Systemic Interventions
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
One of the strategies carried out by several development initiatives and projects to become more self-sustainable is to foster interventions that are as systemic as possible.
An intervention is systemic when it tries to address problems by taking their different causes into account, while addressing the needs and interests of all those involved (both globally and locally, in the present and in the long term). In a school, for instance, a systemic intervention would consider the students and teachers, as well as the learning contents and materials, the nutritional conditions of the children, the safety of the area, the conditions of the infrastructure, and so on. In other words, an intervention is systemic when it tries to identify, take into account and address all aspects and characters of the ecosystem that contribute to the problem it is working on, with the intention of forging deep-seated solutions rather than superficial ones.
When development projects respond more systemically to problems, their solutions are more holistic and relevant to more people (not just a few). This also encourages community participation and cooperation at the local level, increasing the self-sustainability of initiatives.
One way in which some initiatives make their interventions more systemic is by collaborating with other development projects or forming networks so that their interventions can cover more areas (education, health, infrastructure…) and support each other. Others create mechanisms such as participatory diagnoses, co-management or decentralization dynamics, which help different contributors participate and express their interests or needs, as well as the aspects they believe the problem is related to or the ways in which the problems could be solved in a more systemic way. Still others decide to work not only with the sector of their interest (such as children or the elderly, for example), but also with their families or communities in order to better serve them by transforming their environment.
Actually, there are many different ways to achieve more systemic interventions to make a project more self-sustainable. Take a look at how these initiatives have done it!
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