Milaan Team Retreat
(Dec 14-17), Jim Corbette, Uttarakhand
Terms of Reference
About Milaan
Milaan works at the intersection of education, community and systemic change, supporting adolescent girls to claim their futures. Milaan is strengthening its internal culture so that the way colleagues work together reflects the values it seeks to advance through its programmes.
Milaan’s People & Culture Framework is anchored in five values:
- Collaboration over silos
- Radical honesty, delivered with care
- Mission-first thinking
- Lifelong learning
- Ownership and agency
Retreat context
Milaan plans to hold a three-day residential team retreat in December 2026 for approximately 50 colleagues across functions and levels. Most participants have joined Milaan recently or have been with the organisation for one to three years, alongside a smaller group of longer-serving colleagues.
The retreat should help people know one another beyond their roles, feel part of Milaan and understand how their work contributes to its purpose. It should also provide practical experience of collaboration, feedback, communication and ownership. Milaan’s wider organisational context includes a need to strengthen cross-team working and create a more direct, healthy feedback culture. The retreat should be a participatory team experience combining reflection, honest conversation, practical learning, celebration, play and informal connection.
Purpose
To design and facilitate a three-day retreat that strengthens relationships, deepens connection with Milaan’s mission and helps colleagues practice ways of working that support collaboration, communication, feedback, ownership and distributed agency.
Intended outcomes
By the end of the retreat, participants should:
- Know colleagues across teams, locations, levels and tenures more personally.
- Feel a stronger sense of belonging to Milaan, understand Milaan’s mission and see how different roles contribute to it.
- Recognise important interdependencies across functions and reduce “us and them” thinking.
- Have practised simple methods for collaborative problem-solving and decision-making.
- Understand what ownership and distributed agency look like in everyday work.
- Be more confident giving and receiving specific, respectful and useful feedback.
- Agree on a small number of practical communication and collaboration commitments.
- Leave feeling rested, energised and connected—not overloaded by content.
Scope of work
The selected agency or facilitation team will undertake the following work.
- Review Milaan’s People & Culture Framework and other relevant organisational material.
- Hold an inception discussion with the Country Director, People & Culture lead and a small internal design group.
- Hold selected conversations with 8–10 colleagues representing different functions, locations, levels, genders and lengths of service.
- Identify language, accessibility and participation needs, as well as sensitive issues that require care or should remain outside the retreat.
- Advise on participant communication, room layout, materials, social time and other conditions needed for the retreat.
For detailed information, please check the complete version of the RFP attached below.