Islands are not bearing the impact of climate change. Although Islands may be considered as 'big ocean states', their small size result in issues, e.g. over-reliance on the imports of food and energy, and on few economic sectors.

Small Island Development States (SIDS) also encounter similar challenges. This may requires shared solution and to do more. The UNDP's Centre of Excellence for SIDS (COE), launched by the Government of Aruba and the Kingdom go the Netherlands, aims to assist SIDS to deal with their sustainable development challenges, facilitate knowledge flows in innovation, sustainability and resilience in ways that policymakers prefer and utilize innovative approaches and leverage its network. 

There might be at least 3 lessons that could inspire small or large organizations to think about the approaches in development: 

1. Focus on knowledge demand. The centre does not need to be expert on topics that are top-of-mind but plays the role of knowledge broker. It helps to be based on an island to see the latest developments, e.g. wind farms and waste solutions. 
2. Leverage complementary networks. For those islands that have not done any activities before, the centre acts as an enabler of solutions for islands by finding a partner with similar objectives and complimentary skills. It can also deliver an online course on sustainable energy for SIDS policy marker with a small budget.
3. Create smart solutions. Compared to other giant institutions in development, this small centre tends to do things differently, i.e. enriching a event from a knowledge perspective in fun and engaging way. 

These three lessons may help the centre to be demand-driven and to do much efforts with limited resources. The biggest challenges of this centre is the time which used to find partners and to leverage what other have done.