Learning Story -
CREATING OPPORTUNITIES FOR LEARNING FOR THE STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS – KNOWLEDGE MAP
Working with Strhive meant, from the beginning, working as a team in which Strhive always kept an eye on the goals and needs and responsibilities.
At a Glance
From 2016 to 2020, the Strategic Partnerships programme ‘Dialogue & Dissent’ took place. In 25 Strategic Partnerships, alliances were built between the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and civil society organisations to strengthen capacities in lobby and advocacy. The four themes at the core of this programme were:
- gender equality and inclusion,
- the protection of environmental rights,
- empowering communities in local governance and
- the promotion of sustainable and inclusive resource management
Strhive worked with Partos to enable organisations in the Strategic Partnerships to learn from one another in a systematic way by compiling the knowledge that has been developed during the programme and making it easily accessible.
In 2021, the new Strategic Partnerships phase started, focused on Strengthening Civil Society. During the “Dialogue and Dissent” Strategic Partnerships, many lessons, knowledge products, tools, methods and instruments have been developed. These offer a valuable contribution and learning opportunity to the new and future phases of the Strategic Partnerships. Therefore, Partos and Strhive joined forces to answer the question: How can the Strategic Partnerships learn from the previous ones and build on the developed knowledge
The goal of this project was to enable the new programmes to build on the existing knowledge and experiences developed throughout the past five years of Strategic Partnerships. Partos plays an active role for learning in the humanitarian and development field in the Netherlands and aims to facilitate this learning process. The existing knowledge had to be surfaced and made available for the new partnerships, and organisations across the field to learn from.
Strhive's Approach
Strhive worked with Partos to create the Strategic Partnership’s Knowledge Map. The Knowledge Map provides an interactive overview of the key knowledge products developed throughout the past five years of Strategic Partnerships. It includes, among others, tools, methods, reports and studies.
Following Strhive’s model, Strhive adopted a 3-step process to develop the Knowledge Map in collaboration with Partos:
- First, the context and current structures for learning were analysed. In this step, the key themes and framework for the knowledge map and knowledge products was established.
- In the second step, the knowledge products were developed through a combination of a knowledge audit and knowledge mapping exercise. Here, the previous Strategic Partnerships provided their most valuable contributions from the past five years. Their contributions were the input for the knowledge products to be included in the map.
- The last step focused on turning the knowledge products into opportunities for learning. This was done by creating an interactive, easily accessible Knowledge Map hosting the key knowledge products.
By following this process, Strhive developed the answers to the following key questions with Partos that are crucial to facilitate learning:
- How can we surface, compile and make available knowledge developed throughout the Strategic Partnerships?
- How can we make these knowledge products available to the partners and others in the field?
- How can future Strategic Partnerships build on the knowledge of previous ones?
The knowledge map provides an overview of the knowledge products divided over the four key thematic areas: Inclusion & Diversity, Advocacy, Civil Society, COVID-19 & Miscellaneous. All the knowledge products can easily be accessed by clicking on the sub-category of interest in the knowledge map. One finds then all the relevant tools, methods, reports and other materials for your work that have been developed during the Strategic Partnerships.