Workstream 6 (Participation revolution): Reinforcing Change, Empowering Champions - January 2020 update

Reinforcing Change, Empowering Champions

Workstream 6 Co-conveners have finalized a 2019-2020 workplan in consultation with key workstream members and outside experts.  The workplan is organized under four pillars of work:

1) Support permanent and sustainable change in the way we do business;

2) Promote the link between effective participation and quality humanitarian response;

3) Ensure inclusion of Participation in annual Grand Bargain reporting; and

4) Better align our work with other Grand Bargain Workstreams.

In the coming year, WS6 will continue to cooperate closely with IASC Results Group 2 on Accountability and Inclusion (RG2).  We’ve agreed  to seek complementary approaches to advancing Participation between GB workstream 6 and IASC Results Group 2 with, broadly speaking, WS6 prioritizing agency-level actions and RG2 leading on collective-level change.

The overarching goal of our work will be to strengthen and reinforce the broad acceptance of deeper participation identified by the annual report, recognizing that this represents a substantial practice change at the level of individual agencies, and provide tools to support the work of existing Participation champions, particularly at the field level.

We will convene a webinar with all workstream members on February 19th 2020 to engage them on the new workplan and its activities.  Separately, we have discussed with RG 2 the possibility of jointly convening a call with donors in order to better understand the similarities and differences in approaches to this topic among donors, in particular, the requirements placed on implementing partners and how to better align our approaches.