CSO’s and Businesses; joint agents for change

PSO, ICCO, Centre for Development Innovation (Wageningen University) and the Partnership Resource Centre (Erasmus University, Rotterdam) proudly present a joint publication with the latest insights on cooperation between Business and Civil Society actors for development. This digital publication is the product of an international learning event where development NGOs and businesses from the North and the South reflected on their partnerships. CSO’s and Business do complement each other and can play a stronger role together for the cause of real social change and sustainable development. But there are issues to be addressed before this can become reality. The learning event dealt with these and other questions: what are the motives behind those partnerships? What challenges – especially related to capacity issues - occur while working together? What are the next steps? Supported by new thinking about and recent research on NGO-private sector cooperation, participants came up with a shared view on NGO-Business cooperation, based on their own practices and many examples. The result of this joint North-South effort is this publication: CSO’s and Business: Joint agents for change. Its backbone is a series of five Insights that highlight the main challenges of a partnership and how to address them. This publication is written from the perspective of a development NGO, but targets professionals from both Civil Society- as well as Private Sector. It aims to support a better understanding of the intrinsic organizational and capacity issues that occur when a development NGO engages into a partnership with a business. Files