The Civil Society Partnerships Programme's first phase of work focuses on learning more about how CSOs use evidence to influence policy processes, identifying northern and southern organisations helping them to do this, and improving ODI's own information and communication activities to be more useful and accessible for CSOs. The first step is a series of consultations in different geographical regions of the developing world to learn more about the role that CSOs currently play in using evidence to promote development policy and practice, explore what they need to do it better, and to identify opportunities for small-scale collaborative work.