Giving Compass' Take:

• Sean McKaghan from the board of Fundación Avina focuses on sustainable development through collaborative action in Latin America.

• How can donors help to ensure the long-term success of collaborative efforts? What types of collaborations make sense in tackling sustainable development?

• Read about the role of the private sector in Latin American development.

We are constantly asking ‘how do you move toward sustainability?’ We measure ourselves by how much we contribute to a more sustainable Latin America. That lens allows us to work with all different sorts of drivers—we work in energy, we work in access to water, we work in urban areas, we work in the Amazon. We’re constantly updating our context analysis to keep abreast of the key challenges and opportunities for Latin America to achieve a more sustainable future and how can we contribute to those change processes.

For us, the key to change is building collaborative processes that involve a whole host of different players in a trust network. They not only make the change but defend it over time.  If the key players are aligned around a common vision, that social capital will contribute in different ways to the change process, and maybe to others as well.

You need this kind of social capital, diverse groups and coalitions of people and organizations to make these changes happen in a very complex context, and for assuring those changes last. At Fundación Avina, we know we can’t make a big impact by ourselves. We focus on building these coalitions of partners, and together it’s amazing the mountains we can move

Read the full article about lessons on collaborative action from Latin America sustainable development by Sean McKaughan at Skoll Foundation.