Posner Center Symposium: Big & Bad Ideas in Collaboration

What is the best data collection tool - or combination of tools - for your organization? This workshop will share best practices for mobile, online, and offline data collection and provide a hands-on deep dive training on Kobo Toolbox, so participants will leave ready to run a trial in their own organization. While we will address broader principles, the workshop will focus on Kobo Toolbox - a free open-source platform to collect data in the field using devices such as mobile phones or tablets, as well as with paper or computers. It is being continuously improved for use in difficult field environments and was developed in a joint initiative between OCHA, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI) and the International Rescue Committee (IRC). Participants should bring a laptop computer and register their account before the workshop: https://kf.kobotoolbox.org/accounts/register/#/ Note: We encourage organizations to attend as a global team. This session is designed for global participation via our virtual global classroom. Included in registration, attendees who select this session will receive a link to share with their international team members to attend virtually.

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Complacency and status quo can be toxic to any organization. While it may be impossible (and potentially dangerous) to staff your entire organization with entrepreneurs, your organization can benefit from the entrepreneurial mindset to innovate, refine, and thrive. In this fast paced and global environment, it is imperative for any organizations working with varying constituents from all over the world to embrace the EMF in order to drive meaningful collaboration to innovate, build, and scale effectively. This program demonstrates the framework of entrepreneurial mindset through leveraging the following fundamental concepts: - Accurate identification of the problems: Distinguish & define symptoms and root-causes - Critical and collaborative thinking - Developing strategic visions with pragmatic tactical plan - Risks mitigation & contingency planning - Active & passive leadership - Real-time learning + reflection + refinement

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How do we collect useful feedback on intangible outcomes like hope, agency or trust? The thoughtful development of human capacity intended by most international development organizations involves a combination of both visible outcomes like latrines or new farming techniques and invisible outcomes like hope, agency or trust. Even though both are important, existing evaluation approaches are nearly exclusively focused on the visible...leaving organizations unable to address key elements of their mission. This workshop will provide the frameworks, approaches and practical tools that are being developed to address this need. Come with your questions and creative thinking to join an ongoing discussion in this groundbreaking area!

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A great deal of research emphasizes the strong link between emotional and social competence and a person’s effectiveness as a leader, manager, employee, and plain old human being. Entrepreneurs, in particular, have to rely heavily on managing their emotional world in terms of risk tolerance, building and sustaining meaningful relationships, and coping with the unique circumstances of “going it alone”Starting and maintaining a business in another cultural context adds a new layer of variables, such as cultural differences in values, ethics, laws, and customs Through exercises, case studies, and videos, this workshop will focus on defining the four essential domains of the emotionally intelligent leader – self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship management. The first two domains (the personal) determine how well we recognize and manage our own emotions. The second two domains (the interpersonal) influence how well we recognize and manage the emotions of others and forge strong relationships. We will then define and explore the core competencies associated with these domains, such as transparency, accurate self-assessment, self-confidence, curiosity, empathy, and initiative. Finally, we will explore the essential contextual intelligence skills for navigating with relative ease and adaptability through the complexities of an international environment.

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Use this time to chat with your new connections or continue conversations about the workshops in our meeting rooms while we transform the building for our Networking Welcome Reception.

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Please join us for a networking reception and meet your fellow conference attendees! Light snacks provided.

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How can we create truly collaborative development if we aren’t willing to give power away – to those we serve, to our staff, to local leaders, to our partners. This highly interactive session will use Street Business School's entrepreneurial training program as a case study and help you answer key questions on how to amplify the value of collaboration into your own work.

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Riffing off the format of a couple telling a story of how they met, got married and who now do the dishes, Bext360 and iDE share their respective perspectives on forming a partnership and maintaining it. There will be talks of many firsts - First Blockchain project funded through Posner (and implemented by iDE), first premium payment to “tip the farmers” for Bext360.

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GAN is a highly curated community of independent accelerators, partners, and investors. Together, we create opportunities around the world for startups to access the human and financial capital they need to build businesses and make a meaningful impact wherever they call home. This session is about what we have learned through collaborative accelerators, examples of our social ventures in Latin America, and how we embrace the challenges that come our way.

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The world's first Development Impact Bond (DIB) for Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH), the Rural Sanitation DIB, aims to eradicate the high rates of open defecation in the country and accelerate the Cambodian government's efforts to reach universal sanitation and support the Cambodian government's aim of eliminating open defecation by 2025.  Implementing NGO and Posner Community member, iDE's will share perspectives on their collaboration with the impact investor and outcomes funder in this innovative funding model that will scale their Cambodia model for building sanitation markets in order to increase access to safe sanitation. 

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After grabbing your lunch, get ready to hear some Big & Bad Ideas in Collaboration. Each 5 minute presentation will highlight big, bold projects - and big, bold failures - in collaborative global development

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The session will explore strategies to achieve the profound systemic transformation required, in Gandhi's words, to restore people to control over their own lives and destiny. Community-led development (CLD) is the process of working with people to achieve locally owned visions and goals. The challenge is that the prevailing patriarchal paradigm of development is top-down, in silos and highly unsustainable.

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In 2011, with the beginning of the Syrian Civil War, a flood of photo and video mis/dis-information began appearing on various social media platforms. Human rights abuse researchers struggled with knowing what was real and false. To help resolve this, a small team at Amnesty International and partnering universities developed a way to sift through the potential evidence through worldwide collaboration. In this session, Micah will present a case study on exactly why videos found on social media should be verified, and how the global human rights verification program was formed, and some of the roadblocks along the way.

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We'll share case studies from both Africa and Latin America where Water For People implements a unique district-wide approach to water and sanitation services. We’ll cover how to bring community members along from "stage 0," before implementation begins, and what it looks like to collaborate with district governments.

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Africa School Assistance Project (ASAP) and Maji Safi Group (MSG) employ participatory development strategies to empower stakeholders and beneficiaries to self-identify local challenges and propose solutions. This session looks at how both organizations programming is led by a participatory approach and how they came to collaborate in order to scale MSG’s successful community health education program by ­­pairing it with a ASAP’s unique approach to girl’s education.

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So much discussion of capacity building focuses on the wrong things: what to build, and how to build it. Very little focuses on why partnerships for capacity building are developed. This is essential for success so that shared outcomes are clear from the beginning, expectations are managed, and trust develops through open dialogue along the way. Clarity of purpose also allows for the essential discussion of the two-way nature of capacity building. There is a mistaken belief that local capacity building means developing local organizations and that this is done by international or more developed organizations. In fact, these relationships are very much reciprocal and local organizations contribute as much if not more to the capacity building of the international or more developed organization. This dimension is masked too often and results in power differentials that are skewed and don’t reflect the reality of the interdependence of the partnership. This session engages the audience in a guided discussion about how to create partnerships for purpose, and how Counterpart International has done so in Afghanistan, the South Pacific, and elsewhere in the world. We will look at the range of valid reasons for entering into partnerships: exchanging information; advancing organizations’ missions; amplifying organizations’ brand; motivating staff; leveraging greater resources; deepening impact.

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How can NGOs and businesses leverage cross-sector partnerships for greater humanitarian impact? Learn from Joe Verrengia about the journey of Arrow Electronics' CSR program, how a client relationship to refurbish computers turned into a long-term, deeply collaborative partnership between Arrow and Close the Gap, and their Digitruck project which uses shipping containers and solar power to create mobile IT classrooms.

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Barbara Smith is co-lead researcher for a Mitchell Group study examining USAID’s initiative The Journey to Self-Reliance. The Journey to Self-Reliance is based on the idea that growing a country's self-reliance requires building a country’s capacity to plan, finance and implement solutions to local development challenges, and ensuring that there is commitment to see these solutions through effectively, inclusively and with accountability. Barbara Smith is co-lead researcher for a Mitchell Group study examining USAID’s initiative The Journey to Self-Reliance. The Journey to Self-Reliance is based on the idea that growing a country's self-reliance requires building a country’s capacity to plan, finance and implement solutions to local development challenges, and ensuring that there is commitment to see these solutions through effectively, inclusively and with accountability. We hope to hear from the audience about their personal experiences with building commitment and capacity, and what these terms mean to organizations participating in the session. The session will touch on the successes and failures and how collaboration and shared understandings have contributed to the success (or failure) of your programs. The team will also explore how collaboration through inclusion can contribute to building commitment, whether through broader community engagement, greater enfranchisement of marginalized groups or something else. This session is a chance for your organization to contribute to a study that will ultimately inform USAID policy and practice.

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Global Seed Savers has seen great success in collaborating with Local Government in the Philippines to move our mission of food and seed sovereignty forward. During this session we will share our stories of success and challenges that partnering with local government has brought. We will share our lessons of patience, perseverance, and how to build and foster good working relationships with local government officials who share a similar mission.

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Cap off a great conference by networking with all the Collaborators you recently met!

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