When Systems Cannot Bend, Opportunities Are Lost

My appreciation of these dynamics was profoundly shaped by my first experience in international development in Somaliland. In the early 2000s, tens of thousands of refugees returned to Somalia after escaping civil war and years of living in refugee camps in neighboring countries. Resettlement facilities were established in Somaliland where people lived in makeshift tents, most absent of schools and with limited access to health services and livelihood. I worked with the community, government and non-governmental organizations to design and launch education services for a refugee community of over 10,000 children and youth. The work required navigating complex realities: developing a curriculum where none existed, identifying and training teachers, working with complex community dynamics, and coordinating with women's groups who advocated fiercely for their children's access to education.

Then 9/11 happened. Funding pipelines froze. Due to potential security risks, international organizations were forced to quickly evacuate and, withdrew. Despite the partnerships we had built and the progress we had made, this valuable project collapsed in the face of unanticipated external events. That experience crystallized for me a question: What if we designed programs and funding structures that could quickly adapt to change?

Exploring a Different Model

Since 2017, Columbia World Projects (CWP) at Columbia Global has operated on one key principle: that complexity is integral to the goal of achieving social impact. The work we support requires interdisciplinary collaboration, diverse external partnerships, and demonstration of measurable outcomes. But our approach values a very important ingredient, that is flexibility. We recognize that making progress requires navigating many factors, including garnering local engagement and commitment, pilot testing various elements, policy dialogue, and iterative learning and adjusting.

Consider Columbia’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Professor Vijay Modi’s project in Uganda, Using Data to Catalyze Energy Investments. The faculty, researchers and students involved in the project developed innovative survey methods, including the layering of satellite imagery, farmer and field surveys, census data and paper maps of water sources to estimate the amount, location, type and purpose of energy that businesses and farmers use in rural Uganda. The project began as a data-sharing initiative with an international agency and then pivoted to work directly with the Ugandan government. That fundamental shift was not simple, yet it was necessary, enabling the government to drive the processes, shape priorities, ensure wider use and eventually utilize the data to make long term strategic decisions about national investments and energy policy. The flexibility that CWP offered illustrated how this can amplify impact.

Another example can be found in Planting Stories: Seeds of the Diaspora, a project led by School of Professional Studies Professor Lynnette Widder in partnership with Professors Anelise Chen from the School of the Arts and Ana Paulina Lee formally of the Columbia University Department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures. Faculty partnered with Columbia Artist/Teachers, a public high school in Manhattan, and the Humanities Institute at New York Botanical Garden. Together they designed and piloted a one-of-its-kind teaching curriculum focused on students’ scientific, creative, and cultural knowledge of plants in New York City. The project aimed to equip students with the tools and knowledge to better understand and share their familial and cultural histories and identities, while facilitating cross-cultural and cross-generational transfer of knowledge and practices.

By bringing together creative writing, oral history, and urban studies, Widder’s team reframed environmental sustainability as a question of identity and belonging. As Widder reflects: "I had never been able to successfully work with faculty outside of my own department and school or with the community. CWP made it possible." This kind of perspective-shifting work rarely emerges within rigid disciplinary or funding boundaries.

What the Evidence Shows

A recent evaluation of CWP’s projects confirmed we were on the right path. It examined how interdisciplinary, partnership-based research translates into tangible outcomes. The evaluation indicated that flexibility and cross-disciplinary collaboration were consistent features of successful efforts. Projects that could adapt to real-world imperatives achieved context-specific results, often strengthening partnerships and institutional ownership in the process.

Mailman School of Public Health Professor Darby Jack is leading a project focused on tackling indoor air pollution in Ghana. He captured what makes the difference: "The amazing thing about working with CWP is the ability to change." This is not about abandoning rigor — the evaluation confirmed that one can maintain the rigor of the research while adjusting to evolving context and new knowledge. Flexibility means intelligent responsiveness to implementation realities.

The evaluation also described how involvement in CWP social impact projects led to professional and academic advancement for faculty, researchers, and students, deepening their commitment to social impact work. The evaluation acknowledged the variables that impact project success that we have documented since CWP's inception: project team and staff turnover, political shifts, bureaucratic hurdles, and funding difficulties. These obstacles are not anomalies — they are inherent features of the landscape in which this type of work often unfolds.

Moving Forward

My experiences over the past 25 years, have shown me that there is another way, that the work that I embarked on many years ago in Somaliland may have survived and served that vulnerable community. The importance of adapting to changing imperatives, to working across boundaries and to offering flexibility to researchers can lead to remarkable research and implementable outcomes.

For funders committed to genuine, sustainable impact, the implications deserve serious consideration. We need funding structures that evaluate success by outcomes achieved rather than by plans rigidly followed. We need evaluation frameworks that recognize intelligent pivoting as evidence of strong leadership and management, not a failure to deliver. We need to resource the partnerships, interdisciplinary collaboration, and adaptive capacity that allow solutions to emerge from and remain responsive to the communities they are meant to serve. My hope is that what we aim for at CWP will pave a new way forward.

Ann Bourns has served as Director, Project Management at Columbia World Projects since 2019. She has spent most of her career working with non-profit and for-profit organizations and universities to support the growth and development of global health and research initiatives.