Organisations who are working on tech climate solutions often bring deep passion and strong missions, but face practical challenges. Some have excellent programmes but needed stronger organisational capacity to scale. Others have compelling advocacies but find it challenging to communicate their impact in ways that truly resonate.
AVPN’s APAC Sustainability Solutions Lab (SSL), with support from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and Google.org, helps address these gaps through structured, needs-based interventions. This initiative combines tailored capacity-building and technical guidance to help organisations supported through the APAC Sustainability Seed Fund amplify their impact and deliver on their missions more effectively.
Laying the Groundwork for Effective Capacity Building
Grantees come to SSL with different experiences, capacities, and needs. To ensure support is relevant and effective, the lab begins by understanding these differences rather than relying on a one-size-fits-all approach.
Through its partners, SSL conducts comprehensive needs assessments that examine both communications and technical capabilities. These include audits of storytelling, brand narrative, online presence, digital governance and tools, data and analytics, and cybersecurity, among others. A baseline survey also captures grantees’ own priorities and support needs.
Together, these inputs create a diagnostic map that highlights both individual gaps and patterns across the cohort. These insights directly shape targeted interventions, from tailored workshops and coaching to peer-learning sessions, while shared needs inform broader interventions.
A network of expert partners is then matched to grantees based on these assessments, ensuring the right expertise reaches the right organisations at the right time. Grounded in real insights, SSL’s support is practical, focused, and responsive to on-the-ground realities.
Ensuring Support Drives Tangible Outcomes
To ensure these efforts translate into meaningful outcomes, SSL applies a robust monitoring and evaluation framework anchored by a clear Theory of Change. This links capacity-building interventions to measurable results and aligns them with AVPN’s strategic vision.
The evaluation takes a mixed-methods approach to track how the SSL programme supports grantees over time. Endline surveys capture improvements in technical capacity, digital readiness, and the effectiveness of support, while qualitative interviews provide deeper insights into grantees’ experiences, challenges, and progress.
These are complemented by administrative data and regular progress reports, giving AVPN a holistic view of how organisational, technical, and communications capacity are strengthened in practice.
This approach remains flexible, allowing the programme to adapt to emerging needs while capturing both individual and cohort-wide learning.
Turning Capacity into Real-World Impact
The training and guidance provided through SSL serve as practical tools for advancing each organisation’s mission.
For some grantees, technical support has addressed core operational challenges. One organisation in Thailand using AI to tackle haze pollution refined its data validation methods for detecting fire hotspots, closing a critical accuracy gap in satellite-based monitoring.
Targeted workshops also deepened its understanding of responsible data sharing, ethical AI use, and incident response, enabling them to deploy their technology with greater confidence and reliability.
Communications support has delivered similarly tangible outcomes. An organisation in Taiwan operating intelligent marine cleaning solutions revamped its website and refined its storytelling to better articulate its mission and impact.
This led to a memorandum of understanding with a new partner and interest from companies exploring joint initiatives.
Across cohorts, grantees report greater confidence in managing operations, applying technology strategically, and communicating their work more effectively.
Sustaining Impact
To date, 20 organisations have received capacity-building support through the Sustainability Solutions Lab. More than a programme, the lab serves as a strategic engine for strengthening organisations tackling some of the region’s most pressing climate challenges.
By focusing on core organisational capabilities, SSL helps organisations deliver results today while building the resilience to grow, adapt, and sustain impact over time.
Looking ahead, AVPN will continue to support non-profits at the forefront of innovation for a more sustainable Asia Pacific.
Read more on APAC Sustainability Solutions Lab here.
