Does Collaboration Help?: Asking the Hard Questions

At Chab Dai we have been facilitating collaboration and coordination for years, but is that truly enough? Are we really making a difference?

John Kania and Mark Kramer wrote an article discussing collective impact, a difference made through broad cross-sector coordination, which is exactly what Chab Dai aims for. In this paper they cover three case studies: an education initiative, a conservation project and an effort to reduce childhood obesity, all of these are seen as astounding collaborative successes. They found five commonalities between the efforts, all of which are interesting and pretty simple:

1. Common Agenda

The Millennium Development
Goals, do we need these for
human trafficking? 

2. Shared Measurement System
3. Mutually Reinforcing Activities
4. Continuous Communication
5. A Backbone Support Organization

Now let's assess if Chab Dai, as a coalition, has these characteristics.

1. Common Agenda: Yes! In the most general sense, we are committed to addressing issues of abuse, exploitation and trafficking by working together and providing opportunities for learning.

2. Shared Measurement System: We've developed Chab Dai Charter and Freedom Registry, both of which measure organizational capacity across organizations – Charter through a shared assessment tool and Freedom Registry through documentation of national good practices.

What about shared impact measurement? These are a start, but globally I'd advocate for some type of Millennium Development Goals system for trafficking to get everyone on the same page for at least the first 3 of these 5 aspects. An ambitious goal, but certainly possible.

3. Mutually Reinforcing Activities: Absolutely; coordination and referrals are our specialty.

4. Continuous Communication: In Cambodian culture, collectivism thrives in a formal and informal sense. We achieve this not only through forums, member meetings and emails, but it's the very core of our coalition and Freedom Collaborative project.

5. Backbone Support Organization: We've actually been expanding more and more from coordination support into capacity-building support for our local Khmer member organizations. Freedom Collaborative aims to be a backbone tool for the global movement.

Kevin Bales says only .0043 percent of the global population is affected by human trafficking. That's .0043 percent too much, but it does make the problem seem surmountable. This is something we can eradicate. If, then, we are indeed using a model that is proven to work, why are we still addressing trafficking? Can we move on to another issue?

Well let's look back at those case studies. The education initiative was able to show success in 34 of 53 indicators, which is great but still only a 64% percent success rate. An education initiative, perhaps shouldn't see a D grade as success.  

The conservation project was able to protect and restore 1,000 acres and 27 species are now thriving. However, this took 15 years and included perhaps one of the most powerful partners around, the U.S. Navy's 1,000 acres is also a tiny fraction of the millions of acres of land under threat around the world.

The childhood obesity reduction effort was able, over it's first year, to reduce "approximately one pound of weight gain over 8 months for an 8-year-old child." The effort itself said this result "may seem small."

Now, the conclusion to draw from this is not that collaboration isn't effective or that these case studies are not as successful as they're made out to be. The case studies, and please check them out for yourself, are absolutely impressive and are certainly much more effective than the sum of each stakeholder working independently.

The lesson here is that the work of collaboration addressing any issue is incredibly difficult, and the Chab Dai Coalition is actually doing quite well and more importantly collaboration can make a difference if it's done right. For us, collaboration is difficult in general, which is further compounded by the complexity of trafficking, which is then compounded even further by a Cambodian context with present corruption and lack of resources.

Going up against this, Chab Dai is not just doing well, we are doing really well. Chab Dai, as a previous blog post has mentioned, is a model for countries that are much more developed and are less corrupt than the Kingdom of Wonder, including, from our experience, countries like the U.S. and Canada. If you want further evidence, please check the December 2012 evaluation of our coalition. 

We have seen tremendous growth in our collaborative efforts with other organizations and have witnessed changed lives; empowered women, men and children; educated responses; sustainable opportunities and freedom for thousands. And it has taken the collaboration of NGOs, professionals, practitioners, students, volunteers, the Khmer community and international efforts to get us here. We hope to see more people engage in collective impact in this effort to fight human trafficking.