Standard Chartered's 'Seeing is Believing' initiative launches case study

15 February 2010

A partnership launched by Standard Chartered seven years ago is the subject of a case study by IBLF’s The Partnering Initiative. This offers an opportunity for other would-be corporate or NGO sectors partners to learn about the challenges and the solutions arrived at that have made this partnership both dynamic and successful.

Click here to download the case study.

Seven years ago, Standard Chartered Bank launched Seeing is Believing as a staff initiative to address blindness in parts of the developing world where the Bank had a presence. The programme is now a multi-partner, large-scale and ambitious project involving several international and national NGOs working at local levels.

It has raised a total of $17m and impacted the lives of 8 million individuals and is targeting to raise a further $20m to develop comprehensive eye care for 20 million people in underprivileged urban areas. By the end of 2012, it will have raised $40m for eye care in the developing world.

The programme has been written up by IBLF’s Partnering Initiative and produced as a learning case study with a focus on the Bank’s collaboration with the International Agency for Prevention of Blindness (IAPB).

Hosted by Richard Meddings, Finance Director of Standard Chartered, an event marked the launch the case study in London, giving a group of international NGOs and other development agencies the chance to hear the story first-hand.

The session, facilitated by Ros Tennyson, Director of Partnership Programmes at IBLF, was built around a conversation between the lead partners.

“The invitation from Standard Chartered was to use the Seeing is Believing project as a way of teasing out lessons that could be useful to others in the corporate or NGO sectors seeking to collaborate to achieve sustainable development goals. The case study offers insights for everyone trying to work on corporate / NGO collaboration programmes. It is not often one has the opportunity to ‘get inside’ the realities of a sustainable development partnership”, explained Ros.

The overarching concept of the project in 2003 identified by Bank staff worldwide as a key and neglected issue in many of their markets – was simple: raise funds to develop comprehensive eye care in the developing world. The implementation has been far more complex: over the course of 7 years it has shifted from a philanthropic venture into an initiative that is clearly aligned with the Bank’s primary business.

The case study records the achievements of the collaboration’s activity – consistently exceeding fundraising targets, a successful employee engagement programme, and aligning with global strategies on eye care. This is not solely a story of success. The complexity of this multi-partner initiative has proved challenging for all involved – how to work with an organisation or sector who’s culture is very different from your own, how to reach agreements on the scope of the project, how to reach scale in a relatively short timeframe and how to keep the activity globally communicated but locally appropriate.

This case study is focused on capturing the lessons for all those involved in running partnerships worldwide. It is an attempt to present a balanced insight into a high-achieving project alongside a more critical analysis of an on-going partnership tackling the kinds of issues that so many cross-sector partnerships face on a daily basis.

“We are considering…perhaps expanding the project by working with other corporates in some form of federation – expansion by the multiplication of the model by others. We have created a model that woks – it would be good for others to see it and to adopt or adapt it to achieve equivalent goals”, suggested Richard Meddings.

Related links

For more information on Seeing is Believing: http://www.seeingisbelieving.org.uk/

For more information about The Partnering Initiative: www.thepartneringinitiative.org