A global network of partnership practitioners

Cross-sector partnerships are a well established mechanism for tackling the challenges of sustainable development worldwide. As a result, more and more people are taking on the role of partnership practitioner, carrying the responsibility for ensuring partnerships are innovative, efficient and effective. To get up to speed quickly and ensure access to good practice, this new wave of practitioners requires easy access to support, skills, up-to-date information, courses and connections to other experienced practitioners.

The Partnering Initiative will soon be launching an online forum to support practitioners in their professional development and their efforts to build and run effective cross-sector partnerships for sustainable development. The Forum will also facilitate a collective voice for partnership practitioners and the partnership movement generally. The website will:

• Create a forum for networking and the exchange of knowledge and successful practice
• Provide an online space for research and collaborative working on specific partnering issues or in a particular country which will result in the development of new learning and materials pushing the boundaries of partnering theory and practice
• Provide access to the latest thinking, news, events, information, tools, publications, case studies, awareness-raising presentations, sample partnering agreements etc. through an extensive resource bank
• Provide online learning opportunities
• Report on the current status of partnering practice; collate practitioner opinion and give a voice to partnership practitioners who together form the partnership movement.

The site will be available to a number of communities of practice over the course of the next few months to begin populating it with their knowledge and materials. A basic beta version of the first community of practice on evaluation is now online. We will be adding functionality over the coming months, and look to launch the site fully later in the year.

To sign up now please go to www.partnershipforum.org