Community Investments Designed to Survive Handover
Projects can meet their targets, spend their budgets and still fail to create lasting value.
The test is whether the system still works once external support ends. The EDGE5 Survival Gates™ framework is designed to keep investments functional, locally owned and resilient.
EDGE5 works with mining companies from project development through operations and closure, strengthening community investment, local livelihoods and the practical capability needed for long-term performance.
Explore Mining & ResourcesThe spend is approved. The exposure arrives years later.
Organisations invest heavily in community development, food and water security, livelihoods, productive land use and long-term land systems. Projects can perform well during delivery and still depend on continued funding, outside expertise or systems local stakeholders were never prepared to manage — a technical system does not become a community system by being handed over. Without the knowledge, skills and confidence to operate and adapt it, the investment fails once the organisation steps back, often years after it was signed off as complete.
For mining companies, this can surface later as closure risk, social licence pressure and reputational exposure. For governments and NGOs, it can mean systems left dependent on continued funding or outside technical support.
EDGE5 identifies these weaknesses before investment is committed or handover occurs, and helps redesign the system while that is still straightforward and inexpensive. The objective: investment that continues to perform, rather than becoming a closure liability.
Five constraints decide whether a system survives
Most systems are approved without being tested against these before exit. Full framework →
Reliable without external delivery.
Function maintained by the system, not imported inputs.
Available when the system needs it.
Capability that stays after handover.
Local standing to decide, and hold it.
18 years' operational experience within one of Australia's largest resource companies.
International food security, livelihoods and community resilience programs across four countries.
Community development advisory for mining operations in Mali.
Long-term agricultural and community systems designed to operate on local capability after external support.
Advisory discussions with site staff on land use around a mine development in Ghana.
Community development and sustainable land-use advisory for mining operations in Ghana.
Community capability development for mining operations in the Philippines.
With the skills gained the participants became local TOTs (trainer of trainers) who trained over 8,000 community members and helped to establish more than 13,000 permaculture-based home gardens in four sectors of Nyabihu district.
Geoffrey S.N. Kayonde Country Director, ADRA Rwanda
Systems still running, long after the work ended
The test EDGE5 applies to client investments is the one it applies to its own work.
Since 2004 — Ghana Permaculture Institute
Established in collaboration, with Greg Knibbs setting the plan and vision. It now operates independently, delivering Australian Government-funded community programs.
Since 2014 — Rainbow Ridge, Tanzania
A degraded, eroding hillside redesigned to harvest rainfall. It now retains virtually all rainfall on site and continues to improve under local management.
Resolute Mining, Mali
For offline board and leadership review
- Request PDF →Executive Brief 01 — The EDGE5 Survival Gates™A gate-by-gate risk profile, recurring failure patterns and a self-assessment. For CSR managers, ESG leaders and community relations teams.
- Download PDF ↓EDGE5 Capability StatementFirm credentials, advisory services and selected experience. For procurement, shortlisting and supplier review.
- Download PDF ↓The EDGE5 Screening ToolA fifteen-minute first-pass check of whether a program will keep working once outside support ends. For program owners and project teams.