here - Tamarack CCI

The Case for Multisectoral Collaboration
There are many interconnected reasons why adverse social conditions like poverty, or crime, or
environmental degradation exist. Rarely can any of those conditions be changed by altering one
single variable. In poor families, for example, each problem magnifies the impact of the others.
A ll of the problems are so intertwined that one negative change can produce a chain reaction,
the results impacting on all aspects of life.
A run-down apartment can exacerbate a child’s asthma, which leads to a call for an
ambulance, which generates a medical bill which can not be paid, which ruins a credit
record, which hikes the interest on an auto loan, which forces the purchase of an
unreliable used car, which jeopardizes a mother’s punctuality at work, which limits her
promotions and earning capacity, which confines her to poor housing.
The poor have less control than the affluent over their private decisions, less insulation
from the cold machinery of government, less agility to navigate the pitfalls of a frenetic
world driven by technology and competition. Their personal mistakes have larger
consequences, and their personal achievements yield smaller returns.
If problems are interlocking, then solutions must be as well. There is no single variable
that can be altered to help people move away from the edge of poverty. Poverty, like
many other social ills, can only be reduced by attacking a full array of factors. 2
When we accept that interlocking problems require interlocking solutions, we soon recognize
that these solutions require multisectoral collaboration. They will require many stakeholders to
collaborate to bring about the social transformation that is desired.
Collaborating with Business for Social Transformation
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