Strategy
Supras’ strategy is an operationalization of its Vision. For details on how the strategy is implemented, see the Profile. Regarding how the strategy relates to and reflects organization and staffing, see page Staff and Consultants.
The approach
The strategy is built around an integrated and interdisciplinary approach to social analysis, knowledge management and strategic communication. Social analysis is here understood as a conceptual framework aimed at pointing towards specific aspects or parts of society in order to study them and provide guidance on, for example, poverty reduction in connection with projects and investment operations. Knowledge management is a structured approach to managing, producing, disseminating, analyzing and using relevant knowledge and information, increasingly made possible and facilitated by use of computers and ICTs. Strategic communication amounts to getting the right knowledge to the right stakeholder at the right time and with the right effect. The integration of these there amount to, first, a means for assessing the situation in, for example, a project area, and, second, to assess and determine relevant and optimal strategic partnerships aimed at implementing interventions and reaching goals.
It is fundamental to our way of operating to collaborate closely with all relevant stakeholders in civil society, the public sector and the private sector. Following from Supras’ Vision, the local people — that is, the beneficiaries — is a key stakeholder category to approach and involve. Local people should come out of a development intervention not just with their lives and subsistence base at the same level as before the intervention, but they should benefit from it.
A key part of the strategy is to locate and involve local relevant capacity and expertise. It is, furthermore, to train local people where necessary. Supras’ approach to keeping in touch with its former short-term consultants is to include them in a roster of local consultants and experts in various fields, and to involve them in operational activities whenever feasible (for roster members see Consultants).
The goals with the overall engagement is, on the one hand, increased participation and, on the other hand, capacity- and network-building. Underlying this engagement is a concern with achieving co-management, inclusion, networking, sharing and transparency.
The tools
The tools and means employed range from social analysis (including social assessment and stakeholder analysis), knowledge sharing and knowledge production, network analysis, participatory approaches and poverty and social impact analysis, to strategic communication, Information and Communication Technologies (specifically Internet and email) and use of advanced technologies like GIS and GPS.