Conditions for Effective Collaboration

Alignment with your organisation

For a youth serving digital platform to be successful, its users must see it as providing reliable and trustworthy information. Being able to connect with other young people and accessing relevant learning resources, service providers and potential employers is equally important.

Therefore, it is imperative that the organisations you partner with, and the companies you profile on the platform, have the best interests of your users in mind and uphold the same quality standards and principles that your platform stands for. The precondition of the effective collaboration is that both you and the service-provider understand and respect the values and missions of each other.

This requires a thorough due diligence process and an evaluation of the products and services that they offer. The due-diligence process can be followed up by several rounds of discussion or negotiation about the type of desired collaboration.

Forms of collaboration

The form of collaboration with service providers can vary in the degree of formality or collaboration intensity. The form of collaboration can be detailed and formalized with a letter of intent or a collaboration agreement. Setting up a more formal and standardised partnership can help to guarantee effective collaboration to monitor and respond to the needs of young people. 

For example, formalizing the collaboration in a letter of intent or agreement, can help determine the right to access relevant documents or records such as annual report, quarterly or monthly report, registration forms, consultation forms or counselling notes of the service provider. This is key to monitor the journey of service referral of young help-seekers and quality of the services provided. Naturally, this needs to be done based on the precondition of mutual confidentiality and transparency towards help-seekers, making sure they are fully aware that the documents will be shared with you.  

In more formalized types of collaboration, it can be beneficial to align the M&E frameworks of you and your partners to ensure that they are connected and consistent. Any gaps in capacity and knowledge on M&E, can be tackled through capacity building activities in an early phase of your partnership.

An example of effective collaboration – Justice4Her in China RNW Media’s Justice4Her program provides both an online and offline platform of support against gender based violence (GBV) and greater awareness and legal representation of young female migrant workers. The project is built upon a strategic partnership with a local legal aid organisation. This is done through the dissemination of online content, linking young women with relevant service providers and legal counsel along with the conducting of in-person skills building and empowerment workshops. The project has provided training courses for around 160 pro bono lawyers on gender awareness and practical legal skills, 50 media professionals on storytelling and avoiding victim-blaming when reporting on GBV, 40 NGO and CSO professionals on new media campaigning for social change and 300 female migrant workers on GBV and life skills.