Building successful partnerships

 

• You can also share your tips and experiences with building international partnerships at the bottom of this page (log in with your SALTO username or create one)

A trustful partnership does not prevent you from having discussions, disagreements and misunderstandings, but it creates a space in which they can take place in a safe and empowering environment.

The key to a successful partnership lies in one essential aspect: personal relationships. It is important that the initiators of the partnership (e.g. youth workers that met on a training course) like each other and get along. This is a solid base for a partnership to continue to build on.

It involves more than just finding a partner organisation and getting along with a youth worker abroad: the main issue is how to retain and work with this partner. The following are some elements that you may have to reflect on in your partnership!

• Based on the Training-Kit on Social Inclusion available from www.youth-partnership.net and www.SALTO-YOUTH.net/Toolbox/

Are your organisations compatible?

Especially when working with young offenders or those at risk of offending, it is important to create partnerships between organisations that reach similar target groups, because the impact of this Youth in Action experience will be continued in their daily life.

Therefore it is important to find out answers on the following questions:

• Do your organisations share common aims? Or are they at least compatible?
• Do the organisations work with a similar target group (age, mix, gender, educational background, geographical situation)? And if not how will you deal with the differences?
• Do your organisations have similar activities? Would you find a programme in common that both organisations are happy with?
• Do you have similar organisational capacities (size of the organisation, budgets, available networks)? Or would you find ways to work together on an equal footing?
• Do you have similar organisational cultures or working spirit? Or at least the openness to adapt to different ways of working?
• Do you have common educational principles? Are the differences in approach reconcilable?
• Do you have efficient channels of communication? A common working language?
• Do you have similar legal requirements (health & safety, needed qualifications, alcohol & drugs policies, etc.)? Are they compatible?
• Do you have your hierarchies' support to join in such a partnership - time and resources should be freed to work on this co-operation?

Of course no two organisations are completely the same and share all the above elements. It is important to be flexible, but also to be conscious of how you will deal with the differences. The more similar your organisations are, the easier the co-operation, but perhaps less to be learnt from each other.

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When the above questions on the level of the organisation are discussed with your partner organisation, specific questions in the light of to the young people's needs and objectives are important to consider.

• Evaluation criteria and monitoring: What criteria do the partners use to monitor and evaluate projects and the partnership? At which intervals? What would be the limit of acceptance?
• Partnership Timetable: What is a realistic time span for the project? The co-operation time span? What deadlines must the partners adhere to?
• Distribution of tasks: Who does what? How flexible and reliable is the process for distributing tasks? What backups are foreseen?
• Budget and resources: What resources, both human and financial, will each organisation commit to the project?
• Co-operation between organisations and groups: How will the youth workers and the young people in both organisations contact each other? How could they get to know each other better?
• Communication and coordination: How will you keep all stakeholders informed about the project? How are you going to ensure regular contact between the partners? What needs and what doesn't need to be communicated/reported? How will you make decisions?
• Agree on the final project plan. It is important to make sure that the plan is agreed upon by the decision making body of the various organisations involved. Ensure organisational support for and commitment to the project.

Read more about Setting up partnerships in the T-kit on Social Inclusion, chapter 4, page 30 - www.youth-partnership.net and in Over the Rainbow from the SALTO Ínclusion for All' series at www.salto-youth.net/OverTheRainbow/

• Share your tips and experiences with building international partnerships at the bottom of this page (log in with your SALTO username or create one)

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