The Peer-Learning Week offered a co-creational space with the intention for every participant to be involved. The goal was to learn and exchange on challenges, lessons learned and best practices with each other. This year, academics and practitioners from 18 different organizations based in different parts of the world participated in the online meet-up, including organizations from Costa Rica, South Africa, Kenya, Mexico and the Netherlands among others. New community members received a warm welcome as the idea was also to connect and reconnect with each other.
The agenda was based on the community´s ideas and interests so that a broad range of topics was covered. The speakers, most of them community members, created engaging and interactive session inputs as a basis for a deep dive in different breakout groups.
In Monday´s introduction session, it became clear from the very beginning that Equity is a topic that resonates within the community. Questions like “How can different stakeholders cooperate with Equity in MSPs?” or “What are the structures that support equity?” were discussed. In this context, Juan Pablo Sarmiento Barletti (The Center for International Forestry Research, CIFOR) presented an adaptive and reflexive learning tool that supports more equitable MSPs.
Thursday´s session went into a similar direction as the topics “Exploring collaborative leadership” and “3 work hacks for agile decision-making in non-hierarchical settings” have been addressed in parallel breakout groups in the aftermath of well elaborated inputs by Herman Brouwer (Wageningen Centre for Development Innovation, CDI) and Michael Beyer (como consult). The idea of working together in an equity-based way was one of the core themes of the Peer-Learning Week.
As the topic of impact and impact assessment of MSPs and MSP Support Platforms remains very relevant to all platforms – especially in times of COVID-19, where objectives may change – Stella Pfisterer (The Partnerships Resource Centre, PrC) gave an input on this which led to a lively exchange among participants. One message is that we need to measure collaboration beyond the direct impact, another take-away is that evidence is needed but learning as well.
In light of the current situation, Darian Stibbe (The Partnering Initiative, TPI) shared his insights on “Learning the lessons from crisis partnering: what can we do to speed up the process of partnering in the future?” with the participants on Tuesday. The group jointly discussed inhibitors to rapid partnering as well as enablers of rapid partnering among other questions. Apart from building back better, the participants also discussed the possibility of building forward, taking future scenarios into account.
MSP Platforms such as Partnerships2030 support MSPs in initiating partnerships, for example, and also promote knowledge exchange. In order to learn from each other, national MSP Platforms exchange information in a Community of Practice. Partnerships2030 is a member and facilitator of the Community of Practice.
