Stakeholders Forum – Day 2

07/02/2017

After the group activity it was time for a presentation by one of the participants who has extensive knowledge on collaboration and partnership with a company; Jihyun Park from IWO/Better World organisation in South Korea.

Jihyun gave tips on how to create and manage external partnerships and provided an example of her organisation’s collaboration with Samsung. Since there was a representative from Samsung there as well, she could give opinions and tips from a stakeholder’s point of view. The informative presentation led to an interesting discussion and several of the participants had questions for Jihyun and for the Samsung representative.

Jihyun mentioned how an organisation should position itself externally and what strengths you should highlight, for example the very extensive network that is the CCIVS members and the whole IVS movement. This global network make it possible for the members to hold projects in many different locations around the world, which is a fantastic asset and opportunity from a stakeholders viewpoint.

She also discussed the importance of keeping the values of your organisation and make sure that all partnerships are in line with what the organisations does and want to do. The work should be balanced and it is important to make sure that the partnership does not become negative.

The following discussion brought up the issue of receiving funds from partners that you might not agree with morally and ethically. Jihyun pointed out that an option is to try and see and measure the value yourself, how much impact and value could your organisation create using the funds you receive? If the work done with the funds will produce a very positive outcome then it might be beneficial to go through with the partnership, while of course maintaining your organisation’s values and ethics.

Overall this activity proved to be highly appreciated by the participants, and the discussions were very fruitful for everyone involved.

The last activity consisted of our facilitators explaining the process of the next day, which was the Partnerships Meeting on the 8th of February.