Blog: International Aid
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Funding and Accountability for sustainable projects?
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Funding and Accountability for sustainable projects? What are Sustainable Development Goals? " the United Nations adopted the new post-2015 development agenda. The new proposals - to be achieved by 2030- set 17 new 'sustainable'...
Sustainability Ready: what it takes to support & measure lasting change webinar
On June 24th under GLocal's UNConference, "Co-creating our future stories of hope and action", Jindra Cekan, Holta Trandafili, and Isabella Jean presented their work on sustainability evaluations and exit strategies via local voices. We chaired a 2-hour discussion...
Assuming Sustainability and Impact is Dangerous to Development (+ OECD/DAC evaluation criteria)
Assuming Sustainability and Impact is Dangerous to Development (+ OECD/ DAC evaluation criteria) We all do it; well, I used to do it too. I used to assume that if I helped my field staff and partners target and design funded projects well enough, and try...
Public and Private paths to Sustained Global Development Impacts
Public and Private paths to Sustained Global Development Impacts (Reposted from: https://medium.com/@jindracekan/public-and-private-paths-to-sustained-global-development-impacts-9b7523891fce) Six years. That’s how long ago I began researching proof of sustained...
Setting a higher bar: Sustained Impacts are about All of us
Setting a higher bar: Sustained Impacts are about All of us Global development aid has a problem which may already affect impact investing as well. It is that we think it's really all about us (individuals, wealthy donors and INGO implementers) not all of us (you, me,...
How ‘new’ are our projects… and who is aiming at the right outcomes?
How 'new' are our projects... and who is aiming at the right outcomes? Valuing Voices exciting news is we have received research grant funding from the esteemed evaluator, Michael Scriven's Faster Forward Fund. We're looking into the value-added of...
Embedding Sustainability Everywhere – All Five Slices Now
Embedding Sustainability Everywhere - All Five Slices Now It has been a tumultuous year, and next year does not look like we will have much stability as a respite. As domestic concerns grow larger in two huge economies, US and UK, the question of the...
Maximizing what we’ve got… Time is now!
Maximizing what we've got... Time is now! We had a stirring conversation here in D.C. with someone very knowledgeable about sustainability; this person is a strong proponent of local ownership of all development. They also said...
Who is responsible for sustaining development?
Whose responsibility is it to sustain project activities? Billions of dollars are pumped into development activities in developing countries all over the world. Communities getting involved in these projects have a clear objective, which is to have their lives...
The Disruptive Potential of Feedback (reblog from NonprofitChronicles.com)
The Disruptive Potential of Feedback by MARC GUNTHER, OCTOBER 18, 2015 ( reblogged http://nonprofitchronicles.com/2015/10/18/the-disruptive-potential-of-feedback/) Few institutions in the US are as undemocratic as endowed foundations. The executives in...
Face our fears! Learn from failure…
Face our fears! Learn from failure... Global Giving has a nice example of getting participant feedback success/failure of a project their fundraising funded. The organization failed, which was sorrowful to the players in West Africa and funders worldwide (I, too am a...
Altruistic Accountability… for Sustainability
Altruistic Accountability... for Sustainability Many of us in international development feel a sense of responsibility for others to be well, and for our work to improve their lives as well as for the work to be done in good stewardship of aid resources and optimizing...
It’s not just Me, it’s We
It's not just Me, it's We Many of us want to be of service. That's why we go into international development, government, and many other fields. We hope our words and deeds help make others' lives better. For 25 years I've written...
Are We Done Yet?
Are We Done Yet? When are we off the hook, so to speak, for the well-being of the participants whom we said we'd make healthier, better fed, more educated, safer, etc? America’s Agency for International Development (USAID) is the main channel for...
A Missing Piece In Local Ownership: Evaluation Reblog from InterAction (US’ NGO Umbrella Organization)
A Missing Piece In Local Ownership: Evaluation (Reblog from http://www.interaction.org/blog/missing-piece-local-ownership-evaluation Grino and Levine) Ten years ago, ownership was established as a key principle of aid effectiveness. Although understanding...
Making money– is this a way to sustainable livelihoods? PACT’s Nepalese Lessons
Making money-- microenterprise-- is this a way to sustainable livelihoods? PACT's Nepalese Lessons Many Americans are steeped in the belief that we must 'pull ourselves up by our bootstraps', that hard work and especially faith in small businesses is the...
Learning from the Past… for Future Sustainability
Learning from the Past... for Future Sustainability Heading up Food Security for Catholic Relief Services (CRS) was my first international development job in 1995-1999 and I have watched this organization grow in its commitment to program quality and learning/...
Czech it out! Great evaluation happening in the Czech Republic
Czech it out! Great evaluation happening in the Czech Republic One of the delights of living in another country is the surprises one encounters. For me, coming back to our second 'home', it was an evaluative surprise. For by connecting to the Czech Foreign...
Ideas we’re not ready for are the ones we need most
Ideas we’re not ready for are the ones we need most Guest Post: Barbara Geary Truan Some ideas precede and shape reality, the ones that lie behind everything we create. Other ideas lag behind an often hidden reality: they seek then find it. Galileo...
What should projects accomplish… and for whom?
What should projects accomplish... and for whom? An unnamed international non-profit client contacted me to evaluate their resilience project mid-stream, to gauge prospects for sustainable handover. EUREKA, I thought! After email discussions with them I...
What’s likely to ‘stand’ after we go? A new consideration in project design and evaluation
What's likely to 'stand' after we go? A new consideration in project design and evaluation This spring I had the opportunity to not only evaluate a food security project but also to use the knowledge gleaned for the follow-on project design. This Ethiopian Red Cross...
Data for whose good?
Data for whose good? Many of us work in international development because we are driven to serve, to make corners of the world better by improving the lives of those that live there. Many of us are driven by compassion to help directly through working...
Sustainability SPRINGing out all over the place… and Disrupting!
Sustainability SPRINGing out all over the place… and Disrupting So what is sustainability? You may think it's the climate's long-term wellbeing and how to gauge changes to that. You may think it's linked...
Youth Series Part III: The Role of ICT4D (Information and Communications Technology for Development) in Empowering Youth
Youth Series Part III: The Role of ICT4D (Information and Communications Technology for Development) in Empowering Youth Youth Series Part I here Factors Hindering Youth Participation in Development Youth Series Part II here How Technology Enables Youth Participation...
Pineapple, Apple- what differentiates Impact from Sustainability Evaluation?
Pineapple, Apple- what differentiates Impact from Sustainability Evaluation? There is great news. Impact Evaluation is getting attention and being funded to do excellent research, such as by the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie), by donors such as...
The lack of ex-post project evaluation at the World Bank: One has no power
The lack of ex-post project evaluation at the World Bank: One has no power The World Bank has a huge repository of 8,483 evaluation resources in its e-library database, so naturally Valuing Voices was very interested in investigating how many of those resources...
Stepping up community self-sustainability, one [Ethiopian] step at a time
Stepping up community self-sustainability, one [Ethiopian] step at a time Having just come back from evaluation and design fieldwork for an Ethiopian Red Cross (ERCS)/ Swedish Red Cross/ Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent project, the power of...
Aminata and I both want to be proud…
Aminata and I both want to be proud... I met Aminata in Mali in 1990 during my doctoral research. She was a Bambara farmer and an impressive woman, with pride in her community. She was a helpful informant during my research on how communities cope with...
What are the prospects for self-sustained impact at the Macro level? (Part 1)
What are the prospects for self-sustained impact at the Macro level? (Part 1) After studying various impact evaluations, it became clear that different development projects also have different scales, with multilaterally-funded macro-level being focused on higher...
Twigas (Participant self-sustainability) throughout ‘development time’- Design, Implementation, M&E and beyond
Twigas (Participant self-sustainability) throughout 'development time'- Design, Implementation, M&E and beyond What if we saw our true clients (sometimes vulnerable twigas) as our project participants and wanted the return on investment of...
‘Developing them’ fails. Long live country-led development!(?)
'Developing them' fails (Haiti). Long live country-led development! (?) I am tired of inefficiency and waste of tax dollars and human capacity and time. Some organizations use images of Africans, Asians, Latin Americans and Caribbean people...
Let’s start turning the oceanliner of development to dignified sustainability – today!
Let's start turning the oceanliner of development to dignified sustainability - today! No time like the present, our participants are waiting for dignified development to fully arrive. Dignity is the "quality or state of being worthy of esteem...
Development= A Jeep (motor optional).. Resilience? If within 5 years!
Development= A Jeep (motor optional).. Resilience? If within 5 years! Imagine being given a lovely new Jeep. You get a driver (remember driving school) to help you learn to steer it around the pothole-strewn, scantly lit roads. Eventually you take over the...
Is Development Doomed? No! Youth and community input are key to sustainability
Is Development Doomed? No! Youth and community input are key to sustainability Paul Theroux has a deeply depressing, if quite realistic, view of how development has failed Africa. "Zambian-born economist Dambisa Moyo calls aid a "debilitating...
The ’causes and conditions’ are right for sustainable impact… $100 billion of funding needs it
The 'causes and conditions' are right for sustainable impact... $100 billion of funding in 2014 alone needs it! Many of us know that when the time is right, things click into place and manifest, but when they are not yet ripe for change, they...
Time is ripe for incentives to change….
Time is ripe for incentives to change…. There is so much promise now in returning international development to the hands of those who we mean to ‘develop’. Here are a few examples: •Accountability has been proposed as a core...
Mercy Corps – early leader in evaluating sustainability… and what donors are funding
Mercy Corps - early leader in evaluating sustainability... and what donors are funding Mercy Corps shared their work in post-project sustainability early on, inspiring me it was possible. As they put it, "clearly, a sustained ability for collective problem...
Unintended impacts – LWR and Gates Drought Resilience in Niger
Unintended impacts - LWR and Gates Drought Resilience in Niger Unintended development program impacts - how much do we know about what they are and how we could learn from them for future programming? How often do we even question our assumptions about what we meant...
Corruption. Now I’ve said it, fear is our greatest barrier
Corruption. Now I've said it, fear is our greatest barrier That wasn't a typo. When I started working in international development, and quite regularly since, the need for us international development agencies as intermediaries has been that we...
Accountability and Solidarity – what does it take?
Accountability and Solidarity- what does it take? Who are we accountable to? US agencies would say our taxpayers, international charities would say their donors, but what would ordinary folks like you and me say? Our consciences? My dear friend Peter...
“Free” resources? How many (no-comment) strings are attached?
"Free" resources? How many (no-comment) strings are attached? Is aid really free? We offer communities, households, individuals a lot -- training, in-kind resources such as seeds/ tools or clean water dispensers, etc. We also ask some in return, as...
The pitfalls of pushing development even faster… we need compassion for all
The pitfalls of pushing development ever faster... we need compassion for all 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...
The need to return.. and learn post-project close-out: Plan Int’l
The need to return...and learn post-project close-out: Plan Int'l 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 do we know… about international development, ourselves, ‘them’ and the intersection?
What could we know... about international development, ourselves, 'them' and the intersection? How would international development look from the eyes of the participants? What works best? What fails? Who decides what success and failure is, and how much...
Jindra Cekan, Ph.D. has used participatory methods for 30 years to connect with participants, ranging from villagers in Africa, Central/ Latin America and the Balkans to policy makers and Ministers around the world for her international clients. Their voices have informed the new Sustained and Emerging Impacts Evaluation, other M&E, stakeholder analysis, strategic planning, knowledge management and organizational learning.