In Oxford recently, a modest meeting room designed for forty people ran out of chairs. We had to keep bringing more in.
It happened during a side conversation at the Skoll World Forum that week. But the moment stuck with me for a reason that went beyond simple overcrowding.
Partnership has been discussed for years. What's becoming obvious now is that it can't stay as a coordination exercise between institutions.
"It has to become a shared way of working, where institutions are willing to align, to trust, and in some cases, to step back," someone in that room said.
For years, those working where climate, health and gender intersect have done this work quietly. It wasn't always a defined sector or funded priority—it was just lived reality.
Communities never experience these problems separately. A flooded road becomes a health crisis when it stops a woman reaching the clinic.
Without power, a facility can't save newborn lives. A failed harvest isn't just environmental—it changes everything about how families eat and survive.
Yet our institutions treat them as separate issues. Our funding structures do.
Our language does too.
What I witnessed in that crowded room was different. Not a breakthrough, but a shift in focus.
Funders, implementers, researchers and policymakers were having the same conversation. They weren't debating whether these connections matter anymore—they were asking what actually works to respond to them.
That's an important distinction. The work itself isn't new.
What's new is taking it seriously and building around it together.
Development finance is moving—slowly but measurably—toward a system-wide approach. Institutions are recognizing that real impact doesn't happen in isolation.
But this shift demands honesty about what it actually requires.
First, we must stay close to the real problem. The most effective work I've seen doesn't come from perfect programme designs.
It comes from people responding to what's directly in front of them. Installing solar power at health clinics so care continues at night.
Mapping thousands of facilities to find actual gaps.
Designing tools with the people who use them, not for them. These are practical solutions to real conditions—not abstract ideas.
Second, we need to rethink what we mean by community.
Usually, we list community as one stakeholder among many. But that gets it backwards.
Community is the design team. The most resilient solutions are shaped from the start by those closest to the problem.
When that doesn't happen, intention and reality drift apart quickly. The gap widens faster than anyone expects.
Third, we must speak precisely about women in this work.
Too often, women get framed as vulnerable people who need help. But in most places, women are already holding the system up.
They're the health workers. They're the carers.
They're making impossible daily decisions that keep families and communities functioning. Recognizing this changes everything about how we approach the work.
