Goal 1
Strengthen the collaboration, solidarity and mobilisation of civil society organisations
Overview
Over the past decade our network has grown in numbers, diversity and strength. We are establishing ourselves as truly global and increasingly influential in pursuing risk-informed development. Now we must realise this potential by ensuring members have the mechanisms, resources and commitment to work collaboratively across and beyond our network.
There is a need to transform the way society interacts and place greater emphasis on citizens disproportionately impacted by disasters. We need to enhance and maintain a clear focus on collaboration and solidarity so that we are able to work together effectively across countries and continents and build a global movement for transformative change.
We must continuously re-energise and harness the commitment and dynamism that members bring to the work they do around the world. To ensure our network is able to effectively represent people living in poverty and vulnerable situations in some of the most challenging places on earth, we must also strengthen our accountability and governance structures.
Achieving our goal
Culture
Outcome
- CSOs recognise the benefit of collaboration over competition.
Indicator of Success
- Increase in CSOs’ understanding of the benefits of collaboration, as measured by annual membership survey.
Activities
- Run ‘collaboration not competition’ campaigns highlighting the benefits of working together.
- Disseminate success stories of collaboration to help CSOs see that collaborative resilience building is achievable.
Capacities
Outcome
- CSOs have the necessary skills and capacities to collaborate.
Indicator of Success
- Increase in collaboration capacities of members, as measured in annual capacity assessment.
Activities
- Assess and strengthen capacities to collaborate, including how to develop partnership strategies, how to work in consortium fundraising bids, and how to broker and maintain partnerships with different types of actors. This could be done through trainings, mentorships, and guidebooks.
- Produce a guidebook on how to build resilience collaboratively.
Structures
Outcome
- Mechanisms and policies are in place to enable collaboration.
Indicators of success:
- National and regional coordination groups meet annually, as measured by meeting reports.
- Increase in use of community platform, as measured by salesforce analytics.
Activities
- Hold national coordination meetings of our members so that they can mobilise around shared issues and establish collective work plans.
- Run regional collaboration workshops every two years to create space for CSOs to meet regionally and design joint actions.
- Further develop the community platform as an online platform for organisations with shared interests to connect and collaborate.
- Strengthen cross-language working spaces, including by trialling innovative interpretation options.
Accountability
Outcome
- CSOs are held to account to collaborate.
Indicators of success
- Increase in proportion of donor funding that is delivered to consortiums that include local organisations, as measured by Partner Survey.
- All GNDR projects assess partners based on collaboration principles, as measured by GNDR annual reports.
Activities
- Design criteria to assess levels of collaboration for donors to use when selecting projects and for GNDR to use when selecting partners.
Impact
What will success look like?
Partnerships and joint actions between CSOs are created or strengthened, and civic space is widened.
How will we measure this?
Quantitative indicators:
- Increase in % of local CSOs who report they can amplify priorities of communities most at risk to national platforms
- Number of partnerships created
- Number of partnerships strengthened
- Number of joint workplans implemented
Qualitative indicator:
- Stories of collaboration from all GNDR regions
Sources:
- Annual membership survey
- VFL survey conducted at the end of strategy
Baseline:
- 55% of local CSOs report being able to amplify voices at national platforms effectively, with some limitations or occasionally (VFL 2019)
Photos
Top photo: Balram Sethi, 38, takes part in a discussion about resilience building with members of a self-help group in Odisha, India. Balram, who works for a local civil society organisation, was a surveyor for Views from the Frontline. He says: “Here in the village, usually one person attends the Gram Sabha (village council) and represents their family. Obviously, being a patriarchal society, men are given the priority; hence women do not actively participate in the Gram Sabha meetings.” Credit: Sarika Gulati/GNDR
Middle photo: Credit: Srijan Nandan/GNDR
Bottom photo: A visit to Pencahue in the Maule region of Chile, as part of a South-South exchange between GNDR members from Dominican Republic and Chile to share and learn community-based disaster risk management practices. Credit: Diego Alejandro Bravo Majin
Download the full strategy
The full GNDR strategy document is available in PDF format in four languages.
Find out more about the work of our global network by visiting our main website.
Our supporters
This site was made possible due to the generous contributions from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation and the Swedish International Development Cooperation.
