Changing children’s lives by changing business

In a cramped settlement in a large city in northeast India, most people live in one-room houses. These houses do not have toilets. The only bathrooms are shared – with about thirty people per toilet. For Nisha, 13, not only are the poorly maintained toilets unhygienic, they also pose a danger – especially at night.

“There are no proper latches in the toilet; one of us has to hold the door for the person inside. So, I cannot go alone,” says Nisha.

 Annila Harris/World Vision

On January 1, 2016, The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was launched, and the clock started ticking on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The ambition of these goals inspires hope.

In World Vision, hope fuels our best efforts. We believe a world without poverty is not only possible, but is within reach. In order for Nisha’slife to improve, the system in which she lives needs to be re-shaped. We are convinced that cross-sector partnerships – those involving two or more groups or people from government, civil society, business, UN agencies and/or other non-state actors, including academia – are a critical way in which to make this change happen. If and when they co-develop innovative solutions, our goals will be achieved. For children like Nisha.

But, we need to see more intentionality in enabling these partnerships to flourish. World Vision’s new paper, Delivering on the Promise, developed with The Partnering Initiative outlines how this can happen and who needs to show leadership. Based on 50 interviews with experts from different backgrounds and perspectives, the paper focuses on multi-stakeholder platforms for partnership – a key element of strengthening a supportive environment for collaboration at the country level. These platforms bring together organisations from all sectors of society around a particular issue or geography; they seek to facilitate innovative collaborative approaches and directly broker and support new partnering action; they provide a systematic approach to getting partnerships to the necessary scale.

Among the key questions this paper explores is “how can platforms ensure that they deliver for the most vulnerable?” This is critical because through Agenda 2030 not only will no one be left behind, but all efforts will be made to first reach those left furthest behind. World Vision works for the most vulnerable children – children like Nisha.

One of the biggest barriers to achieving this, believe it or not, is a lack of data on the most vulnerable. Those who have been ‘left behind’ are often invisible – for example, children whose births and deaths are are never registered and individuals who have no say in matters that affect them. Platforms and partnerships need to recognise that these significant imbalances in power between different groups, and indeed abuse of power, are at the root of why many in society continue to live in situations of extreme vulnerability; these realities must be recognised and countered. One way to address this is to engage relevant citizen groups directly - including children where appropriate - rather than solely through an intermediary organisation.

World Vision is putting this into practice. In July this year, we will launch the Asia Pacific P3 Incubation Hub, a multi-stakeholder platform of partnerships, innovations and inclusive business models for new solutions to development and humanitarian challenges. Based in Singapore, which hosts more than 180 water companies, the initial thematic focus of the platform will be water, sanitation and hygiene.

This platform will bring together new, potentially non-traditional development actors, to catalyse partnerships aimed at improving the quality of life and inspiring hope into the lives of millions of children across Asia. Millions of children like Nisha.