The Power Awareness Tool
Curious about how power flows in your partnership? The Power Awareness Tool (PAT) guides you through an honest look at decision-making dynamics, helping ensure everyone’s voice is valued and shift power where necessary. Ready to dive in and make power work for your partnership? Click "Start now" to begin your journey!
Why use the Power Awareness Tool?
PAT makes partners aware about power relations in partnerships the PAT focuses specifically on decision-making power in partnerships.
As the name suggests, the PAT makes partners aware of power relations in partnerships by making them visible. In any partnership, decision-making power can be a silent yet critical factor. Who gets to decide what and how can make or break a collaboration. The Power Awareness Tool (PAT) helps you shine a light on these dynamics and explore how power can be shifted while ensuring that all partners are involved.
This is necessary because in many partnerships for development, donors and international NGOs have too much power, and local NGOs in the Global South too little. There is widespread agreement that this should change. Despite this consensus, the power imbalances persist. Apparently, it is hard to put the principles into practice. Therefore, Partos developed the Power Awareness Tool. By using the PAT, you'll be able to:
- Identify crucial decision-making topics and who holds decision-making power in your partnership.
- Avoid misunderstandings and frictions that can undermine your collaboration.
- Have open and honest discussions about decision-making processes.
- Agree on how to involve all partners in decision-making in a way that works for everyone.
The PAT doesn't dictate how you should make decisions - that's up to you and your partners. Instead, it empowers you to have a clear and open-minded conversation about power dynamics, leading to a stronger and more effective partnership.
How it works
There is widespread consensus that in partnerships for development, donors, and international NGOs have too much power, and local NGOs in the Global South too little. Despite this consensus, the power imbalances persist. Apparently, it is hard to put the principles into practice. Those with the most power, usually the donors, and to a lesser extent the INGOs, are not always the most knowledgeable about the local situation or about the change needed and how. While there is broad consensus on this, power imbalances persist. We believe this is partly because power is in many ways elusive. Therefore, Shift-The-Power-Lab developed the Power Awareness Tool
New ways of Collaboration
We do this by tackling the problem of power imbalances between civil society organisations, moving from top-heavy and top-down systems of international development and philanthropy towards a flatter and more equitable paradigm of people-based development. Under the Shift the Power Lab 2.0, Partos is scaling its efforts to accelerate the power dynamics shift within international development cooperation by co-creating practical solutions for systems change.
Frequently asked questions
Everything you need to know about the Power Awareness Tool (PAT)
Highlights
For Members
Most read
Contact
- The Hague Humanity Hub Fluwelen Burgwal 58 2511 CJ The Hague
- +3120 32 09 901
info@partos.nl - KVK 34214586 RSIN 813990646
