Training for Transformation: Building Multi-Stakeholder Competences in Public Administration

Event Type
Side Event Hamburg Sustainability Conference

Location / Date
Hamburg, 02.06.2025 until 06.06.2025

Managing Global Governance Training and Learning

The MGG Training and Learning Side Event to the Hamburg Sustainability Conference will focus on multi-stakeholder processes. The Hamburg Sustainability Conference challenges barriers to SDG implementation with a systemic approach. It is driven by the vision that reaching the SDGs requires interdisciplinary and trustful collaboration among the international community. The conference aims to foster new partnerships and collective action of those who are willing to commit to action.

In direct continuation of the Hamburg Sustainability Conference, the MGG workshop on multi-stakeholder processes aims to reflect upon the HSC from a multi-stakeholder perspective and implement learnings on MSP directly in the area of training and learning in the public sector. This interactive workshop brings together professionals engaged in multi-stakeholder processes as well as experts from schools of public administration and other training institutions for civil servants. The overarching aim of the workshop is to identify leverage points to strengthen the competences of civil servants to successfully design and implement multi-stakeholder processes.

Systemic approaches including a diversity of knowledge, perspectives and actors are key for sustainable development. Multi-stakeholder processes hold great potential to enhance mutual learning, integrate diverse perspectives, and develop more inclusive and effective solutions. At the same time, they pose practical challenges — such as managing conflicting interests, navigating power dynamics, and ensuring long-term engagement. Leveraging the potential of diversity is ambitious and needs a specific set of competences.

This workshop is structured along four main elements: It starts with exploring the challenges of multi-stakeholder processes and identifying best practices (1). This feeds into the identification of specific sets of competences that are needed to successfully design and implement multi-stakeholder processes (2). In a next step, existing activities of schools of public administration and other training institutions are discussed: to which extent do they support key competences for multi-stakeholder engagement, where are gaps, what are leverage points to improve the training provided for civil servants? (3) At the end of the workshop, participants design concrete activities to improve the competence development for multi-stakeholder processes in the various schools of public administration and training institutions (4).

Throughout the workshop, special emphasis is put on informal exchange and mutual learning. The workshop offers a space to share real-life examples, identify barriers, and brainstorm concrete actions to enhance competence development. It is also an opportunity to assess the need for additional offerings—be it train-the-trainer formats, leadership sensitization, or curriculum innovations. Ultimately, this exchange will help to further shape the shared agenda for strengthening the public sector’s role in driving effective multi-stakeholder collaboration for sustainable development.

The conference is organised by the German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS) in the framework of the Managing Global Governance (MGG) programme with financial support from the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the Ministry of Science and Culture of the State of North-Rhine Westphalia.

Hinweis

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