Working as One network

INDEPTH focuses on the following functions to increase inter-member networking (To use the ODI terminology: http://www.odi.org.uk/rapid/Projects/PPA0103/Link_function_form.html)

• Community building: Promote and sustain the values and standards of the members
• Facilitation: Help members carry out their activities
• Convening: Bring together different people or groups of people
• Investing / providing: Offer a means to give members the resources they need to carry out their main activities
• Filtering: Decide what information is worth paying attention to and organize the significant amounts of information generated by and targeted at the community 
• Amplifying: Help take little known or little understood ideas and make them more widely understood

In a support network, the Network supplies member centres with resources (funds, goods and services including technical advice and capacity strengthening) for member centres to carry out their own activities (research, advocacy etc) largely independently.

In an agency network, the Network itself becomes an agent of change e.g., co-ordinating research, communications. The Network develops a recognisable brand and develops outward-looking functions such as amplifying and convening. Member centres provide resources to the Network which in turn is charged with influencing the policy process.