By Bojan Fürst

The world is complicated. Navigating through its challenges and solving the problems we encounter along the way is rarely something any of us can do on our own. 

Partnerships are the obvious solution to tackling complex problems, but we often forget that building a partnership is a skill in itself. It is also a skill that we don't pay much attention to until we need it - usually desperately.

Where do you even start? Who do you partner with? How do you start the engagement process? How do you determine appropriate roles? How do you ensure that all partners feel valued and become a part of a solution? What do you do when the project is over, and the partnership has come to an end?

You can find the answers to all of those questions in an online training module called a "A start-to-finish guide to building and navigating partnerships" developed by Research Impact Canada (RIC). The module is available on the RIC's educational platform and you can access it for free at https://researchimpact.ca/kmb_resource/a-start-to-finish-guide-to-building-and-navigating-partnerships/.

The module will provide you with a step-by-step guide to partnership building and help you understand how to create strong, fulfilling partnerships whatever the field you work in.

Bojan Fürst is the Knowledge Mobilization Manager with the Leslie Harris Centre of Regional Policy and Development at Memorial University of Newfoundland. It’s a complicated way of saying that his job is to match community needs with university resources. He also hosts Rural Routes, a podcast that explores what it means to be "rural" in the 21st century.