Making connections

World Vision is committed to partnering with a diversity of people who can bring life in all its fullness to children – with governments and business, and with our peers in civil society.

 

We make alliances and sign up with long-lasting and short-term bodies where we can get more done together than apart. This seems obvious in advocacy campaigns. But groups like the Steering Committee for Humanitarian Response (in relief emergencies) or various partnerships for accountability and transparency are also important to our success.

The International Civil Society Centre (ICSC) is a potent convenor for international NGOs. ICSC organises a range of meetings for senior staff from across the civil society sector.  Annually, they invite the Board Chairs and CEOs of the top 30 global civil society organisations to a ‘VisionWorks’ meeting to discuss strategic issues, opportunities and threats.

 

It’s a great place for leaders to get to know one another and to build trust. Some issues are so big, they only move when we put our shoulders to the wheel together. Alongside this year’s meeting, I participated in the “Global Peers” event, where we seek to strengthen the sector’s links to the United Nations, World Bank and other important stakeholders.

Through ICSC, we have started to explore the possibility of bringing together reports and data from all our agencies that chronicle how we are collectively contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals. Our individual reports remain important, but the combined experience and learnings of all the organisations has the potential to carry far more weight in advocacy and with the media.

 

There is still plenty of room to draw more people into partnerships which change the trajectories of people’s lives in the world’s most vulnerable communities.