Empowering And Equipping Partnering Champions To Reduce The Impact Of Disasters
By Hazel See
What happens when you fuse passion and energy to serve vulnerable communities, with innovation, strategy and action planning to enhance partnerships? Energized and well-equipped partnering champions, ready to combine resources in new ways to further reduce the impact of disasters.
Asia P3 Hub ran an invigorating three-day Partnering Bootcamp in March with World Vision International’s (Asia Pacific Region) Disaster Management and Business Development teams, followed by a one-day field visit to World Vision Cambodia’s programme areas in Phnom Penh and Kandal Province.
Reducing the impact of disasters through new partnerships
The Asia Pacific region bears the brunt of disasters such as flooding, tropical storms, earthquakes, tsunamis and landslides. Low-lying islands, impoverished households and high-density communities with poor infrastructure are at the greatest risk. World Vision works to strengthen household and community resilience to cope with disasters and to meet the needs of the most vulnerable children and their families, during disasters.
Looking at the trends ahead, participants shared a common concern that the scale of humanitarian needs in the region is likely to continue growing. Existing capabilities and resources will be inadequate for supporting communities with disaster preparedness systems and to restore normalcy after an occurrence. New partnerships that bring together local knowledge, networks and community trust are needed before, during and after a humanitarian crisis. Through the Bootcamp, participants started developing skills and action plans that help them build complementary and sustainable partnerships to bring new skills, experience and technologies that reduce the impact of disasters in the region.
Finding mutual benefit for all partners
One of the key challenges in an effective partnership strategy discussed at the Bootcamp was the need to find mutual benefits for all partners. How do we go about doing this when our potential partners can be so different from us? What are they looking for? What is our value proposition that makes a partnership meaningful?
Phearak Svay, Senior WASH & Partnership Advisor, Asia P3 Hub advised participants to research and gain a deep understanding of what potential partners are looking for i.e. why companies would want to partner in an emergency humanitarian response or support disaster preparedness for a particular community. This could include minimising the impact of disruptions to business, demonstrating good corporate citizenship that aligns with customers’ and employees’ interests, and deriving concrete value (e.g. staff competencies, building relationships with governments, other businesses and international organisations, testing new products or innovations). Articulating the mutual benefits clearly early on when scoping and building the partnership, and putting it explicitly into a partnership agreement is a critical part of a partnership strategy.
Developing a ‘Plan Me’ to effect culture change
Peter Drucker, known widely as the father of modern management, once said, “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Participants learned from thought leaders across different sectors how to bring about a culture change from within an organisation to enable new and diverse partnerships to flourish — including how to develop new competencies, leverage their spheres of influence and grow a support network. Bill Downing, Business Management & Partnership Advisor, Asia P3 Hub facilitated participants in drawing up their personal development plan (‘Plan Me’) that includes identifying specific partnering competencies e.g. negotiation, mediation, facilitation, engagement, convening, and coaching, that they committed to develop over the next few months. Participants were also given the opportunity to practice interest-based negotiation skills, and develop a partnership pitch during the Bootcamp.
Experiencing the possibilities of combinatorial innovation: in real life!
The best way to learn is to get involved and experience it! That’s what all of the participants did at the field visits, where they experienced first-hand through three case studies the possibilities that can come about when we pool resources and tap into complementary capabilities of diverse partners.
First, a visit to the Urban Community Network in Phnom Penh, which was able to establish a collective voice on land tenure and other development issues related to child protection, education, health and livelihoods, only because they tapped into complementary strengths of the members of the network. Through collaboration with and support from NGOs, they were able to advocate strategically at the national and local government levels to influence policy changes and amendments of laws. The work continues to be challenging, and in some cases e.g. obtaining land titles for a slum community, required ten years of perseverance before seeing results.
Second, participants learned from Russey Chroy Primary School how the school had brought about a change in attitude towards education in the community and lowered the school dropout rate from 38 percent to 2 percent over a seven-year period. The school leaders were committed to the mission of helping all children learn and advance to higher levels of educational attainment. It had a clear strategy of enhancing its curriculum, pedagogy and school infrastructure through partnerships with NGOs and businesses; and building a strong relationship with parents and the community through close communication.
Third, participants heard from the Agriculture Co-operative groups in Svay Broteal Commune how it had tapped into the resources and expertise of diverse partners such as its government partners — the Provincial Department of Agriculture, District Office of Agriculture; NGOs — USAID Horticulture Innovation Lab, World Vision, Teuk Saat 1001; and business partners. This partnership enabled the co-op members to develop new farming and entrepreneurship skills. By working together, members enjoy economies of scale when purchasing farming supplies and also obtain better prices for their products when selling in bulk to private companies such as ASA and Khmer Market. Besides sharing the profits with members, they invest in capacity building and giving back to the community e.g. supplying clean, locally-treated water to schools in the village.
Energized and equipped partnering champions
At the end of the four days, participants shared their key takeaways. Here’s a sampling of what they learned:
- “There are many good reasons to partner beyond increasing the funding and resources available to one partner. As partnering champions, we must build trust and find the sweet spot of partnership that brings about mutual benefit.”
- “We must exercise both passion and perseverance to develop and sustain successful partnerships.”
- “We are not alone and there are many others within and outside the organisation who face similar challenges. Through learning from each other, we can become better partnering champions and work towards more transformational partnerships.”
Asia P3 Hub empowers partnering champions through its Partnering Bootcamp, which is suitable for corporates, NGOs, academia and government and other teams looking to increase their impact through partnership. Contact us to learn more about the Bootcamp.
This article was written by Hazel See, Asia P3 Hub Partnerships Advisor.
Hazel has more than ten years of experience in strategic planning, leadership, organization development, learning and development, and service management through various roles in the public sector. She is a strong advocate of human-centred design and futures thinking and regularly applies them in research and consultancy projects. She is also one of the authors of Governance, a primer on Singapore’s governance principles. Today, she is a Partnerships Advisor at Asia P3 Hub.
Reach out to her via LinkedIn.
