Call for long-term development modalities
A CALL for development approaches to move towards longterm modalities rather than three to five-year projects was made during a plenary session on Partnering for Resilience: a collective impact at the second and virtual biennial Pacific Resilience Meeting organised by the Pacific Community (SPC) last Thursday.
Janet Lotawa, co-founder, and executive director at Rise Beyond the Reef, called for a long-term modality considering the 50 per cent failure rate of projects with shorter lifespans.
Most recently, the organisation implemented a basa exchange which, based on a belief that Fiji can feed Fiji, involved buying crops at village gates in rural remote areas to supply areas on lockdowns and those in containment areas.
“We need to really think about how you shift your partnership model,” she said.
“I think there’s a lot of opportunities for taking a long-term partnership approach because I think resilience starts with us as organisations.
“If we’re not resilient as organisations and we’re 99.9 per cent dependent on aid dollar, I don’t think there’s any way we can lead communities to become resilient.
“I think we all have to have a hard look at our model and how we create some earned income options so that we can be more responsive, we can be more flexible and that we really have the opportunity to develop more home-grown, efficient models to support resilience in communities and the work that we do as organisations long-term.”
The basa exchange meant that casual market vendors (who sell at the market on weekends) could still earn some cash from the initiative.
Those who sold their crops would then spend their monies in stores, which for Rise Beyond the Reef was the concept of circular economy manifested.
The plenary discussed the importance of partnerships in building resilience, something that would require a collective and systematic approach of government, private sector, civil society, and the community, coming together and finding ways to reduce associated vulnerabilities.
Dr Andrew Jones, the director of Geoscience, Energy and Maritime at the Pacific Community (SPC) understood the existence of short-term projects. Some are influenced for example by funding cycles, among other factors.
“It is about trust in the partnerships. Our best successes are indeed from long-term partnerships after two or three project cycles,” Dr Jones said during a press conference at the end of the meeting.
The 2021 Pacific Resilience Meeting was focused on genuinely exploring learnings and approaches that build resilience and locally-led actions towards a safer Pacific with more than 1500 attendees and 154 speakers across the three-day meeting. The outcomes and learnings will be presented to Pacific Leaders at the upcoming Pacific Leaders Meeting.
If we’re not resilient as organisations and we’re 99.9 per cent dependent on aid dollar, I don’t think there’s any way we can lead communities to become resilient – Janet Lotawa