With 40 years of development experience, Hivos and its network of more than 800 Southern partners have a rich and often not sufficiently accessible wealth of practice. Through knowledge networks between partners, Hivos has stimulated the sharing of experiences, evaluations and information. The need to go beyond knowledge-sharing led to a plan to establish a number of new knowledge programmes, to be developed in cooperation with a number of other knowledge institutions in the North and the South. One of the first knowledge programmes to be launched focused on civil society building in collaboration with the ISS.

As one of the leading postgraduate research institutes in international development, ISS has a key role in promoting the generation and sharing of knowledge on development issues. ISS undertakes innovative research on civil society, provides educational activities, as well the dissemination and translation of research results into policy and strategies. ISS has taken up the aim of paying even more attention to the practical applicability and utilisation of its knowledge products.