Developing partnering skills for strategic engagement

Partners in Action is a programme initiated by the United Nations System Staff College (UNSSC) and the International Business Leaders Forum (IBLF) in 1998 with seed funding from the United Nations Foundation for International Partnerships.

Please download our report detailing the activities and impact of the Partners in Action programme here.

The aims of Partners in Action are to:

• Promote partnering and brokering awareness, learning and action within the UN system and in cooperation with relevant external stakeholders in the private sector, civil society and the public sector.
• Enhance the ability of UN key staff to manage cross sector partner relationships and to enable these organizations to impact their major networks worldwide
• Support the integration of partnering and brokering skills / tools into UN human resource development procedures
• Fill knowledge management gaps in UN systems and complement existing UN institutional capacity-building efforts related to partnering and brokering.
• Engage and influence key inter-agency programmes for building partnering capacity and developing learning opportunities.

In the past 3 years particularly the Partners in Action project realised significant achievements including:

• Launching a unique training course for UN staff and their partners. The ‘Partnering Skills for Strategic Engagement’ has been delivered in 12 locations around the world: – Austria; Ethiopia; France; Indonesia; Italy; Kenya; Panama; Senegal; South Africa; Switzerland and Thailand
• Attracting more than 500 participants including 369 participants from 40 UN organizations, offices and departments alongside 143 partner representatives from government, civil society and business.
• Establishing the Partners in Action online community of alumni of these courses
• Creating the Partners in Action project web space on the UNSSC website including all course materials, outputs and a compendium of resources on UN-business partnerships
• Publishing The Brokering Guidebook – now into it’s 3rd edition - that can be downloaded for free here
  
• Delivering more than 20 additional partnering awareness-raising and capacity-building activities at both headquarters and country/regional levels for various audiences including:

• Training of Trainers Workshop in Partnering Skills
• UN Leadership and Coordination Skills Workshops
• UN Country Teams in the Gambia and Kuwait
• UNEP Global Mercury Partnership Meeting of Partners
• UNFPA Country Representatives in Africa

The following organisations have participated in the programme:

•ACER •AFRICASO •Alliance Nationale de Lutte contra le SIDA •ARC •Badan Rehabilitasi dan Rekonstrucksi •CEDECOM •CETU •CIP •DESA •DPA •DPKO •EANNASO •HAPCO •ECLAC •FAO •IFAD •IFRC •ILO •Indonesian government •Islamic Relief • ITC •ITU •Mercy Corps •MDG •MSF •National Partnership Forum against HIV/Aids (Ethiopia) •NEP+ •NPF • OCHA •OECD •OHCHR •OLA •OSIWA •Plan International •Stop TB •UNAIDS •UNCTAD • UNDGO •UNDP • UN-DPA • UN-DPKO •UNEP •UNECA •UN-ECLAC •UN-ECE •UNESCO •UNFPA •UNEP •UN-HABITAT •UNHCR •UNICEF •UNIDO •UNIFEM •UN-ISDR •UNITAR •UNIC •UNMAS •UNOB •UNOCI •UNODC •UN-OLA •UNON •UNOPS •UNORC •UNSSC •UNV •WFP •WHO/PAHO •WMO •World Bank

For enquiries about partnership capacity building within the UN system, please contact Kate Hewett, Training Manager on firstname.lastname@iblf.org