A3: Multi-stakeholder partnerships require effort to take action across cultural, organizational and geographical ranges – but they can achieve long-lasting impact. The only thing harder than working in partnerships is not working in partnerships!
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Partnership is really important to adopting shared approaches, pooling resources and building a critical mass of companies that say not GBV. BfP could take a leading role in helping to facilitate partnerships that bring funding into the DV sector and support cross-industry/sectoral partnerships. This could help avoid the rather piecemeal approach that exists. Again, I want to reinforce the message of the prevention of GBVH and building this into occupational safety and health risk assessment procedures, amongst others. There may be other gender equality issues that BfP could focus on, such as the gender pay gap / pay equity, and to make the connections with GBV. BfP could consider putting a lens on informal workers, who represent the vast bulk of workers in many low-income countries.
As I mentioned in my last approach, developing the HRDD so that companies can prevent gender based violence would be brilliant. 
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A3: Katherine from CARE International:
- Invest in longer-term strategic partnerships that leverage NGO expertise and ability to impact the lives of and amplify the voices of the most underserved communities.
- Challenge corporate emergency giving practises that are reactive - look for new strategic approaches to partnerships that help mobilise faster response times, and better solutions for preparedness and recovery.
- Collaborate!!!
- Making space for voices of the global south at leading business events around the globe
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A3: At TechnoServe, we see potential in partnerships that bring together private-sector investment and catalytic public or foundation funding. It’s one way we can deliver initiatives that create real-world impact now and advance a learning and innovation agenda.
A great example of this is the USDA Food for Progress-funded MOCCA program (mocca.org), which is helping to create better livelihoods for 120,000 coffee and cocoa farmers across Latin America and making those value chains more regenerative, resilient, innovative, and inclusive. In addition to the initial funding from USDA, eight of the world’s leading coffee buyers have invested in the program.
Another example is an initiative called Millers for Nutrition (millersfornutrition.com), which has catalytic funding from the Gates Foundation and private-sector investment from global fortification partners to help SME food processors produce more nutritious food - they are on their way to improving nutrition for 1 billion people globally.
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A3: Continued
An example from our point of view is the meaningful inclusion of children and youth , there is so much power in youth voices in advocating for climate action. Businesses need to engage meaningfully and listen to and collaborate with young activists, supporting initiatives that empower children and youth to participate in climate solutions and try to bring young voices to the decisions being made. Youth representatives on boards or councils for example are one example of a first step towards engaging youth in climate work.
A wonderful example we can also share today is a recent MoU signed during COP28 between our Regional Office in Africa and a Swedish green innovation company called Spowdi. See article here. This type of partnership bridges the gap between the solutions and the people that can benefit the most from them. Spowdi, who has developed a climate-smart farming technology solution can scale its product via ChildFunds’ implementing project areas, opening doors to increase the reach and impact of its solution. Such kind of partnerships are what ChildFund is exploring with businesses, we cannot be the experts on everything in this world, let’s not reinvent the wheel and work together rather than in silos. 
A3: Ashoka’s Planet & Climate team views climate change as a design challenge. It’s also a human behavior challenge. When thinking about where to take meaningful climate action, we often start at home, where most (but not all) people experience the highest degree of agency. This is a great place to start! But where do we experience the most power to change systems? Oftentimes in our roles at work. So here’s how Ashoka believes business can have greater impact: ensure that your people can channel their changemaker energy in changing systems. Only then will we start to see the wider shifts needed to address the climate crisis. Ashoka is eager to partner with individuals and/or their teams and employers that will lead this transformation. In 2024 we will launch a playbook for fostering and supporting climate agency. We are also eager to design bespoke learning journeys or corporate engagements to help foster a changemaker company culture, support existing high-impact social entrepreneurs, and foster wider cultures of climate changemaking.
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DOT worked over the course of 2023 within an multi-stakeholder ecosystem to develop a set of principles for Advancing Digital Inclusion for Young Women and Men in the green economy; we will be launching these in the coming month (stay tuned on our website www.dotrust.org) but critical to these principles and deep/transformative impact at scale on digital livelihoods is for us uptake and endorsement of these principles and commitment to actioning them in policies at the government level, CSR work for the private sector, and in their foundations and of course at the NGO/Civil Society level.
USCIB’s Last year USCIB’s “Moving the Needle (MTN): Advancing our Common Agenda (OCA) with Business” Moving the Needle: Advancing Our Common Agenda with Business | USCIB initiative
convened roundtables, and developed recommendations and suggested options towards a more systematic engagement with business in targeted practical areas aligned with the theme of the 77th session of the UN General Assembly - Science, Solidarity and Sustainability. The potential to apply business data, management tools, metrics and approaches to help turbo-charge 2030 Agenda action and get it back on track towards the SDGs
MTN explored how business tools, metrics, information, expertise, action, and resources can be brought to the table, actively participating in accelerating SDG implementation, working with and through the multilateral system.
A3 Part 4
Social Enterprises and Impact Investing:
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Investing in or partnering with social enterprises that align with the business’s mission can lead to mutually beneficial outcomes.
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Engaging in impact investing, where financial investments are made with the intention of generating positive social or environmental impact alongside financial returns, can be a powerful strategy.
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Hi Wifag, thank you very much for this question and the answer is absolutely, yes we have, and we’re looking hard as a priority this year for how to elevate this explicit link between poverty and climate change on the international climate agenda. An article a colleague of mine recently published that you may find of interest can be found here: How the Graduation approach is adapting to a changing climate.
You may be interested in the Roundtables we (The Canadian Poverty Institute) have organized:
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In response to the intermingled nature of polycrisis, partnerships between previously vertical sectors will be even more important.
For WEConnect International, new partners can join our movement to leverage our collective purchasing power in support of inclusive and sustainable trade.
- Large Buyers can join as members to find new and innovative products and services.
- Women-Owned Businesses can join for free as suppliers.
- Governments and Civil Society Organizations that are already working to help women grow their companies and partner with us.
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Thanks for sharing Yaquta! To add to the evidence base, we were excited to launch our report on gender lens investing in smallholder farming in which we found a clear business case for investing in women-led businesses and gender-inclusive businesses. A clear reason to continue expanding investment in these underresourced businesses for everybody’s sake.
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South Africa is predominantly a mining area and examples of collaboration have been these companies deploying some of their capabilities in areas that matters like potable water and waste water treatment. Recently we have seen the demand for more connectivity coming from the youth segment of the communities.
A3: Continued
Is there something more to be said about multifaceted partnerships that bring together governments, the private sector, institutions, NGOs, and communities. Collective action is required to address the climate crisis, ChildFund’s experience from Typhoon Odette reaffirms the importance of collective responsibility and action in hard times, A direct quote from a recent article on our work: Overall, Typhoon Odette and the outpour of humanitarian support from the government, local and international non-government organizations like ChildFund Philippines, and the private sector reinforced the importance of the collective responsibility to support each other and rise together.
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This is a great one, especially since I’ve been involved with the launch of the Future Possibilities Index that looks at opportunities brought on by 6 megatrends (incl. AI, Net Zero, Circular Economy, Bioeconomy, etc.) up to 2030.
At Vantage Research and our research partners, we’ve deliberately tried to have an optimistic tone with this index, as opposed to the usually gloomy atmosphere that we’ve seen in the past 4 years (pandemic, wars, cliamte change, AI, etc.). And I’m forcing myself to stay optimistic, despite the challenges I’ve mentioned in the other response.
One example is AI. Technology in itself is neither good or bad, in my opinion; it’s all about what you do with it. And AI is exactly the type of tech innovation that can go both ways: you can use it for good - and I’ve written an article about its applications in food security for instance - but you can also use it for straightforward bad things, such as hacking. Or, if you don’t have any stance on it, and pretend it’s a neutral technology, it can have unintended bad consequences, such as massive layoffs through the replacement of workers. Now, the argument is usually that “yes, AI will mean people will lose their jobs but they’ll get new jobs, more skilled ones” except that’s not always the case. So we, as a society and as businesses, need to think about how to embed and take advantage of AI, in a way that doesn’t harm our fellow human beings.
And this feeds into what I’ve said earlier, the fact that we need to work together, collectively and cooperatively to find ways to seize these opportunities (circular economic models, the transition to Net Zero, AI, synthetic biology) in a way that is good for the people and the planet alike. There is no business and no profit without people and the planet. And we shouldn’t forget that.
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A3:
Supporting women’s entrepreneurship - addressing barriers to women in the workforce
Youth - working with schools/universities to create pathways to employment or entrepreneurship
Business is a potential linchpin at the intersection of climate, poverty eradication and development - playing a positive role in all would be a huge contribution.
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Hi Emma, I’d love to learn more. I’m based in New York in the US and would be happy to set up a call. You can email me at: ashley@bracusa.org.
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A3: We have helped clients scale and deepen impact through partnership by operationalising and creating tools that link overall strategy, partnership functions and measurement-evaluation-learning.
For example: decision trees are a simple tool that delivers a lot of its value in the design stage because it forces conversations across silos about partnership decisions before they are critical. They then make the day-to-day operational decisions of those with a partnership function much easier.