Jul
19
2022

Summer Session 2: ‘Sustainability: easy to say, hard to achieve?’

UK time 11:00 – 12:00 Malawi time 12:00 – 13:00
Location Zoom

Over the summer of 2022 we hosted a series of three informal digital events exploring key issues of relevance to our members. Following a vote in our members’ bulletin, we selected three topical questions to frame these sessions against.

The recording of this session can be found on this webpage and the chat log is available here.

Almost every funding application ever written talks about ‘sustainability’ as something that’s easily achieved, yet this is very rarely the lived reality on the ground. It’s something that’s part of our all vocabulary but do we spend enough time really reflecting on what we really mean by ‘sustainability’? We recognise that it has lots of different meanings in different contexts and we think that across the SMP and MaSP membership there’s brilliant learning from over the years about what has, and hasn’t, worked in this area. We were keen to tap into this.

We encouraged all those attending to think about the below questions:

  • What does ‘sustainability’ mean to you and your partners?
  • Can you share an example of an approach you have taken, been involved in or have seen which you feel has helpfully made a partnership genuinely sustainable?
  • And have you seen an approach which you feel has undermined sustainability?
  • Have your views on ‘sustainability’ changed over time?
  • Should everything be ‘sustainable’ / is ‘sustainability’ the right approach?
  • Are there resources, information or advice which you have found really useful in building sustainability?
  • What advice would you give yourself relating to ‘sustainability’ if you were starting your own partnership afresh?
  • What more (in very tangible terms) can we do as individuals and a community to support sustainability?
  • Can building gender equality support a more sustainable approach?