Reducing poverty is a global challenge, but solutions can be global as well. Social innovations from Asia can be adapted to Brazil. Successful techniques from projects in Peru can be applied in the Dominican Republic.
The Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF) has identified a successful poverty reduction method developed by the Indian NGO Hand in Hand, and our partner World Vision Brazil has customized it for Brazil. This approach develops income-generating opportunities for 50,000 people in 10 states in the northeast of Brazil, using a combination of technical assistance, access to finance, and linkages to markets and industry in relevant sectors. A regional network of grassroots organizations helps to expand, strengthen, integrate, and institutionalize the job-creation project.
The MIF learned 3 major lessons from this south-south knowledge transfer. I shared them at the Livelihoods Asia Summit in Delhi, India, last month, during a special session on the global experiences of social innovations. The lessons are:
- South-to-south cooperation works, but methods must be customized. It’s crucial to understand and adapt to local culture and local obstacles. Patience and flexibility are the keys to success, because sustainable change does not happen overnight.
- Creating strategic partnerships—mainly with local grassroots organizations—is essential. The local groups must believe in and feel ownership of the project, especially when the method is transferred from a different place and culture. When scaling up the project, it’s also important to forge partnerships, such as cross-sector cooperation between government agencies and the private sector.
- Focus on making projects simple and cheap. It’s also necessary to monitor their progress closely and often, and to adjust if needed.
Hand in Hand Chairman Dr. Kalpana Sankar, summing up this job-creation method at the special session, proposed a holistic approach of job creation, women’s empowerment, and community development as a way to make rural communities economically self-sustainable.
This is a lesson that I have found to be true across the globe, and something that we’ll be looking at in future projects.
