Atmah SIB

Project insights

1. Starting with an in-depth analysis of root causes and prioritisation of social challenges

   The development of the Atmah SIB began with the Department of Community Development (DCD), who built up a detailed evidence base of the social issues terrain in Abu Dhabi. This evidence was benchmarked against a number of international indices and frameworks. In-depth analyses led to an initial long-list of 40 social challenges, further distilled into 20, after a criteria-based prioritization process.

   6 of these were cascaded down to Ma’an: the Authority of Social Contribution, an entity with the mandate to introduce new forms of social impact contracting such as SIBs. One of these was ‘Inclusion’, with a specific focus on breaking down barriers to socio-economic inclusion confronting ‘people of determination’.

   SIBs are not the panacea for tackling all forms of social challenges. Ma’an conducted a detailed feasibility assessment, informed by a granular understanding of the key social challenges. This led to a decision to implement a SIB with very specific objectives of facilitating wider system change. These are discussed below.

   
   

2. Building capacity for social outcomes in the local ecosystem

   Ma’an: the Authority of Social Contribution was established in February 2019 in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi with the aim of bringing together the government, the private sector and civil society to support a culture of social contribution and participation. Ma’an will deliver solutions for social challenges with five pillars of work: a Social Investment Fund, a Social Incubator programme, a Social Volunteering programme, Social Impact Contracting Programme, as well as Outreach Management.

   For Ma’an, with their mandate to embed social outcomes thinking and planning In Abu Dhabi, there is recognition of significant gaps in the local ecosystem. As the nascent hub for knowledge and expertise in this area, Ma’an has positioned itself as an intermediary whose role is to coordinate and steer cross-sector partnerships in a way that maximizes potential impact while minimizing implementation risks. The Atmah SIB is thus a vehicle through which Ma’an can expose local players to innovative tools for facilitating social outcomes, thereby building knowledge, confidence and capacity in the local ecosystem to mainstream outcomes-focused approaches over the longer term.

   The process of designing the Atmah SIB was used to generate wider interest and to raise awareness of social contracting and social financing, beyond the specific partners that entered into the SIB contract. Ma’an engaged with a much larger pool of stakeholders, particularly targeting system actors that will have a role in embedding some of the lessons from the SIB in national policy and practice.

3. Systemic change through collaboration

   While there is ambition to develop first-in-class and at-scale inclusive provision in Abu Dhabi eventually, there is recognition among project stakeholders and the Abu Dhabi Government that “Rome wasn’t built in a day”. The Atmah SIB is thus a cross-sector collaboration intended to tackle an entrenched social challenge through a “start small, aim big” approach, involving players that will be instrumental in forging the longer-term vision.

   The Abu Dhabi journey hints at the possibilities if SIBs are designed with a system-level underpinning rather than as a discrete project-level innovation. The Atmah SIB is designed and being executed so as to inform the way the Government and project stakeholders upscale the intervention nationally post-SIB. It will further improve the understanding of appropriate forms of funding structures to support such large-scale replication. Outcomes are defined not only in terms of the needs and requirements of the specific actors involved in the SIB, but also the wider and longer-term building blocks for system reconfiguration that will support improvement at scale. This alerts us to the need to mobilise system actors, and not just project stakeholders.

   While the Atmah SIB only involves 25 PoD students, the outcome pricing has little to do with the specific costs relating to provision for these 25 students per se. Stakeholders took into consideration not only the costs of provision, but also the opportunity cost to society as a result of exclusion from economic productivity, as well as the costs to families in supporting PoD children. Indeed, it can be argued that the SIB attempts to shift an expenditure that currently falls upon families onto the Government. The SIB can be understood as being motivated by social value, and not fiscal value, aimed at achieving genuine inclusion of an excluded group over time.

   The word ‘Atmah’ translates broadly into ‘aspire’. The Atmah SIB is not simply about encouraging the aspirations of PoD students or their families, but is also emblematic of a wider aspiration for Abu Dhabi society to embrace inclusion.