Our call for greater collaboration in tough times
Collaboration: Noun – ‘The action of working with someone to produce something’
Collaboration is a key tool that businesses have used in the past to help become more sustainable, intertwine with technology, build their appeal to new markets and more. We have numerous examples that we can go by such as Uber X Spotify and how they were able to improve the customer experience, Coca Cola X Heinz coming together to develop more sustainable containers, Puma X Adidas X Innovalley collaborating to create intelligent sportswear and accessories – the list goes on.
Some of the common denominators that comes along with collaborations between organisations are clear to see –
Collaboration
- Helps us problem solve
- Brings people and organisations closer together
- Helps people learn from each other
- Opens up new channel for communication
In the sector that we are working in (Community/Social development*) and the role of trying to help young people find work, I think is paramount that we adopt these techniques and stick to them whole fully – more specifically to Southwark.
A positive example of an experience that we had in the pipelines pre-COVID 19 was when we were going to be working with Raw Music Material & Spotlight 1st in 3 different areas. The areas revolved around Music, Photography and Event management with the young people taking full control and mentors from each organisation that was involved. Although COVID regulations made us rethink the way we are going to work with these young people – it is great to know that we have 15 keen young people who can learn while the organisations build a link with each other.
Flip side to this though – I raise the argument that stands deep on our doorstep as to why I should have to send these young people to another borough to engage with these studios. Working in Southwark and taking into consideration the thoughts of ‘Post Code Wars’ – I felt a way about the safeguarding element for these youngsters. Most of the time, the sessions when we planned them out would have been occurring in the evening between 6 – 9pm so travelling to and from the facility left me slightly uneasy thinking of how we could get people home safely every evening had it gone ahead.
By collaborating within Southwark to begin with on these projects – it allows us to work more efficiently as a community and also will allow us all to boom in the sector creating pathways for the young in the future. One thing that we have to consider heavily is that we are dealing with young peoples lives and if we really want the best – we need to put their needs before our organisations personal agendas (plus, funding applications work better when we can show that we can work collaboratively on these type of projects).
Call to action –
I would personally like to see us working together in Southwark in a wider and broader way to bring about the change that we want for the area – especially for those who are the future of our community. As mentioned with the points in the beginning of this post, collaborating can open doors for many bridges and positive pathways for organisations in the area.
Lets work together and make things happen in all industries.
Written by Steven Davies
