Mapping Participants and Resources
a strategy for self-sustainability
More self-sustainability means having more autonomy and less reliance on external funding, expertise or decisions. It means having a larger capacity to choose and negotiate with other initiatives what’s best for your project and what’s not. It means an increasingly equitable participation, which will lead to development models that are more comprehensive and relevant for all, that is, more sustainable. Know more
Several development initiatives increase their self-sustainability by taking the time to spot and make note of all the resources at their disposal –whether material or human, local or external.
When a development project is very clear about its resources, it can better plan how to make the best use of them and how best to manage them: an inventory clarifies what the initiative already has and what it lacks to solve their target development problem comprehensively. In addition, a resource log can help answer other very important questions for project self-sustainability: do all resources come from a single or from a few sources? Are there more external resources or more local resources at hand? How can dependence on external resources be reduced? How can local resources be better leveraged or strengthened? This process helps assess how much need there is to broaden and diversify the project’s sources of support.
For all these reasons, several initiatives create logs or lists in which they register all the resources at their disposal, including knowledge, work, local engagement, materials, infrastructure, financial contributions, etc. Others organize participatory diagnoses to spot, together with the communities they work with, not only the problems to be solved but also the resources available to do so (some, for example, use geographic maps to visualize the priorities, needs and resources of each region). Still others invite external audits to get new perspectives and identify the totality of their sources of support. Still others prepare accountability reports or appoint teams to design, maintain and update logs and inventories.
This catalog can be very useful for negotiating with external partners on more equitable terms. Some also use it to enter into matching fund agreements in which all or several of these local resources are “matched” financially by a donor or government interested in promoting their projects. Others use this information to encourage entrepreneurship projects and create exchange systems that leverage these resources. And some others to clarify the type of consultancies, collaborations or feedback they need to solve the problems they are working on.
There are many different ways to build self-sustainability by listing project participants and resources. Take a look at how these initiatives have done it!
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