The ‘good’ of good practices

With IDEAS we would like to present a palette of 45 practices that have proven to be successful, for reasons of effectiveness and efficiency. So often initiatives, programs are seen as good practices but less often mentioned why the practice is good. What makes them successful and what have good practices achieved in the first place and impacted in the second place. Proven success cannot be seen separately from impact. Especially when initiatives were developed to improve social cohesion and have social change as aim. Underrepresentation nowadays is not only a concern from a social justice standpoint but also have political and economic impact on an institutional, regional, national and global level.

With good practices we have the following in mind:

  • good practices that have proven their success in terms of time, in fact survived policy and political changes and are part of the mainstream services and programs of institutions and regions. These examples can be seen as good practices because of the impact they created. These practices often have intended and unintended outcomes and impact;good practices that have proven their success in terms of measurable results and have successful qualitative outcomes;
  • good practices that are efficient apart from being effective because they can be replicated in a fairly short time with a limited amount of resources;
  • good practices that have proven their success in a rather short timespan but have the potential to grow to a long term sustainable success;
  • good practices that are innovative in their aims & way of implementation. Innovative because of of content, political and regional context, funding mechanisms and innovative in terms of mission and vision. Practices that dare to challenge organisations by touching upon sensitive issues that are often part of initiatives to improve inequities in society.
  • good practices that support the visibility of and success of groups that have not only been underrepresented were invisible in many ways because of a lack of acknowledgement and visibility for instance indigenous groups