Approach
We believe that to be effective and sustainable, technical or strategic support must be client-driven: the client must ultimately be able to carry out needs assessment, evaluate available services and choose providers, and mobilize resources to finance interventions. Only in this way can the client retain autonomy and decision-making power, as well as "ownership" (responsibility for the outcome of the project).
zeGOgroup aims to contract directly with clients (countries, sectors, organizations) and can also assist them where necessary to mobilize funding, including through innovative or lesser-known mechanisms such as basket funding, grant pooling, CSR...
Our approach is both a complement to and a continuation of one-off, short-term and "emergency" interventions. We look at all components and aspects of support required to strengthen entire systems. We believe that strengthening systems sustainably can only be achieved through tailormade, holistic interventions co-developed with the client and carried out over time.
Technical support: the current model
Technical support tends to be offered on a supply-driven ("push") basis by expert professionals - for private hire in the corporate world, in developing countries usually provided free of charge by donors - in response to urgent or short-term needs (unsatisfactory results, audits or investigations, grant proposal or strategic plan writing, development of corrective actions in the case of management or operational shortcomings.)
This type of support, while providing a necessary – even vital – lifeline in emergency situations, is rarely followed up by more systemic or long-term interventions, which would enable sustainable building of client and systems capacity. This tends to lead to a pattern of recurrent interventions with similar (even identical) objectives, and foster dependence on external expertise.
Our response
zeGOgroup is the result of the combined experience of its four founders, from very different backgrounds but with the same passionate commitment to systems development and empirical research through hands-on fieldwork.
Our vision also stems from our extensive experience of emergency and short-term interventions as well as longer term systems strengthening assignments, in both public and private sectors worldwide. While acknowledging the need for effective crisis management assistance, we believe that a more holistic and sustained approach to technical support is also necessary.
Our approach is therefore 100% client-centric: we work with our clients to co-create their technical support plan, assess the service offer, choose and source providers, mobilize and manage funding, achieve sustainable results and skills building.
