New Delhi : PRADAN organized the third annual event Samagam for 2022. The event also marked the completion of 40 years of existence of PRADAN. This year’s event had eminent speakers like Shoka Nodo UNDP Resident Representative, India, Anoop Nautiyal Founder, Social Development for Communities Foundation, Ms. Reshma Anand, CEO, Hindustan Unilever Foundation, Ms. Sonali Srivastava, Head, Anode Governance Lab, and Foundation, Dr. Saurabh Garg, IAS, CEO, UIDAI, and, Mr. Bhim Singh, IAS, Collector, District of Raigarh, Chhattisgarh, to name a few.

The focus for this year has been partnerships and winning coalitions for achieving our Sustainable Development Goals. Speakers from UNDP, the Government sector, and private organizations came together to discuss the changing environment in coalitions and funding. Today’s donors are seeking co-funds and government partnerships and helping deliver a greater impact on the economy.

Ms. Shoko Noda, UNDP Resident Representative, India said, “Achieving SDGs require a truly joint approach. Different sectors, especially the civil society organizations, private sectors, academia, communities, and media; all must work together in an integrated manner by pulling resources, ideas, knowledge, expertise, listening, and understanding of what’s happening at the community level. Building these coalitions is an integral part of SDGs and this is why we have a specific goal SPG 17 for partnership. UNDP globally and in India has encouraged and promoted effective public-private sector partnership, civil society partnerships to push for social goals collectively and at our end we are making our efforts to be an integrator of SDGs. 

Mr. Saroj Mahapatra, Executive Director, PRADAN said, “There must be a coalition with community institutions directly, rather than few ones who indirectly engage. Rational leadership is important and there should be honest conversations on intention, motivation, and competencies. Post pandemic, there has been an enormous increase in the number of collaborations over the past two years, wherein, the funding has also scaled up. Partnerships and coalitions are significant to make the funding scenario favorable for social development projects.”

The first session focused on CSO Coalitions at work: Rationale, Experiences, and Challenges and talked about major factors that make coalitions successful. There should be a focus on the larger picture (systems thinking) instead of the symptomatic interventions. According to a few speakers, identity crisis is a major factor where the discarding of ideas or thoughts can lead to an imbalance in the coalition.

The second session focused on Donors seeking co-funding- opportunities, and challenges. Speakers talked about the need for philanthropic collaborations. Multi-stakeholder and multidimensional collaborations bring in diverse skill sets, but it requires robust alignments and course corrections. 80% of collaborations take place to leverage diverse skills, 77% collaborate to expand the circle of influence and impact, and 60% collaborate to mitigate risk. The three primary goals of collaborators include- scaling solutions, helping build the field, building a case for promising innovations, and spanning a range of key roles to achieve impact. 90-95% of total funding comes from govt. the rest of the 5% coming from philanthropies and CSOs make the 95% complete in terms of bringing in know-how. There is an appetite amongst funders to bring a large-scale impact – US$500 million has already been mobilized and a gender fund has been initiated.

The third session focused on the Convergence of government departments is helping deliver a greater impact on the development rupee.  In many cases, there is a convergence between programs such as MNREGA and NRLM and skill development. Partnership with academic and research institutions, person power is different forms of convergence.