Giving Compass' Take:

• Peggy Dulany, founder and chair of Synergos -- an organization focused on building sustainable solutions for those facing poverty -- is interviewed about her company, philanthropy and other topics.

• Dulany believes firmly in inclusive collaboration at Synergos. Why is it essential to include the people who are affected by the problem when coming up with the solution?  

• Read about how companies can shift mindsets toward sustainable thinking in 2019. 

Denver: There are many organizations that are dedicated to and possess great expertise in areas such as education, health, fresh water, agriculture, and a host of other issues. But there are very few whose expertise is problem-solving, convening, facilitating, and getting people to work together in such a way that it makes a significant difference in the lives of those they are seeking to serve.

One of the most exceptional and thoughtful of all of these is Synergos, and it’s a great pleasure to have with us their founder and Chair, Peggy Dulany. 

Tell us a little bit more about Synergos, Peggy, the mission of the organization, and what it was created to do.

Peggy: The mission is to enable people to solve problems sustainably, particularly around poverty, the environment, etc., but by using methods that allow them to bring their best selves to the table and work collaboratively to do so.

Give us an idea of some of the problems that the organization works on and what parts of the world those might be in.

Peggy: Until quite recently, a large part of our focus was in both forming networks, so that we would have the capacity to do the convening and find the right people to work together in many different countries around the world. I’ll give you one example. In Maharashtra, India a number of years ago, we worked with the collaboration and support initially of UNICEF and Unilever and Genron– another convening organization in facilitating– to reduce childhood stunting in the State of Maharashtra, which has a hundred million people.

The end result, after a long process of building trust across stakeholder groups where there was no trust and no love lost, was that the rate of childhood stunting of children under five went down from 39% to 23%.

Read the full article about Synergos by Denver Frederick at the Business of Giving