Empowering Collaboration for Climate Resilience with IDRC: The CLARExchange Forum 2023

The Context: Nurturing the Culture of CLARE

Inclusive Innovation partnered with the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC) to host a dynamic series of virtual learning and exchange workshops as part of the CLARExchange Forum 2023.

CLARE [https://clareprogramme.org/], CLimate Adaptation & REsilience, is a £110m, UK-Canada framework research programme on Climate Adaptation and Resilience, aiming to enable socially inclusive and sustainable action to build resilience to climate change and natural hazards. Research supported by CLARE is bridging critical gaps between science and action: developing new tools and supporting partner governments, communities, and the private sector to use evidence and innovation to drive effective solutions to the climate challenge, whilst building ability of both those carrying out the research and those using the resulting evidence.

Purpose and Objectives

With a cohort of CLARE-supported research projects starting in 2023, the CLARExchange Forum was conceived to encourage project teams to come together online and immerse themselves in the culture of CLARE by…

• Knowledge Exchange & Networking: Providing opportunities for connections and networking among different projects’ team members to share their respective work, innovations and intended impact (in both English and French languages).
  

• Surfacing Opportunities for Collaboration: Engaging the broader CLARE community in discussions on cross-cutting elements of the program (such as research for impact, common research questions, capacity strengthening, and gender equality and inclusion) in order to begin surfacing entry points for potential collaborations.
  

• Learning and peer exchange: To encourage projects to showcase elements of their work that could benefit others engaged in the programme and support concrete learning outcomes.

"Working with Inclusive Innovation is what made it possible for CLARE to run CLARExchange as an inclusive opportunity for a wide range of team members working on different projects to share and engage early in the program, and in a way that is mindful of our carbon footprint. We were so impressed with their motivated and positive responses to every challenge we brought to them!" Hayley Price-Kelly, Senior Program Officer IDRC

People Involved

The CLARExchange Forum brought together:

• A large group of diverse and international team members across CLARE-supported research projects.
  

• Representatives from the UK Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office (FCDO) and Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC).
  

These stakeholders collaborated to ensure the event aligned with CLARE’s vision of driving inclusive and sustainable climate resilience.

"The facilitation was excellent with clear guidance on the agenda, moving to and from breakout groups, use of the Storm boards, and what to expect. It was a significant time commitment to participate and the facilitation made it that much more worthwhile and easy to have inclusive participation across the many teams/time zones." - Julie, Canada

Workshop Process

Through meticulous planning and collaboration with IDRC and FCDO colleagues, the CLARExchange took place over three sessions in November 2023 and successfully allowed participants to engage with all elements of the program. Critically, we ensured the agenda was designed to be flexible and varied in format, activity and interactivity to ensure that all participants (no matter the collaboration style preference, timezone or language) could engage fully with the content.

As a result 176 guests joined us live across the Forum, spending over 881 collective working hours collaborating and exchanging knowledge and energy with each other!

"I really liked having the opportunity to hear about other projects and connect to a large number of project participants. Additionally, this was one of the smoothest and most well-run online events I have attended. Hats off to the CLARExchange team for their excellent work!" - Anon.

"Thank you for the great effort in organizing CLARExchange 2023. Truly innovative and participatory. I feel your care in how it was designed, implemented and followed-through. I hope there is another in 2024. Merci beaucoup!" Rowena, Philippines

——– The UK is the majority funder of CLARE, providing 85% of the ‘CLARE Research’ funding and funding CLARE Services and Partnerships. Canada’s IDRC provides 15% match-funding towards CLARE Research and is its main delivery partner. Both organisations work closely to set the strategic and technical directions of the initiative.