One Good Idea for Better Collaborating, Learning and Adapting

At a global organization, bridging the gap between day-to-day of program implementation and more systematic reflection, documentation of lessons learned and dissemination of knowledge is challenging, particularly for organizations such as Global Communities, which operates in more than 20 countries across Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East. Opportunities are few and far between to bring field teams together to share ideas and learn from each other.

One Good Idea, an internal competition to spur knowledge capture and spark discussion resulting in widespread and useful dissemination, has fueled Collaborating, Learning and Adapting on a broad scale. Importantly, its conception, roll-out and follow-through has been deliberate at each step of the way to ensure broad participation, staff engagement up and down the ladder, and most importantly deliver a successful platform to capture innovation and translate these into organizational models. This has required significant investment in time, resources and internal funding.

The competition’s initial award entailed adapting a proven model for Youth Local Councils (YLCs) on behalf of Global Communities’ Palestine team for its Honduran counterparts. With engagement from both field teams as well as support from Headquarters including Executive Management, this One Good Idea has made its way from the Middle East to Latin America—and in the process prompted a level of self-reflection and eventual collaboration among disparate teams that, in and of itself, has inspired our organization.