Fiachra Brennan from Comhlámh alongside international colleagues at IVCO 2026, following their session on building sustainable and balanced partnerships beyond capacity building. The conversation highlighted the importance of reciprocity, shared decision-making and recognising local expertise in building partnerships that last.
How can we build more equitable partnerships, and what does it take to sustain them over time?
These questions have been central to conversations on Day 2 of IVCO 2026 in Paris, where colleagues from across the world are exploring how partnerships can strengthen volunteering and contribute to global solidarity.
Trust, reciprocity, inclusion, sustainability and human connection have all emerged as important themes. Alongside discussions about relationships between volunteer-involving organisations, donors and governments, there has been a focus on how we work together, whose knowledge and perspectives are valued, and how we create opportunities for mutual learning.
Comhlámh’s contributions
Fiachra Brennan from Comhlámh presented Rethinking Practice: The Role of Ethical Communications and Critical Literacy for Equitable Partnerships. His presentation explored how members of Comhlámh’s Code of Good Practice for Volunteer Sending Agencies are working with volunteers in Ireland to explore saviourism, anti-racism and cultural sensitivity as part of their training.
The presentation examined how the stories and narratives we encounter shape our understanding of development, international volunteering and our relationships with others. As Fiachra highlighted, in the Global North we have received many strong, single stories about the “poorer” parts of the world, alongside ongoing narratives about “development”, “progress”, “poverty” and people in need of “help”.
These narratives influence how we understand global issues and our own role in addressing them. Questioning them means looking at the assumptions we bring to our partnerships and collaborations, and considering whose perspectives shape our understanding.
Ethical communications is not simply about choosing the right words or images. It is about the values and politics of what is said, written and represented, by whom, in what context, for what purpose and with what effects. The ways we communicate shape how global issues are understood and whose perspectives are heard.
Drawing on critical literacy approaches, Fiachra explored how we can deepen our understanding of local-global connections and become more aware of our own ways of thinking, doing and relating. This includes recognising that we all see the world through our own lenses, shaped by our experiences and backgrounds, and that our knowledge and perspectives are always partial and incomplete.
Rather than treating ethical communications as a checklist of what is right or wrong, this approach creates space for critical reflection, dialogue and mutual learning. It encourages curiosity, humility and openness to questioning our assumptions and learning from perspectives beyond our own.
Fiachra also highlighted the importance of deeper learning and reflection. Toolkits, frameworks and checklists can offer useful guidance, but they cannot replace the work of examining our own assumptions and considering how our perspectives have been shaped. This means being willing to sit with discomfort when familiar ways of thinking are challenged. It is an ongoing process of questioning, listening and learning, and of reflecting not only on how others work, but also on our own practices and positions. As the presentation emphasised, transformation begins with a willingness to be transformed ourselves.
Building partnerships that last
Another key conversation focused on building strong, trust-based partnerships between volunteer-involving organisations, donors and governments. It explored how organisations can develop longer-term strategic relationships, articulate the value of international volunteering and respond to donor and government priorities while maintaining their own missions and values.
Across these discussions, there was a shared recognition that partnership involves more than funding or delivering agreed activities. It requires trust, open communication and an understanding of what each partner brings. It also means recognising differences in power and resources, making space for honest conversations and shared decisions, and learning together as circumstances change.
These are important questions for any organisation working in partnership with governments or donors. They are also questions that feel very close to home at Comhlámh.
For many years, our relationship with Irish Aid has supported not only programmes, but also the wider work that makes values-led international volunteering possible. This includes relationships across the volunteer-sending sector, the Code of Good Practice, spaces for critical reflection and learning, and connections between international volunteering, global citizenship education and solidarity.
With this strategic partnership funding now coming to an end, we are facing important questions about how this work can be sustained.
What happens to the relationships, shared learning and infrastructure that have developed over years of collaboration? And how do we recognise the wider contribution this work makes to civil society and global solidarity?
Funding relationships and organisational priorities inevitably change. But the end of a funding agreement does not mean that the work it supported, or the value built through the relationship, suddenly disappears. There is an opportunity to take stock of what has been learned and to consider what is needed next.
At Comhlámh, our work over more than 50 years has been shaped by relationships across international volunteering, global citizenship education and solidarity. Our Code of Good Practice, our connections with volunteer-sending organisations, and the spaces we create for critical reflection and learning are part of a wider contribution to civil society. They help connect individual experiences of volunteering to questions of power, responsibility, global justice and solidarity.
This is not work that any one organisation does alone. It depends on collaboration across organisations, communities and institutions, and on recognising the value of the shared infrastructure that allows a sector to learn, challenge itself and develop over time.
Looking ahead
As we look towards 2030 and beyond, the conversations at IVCO have been a reminder that equitable partnerships depend on more than shared goals or formal agreements. They require trust, reciprocity, recognition of different forms of knowledge and a willingness to learn from one another.
They also require sustained commitment to the relationships and shared infrastructure that allow this work to develop over time. As partnerships and funding arrangements change, it is important to reflect on what has been built together, what has been learned and what needs to be sustained.
For Comhlámh, these questions remain central to our commitment to values-led international volunteering and global solidarity. The challenge is to carry the learning forward, continuing to build relationships in which people can reflect, question, collaborate and shape the work together.