Giving Compass' Take:

• At the AVPN Conference 2019, 20 policy fellows from the Policy Leadership Lab were inducted as AVPN members and share the four ways they will leverage the networks of AVPN to drive progress on policy initiatives. 

• Siloed work does not bring fruitful results when it comes to policy change. Harnessing the power of collaborative learning can help groups pursue sustainable change. How are you building networks to achieve a common goal? 

• Read about some of the other takeaways from the AVPN Conference 2019. 

The 2019-20 cohort of policy fellows from the Policy Leadership Lab were inducted at the AVPN Conference, marking the start of a 12-month journey of working with AVPN members and resources to advance policy initiatives in their respective markets.

Why are networks important for policy initiatives? Rigid and unimaginative bureaucratic structures, siloed and separate streams of competing priorities, lack of accessible and transparent data, the need to toe the line around legal definitions and red tape when working with non-traditional allies. These, and more, have been touted as critical challenges in working with the government to advance scalable and proven solutions. The good news is that policymakers at various levels of government are keen to engage differently with social investors, as evidenced by the commitment of the 2nd cohort of AVPN’s Policy Leadership Lab fellows. Their proactiveness bodes well for the possibility of collaborative ways for policy and social investment to work together.

The not-so-good news is that despite their best intentions, policymakers that want to engage more deeply with social investors face challenges of their own. They are juggling many different policy priorities typically with little bandwidth to mobilise resources and appropriate authority’s attention to engaging social investors, especially when they could be in remote locations with little time or budget to spare for travel.

Here are four ways the 2019-20 cohort of Fellows plans to engage the power of AVPN’s network of members and stakeholders, through the Policy Leadership Lab:

  1. Learning from failures together
  2. Surfacing best practices in forging resilient government partnerships
  3. Leveraging areas of synergy within and outside the Fellowship
  4. Taking ownership: You are part of the AVPN network

Read the full article about power of networks to drive policy initiatives by Rachel Chan at avpn.