by Jindra Cekan | Mar 26, 2014 | Accountability, Africa, Bilateral organizations, Credit, Donors, Ethiopia, Evaluation, Food security, International aid, International non-profits, LIvelihoods, Local Participants, MDG, Milenium Development Goals, NGO, Participation, Results, Rural Development, Sustainability, Sustainable development, Transparency, Women and gender
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 communities is still palpable in my mind. They know what great impact looks like. They know what activities they can best sustain themselves. It’s up to us to ask, listen and learn from them and support their own monitoring/ evaluating/ reporting. It’s up to us to share such learning with others and to act on it everywhere.
There are a myriad of possible sustainability indicators, and the outcome indicators below, suggested by 116 rural participants from Tigray, Ethiopia seem to fall into two categories of expected changes: Assets and Life Quality (Table 1). As the food security/ livelihood project extended credit for animal purchases, it is logical that tracking increased income, savings, assets, and home investments plus expenditures on food and electricity appeared.
We gleaned this from discussions with participants, asking them “what can we track together that would show that we had impact”? Our question led to a spirited discussion of not only what was traceable, but also what could be publicly posted and ‘ground-truthed’ by the community. Discussing indicators led to even deeper conversations about the causes of food insecurity which were illuminating to staff. What was surprising, for instance, was the extent to which families saw changing seasonal child-field labor practices in favor of 100% child-school attendance as great indicators. School attendance (or lack thereof) was dependent on families’ need for children’s seasonal labor in the fields. Community members said they knew who sent their children or not, which no only ‘cleaned’ the publicly posted data but triangulated implementer surveys and opened room for discussions of vulnerability.
Not only is this exciting for the project’s outcome tracking but even more importantly, our team proposed to create a community self-monitoring system, suggested in by Causemann/Gohl in an IIED PLA Notes article– “Tools for measuring change: self-assessment by communities” used in Africa and Asia. This learning, management and reporting process will fill a gaping need as current “monitoring systems serve only for donor accountability, but neither add value for poor people nor for the implementing NGOs because they do not improve effectiveness on the ground.” The authors found that not only “participatory data collection produces higher quality data in some fields than standard extractive methodologies [as] understanding the context leads to a higher accuracy of data and learning processes [which] increase the level of accountability… “ but also that such shared collaboration builds mutual learning and bridge-building.” While our community members may have offered to track this publicly to make this partner happy, men and women discussed this excitedly and embraced the idea of self-monitoring happily. ERCS will be discussing with communities to either track data monthly in notebooks or on a large chart hung in the woreda office for transparency. Data (Chart 1) would include these asset and quality of life indicators as well as loan repayments (tracked vertically) while households (tracked horizontally) could see who was meeting the goal (checked boxes), not meeting it fully (dashed boxes) or not meeting it at all yet (blank boxes). Community members corrected each other as they devised the indicators during our participatory research and this openness reassures us that the public monitoring will be quite transparent as well.
[1]
Further, what was especially satisfying was getting feedback from across the three tibias (sub-regions) on what activities they felt they could sustain themselves irrespective of the project’s continuation. Table 2 shows us which activities communities felt were most self-sustainable by households; these could form the core of the follow on project. Sheet/goats, poultry and oxen for fattening were highly prioritized by both women and men, in addition to a few choosing improved dairy cows. The convergence of similar responses was gratifying and somewhat unexpected, as there were several other project activities. The communities’ own priorities need to be seriously considered as currently they get only one loan per family and thus self-sustainable activities are key.
There is more to incorporate in future project planning by NGOs like Ethiopia’s ERCS. The NGO-IDEAs concept mentioned above also includes involving project participants in setting goals and targets themselves, differentiating between who achieved them and why, and brainstorming who/what contributes to it and what they should do next. Peer groups, development agencies and any actors could collect and learn from the data. Imagine the empowerment were communities to design, monitor and evaluate and tell us as their audience!
And they must, according to ODI UK’s Watkins, who has a clear vision on how to achieve a global equity agenda for the post-2015 MDG goals. He suggests converting the principle of ‘leave no one behind’ into measurable targets. He argues that, by introducing a series of ‘stepping stone’ benchmarks, the world can set ambitious goals on equity by 2030. He writes, wisely, that “narrowing these equity deficits is not just an ethical imperative but a condition for accelerated progress towards the ambitious 2030 targets. There are no policy blueprints. However, the toolkit for governments actively seeking to narrow disparities …has to include some key elements [such as] identifying who is being left behind and why is an obvious starting point. That’s why improvements to the quality of data available to policy-makers is an equity issue in its own right”. Valuing Voices believes who creates that data is an equally compelling equity issue.
So how will we reach these ambitious targets by 2030? By putting in stepping stone targets, returning project design functions to the ultimate clients – the communities themselves- and matching their wants with what we long to transfer to them. In this way we will be Valuing their Voices so much that they evaluate our projects jointly and we can respond. That’s how it should always have been.
What are your thoughts on this? We long to know.
Sources:
[1] Ashley, H., Kenton, N., & Milligan, A. (Eds.). (2013). Tools for supporting sustainable natural resource management and livelihoods. Participatory Learning and Action, (66). Retrieved from https://pubs.iied.org/14620IIED/
[2] Watkins, K. (2013, October 17). Leaving no-one behind: An equity agenda for the post- 2015 goals. Retrieved from https://www.odi.org/blogs/7924-leaving-no-one-behind-equity-agenda-post-2015-goals
by Jindra Cekan | Mar 25, 2014 | Africa, Food security, International aid, International non-profits, LIvelihoods, Local Participants, Participation, Results, Sustainability, Transparency
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 famine, and how famine early-warning systems could support them to do so more effectively (Note: 'early' warning is often far too late to prevent anything, I found, as donors don't want to intervene until far too late).
She's stayed in my mind these 24 years, and I want her to be proud of our international development work. I too want to be proud of what we accomplish to alleviate poverty and ill health by improving lives and livelihoods. We do so much in agriculture/ natural resource management, health and nutrition, education, etc. Yet do we start with communities' burning needs? End with their evaluating us? Or do we mostly use them to implement our ideas?
I've been part of the problem, part of the development 'industry' for 25 years. While I've used participatory methods such as PRA/ RRA and Appreciative Inquiry, I've mainly been focused on answering donor questions as to how successful we were, rather than helping communities ask the questions they want to answer and get the resources to succeed. I am no longer as proud of that work. We've left African Aminatas, Asian Aainas, Latina Adrienna's and millions like them behind in our rush to implement, to get more funds, to succeed, win more, 'develop' more…..
In founding ValuingVoices I put myself in their shoes, seeing projects come, projects go, temporary changes coming, some unintended results coming, some building on projects coming, but mostly going. It's never hard to celebrate local capacity when surrounded by vibrant voices, teaching us about their communities and their needs. What is hard is when so much of those decisions are not in their hands, but are at the mercy of donors who often decided not to support them (after our fieldwork showing both need and great capacity was presented): 'this region was not a priority' or 'we are now working on a new sectoral focus or a new initiative and this is no longer in our priorities.'
I am that much more deeply encouraged by a recent article on nutrition that points the way toward building these women’s pride as well as my own by starting with their voices and with donors being willing to listen. Nutrition research in Rwanda suggests that scaling up community-based solutions is the way forward. They decreased (stunting) malnutrition by 18% in five years which is very fast by "'setting up an almost universal community-based health insurance scheme… with the help of [each village determining its own way to tackle malnutrition… and not packaged interventions provided by donors" said Fidele Ngabo, director of Maternal Child Health. The article says "the Rwandan model could be used in other African countries, where foreign donor-driven initiatives tend to focus on treatment and technical solutions…. Change will only come when nutrition research is led by Africa, and interventions are designed to meet a country’s priorities, according to the findings of a two-year European Union-funded SUNRAY (SUstainable Nutrition Research for Africa in the Years to come)."
(a future Aminata?)
This groundbreaking research highlights the issue so many of us encounter. "Researchers from developed countries search for African partners for joint research, based on funding and research priorities defined outside Africa… so, despite enormous amounts of money spent on nutrition research and interventions, malnutrition rates have not fallen [in Benin]. Instead, the research agenda should be based on needs identified within the continent. Calls for research proposals of donors should match this agenda… [and prioritize] the locally identified needs and priorities." That sounds almost heretical in some circles.
In Benin, "researchers and policymakers wait for 'the dictate of donors before taking action. Hence, donor-funded programmes aren’t sustainable. As soon as they end, all activities are stopped, and acquired benefits and good practices are lost,' said Eunice Nago Koukoubou of the Université d'Abomey-Calavi in Benin, an author of the published findings." Yet the crux of the problem is that donor funding is filling a gap not filled by national governments. It isn't even so much that they are unwilling, rather in the case of Benin, “the government is trying to raise funds for the [strategic plan where nutrition should be central in development]", which also needs technical capacity building, a means of carrying on data retention and learning and a means of sharing findings with each other. What is needed is a "partnership between African researchers, 'who have more credibility and knowledge of the context', and Western researchers with the resources and opportunities (e.g. the African Economic Research Consortium).
Until we get to national partnership, let's improve our local ones. Let's really listen to participants in co-designing activities in projects we still think are best. Let's build on and share SUNRAY's approach of starting with what Aminantas, Aainas, Adriennas want and get Rwanda's great results. Let's partner in the truest sense of the world. After all, this excellent article underscores that "ultimately it is about political will…. [some] who feel they lack resources to tackle their long-standing battle with chronic malnutrition have to realize that “your children are not the donors' children, they are yours." They are our children, at least we need to treat them with respect as if they were.
by Kelsey Lopez | Mar 7, 2014 | Bilateral organizations, Donors, Evaluation, International aid, International non-profits, JICA, Local Participants, OECD, Participation, Results, Sustainability, Uncategorized
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 scale objectives from the municipal up to the national level while micro-level are geared towards improving socioeconomic aspects of communities. Our research revealed that there is a recurring error among projects that makes them ineffective: a lack of community involvement in all stages of the project, or more specifically, their lack of involvement in both the design and the evaluation process. This results in a lack of opinions from the local level regarding project self-sustainable goals, and prospects for ultimate success in self-sustainability. We have seen both macro projects, implemented by multilaterals, and micro projects, implemented by international non-profits, that fail to include local participation in their methodology, but one trend we have noticed is that projects on the macro level, have a tendency to plan, implement, and complete projects with little input from local participants or consideration for the possibility of self-sustainability impacts.
A particularly egregious example of non-self-sustainability at any level is the project for OECD-funded Improving the Performances and Management of Public Lighting in Ho Chi Minh City, which was a project with no ground level/community participation, but rather took place at the municipal level between French company Citelum (supplying technical assistance and equipment) and Sapulico (Saigon Public Lighting Company, Ho Chi Minh City's public lighting authority). From the evaluation summary, we saw the project was most concerned with propagating appreciation for French expertise in the area of public lighting at the national level rather than fostering national electrical self-sustainability. With organizational sustainability as a main objective, the project itself was not considered self-sustainable for a few key reasons:
-
“Sapulico's engineers acquired the necessary [skills required to operate the system], however, their current skill level is insufficient to handle present and future technical difficulties without the assistance of Citelum.” This means that the local company in Vietnam would continue to be reliant on foreign expertise in the likely event of future technical difficulties.
-
Also, jarringly, “there are also concerns even about the project's current viability as Sapulico's budget doesn't allow for the purchase of equipment from abroad, therefore the company will be unable to replace equipment that has reached the end of its lifecycle.”
This highlights an obvious overlooking of future project sustainability due to the local budget conditions and insufficient training. Had the project been more concerned with guaranteeing even national self-sustainability rather than the financial sustainability of the foreign implementing organization, the project overall could have been more successful far into the future….
A more promising example of a macro level project aiming for more localized impact, yet still failing to consider self-sustainability, is the JICA Agricultural Development Project in Kambia District. While we commend JICA as the most active multilateral to do ex-post evaluation, we again see the tendency of macro level projects to focus on systemic changes at the national or at least regional level which often self-sustainability buy-in, whereas micro level projects tend to focus on communities or at most sub-regions with the objective of fostering longer-term sustainability. This project, on the other hand, is a hybrid of macro- and micro- as it was to intervene at a district level and it did try to create agricultural extension buy-in. The key takeaways from JICAs post-project evaluation:
-
This project was concerned with improving agricultural productivity at select sub-district pilot sites, and then a further extension of the project throughout the entire Kambia District. The evaluation focuses heavily on the inability of the project to complete this objective of extending the project geographically because there was insufficient manpower, technical support, and funding to complete project dissemination, which suggests that sustained impact was not fully considered when planning implementation. It also suggests it did not expand because lessons seem not to have been learned from the implementation, and funding was not longer available.
-
The key point here is that the project did not secure adequate resources or funding for the true completion of its objective, which was to extend the successful outcomes that they observed at the pilot sites further across the region. This resulted in an evaluation analysis of sustainability that was only “fair”.
-
This project also fails to mention any local participation in the design, planning, implementation, or long-term sustainability phases, so despite seeing successful outcomes in increased crop production at the pilot locations, the evaluation was ultimately negative.
-
It is clear from the evaluation that the project was being executed from the side of the implementing agency rather than involving local participation beyond the extensionists, and no input was asked from community members about resulting agricultural self-sustainability.
-
The crux is that had the project been more focused on local self-sustainability beyond the regional extension system, its own organizational deficiencies (lack of manpower, technical support, and funding mentioned above) might not have hindered the ability to expand the project further.
Compare these findings to those we have analyzed in other blogs which illustrated the far more successful project and evaluation results that micro level non-profit development agencies like Mercy Corps, Plan International, and Partners for Democratic Change fostered when they made community participation the key to their development process. However, JICAs Kambia project and the Vietnamese Public Lighting program are not alone in their shortcomings, because the consistent lack of local community involvement in community-focused projects is a theme that we continue to see with macro level and micro level development schemes – a pattern that Valuing Voices is determined to change.
Overall, what we have discerned from this analysis is that projects conducted by macro level multilateral actors have a lower chance of ensuring self-sustainability, in part because they usually aren’t linked directly to the community in regional or national-scale projects. By contrast, micro level projects by international non-profits tend to have a higher chance of fostering greater self-sustainability because they are linked more closely to the end users of development, thereby benefiting both the organization itself as well as the local participants from more inclusionary practices.
We can clearly see that at least a few organizations, both at the macro and micro level, are asking the right questions by conducting these post-project evaluations. However, a systemic problem persists in that virtually no one is designing for self-sustainability. But without it, how successful are we really?
by Kelsey Lopez | Feb 12, 2014 | Evaluation, Food security, International non-profits, Literacy, Local Participants, Participation, Results, Sustainability, Uncategorized
What can we learn from Ex-Post Evaluations?
In trying to learn more about sustainable development solutions, the first place to look for information is in ex-post evaluations, also commonly called post-project evaluations, which are conducted by either development organizations themselves or by independent external evaluators. Unlike final project evaluations, which are completed at the time of a project’s conclusion to assess whether or not it has achieved its intended goals, an ex-post evaluation is conducted in the years after a project’s official end date – maybe one, three, or five years after the fact. An ex-post evaluation is a highly valuable tool for determining not just how successful a development project may have been after resources and international funding were withdrawn, but rather the long-term sustainability of the outcomes for the community members who were being ‘developed’.
With the seemingly obvious necessity for ex-post evaluations to gaining a better understanding of both positive and negative development practice, I was surprised by how hard it was to actually find any. Some organizations are diligent about conducting post-project evaluations and documenting the results for future reference, namely the development assistance organization Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), which has an extensive reference database to search its ex-post evaluations. However, this is certainly not the norm (yet), or if organizations are conducting ex-post evaluations they are not making the information widely available to the public. My research process included search terms such as, “ex-post evaluations by international development organizations”, “post-project evaluations”, and “impact evaluations.” In using these generic search terms, I was only moderately successful in finding helpful evaluations for my reserch, which suggests the need for more readily accessible information to the public about development outcomes.
We also found that some organizations had completed these evaluations, but they were at times too vague to obtain much useful information from. Out of about 10-15 evaluations that we found so far, there were only around 7 that were clear and organized enough to include in my table of summaries. (My search was limited to projects that were conducted predominantly at the community level, rather than at the municipal or state level.) The variable quality of these evaluations has a negative impact on their usefulness – if an ex-post evaluation is in an unsearchable format or doesn’t follow a fairly standardized organization, how will it be able to inform future projects efficiently? Additionally, it would be much easier for project coordinators to learn from past projects, and even other organizations, if there existed a more accessible and methodical database to make searching for ex-post evaluations simple. Despite these challenges, I have included five different evaluations from my preliminary research with which I was able to compare results for a better understanding of how to achieve sustainable project outcomes. The framework used for analyzing these evaluations considered:
- The sector of the development project (i.e. food security, poverty reduction, agricultrual development);
- the implementing organization and the evaluating organization (if it was different);
- the dates and gap between the project and the ex-post evaluation;
- the project objectives;
- specific ex-post evaluation methods;
- the positive/sustainable outcomes;
- the negative/unsustainable outcomes;
- the transfer to authorities;
- the amount of money invested overall;
- and the level of local participation.
The five evaluations analyzed include:
For a full summary of these evaluations, please see the Ex-Post Evaluations Summary Table. Here, are brief synopses of the most pertinent information for the above framework of analysis, and the table provides a better context for our conclusions.
Here are the key findings from the various ex-post evaluations that we found to be most significant:
- Over 18 million USD were spent on the five combined projects, but most projects did not explicitly enumerate how many people/households were impacted by the individual projects. An exception to this is the project in Mauritius, which reported reaching around 3,500 people. Without understanding the scale of the program, it is difficult to compare projects directly to one another.
- Mercy Corps’ MILK Project in Niger was inclusive and participatory in its ex-post evaluation process, which resulted in hard data that can easily be analyzed, compared, and learned from in future projects. In addition, this evaluation utilized a unique pictoral tool developed specifically to include all project participants in the feedback loop, despite widespread illiteracy, so that every individual had the opportunity to provide their insight on project impacts.
- JICA’s Ethiopian agricultural development program involved community participation in the project from the earliest planning phases, with 100% of members reporting that they had “participated” or “actively participated” in the process. This resulted in feelings of greater personal ownership of the project, and heightened local understanding of their responsibilities.
- Evaluations that included direct community feedback in their analyses were by far the most helpful when trying to determine sustainability. For instance, in JICA’s Agricultural Development Project in the Kambia District of Sierra Leone there was no mention of local level involvement throughout any of the stages of project planning, implementation, or evaluation, which could have influenced why the project only “somewhat” achieved its objectives
- Projects that have flexible agendas, willing to change with the changing needs of the population during the planning/implementation phases, are viewed positively by the developing community and achieve more successful outcomes. This willingness to adapt was what characterized the project in GVC OLNUS Argentine Puna. Considering the true, up-to-date needs of the community allowed for greater local participation that enabled the strengthening of local autonomy (and thus, sustainability).
- None of the project evaluations provided a breakdown of how successful budget allocation was. The JICA projects included a breakdown of the overall budget into equipment and local costs, however despite some evaluations noting who provided certain funding, none mentioned if parts of the budget were inefficiently used. We believe it would be helpful to include not just how much money was invested in a project, but also how much of that budget either prompted direct growth or failed to produce an effective outcome.
Local community members are often referred to as ‘beneficiaries’ in the development process, yet they are the ones who governments, NGOs, and multilateral organizations are trying to empower through their various socioeconomic development missions. So, when we need to understand what worked with a project, and as importantly what didn’t work for a project, it is the voices of the community that need to be heard. A lot of great work is being done in international development, but it is clear that after her initial research that ex-post evaluations are essential to determining project sustainability and that projects that propose community-level development must also take the time to directly involve those community members in their own evaluation process. This feedback loop has the power to inform and influence future projects, while also creating the opportunity to actually listen to what participants (not beneficiaries) can sustain for themselves to achieve a better life.
Where have you found feedback loops that work? What excellent programming can you share?
Sources:
[1] Nishimaki, R., Kunihiro, H., & Tahashi, S. (2008, July 8). Evaluation Result Summary: The Project for Irrigation Farming Improvement. Retrieved from https://www.jica.go.jp/english/our_work/evaluation/tech_and_grant/project/term/africa/c8h0vm000001rp75-att/ethiopia_2008_01.pdf
[2] Kumagai, M., Otsuka, M., & Sakagami, J. (2009, September 26). Evaluation Result Summary: The Agricultural Development Project in Kambia in the Republic of Sierra Leone. Retrieved from https://www.jica.go.jp/english/our_work/evaluation/tech_and_grant/project/term/africa/c8h0vm000001rp75-att/ethiopia_2008_01.pdf
[3] The Improve Group. (2012, December). Post Project Evaluation of Mercy Corps’ MILK Program in Niger: Examining Contributions to Resilience. Retrieved from https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/read/35930718/niger-milk-post-project-evaluation-final-report-mercy-corps
[4] Proatec SRL. (2013, March). Ex Post Evaluation of Projects Managed by NGOs in Argentina. Retrieved from https://www.oecd.org/derec/italy/Evalutation-of-Projects-Managed-by-NGOs-in-Argentina.pdf
[5] International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). (1997, August). Small-Scale Agricultural Development Project – Ex-post Evaluation. Retrieved from https://www.ifad.org/en/web/ioe/evaluation/asset/39828071
by valuingvoicesjin | Jan 15, 2014 | Accountability, Africa, Bilateral organizations, Governance, International aid, International non-profits, LIvelihoods, Local Participants, Results, Sustainability
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 or respect." When we design projects with communities with long-term self-sustainability as the core value, we are respecting them.
And we must start local. As Acumen Fellow Natalie Grillon says from Uganda: "Ask more questions, listen and learn. I’m always trying to get better at listening to learn before I act so that my actions can lead to productive results based on consensus and conversations rather than assumptions. Don’t believe that you know the full story. The farmers for whom I work know their crop, know their land and know what they want."
She goes on to tell us how she stopped doing things for the project staff: " I could offer more in working alongside my colleagues to learn how to do new things together, like using a new database or thinking about ways to motivate teams… I could feel the sense of empowerment and excitement that could come from learning even a simple new thing and which only required a few minutes of our time" rather than just doing it herself for them.
This is what Valuing Voices is all about — seeing our participants as our true clients, as listening to what they want rather than designing development requests for proposal and even project proposals themselves in capital cities far from input by these very clients. Would any corporation in their right mind design without asking potential clients, without pre-testing and tweaking interventions before a full launch? Imagine how products would fare without marketing campaigns touting their benefits over other products? This doesn't happen often in development because participants are most often seen as 'price takers', grateful for what we offer, not matter if the fit is not perfect. Such an approach is not only inefficient, it is deeply disrespectful.
On the other hand, there are successes to be seen along the lines of localizing development. In addition to successes found in my other blogs (see Plan, Mercy Corps, LWR and even PACT – forthcoming), Devex recently posted an article praising Nuru and Millenium Villages for "working to develop local leaders who will fully take over the various programs they’ve begun after the foreigners leave in two years… [using] the opportunity to build up local leaders and engage them in developing their own communities." Hallelujah! Devex says Munk's critique of Millenium Villages is that "Millennium violates two basic principles of good development: It’s not scalable and it’s not sustainable". Nuru believes "poor people hold the keys to their own development."
Absolutely! Not only should design and implementation center around community wants and capacities, there are all sorts of project activities that communities can help sustain themselves:
* Agriculture and livelihoods (income generation, micro-credit, marketing),
* Natural resource management (climate-smart agriculture, reforestation),
* Literacy and numeracy.
While there are other things larger than communities that need ongoing external support for, how often are there referendums on what they would prioritize? The UN recently named 2014-2024 the sustainable energy decade and infrastructure such as roads, water systems as well as trade including the World Trade Organization's Doha Trade talks for improve the trading prospects of developing countries are vital, how often have citizens been asked? Ashoka's Changemakers supports projects that create feedback loops (like our own in East Africa: http://www.changemakers.com/project/valuing-voices-kenya).
Communities are deeply grateful for assistance yet they want to to have a voice, to steer the ship more themselves. The Listening Project found that "agencies should slow down and take more time to understand people’s capabilities, priorities, preferences, and ideas… [participants] don’t want to have aid agencies to be more extractive in how they gather information. They want to be part of the decision making process of aid efforts. This goes beyond two-way communication and requires rethinking many of our assumptions and processes to find ways to truly collaborate and support those who are affected."
Among the project's 6,000 interviewees, some wondered "why no one seems to check on whether the assistance provided has made a positive difference in recipients’ lives. It is important for aid agencies to have processes and mechanisms to receive and provide feedback to communities and to be accountable for their actions—and particularly for any harm that has been done."
Yes! We need to help those projects such as Nuru whose farmers are supported in self-sufficiency, countries that support communities evaluating our projects, for a start. That is the dignified life path to take as a development professional – as their peers.
by valuingvoicesjin | Jan 6, 2014 | Accountability, Bilateral organizations, DIFD, Evaluation, International aid, International non-profits, LIvelihoods, Participation, Resilience, Results, Sustainability, USAID
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 controls of the Jeep and control the steering wheel directly, driving offroad, with the copilot praising your good driving and steering only to avoid catastrophe. You are told that one day the Jeep will be yours.
That day arrives. The development agency hands you the keys to the Jeep. You wave good bye to them, return to the Jeep, turn the key. Dead.
Looking under the hood, you realize the motor is gone. Checking the rest of the Jeep you realize there is no fuel and the tries are flat. That is what it is like from the community's view of development projects after close-out. The local NGO to whom the project has been 'handed over' has scant financial or human resources to continue (no engine), and in the last few months' scramble to close out, the implemeneting agency put in few systems for communities to continue doing the programming without support by the local NGO or all the resources they had poured in (no fuel). There is little to help you move the Jeep (even on flat tires) except your own feet, other than the capacity building that was learned early on, as it wasn't built to last based on local materials. Sustainability isn't programmed in projects that have set timelines and donor-set markers of success which mandate close-out.
So you own the Jeep but with little power to move, very much like countless well-meant tractor for development agriculture before you.
There are several glimmers of hope. What communities have is the human power that exists locally, fuelled by participation coupled with information transmission such as WorkWithUs and MakingAllVoicesCount (based on the moral imperative of it's Their Development as well) and ALNAP's push to use evaluation for learning in international development.
We could also help donors springboard to learn from sustainability via the latest buzzword in development: "Resilience". At USAID and DIFD this is the "ability of people, households, communities, countries, and systems to mitigate, adapt to, and recover from shocks and stresses in a manner that reduces chronic vulnerability and facilitates inclusive growth" and "helping communities and countries to be better prepared to withstand and rapidly recover from a shock", respectively.
Resilience could be the doorway to getting community-defined sustainable programming to break the cycle of recurrent emergencies that divert resources from long-term development. Imagine: we could ask citizens what will make them resilient! A rare, shining example is a USAID-funded Ethiopia project with a mandate to use participatory impact assessments (process monitoring plus participatory input to capture local perceptions of benefits) to learn from communities. A USAID Solicitation tells us "seventeen impact assessments on different program activities were undertaken to inform best practice and to develop guidelines and policies. A major impact was the development and adoption of Emergency Livestock Guidelines by the Ethiopian government. These were based on best practice assessments in many countries (including Kenya) and action research on different types of interventions. Emergency de-stocking–selling livestock early in a drought to preserve their price and leave more fodder and water for remaining animals — was found to be particularly effective, with a 40:1 benefit cost ratio. Emergency livestock vaccination campaigns, on the other hand, were found to have no impact on livestock mortality, and were dropped in favor of other health interventions including parasite control and de-stocking."
Excellent Valuing of pastoralist Voices! How are such locally-informed excellent processes and findings being widely shared and implemented? What do you think?
