listening as an ethical and political practice, not merely a conversational courtesy.
Sem ena Werq does not promise clarity. It demands attention.
We are pleased to share that our 2026 Open Dialogues will re-commence in March, anchored in this new theme. We look forward to listening with you.
The Open Dialogues are convened spaces for reflection and exchange across humanitarian response, governance, philanthropy, and civil society. Please feel invited to join the conversation. Sign up for Open Dialogues here.
March 3rd – Resilience: From Must-Knows to Must-Dos. What Resilience Science Means on the Ground. An Impact Trust Open Dialogue with the Stockholm Resilience Centre, the Global Resilience Partnership, Africa Climate & Development Initiative and Susanne Moser Research & Consulting. Register here.
March 10th – What hold us together in a world falling apart? A dialogue on collaboration across difference with Adam Kahane and Betty Sue Flowers. Register here.