Working culture

In pursuing its objectives, the ProVention Consortium was driven by a fundamental belief that certain approaches can and will help catalyse progress and inspire and enable ProVention partners to better promote the risk reduction agenda in the far greater number of international, regional, national, and local settings in which they are working. These included:

• Innovation The multi-stakeholder nature of the Consortium provided a rich setting for identifying and responding to critical gaps in disaster risk management. The Consortium therefore promoted innovative practices and stimulated groundbreaking research and learning to help inform and set the global agenda on disaster reduction.
• Flexibility As the needs of the ProVention stakeholders often evolved quickly over time, the Consortium had to respond and adapt swiftly to emerging disaster risk reduction issues. Thanks to its flexible nature and its light decision making structure ProVention was able to adapt its work plan and set of activities when needed.
• Informality ProVention was perceived by its partners as an informal space where different stakeholders could exchange information, assess their own institution’s performance, and discuss innovative and often controversial ideas aiming at an open and though-provoking debate.
• Inclusiveness Addressing the challenges to implement effective risk reduction measures often requires the involvement of a broad range of actors, including policy-makers, local governments, civil society, the private sector, researchers and others. ProVention seeked to advance the risk reduction agenda by involving diverse sets of stakeholders from the beginning in exploring and promoting innovative solutions and collaborations.
• Independence ProVention provided a space for addressing key issues in an independent and autonomous manner, balancing the needs and interests of a wide variety of stakeholders.