Approach
System change
Woord en Daad is dedicated to sustainably improving the lives of vulnerable people, ensuring a dignified existence for all. We continuously seek new opportunities and collaboration to achieve this goal by being dynamic and adaptable as organisation. Our focus is on systemic change, working in multi-stakeholder partnerships with our southern partners, governments, businesses, civil society organizations, churches, faith-based organizations, and knowledge institutes to maximize impact. Our diversified donor base enables us to blend finances, mitigate risks, and maintain independence in our operations.
Southern leadership and shared power
Woord en Daad is committed to fostering Southern Leadership in all our partnerships, embracing a collaborative model where power and decision-making are shared equitably. Our development approach is rooted in ongoing dialogue with Southern partners, recognising their unique insights, representation and leadership in shaping impactful strategies within their local contexts. By engaging in alliances and public-private partnerships, we ensure that Southern actors are positioned at the forefront, playing significant roles in setting agendas, developing strategies, selecting partners, informing funding guidelines and criteria, and leading business development. This commitment to shared power enhances the effectiveness of our joint mission and reflects our core values of stewardship, co-responsibility, and mutual respect.
Co-creation and adaptive programming
In our role as broker, we draw together focused teams of thematic experts from both the Global North and South to conduct in-depth context analysis, drive innovation and develop targeted intervention concepts. We enrich these processes with continuous monitoring, learning and a documented track record of effective strategies. Our proactive involvement in driving impact is supported by a robust knowledge-base on country-specific sectors and a commitment to data-driven analysis and sharing, which bolsters the partnerships we engage in. Across all our initiatives and solutions, we maintain an explicit learning agenda to guide our documentation of effective strategies and enhance our impact.
Data-informed
We continuously invest in further strengthening a data-informed way of working. We aim to have relevant high-quality data, in an adequate format and available in a timely manner for our teams and the system actors we partner with, as a basis for steering, learning and accountability. We also aspire to provide end users (e.g. farmers, teachers and communities) with relevant data to guide their daily management decisions. To this end we apply a variety of existing IT solutions and we strategically invest in new IT solutions that leverage the latest technological advancements, especially where current IT options are lacking. In alignment with our AI principles, we also leverage artificial intelligence responsibly to support our work, ensuring that it upholds our ethical standards and contributes to our mission. Our primary focus is on IT and AI applications that enhance the impact of our solutions and also deepen engagement with our supporter base. In alignment with our AI principles, we also leverage artificial intelligence responsibly to support our work, ensuring that it upholds our ethical standards and contributes to our mission.
Engaging our constituency in the Netherlands
Our commitment to serving and engaging our supporter base is central to the work we do. For our networks of committed volunteers, individual sponsors, companies, churches, thrift shops and strategic partners we aim to be the preferred and trusted partner in bringing compassion and justice to life. To achieve this, we are investing in responsive partnering – actively listening to the needs and preferences of our supporters and partners, pro-actively collecting feedback and facilitating meaningful engagement. Our goal is to create impactful partnerships that resonate both in the South and the North, driving positive change across all our initiatives.