ADELANTE Programme Knowledge Bank

Creating a public repository of triangular cooperation learning

ADELANTE is the European Union flagship programme on triangular cooperation, launched in 2015 with a budget of over 10 million euros. Its mission is to foster horizontal relations between countries in Latin America and the Caribbean and those in Europe, while encouraging them to exchange knowledge and take advantage of their partners’ capacities to promote sustainable development in the region. The European Commission launched a call for proposals and co-financed eight projects that involve 54 organizations from 18 Latin American and Caribbean countries, as well as several European institutions. 

The eight triangular cooperation ADELANTE projects target various issues and countries, with the participation of all types of actors. These projects have contributed significantly to the region's sustainable development and have generated valuable sectoral and cross-cutting learning. The eight projects contribute directly to 9 SDGs and 27 targets. Significant contributions have been made to SDG 16 on peace, justice and strong institutions. Notable contributions have also been made to SDG 1 on poverty, SDG 10 on reduced inequalities and SDG 17 on partnerships, which are pillars of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and cornerstones of the ADELANTE Programme. Special attention is also paid to SDG 5 on gender equality. 

All stakeholders worked together to collect, analyse and share the knowledge harnessed during the four years of the ADELANTE Programme in a systematic and user-friendly format. An online repository with 28 components was created in order to share evidence of the added value, success stories and lessons learned from triangular cooperation initiatives to address organizational, sectoral and development challenges. 

The joint exercise was structured around a knowledge management methodology that had been applied in previous development cooperation contexts. The Programme engaged a team of European and Latin American knowledge management experts to help guide the process and make the necessary methodological adaptations to reflect the triangular nature of the Programme and its projects. These included variables to assess learning in terms of increasing flexibility, building successful partnerships or sharing knowledge and solutions. 

Using this methodology, the Programme identified three types of knowledge: success stories, best practices and lessons learned. 

Success stories are 'ways of doing' that have generated positive results and could be replicated in other projects to achieve the same results. These pieces of knowledge offer a summary of the case, including objectives, impacts, the critical success factors and the added value for a triangular cooperation approach. 

Best practices are reports on achievements that highlight the critical success factors necessary to achieve them. In all cases, these practices could inspire other projects during the identification and formulation phases. 

Lessons learned are experiences about events that occurred during the development of a project that were useful in its dissemination and reuse. The lessons from ADELANTE projects surfaced during their implementation but provide valuable data to consider throughout the project cycle. 

The ADELANTE Programme management team launched this initiative; provided the methodology; and edited, consolidated and published the Knowledge Bank. However, the project coordinators and partners took charge of identifying, analysing and systematizing the knowledge that originated from their projects. As such, the Knowledge Bank comprises 28 records that highlight interesting elements that are important to the success of a project, such as: