Two major initiatives contribute to unleashing the power of business for sustainable development.
Over the last four years, TPI has developed and expanded a global initiative focused on creating local-level business hubs, the Business Partnership Action programme (BPA). BPA supports the creation of locally-owned and run country-level platforms that systematically bring together government, business, donors, the UN and NGOs, in order to build trust and align interests, innovate, and support win-win partnerships that contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals.
Over this period, BPA has supported the development of multi-stakeholder platforms in Zambia, Mozambique, Colombia, East Africa, and Asia Pacific, all of which are engaging business in partnerships with a focus ranging from development and inclusive business to humanitarian and water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH). In 2014, BPA held a two-day workshop in Mexico for practitioners from 11 different platforms for partnership from around the world, to share learning and identify the building blocks for a successful platform. The workshop contributed to a major new publication: Platforms for Partnership: Emerging good practice on engaging business as a partner in development.
In 2014, at the Global Partnership for Effective Development (GPEDC) Mexico HLM, TPI launched its groundbreaking policy report, Unleashing the power of business: A practical Roadmap to systematically engage business as a partner in development. The ‘Roadmap’ sets out a systematic approach to engaging with business as a partner in development. It recommends five essential areas for action within which government, development agencies, business organisations and civil society each have their roles to play.
The Business Roadmap initiative has already produced two significant policy inputs: TPI’s Roadmap policy paper in 2014 was followed by a 2016 policy paper, developed in collaboration with World Vision: Delivering on the Promise: In-country multi-stakeholder platforms to catalyse collaboration and partnerships for Agenda 2030. The launch coincided with a major outreach and advocacy event, the 2016 webinar: ‘Delivering on the Promise – how do we scale up collaboration for the SDGs‘? As part of the Roadmap initiative, training courses were also delivered, on the topic of on engaging with business as a partner in development, as part of the GPEDC Learning and Accelerating Programme, in Korea.
These two initiatives are now merging into a single Global Partnership Initiative (GPI): Business Partnership Action: Unleashing the power of Business for the SDGs. An important next phase is the development of The Partnering Academy, a major new initiative to build up the specialist skills and competencies that all sectors require to be able to collaborate effectively across sectors.
For further information on the initiative, the hubs and other successes to date, as well as future plans, see TPI’s recent Report on Global Partnership Initiatives. This report highlights the results achieved over the last few years, and outlines a plan of activities for the next phase.
Leave a Reply