Valuing Voices That Change The World... Why?

Why have I always Valued Voices That Change the World?

I started interviewing scores of people in all corners of Nigeria when I wrote grant proposals for an amazing Bishop (now Cardinal Onaiyekan) in Ilorin Diocese in 1987. I wanted to get resources to those in need by getting their stories across to grant givers.  Their wisdom and resilience remained with me and a few years later inspired me to write my PhD "Listening To One's Clients: a Political Analysis of Mali’s Famine Early Warning Systems". In this work too I talked to hundreds of people about whether famine monitoring systems were tracking the 'right' indicators of need, whether they got aid to them in time, etc. (Finding: they looked at the right food insecurity information, but donors didn't care enough at the time to prevent, rather they only reacted to proof of descent into full famine.)  

After lots more qualitative interviews, assessments, evaluations across Africa, Latin America, the Balkans for some great international non-profits, eventually I got trained in Appreciative Inquiry to bring celebration to qualitative interview methods. This all helped me to listen better, to search for the voices harder to hear (women, youth, elderly, orphans). I've lead Appreciative Learning exercises and qualitative research at donors like USAID in Washington and in their Missions, with senior country-national policy makers in a dozen countries for innovative projects funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and with communities in 26 countries around the world through non-profits. Many people in international development feel voiceless - within institutions themselves.

These experiences have come from my passion to listen, distill and disseminate. Lately I've become driven to add to evaluation by listening to communities after projects end, after we all go home. We need to know what remains, what do they value enough to keep doing with their own resources, or what do they create anew from seeds projects planted in their minds?  We need to listen and learn, they don't have time to waste.

So what drives me? Like many others, working in the field, sloshing through muddy sewage -slums and walking through dusty villages, driving by acres of sparsely-sown Sahelian fields, seeing families struggle as well as thrive in conditions that would fell me. My desire to foster compassion for those voiceless in development and wanting to have their voices heard also comes from being raised by charming, negligent alcoholic parents who were unable to listen to much of anything other than their addiction's needs. I was voiceless; rarely did anyone listen to my (seemingly sage) advice much less what I needed to thrive, much like the participants I try to serve. It also comes from my nourishing Buddhist practice and community; they help me see that we all 'inter-are' - that all beings are connected and one. I've seen we have a responsibility to help others as we wish to be helped. All faiths have this basic tenet along the lines of 'do unto others as would be done by'. 

So what drives you to want the world to be a better place? Where does your work heal old wounds? Where do you feel a longing for deeper interconnection? I'm listening, we all are...

The pitfalls of pushing development even faster... we need compassion for all

The pitfalls of pushing development ever faster... we need compassion

There is great need for compassion in development, for all those pushed to perform.  First, for the participants of development projects, who can have projects imposed on them with timeframes that do not accommodate their participation and learning. They can feel pushed that "current project cycles and procedures do not allocate attention, time or resources for such consultation... the urgency to distribute resources on a schedule set by donors (often 'too fast') as undermining opportunities for outsiders to understand local social and political dynamics and processes" thus sustainability.

Parts of the system are broken when we development workers push projects designed abroad, don't have time we know is vital to take to involve participants in needs assessments, project design/ implementation/ monitoring and evaluation (M&E). Many of us feel such pressure to perform, to prove impact that we work 80 hours a week, race to meet donor reporting requirements... Everyone suffers from such incessant pushing, For instance, a Columbia University study examined the mental health of national humanitarian aid workers in northern Uganda and found that of 376 national staff working for 21 humanitarian aid agencies, over 50% of workers experienced 5 or more categories of traumatic events. Sadly, 68% reported symptoms putting them in high risk for depression, 53% at risk of  anxiety disorders, and 26% of respondents were likely to have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Staff are often pushed to the brink from wanting to serve participants, meet their Headquarters and donor requirements and function in situations that do not offer optimal safety, great functionality, much less time for learning or collaboration.

While not as dramatic, equally painful is the donor push of projects out the door to get more funding through the pipeline. Such pressure at headquarters often doesn't allow for design to emerge from their field offices, they may be time-forced to use templates from old projects, without the benefit of analyzing evaluations to learn what should be replicated, or not. My own Appreciative Inquiry study into Learning at USAID found wonderful learning champions who were also overwhelmed. Lessons from them were distilled into headlines, some of which included "I"m late, so late and so tired" and "Make Time!".

One project which will likely perpetuate such problems entered my inbox today from USAID, Government of Sweden via the African Development Bank. It offers up to $1 million funding to grants in 6 East and West African countries. This Agriculture Fast Track Fund wants to accomplish so much that its benefit may be limited at the grassroots. It offers winners a scant 24 months to accomplish a broad range of agriculture infrastructure projects spanning the entire value chain – from production to market.  It focuses on investment-ready agriculture infrastructure projects. Yet what time is there to participatorally plan? Further, what is the absorptive capacity of smallholders, their communities and the networks that support them to sustainably and collectively design projects that absorb such massive funds so quickly? How much collaborative implementation, M&E and learning can happen so very fast?

This goes against what the end-of-the-line wants. As one Time to Listen Myanmar/Burma interview tells us, "People want self-reliance and to focus on long-term development and planning after they have awareness and training. People talked about how project timeframes are too short and long-term projects with community involvement in needs assessments, planning, and evaluation are necessary. People want...to be able to figure things out and to assess their problems for themselves, rather than having NGOs tell the people the issues they face."  Other Time to Listen participants told interviewers of disenfranchisement: “'If you ask me what my priority needs are and I tell you, but then you bring me other things instead, I will take them, but you did not help me (Mali)' and 'Donors do a lot of assessments and focus groups, but then when what comes out of these focus groups doesn’t fit their agenda, they simply change it to make it fit (Lebanon).'"  We have a far way to go but need to change course now, with compassion (and participation) for all.  

Where have you seen great listening in the field? Where have you been heard?

The need to return.. and learn post-project close-out

The need to return...
It's like leaving the screening of a documentary; don't you too want to know how things work out after the movie makers leave? I do. And most of all I long to learn from it... I long to see what people value enough to maintain themselves, long after 'we' have left their lives and livelihoods.

Far too rarely in international development do organizations go back and see what 'stuck' from closed projects.  Most projects are 2, 5, even 10 years in duration, and once the funding ends, so does our spotlight and learning from them. We 'hand over' to local community-based- organizations, or the government and wish them well (albeit with no continued funding or staff continuity), and hope community capacity is strong enough to maintain what we tried to transfer... and hoped they too would feel was valuable.  Many of us in development feel it's wrong but donors say 'we have no more funds'. Basta. Shut off the camera.

There are a few exceptions. Plan International and Mercy Corps (future blog) are two mavericks who have taken their own private funds to learn what's standing long after they left.  (Others are the some well-funded development banks - EIB, World Bank, UN organizations.)  So what could we learn? TONS.

Plan is clear about its objectives of their return to Kenya nine years later: 

* To better understand how PLAN contributed to long-term changes in the communities

• To review overall community ownership of previous projects

• To provide input for programme managers on future programme design

• To inform how to start and finish work in specific areas

Talking to 165 participants, they found many things, including: 
* Water tanks and VIP latrines were not only maintained, but had been copied by others in the community, which is key to sustained uptake. Clearly these were valued.
* Building one health dispensary and two buildings for Financial Services Associations were valued and maintained, boosted dignity and pride in the area. People still used both buildings.
*  Irish potatoes were still being cultivated as the result of Plan’s promotion and training - this training stuck.

Let's learn from what's still standing and look for other, unintended consequences and results that may not have been originally planned. Speaking of which, what was originally planned and what % of project activities are these four results a remainder of?

Processes were less successful:
* Community leaders said "Plan came with its own blue-print of projects, and had not attempted to understand the local community and its needs, nor to involve them in planning" (e.g. grain stores). "Plan was seen as ‘a bringer of things’, but had not built a sense of ownership or responsibility for them. 
* Plan introduced building Community-Based Organizations but almost all Plan-supported CBOs are no longer in operation.... [Communities] did not "appear to have the ability, motivation or capacity to adopt a role representing and advocating for the interests of the 
community and its children."

This is typical of many development projects, broadly proposed to meet focused donor funding and ideals, valiantly shaped in the field to try to address stakeholder needs. Time is often of the essence and locally-driven planning and buy-in take time. All suffer as a result.

Also, situations in-country are dynamic and nine years is a long time. What changed in Plan's absence that could have led to improvements irrespective of Plan's interventions over nine years ago? Some empowerment lasted. Nine years later evaluators found that the "principle that people have to be consulted and to participate was frequently articulated by parents and District Officers... [and even] children understood their rights, as did teachers and some parents." But this could have equally been due to new government free public elementary education for children, increasing focus on ‘child friendly’ school environments, and increased attention to accountability of state actors. More research is needed during those years, especially led by communities and national-level (university, evaluation associations, community members themselves) to track attribution and other unexpected impacts.

Plan put into place some recommendations, including "‘Phasing out’ needs to be regarded as a process which requires both time and context specific analysis and design of the process. Communities need to be involved in the process and there needs to be community buy-in and ownership of post-Plan structures". Kudos to Plan for its bravery to risk learning. Yet nowhere in their recommendations was involving communities throughout in sustainable project design, monitoring and evaluation, rather than just the phase-out.

We all know 'development' needs to be locally led to be valuable at the beginning, middle, end and beyond. Let's start to be brave and ask what could we know?  Where have you looked to learn? What have you learned? I long to know.... we all do.

Rewarding Enterprising Desperation: Youth (Un)employment

Rewarding Enterprising Desperation

Eight years ago I interviewed the Kenyan CEO of a big meat processing corporation during a consultancy. After the interview I tried to get him interested in a local nonprofit I support (KUSARD). He told me he had another charitable avenue to help youth, below.

One day he was driving to work through a typically awful traffic jam and had the windows open. Suddenly a young man threw himself into the car through a window, begging for help. He said he had finished high school at great cost to his family (boarding school fees, uniforms); his father had sold his land to give his son a chance at an education. Even more impoverished, his family hoped this young man would get a job which would be the saving grace for the family's income and long-term security. He tried and tried to find a job but with so many other unemployed youth in the big city, to no avail.  In desperation, that day he decided to literally throw himself at the mercy of this man, thinking that if he had a Mercedes, he must be rich and might help somehow.

Somewhat skeptically, the CEO decided to help. He offered him a cart, and 50 sausages for free to sell.  If the youth could sell these, he could keep the profit, buy more and start generating money. He also threatened him with the police were both not returned.  True to their word, the youth sold and bought, sold and bought until he had made enough money to buy his own cart, then slowly hired other sausage sellers to sell for him. He approached the CEO again months later to return the original cart filled with the same 50 sausages he had originally received.  Impressed, the CEO offered him a job in his plant, which helped the young man pay for the school fees of his two younger siblings and now-widowed mother.

Of the 1.2 billion 15- to 24-year-olds in the world – 200 million of whom are in Africa – about 75 million are looking for work.  What will you do today to support at least one of them? I long to hear who you support, how you advocate... that young man could be my son, nephew or brother. Imagine if he were yours? 

What could we know... about international development, ourselves, 'them' and the intersection?

What could we know...
About international development from the eyes of the participants? What works best? What fails? Who decides what success and failure are?

And who is 'we' in the sentence anyway?

This blog will stream my view and those of and my colleagues in my field, many of whom have been working as I have over 20 years across Africa, Latin America, Asia, Balkans and many corners of the world, as well as those from these very corners. I hope to be a bridge for knowledge sharing between 'old timers', those new in my field, as well as between the 'North' and "South', sharing evidence, trends, stories, and promoting ideas like:

* Using Appreciative Inquiry to celebrate what works best and how to do more of it, as I did for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, USAID and Johns Hopkins University et al, leads to more knowledge sharing, excitement and nurtured souls than a focus on what is broken.

* Country nationals should evaluate their own projects and programs - it's their countries, after all

* Participants best know what success looks like in their own communities - including them in their own discovery, design, monitoring and evaluation is paramount for success and sustainability

* No 'development' project with behavior change as any part of it should be shorter than 10 years, heck it takes 3 for communities and non-profits to get to know and trust each other...

* Donors should go back 3, 5, 10 years later to see what exists now, what communities valued enough to keep up themselves after project funds and staff left.

* There is great need for compassion in development. Parts of the system are broken when we development workers push projects designed abroad, don't have time we know is vital to take to involve participants, feel such pressure to perform, to prove impact that we work 80 hours a week, race to meet donor reporting requirements...

There are so many fascinating trends out there right now which we need to address mindfullly: 
* Even though we produce 1 ½ times enough food for every man, woman and child on the planet, nearly a billion people go hungry while over a billion are malnourished but social movements are changing that. 

* Women produce 60% of the world's food, get 10% of its income and own 1% of the world's property

* By 2100 both China and Nigeria will have over a billion people

* Over 50% of the world's population is under the age of 30!

* Youth demographics in Africa show will tip the scales in terms of country-led development as "Africans are perfectly capable of representing themselves and developing in ways of their own choosing. The African diaspora is making massive contributions to their countries-of-origin, not just in terms of sending back money (about $50 billion annually), but also in terms of reclaiming the development discourse."

How are we addressing, including these as well as 'lessons learned' from the past and envisioning a collaborative, kind future for all of us, where happiness reigns?

What else could we know?...