On the 15th of May, The Hannah Arendt Instituut hosted an informative webinar tailored for Speak Up partners, focused on the Collective Impact Model. The webinar was led by Katrijn Goossens, a researcher from the university of Brussels. This webinar gave a comprehensive explanation on the foundations and building blocks of collective impact and the type of challenges that can be addressed with this model.
Connecting actors from different sectors
The Collective Impact Model is designed to address wicked problems that are complex, with multiple causes and without a clear solution. These challenges often see multiple actors working on solutions in isolated and separated fields, with little knowledge-sharing between involved groups. The aim is to create collective impact, by connecting actors from different sectors to solve a specific challenge. Collective impact includes a cross-sectoral coordination between governments, industries and other actor groups where lessons learned are shared and all actors, as a shared collective, actively utilize their unique skills towards the same goals.
The Speak Up project also focuses on large challenges, such as the transition towards greener and more circular economies and how to deal with increasing polarisation. In this project, multiple governments, knowledge institutions and NGOs work together to create better ways of engaging between governments and citizens, multiple actors need to be included to address such large challenges.
The foundations of collective impact
Collective impact is built on three foundations, namely the urgency of the problem, key figures of influence and sufficient resources. To create collective impact, it is important to work on a challenge that is urgent to all involved actors and that the cooperation includes key figures from the community of actors. Lastly, sufficient resources are vital to ensure that there is long-term collective impact towards a certain challenge.
The Collective Impact Model has five building blocks: a common-shrewd agenda for change, joint measurement of data and results, mutually reinforcing activities, open and continuous communication and a backbone coordinating organisation. These elements ensure that all involved actors share an understanding and a goal and that together, they have established which measurements and activities are vital to work towards the common achievements. Furthermore, these elements ensure that all actors are informed and supported during the creation of collective impact.
This webinar gave an interesting insight into the Collective Impact Model and was an opportunity for Speak Up partners to discuss how this model can be implemented in the project to engage and cooperate with many different actors.
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