Networked Learning for Private Sector Cooperation

Cooperation with the private sector is an explicit strategy of the ICCO Alliance. In the past years considerable experience is gained. For the ICCO Alliance intensifying cooperation with the private sector (in economic programmes, but also in other thematic areas) is the challenge for the coming years. This requires capacity building of staff, as NGO staff is not naturally used to work with the business sector. For this reason ICCO has initiated a Learning Community (LC) on Private Sector Cooperation (PSC) for ICCO, SharePeople and Yente.

The Learning community will address issues as e.g. strategy (how to get started), tools to use (e.g. the ICCO company scan), linkages with resource mobilisation.

Angelica Senders of FSAS was requested by Nelleke van der Vleuten, ICCO specialist on this theme, to assist the start-up of this LC based on the following guiding principle:

• Learning has to lead to an improved practice and a better understanding of this practice in its context. For this it is important that learning takes practice as a starting point; learning should have an action perspective and should preferably start with asking the right questions, not with knowledge. 
• A Learning Community fosters horizontal interaction between practitioners; not all questions are to be answered by ‘experts’; in an effective learning network practitioners assist each other. Networked learning can take place within one organisation, but learning is most effective if synergy is created with learning in other organisations and in other networks. 

Steps taken:

• Start a Dgroup as communication channel, invite potential members and ask them to present themselves and their experiences; 27 people registered. 
• Based on the outcome of an e-survey and 3 Skype conversations (with selected members) agreement was reached on first steps to take in the Learning Community. 
• Subsequently 4 subgroups were formed around cases selected from the experiences of the members. Each group analyzed a case; communication took place by means of Skype and e-mail. Establishment of a wiki (an internet-based platform) named ‘Private Sector Cooperation and Corporate Social Responsibility’ for the ICCO Alliance. 
• The 4 case descriptions are uploaded on the wiki. In September a ‘plenary discussion’ will take place on the cases with the objective to identify shared lessons and common issues. 

This will be the basis for further work in the PSC Learning Community. This Learning Community will be closely linked to the LC on Fair Economic Development (FED) and external networks, e.g resulting from the PSO CSO-Biz event.

5 challenges for cooperation between CSOs and Businesses

On April 5 and 6, 80 and 35 people respectively, representing Dutch NGOs, learning facilitators and CSOs from the South, discussed success factors and challenges in partnerships between Southern Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and Businesses. The event, in short called: ‘CSO-BiZ’, was organized by PSO together with ICCO, the Partnership Resource Centre (PrC) and CDI/WUR. PrC in Rotterdam at RSM, hosted the event. Nelleke van der Vleuten (ICCO) and Angelica Senders (FSAS) were members the organizing committee.

Central issues in the discussions were the needs and capacities of Southern CSOs to effectively engage with business and how Northern development NGOs can assist them in that. The programme on the first day was organized around 4 learning experiences -from Kenya, India, Peru and South Africa- that reflect different ways of private sector cooperation.

Three cases were presented by ICCO partners. Inputs (click on the links for the Powerpoints) from Rob van Tulder and Shankar Venkateswaran presented a critical mirror to NGOs, the need to develop a clear stance on the issue and act upon if they wish to remain relevant. During the second day participants identified specific interests to develop joint learning.

In sum, the following key issues emerged:

1. CSOs will have to integrate a vision on cooperation with businesses in their policy, in their Theory of Change;
   
2. If they wish to engage, CSOs will actively have to learn to understand a business perspective, both parties will have to develop a common language and establish communication;
   
3. CSOs and business will have to find common ground: what are businesses looking for in CSOs and how can CSOs add value to business processes?
   
4. Management of power dynamics is particularly important for CSOs, how can they create an effective good bargaining position?
   
5. After having formulated a common goal, the management of the partnership remains a challenge: both parties will have to come out of their comfort zone, requiring new ways of doing ánd monitoring things.

The overall feeling was that there is still a lot to be learned and the need for ‘exchanging of experiences’ and ‘sharing lessons learned’ was generally expressed. Please click on this link for an impression by PSO of the day. You can find all workshop material, including a video impression on the PSO webiste.

This 2 day workshop provided a lot of input to Nelleke and Angelica to further shape the ICCO Alliance Learning Community on Private Sector Cooperation, a Learning community which will actively be linked up with learning initiatives resulting from this CSO-BiZ event.