We have reached a milestone – it is exactly three years since we published our first issue. Looking back over the issues, I am in awe of the work partnership brokers do across the globe to make development partnerships deliver for the greater good. More evidence and insights are being shared about the diverse ways in which partnership brokers overcome collaborative challenges and create and realise opportunities for communities. It has particularly been a source of inspiration to hear from partnership brokers who are entrepreneurial and innovative, encouraging organisations to consider completely new ways of operating, and to create and scale up new programmes, businesses or operating models, new types of products and services and even new markets to meet development challenges. One such entrepreneurial ‘story from the front line’ comes from Choongo Chibawe and Rafal Serafin. They relate how brokering new types of food systems as partnerships can disrupt the status quo to connect food producers and consumers in new ways. In their article, they share their insights and experiences of using partnership brokering to engage smallholder farmers in reconfiguring local food systems in their respective countries of Zambia and Poland. Food security and sustainable agriculture represent one of the UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets set for achievement by 2030. This goal has huge implications for smallholder farmers, living in rural areas and / or struggling to... Read the article
Abstract: In a long career spanning 25+ years, most of it spent in developing countries and at high levels of management, the author has seen how partnerships live up to the principles of equity, transparency and mutual benefit. In performing multiple roles as a partnership broker, she asserts that this has invariably meant looking at the partnerships through the... Read the article
Abstract: In 2012, the Food Systems Innovation (FSI) initiative was set up between four Australian organisations working to improve the impact of agriculture and food security programs in the Indo-Pacific... Read the article
Abstract: Partnership brokering is needed to work out new ways of organising food systems that treat agricultural smallholders as a resource and opportunity rather than a problem or distraction. This is because food systems are demanding innovation in the way they are organised. This is a matter of transforming stakeholders... Read the article
Abstract: In 2013, the Start Network (formerly the Consortium of British Humanitarian Agencies) commissioned a series of case studies to document its emerging experience as a “humanitarian system change catalyst”. Three case studies have been published to date, relating the story of the consortium from its inception to its current state and looking at the organisational and human dimensions of a multi-stakeholder membership model. In this article, the author provides a critical review of the case studies. A review of the Start Network case studies In 2013, the Start Network... Read the article
Abstract: Partnerships between International Non-Governmental Organisations (INGOs) and local Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) are typically unsuccessful, often due to an inability to manage conflicts and disputes. A well-developed governance approach for a partnership ideally includes a process for managing constructively these kinds of situations;... Read the article
Abstract: Reflective practice is the primary component of the Partnership Brokers Associations (PBA)’s Accreditation Programme, where during the four-month mentored period, partnership brokers are required to keep a reflective log book to show evidence of their practice. Participants report mixed experience of reflective practice. For many partnership brokers, reflection is a new discipline, generating some uncertainty about the process, value, and indeed the discipline it requires to set aside time... Read the article
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Betwixt and Between is a journal published by the Partnership Brokering Association (PBA) to share ideas, developments and actions in cross-sector partnership
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