How CLA has Helped USAID/Colombia Create New Partnerships

Together We Learn Activity (TwL) is a five-year, USD $35 million activity that increases children and adolescents’ access to quality education in areas impacted by migration. Colombia has received over 2.4 million Venezuelan migrants since 2015, and the combination of increased migration and the emergence of COVID-19 has strained Colombia’s education system.

TwL is the first ever New Partnerships Initiative (NPI) that the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has awarded in Colombia. NPIs help USAID improve its collaboration with new, nontraditional, and local organizations by strengthening these organizations’ capacities to design and implement activities in their communities. As an NPI, TwL is managed by a consortium of partners including prime partner, Partners of the Americas (POA), and three core Colombian partners, Fundación Proantioquia, Parque Explora, and Fundación Carvajal.

A key goal of TwL’s is to strengthen core partner’s technical and administrative capacities, making them more self-sufficient and sustainable. To this end, TwL’s prime partner POA uses Collaborating, Learning, and Adapting (CLA) adaptive management and internal collaboration tools and strategies, like pause and reflect sessions, to simultaneously build core partners’ capacities and implement educational initiatives. As a result of its CLA efforts, TwL’s local NPI partners have come together as one team with a shared vision and goals, and they have identified valuable lessons learned for other NPIs, like the importance of inception periods in building relationships between partners and creating cross-organizational teams.