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By Karolina Mzyk Callias
The SDG Philanthropy Platform (SDGPP) has just recently launched an Innovation Challenge on Early Childhood Education in Kenya and Water in Ghana. We are inviting all social innovators to submit their ideas for smart solutions by the 9th of May for Kenya, and the 12th of May for Ghana.
Adopting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) marked setting a universal agenda for sustainable development through to 2030. Unprecedented collaboration is needed to achieve the ambitious and comprehensive Agenda 2030. There is ample evidence that the current modes of development interventions are not alone sufficient to achieve the Goals. Therefore, without radically altered methods of working and new types of interventions, moving the needle on the SDGs is otherwise impossible.
The three innovation challenges in Ghana and four in Kenya are a result of collaboration with diverse local partners from the governments, business, civil society, social entrepreneurs and academia in the countries.
Our approach offers a logical frame and a step by step process of developing “collaborative pathways” for achieving the SDGs and addressing their integrated nature and complexity, as well as a need for scalable approaches. The interconnectivity of the goals means that care also needs to be given to ensure that a positive initiative towards one SDG doesn’t negatively impact another, for example, in Ghana we convene partnerships which aim to achieve “universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water” defined as SDG 6.1. Achieving this goal means ensuring access to the 40% of the population who currently lack it, but this also means placing additional pressure on freshwater systems, risking the achievement of SDG 15 - Life on Land.
Therefore, our approach applies Systems and Design Thinking, where we holistically analyze an issue and its elements, looking at how they relate to each other and influence each other’s behavior, using the SDGs as the larger overarching system. The approach helps to define strategies for smart investing and how to allocate resources and ideas which maximize dividends and minimalize the destructive trade off effects on the SDGs.
Although working with local partners is the bedrock of this approach, we also draw on the vast development knowledge of the UN and bring and test new models from outside the system. We have worked with Banny Banerjee from Stanford University and founder of ChangeLabs, and Jo Addy, founder of Continuum Advantage and adopted to our needs.
The Innovation Challenge has been possible thanks to seed funding from the Conrad N Hilton Foundation, one of the leading global foundations which along with the Ford Foundation and The MasterCard Foundation, pioneer work on the SDGs and support the Platform.
Learning and engaging
The initial step of the process has been to conduct in-depth research to get a better understanding of the challenges faced.
In Ghana we mapped key water policies, projects and stakeholders involved, as well as financial flows constraints and issues. Moreover, to gain additional perspectives, we conducted interviews with selected stakeholders. The SDGPP coordinator in Ghana then connected these various conversations by organizing an “Advisory Committee”, or a group of organizations representing philanthropy, the private sector, NGOs, the government and academia, all working on water. The main purpose of these conversations have been to systematically engage stakeholders to appreciate the scope of the challenge from the systems perspective, discuss key bottlenecks and opportunities and coordinate activities for more effective allocation of resources and ways of working. Another important objective has been engaging the government to ensure that our efforts are systematically integrated into national development plans and budget allocations.
Defining collaborative pathways
With about 40 carefully selected local stakeholders, we organized “power” workshops and collectively identified transformative solutions as well as collaborative pathways for achieving them. During the workshops, we collectively “unpeeled” and simplified complex issues through analysis of root causes and identification of drivers and blockages of progress as well as opportunities. The workshops, while fun, were interactive, dynamic and led to the following results:
1. Defining positive and negative outcomes, analyzing root causes and interplay between the outcomes;
2. Brainstorming on “acupuncture points” or deeply transformative innovation opportunities;
3. Mapping “collaboration pathways” which lead to scalable and actionable solutions.
SDGPP work in Zambia is dedicated to the well-being of children following a broad consensus that without investing in children, the SDGs will not be achieved in the country. According to UNICEF, almost half of all Zambian children, mostly in rural areas, live in extreme poverty, and 25% of mothers are under 17 years old. The dimension which received a lot of attention at the workshop was child protection, especially of girls, against the phenomena of child pregnany and child marriage. During intensive discussions, the acupuncture points or transformative innovation opportunities identified included social protection for adolescent girls. Participants emphasized interventions that alter social norms and behavior, including working with parents and traditional leaders, models for service provision in education and health, and training and job opportunities for women at the community level. The Innovation Challenge in Zambia is still being finalized, due to be launched in May so please stay tuned!
Implementation
The level of resources needed to achieve the SDGs are counted in the trillions of dollars per year, and nobody has this level of funding, not governments and not the private sector. The recent UN conference on SDG financing observed that the biggest challenge is not the lack of capital but rather aligning private sector incentives and enabling an environment for combined private and public investing. Our SDGPP work in countries also demonstrates that there are many sources of capital, ranging from traditional loans and equities to informal and religious giving. The spectrum is very broad and its volume is difficult to estimate.
Although the Innovation Challenge offers a very modest amount, the intent has been to demonstrate positive outcomes on the SDGs of working together. We aim to leverage other sources of funding available for the countries to implement the collaboration pathways that we collectively developed. We are working with networks approaches like the Advisory Group on water in Ghana and Early Childhood Action Network in Kenya. We are connecting with the governments to feed inputs into much bigger national development plans inspired by the SDGs.
We look forward to these and further initiatives and collaborative work moving forwards to help achieve the Global Goals!
Karolina Mzyk Callias is Policy Specialist on foundations and Platform lead, at SDG Philanthropy Platform