A COLLECTIVE IMPACT APPROACH: WORKING BETTER TOGETHER IN THE REFUGEE & MIGRATION CONTEXT IN GREECE.
When Hello Greece kicked off in May 2019, the programme team set out to explore in depth and create a mapping of initiatives, services, organisations and projects in the refugee and migration sector in Greece.
It quickly became apparent that Greece, in response to the increasing refugee crisis that the country had been experiencing since 2015, had become a hive of innovation and activity in the migration space, with the civil society leading the effort and quickly adapting to the changing needs of the arriving displaced populations.
However, at the same time, delving deeper into the dynamics through a series of deep dive workshops, some significant systemic issues arose, which hinder the effectiveness and efficiency of any attempted responses to the crisis:
In essence, the refugee and migration sector in Greece is characterised by a significant lack of coordination, collaboration and co-creation of solutions between all relevant actors across the public, social, civil, academic, philanthropic and private sector as well as the affected local and migrant communities. Therefore, there is no coherent collective strategy in place to effectively tackle the complex challenges of the migration/refugee crisis in Greece, whilst important stakeholders end up competing for funding and legitimacy, leading to a dramatically fragmented, unsustainable and “siloed” landscape.
In response, Hello Greece partnered with German Fellow Daniel Kerber, Founder and CEO of More Than Shelters (MTS) in order to research and co-create a strategic plan that works to systematically untangle and deeply comprehend systemic dynamics (at all levels - in the frontline, the institutional level, locally, nationally and cross-nationally) and then to co-design, test, iterate and implement impactful solutions, whilst deeply engaging and partnering with organisations and decision-makers from across the public, social, philanthropic, academic and private sectors but also most importantly, the beneficiaries themselves.
One key goal of the resulting strategic plan that has been devised is to also provide more impactful and effective solutions for funding partners, as the team strongly believes that their resources should be better invested in solutions that not only are really needed but ones that have been developed in an agile and human-centred manner as well as with viability and sustainability in mind. Therefore, what MTS & Hello Greece propose through their initiative are new formats of linking donors directly with the communities impacted and taking them along this journey with them as co-creators and key decision-makers.
In order to be able to proceed and pilot this approach, the joint partnership of Hello Greece and MTS is currently seeking to raise the necessary funding. If you are interested in partnering or learning more about the initiative, please reach out to Margarita Maniati (mmaniati@ashoka.org) and Daniel Kerber (dk@morethanshelters.com).
