Technology and partnerships are crucial when it comes to poverty eradication. According to the Global Resilience Partnership, investing in innovation and cooperation is not only a game-changer but also the key to building resilience and prosperity for the poor.

Using its network to bring the public and private sectors together to work toward resilience and high impact innovations, the Global Resilience Partnership intends to put an end to vulnerability creating community issues through multi-sectoral collaboration.

With cooperation between the organization’s partners – the Rockefeller Foundation, USAID and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) – the organization is currently engaged in eight projects to build long-term resilience in the Horn of Africa, the Sahel and Southeast Asia.

Global Resilience Partnership is hoping to foster the capacity to recover quickly from issues such as climate change, food insecurity and population growth in impoverished communities through technological innovation and multi-sectoral resource sharing.

Countless aid organizations have observed the devastating impact on development that communities face after a disruptive event. It has also been seen that the ability of a community to bounce back from a disaster or crisis is time-sensitive. The longer that a community remains disrupted, the more difficult it is to get back on track.

The theory behind this drive for partnership is that each sector holds a piece of the puzzle to creating resilience and prosperity for the poor. Individually, efforts are only a fraction of the solution. It’s when the pieces are put together that the bigger picture of a lasting solution is achieved.

Executive Director Dr. Luca Alinovi stressed the importance of this theory even more in a letter calling for continued investment in resilience in 2016: “We will only make progress when we start to ‘join the dots’ and activate different stakeholders to talk to each [other], work together and make each other stronger.”

Connecting the dots must be done on three levels: global, regional, local.

Globally, the Rockefeller Foundation, USAID and Sida have collectively invested $150 million to increase global resilience and establish regional collaborations.

Regionally, partnerships are developed, utilizing and supporting collaboration between local level connections. Currently, the organization is still focusing heavily on this phase of regional partnership development, which is arguably the most critical phase in establishing a lasting and impactful local level solution.

Once at a local level, the organization will mobilize and encourage local and regional institutions, the private sector, governmental development agencies, nongovernmental organizations and humanitarian organizations to work together on the behalf of local communities to help increase prosperity for the poor.

“When we foster resilient livelihoods, men, women and families are better able to cope with chronic stresses and acute disasters,” wrote Alinovi. “A resilience mindset is proactive, focused on root causes, systematic changes and long-term impacts. Resilience is critical to achieving all of our ambitious global goals from eradicating hunger to ending extreme poverty.”

But the establishment of resilience solutions and multi-sectoral cooperation is easier said than done and requires a strategic plan to accomplish its goals. As Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company, said, “Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.”

The Global Resilience Partnership clearly agrees with this sentiment. The organization’s formula for success hinges on “programs that help surface innovation and long-term collaboration amongst the region-wide ecosystem of diverse local actors.”

Starting with a foundation of analytic diagnosis of a region’s problems, followed by the mobilization of a collaborative team to address the identified problems, solutions are developed to meet the unique circumstances. These solutions are then shared with the network and beyond to inspire free and radical change.

Through Global Resilience Partnership’s commitment to creating resilience and prosperity for the poor and vulnerable, the organization is paving the way for a new way of thinking about aid and development. As Alinovi put it, “Technology is a problem-solver, and the acceleration it provides is giving us the chance to make the difference.”

– Claire Colby

Sources: Global Resilience Partnership, The Guardian
Photo: CGIAR