IUCN, on behalf of the PANORAMA initiative, teamed up with the Small Grants Programme of Germany’s International Climate Initiative (IKI SGP), managed by GIZ, to support knowledge sharing and exchange for IKI SGP implementing organizations.
Both initiatives share a similar target audience, i.e. a strong focus on small grassroots organizations and local initiatives. SGP supports capacity development and knowledge management for their implementing organizations, actively supporting exchange and networking amongst them.
PANORAMA can be integrated into all phases of the granting cycle. For this first joint endeavour, the 2 initiatives collaborated on peer-to-peer solution exchange workshops and sharing flagship success stories through videos.
The online exchange workshops, held in November 2023, brought together over 90 participants, from Bangladesh to South Africa, and from Rwanda to Montenegro. The objective of the workshops was to give participants the opportunity to reflect on their projects and work towards framing their projects as “solutions”; and to exchange and network with each other, potentially building long-term relationships.
The participants identified recurring clusters of key success factors from their projects, including:
- Active engagement of communities
- Deliberate focus on women and other marginalized groups
- Strong partnerships with clear roles, across different levels
- Capacity building
- Using technology
- Valuing traditional knowledge
The workshops were rated as “excellent” or “good” by 90% of participants.
The second activity was designed to empower IKI Small Grants implementing organisations to learn how to tell stories and script writing techniques, so they can develop scripts for short video clips, following the logic of the PANORAMA case study format, i.e. developing a “solution” storyline based on their project. The PANORAMA team interviewed grantees to jointly find the story angle behind their project – what is it that will grasp the attention of viewers, surprise them and pull them into the story? This was the basis for them to self-produce a short video, meant for wide dissemination of the grantees’ great work.
One such story, which has been turned into a final video, is on “Ghost fishing”, produced by Fundación para la investigación y conservación biológica marina (ECOMARES) from Colombia.
The PANORAMA team looks forward to future opportunities for working with the IKI Small Grants Programme and other grant making initiatives to support exchange of knowledge and networking amongst their beneficiaries, as well as visibility for the great results achieved by the grantees through their projects.