It shouldn’t surprise me. I’ve written about how accountability is often looked for in all the wrong places. But it’s not as if I’m saying something that should be so foreign or new, right?

Here’s a definition from Keystone’s 2006(!) report, “Downward accountability to ‘beneficiaries’: NGO and donor perspectives”:

Downward accountability: HOW an organization engages with its ‘beneficiaries’, builds relationships, and is accountable for results in ways that enable learning and improvement towards the achievement of its mission.

We all know why those we supposedly serve should come first. But when just sharing the concept of downward accountability in a meeting seems baffling to fellow aid professionals, I know that more significant effort, time and resources to understanding accountability beyond funders are long overdue.

Downward accountability is ultimately about defining impact in a way that places beneficiaries’ perceptions center-stage. I think funders would easily jump on board to if aid agencies knew how to better operationalize this, which is more possible than ever before in the aid industry’s history. GlobalGiving is leading the way.

Maybe funders should start judging organizations not on the “impact” of their projects, but on their ability to create, utilize, and maintain feedback loops with beneficiaries. It’s time for such efforts to no longer be “nice-to-have’s” but a central measure of success of organizational success. This would mean re-focusing everyone on the demand, rather than the supply side of NGO activities.

Accountability to whom? It may be a tired question, but one we all must continue to ask…until we don’t have to anymore.

I, for one, can’t wait for that day.

***

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Ruth writes to articulate the values she wants her child and all aid workers and international do-gooders to embody. How you behave, how you treat people—it matters.

And if you don’t know it by now…our mothers are usually right!

(Happy Mother’s Day Mom!)

***

“How to Make Them Glad That You Are There” from How to Work in Someone Else’s Country
By Ruth Stark

Whether or not your local colleagues wanted you there in the first place, your first job is to make them glad that you have arrived. The following are some dos and don’ts to help you get off to a good start in a foreign land.

DO start with who you are.

People will want to know who you are. In much of the world, this means who you are as a person. This differs from the West, where we start with our titles, university degrees, and job accomplishments. Talk about where you come from. Tell people a bit about your personal and family history, especially about your children. There will be plenty of time to let them know your professional experiences and academic credentials. Be a person first and the consultant part will take care of itself.

DON’T give the answer until you know the question.

Don’t start giving advice the minute you arrive. Take time to get to know the situation. Although you may believe you are well prepared for this assignment and clear about what needs to be done, go slow. You may find that the situation on the ground is far different from what you had anticipated (and different from what you had been told).

Even if you have been correctly briefed and even if you know what needs to be done, you should still resist the urge to start giving advice. Your colleagues in the host country will not appreciate a person who starts spouting the solutions to their problems before they are properly briefed about the situation.

Listen, listen, and listen some more. Gently probe for clarification and then cautiously test your conclusions and advice. Preface remarks with questions such as “Does this make sense to you?” Or “My impression is … but I’m concerned that I may be missing something.”

DO find out who’s who and who does what.

Take the time to learn who the stakeholders are. The stakeholders are the decision makers, your colleagues, and those who are affected by the work you are doing and the recommendations you are making. For your assignment to be a success, many people need to be on board. Find out who these people are and learn their perspective on the work you have been assigned to do.

DO demonstrate your knowledge of (and interest in) local news and events.

When you first arrive, buy the local newspaper and tune in to the local news stations. Reading the front pages will inform you of subjects you can use to “break the ice” in conversations and will alert you to the “hot button” subjects to stay away from, such as political, ethical, and regional issues.

On the “stay away” side, information in the national headlines is good knowledge to have in one’s head but not information to express to others until you are very sure of your facts and your audience. As a way of testing you, people may ask your opinions of these controversial political or regional issues. The wisest course of action is to avoid responding and to switch to another subject.

A good subject to switch to is sports. Read the sports pages and learn the names of the teams, the key players, and the major upcoming events. Many people feel passionate about sports and love to discuss their local heroes. Your knowledge of local sports shows your interest in the country and gives you a topic that can be discussed freely.

Reading the local newspaper and listening to the local news every day is a good way to orient yourself and get off to a good start in your new country.

DO find out what your counterparts expect from you.

In your discussions with your local colleagues, be alert for clues that indicate what they are expecting from you during this assignment. You may find that your colleagues’ understanding of your assignment differs from yours. You may also find that the various stakeholders each have different expectations of you. Clarifying the expectations of the different stakeholders early in your assignment will prevent misunderstandings and disappointments later on. This is a dynamic process. Don’t be surprised if the expectations change over time, as people get to know you.

DON’T rush it.

Often international workers arrive raring to go, with a long list of results and outputs to produce in a short period of time, only to find that their local colleagues don’t feel their same sense of urgency and don’t understand what the rush is.

Don’t be dismayed by the slow pace of your local colleagues. Different people have a different pace, and different cultures have a different sense of time. So don’t be discouraged and think no one cares about your work. That is not necessarily true. It may just be that things in that country move at a different speed.

It may also be that your local colleagues are so overextended that they find the additional work generated by your job more than they can manage. Find out about their other commitments and be reasonable in making demands on their time.

Don’t let the pressures of meeting your target outputs create tensions in your relationships with your colleagues.

DO ask questions, but don’t interrogate.

Some of your stakeholders will be very open and direct in sharing their concerns and perspectives and in telling you what they expect from you. Many will not. For this reason, you will need to watch and listen carefully for the nuances in what they say and do. This takes time and patience.

When you first meet your local colleagues, let them lead the conversation. Then follow up with some general open-ended questions. If you don’t get immediate answers to your specific questions, leave your questions until next time. Don’t let your initial interviews with your foreign colleagues seem like interrogation sessions. Don’t make your colleagues feel like you are pinning them down.

DO beware of assessment tools.

Don’t be a slave to the assessment tools that are so common in projects, with their predetermined set of questions and checklists. For many purposes (research being one possible exception) you can elicit the information you need in a friendly conversational manner, asking open-ended questions. Then if you detect reticence or resistance, you can transition to a different subject.

Confidentiality is never believed and seldom achieved. So asking for information in a written form or in a survey is often perceived as threatening. Unless your project requires it, use other methods for gathering information.

Certain questions are best asked in informal settings–over lunch or when traveling together in the car. Make the most of these opportunities.

DON’T record meetings.

Recording meetings can be very threatening to the people you are working with, particularly those in countries suffering from political unrest, conflict, or oppression. Recording an interview or meeting can also inject an element of distrust into the proceedings. While journalists and social science researchers commonly document information by recording it, this method is not usually appropriate for project international workers.

DO communicate an approachable, friendly attitude.

Your opportunities for informal contacts will be much greater if you are easy to approach and are friendly with your colleagues. If you give the impression of being constantly harried and too intense, no one will want to bother you. So try to lighten up, even if you are under pressure to reach your targets or to produce the deliverables.

DON’T be too high maintenance.

There are some international workers who have excellent skills but are simply not worth the trouble because they make too many demands on their organization and too many demands on their foreign colleagues.

Some workers expect the organization that hired them to “take care” of them; for example, by asking that the organization make arrangements for their holidays and attend to their personal affairs. Others require so much support, encouragement, or time that the organization will think twice before selecting them for another overseas assignment.

International workers can also be too high maintenance for their overseas colleagues. For example, some demand a better working environment than the local standard–a more spacious office, air conditioning, and so on. Other workers expect their local counterparts to take them on shopping trips and to tourist sites, and to help them with their personal errands.

It is one thing if your local colleagues want to socialize with you and offer to help you; it is another thing entirely if you are constantly demanding favors (or giving the impression that you are so helpless that you need them to look after you). This is taking advantage.

The bottom line is this: People who work overseas should be able to take care of themselves and should neither expect nor demand the creature comforts to which they are accustomed in their home country. Avoid becoming labeled as a high-maintenance worker if you want more international assignments.

DO find little ways to be helpful.

When people are working under difficult circumstances–particularly in resource-poor settings–sometimes what they need most is a little practical help. It is often the “little extras” that a worker does to help local staff that are considered the most valued contributions. The “terms of reference” or “statement of work” are often seen as “helping” the organization’s objectives. But it is the personal assistance and help in meeting those objectives that earns the consultant respect among the local staff. The time spent on the little practical help you can provide will be repaid many times over in the cooperation and assistance you will receive in completing your “official” tasks.

Nice, just plain nice, will take you miles.

***

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I dedicate it to her and the visionaries like her who dare to say, “Nope, no more. This is what we can do instead.”

***

Paper Over People

The system commands,
this, then, this,
don’t forget that on your checklist
of what must be done, what must be spent.
Wave your dollar before the noses,
sniffing for change, or opportunity—
which do you smell?
As you dance only in your head,
full of defensed matrixes and office-full distractions
floating around you,
Hide behind your degree of “knowing”
More?
Because you “have” more,
and can write into guidelines,
made of lines you guided?
Because your reality is
an intellectual debate
over real lives lived?
Will you ever dare let yourself
step into “other,” into vulnerability?
Just for a moment.
It’s just a step.

***

Have some poems you treasure that you’d like to share with fellow aid workers and do-gooders? Please send them my way at email.howmatters@gmail.com!

***

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Aid recipients agree, calling for a change in aid’s business model—from that of delivery of goods and services to one focused on relationships (The Listening Project, 2010).

I have experienced the impact and potential of alternative funding and support mechanisms that could serve the conservatively estimated 1,000,000+ local groups and grassroots movements operating across the globe (Wiser.org, 2011).

A major obstacle to this, however, is the estimated 595,000 aid workers (ALNAP, 2010) who are rarely called to examine the bureaucratic rigidities that govern their day-to-day work and that deflate and/or marginalize local activists and changemakers. Cynicism, burnout, and jadedness on the prospect of any “real” progress can seriously compromise the hopefulness that many workers had when they entered the aid industry (Satori Worldwide & Mindfulness for NGOs, 2011). Much of the time, the needs of aid institutions and philanthropies overshadow the needs of grassroots-up initiatives, with SO much being lost in the over-technicalization of aid work and grantmaking.

Yet in my experience as a loudspeaker for “local changemakers,” I’ve seen a growing cadre of skilled professionals that openly, bravely, and constructively question “business as usual” in the aid industry. And they are so needed. Connecting aid workers who want to instill and/or re-cultivate a sense of public service and downward accountability within their roles is the first step to change.

Imagine if just a small percentage of the large-grant aid resources are “unlocked” for grassroots-up initiatives. To re-direct even 0.01% of industry resources for local changemakers would be a tremendous win.

By supporting and encouraging dedicated and self-identified change agents within aid institutions to create more trust, equity and mutual accountability with those we serve in the developing world, the system-wide reform needed becomes possible. Like you, I no longer want to see local civil society organizations as the lowest common denominator of international development assistance. It’s time to recognize local initiatives and indigenous organizations as vital to supporting demand-driven development that can genuinely challenge power asymmetries, and unleash social change.

I support whydev.org‘s initiative to build an international support network for isolated aid workers because, aside from offering mentoring and coaching, I think this effort could help share the good practices and actionable insights about how to better serve local partners, from within the system and outside of it. Now is the time to be corrective and imaginative, shifting the cognitive frameworks with which we talk about international aid.

No matter how you relate to your role in making the world a more equitable and peaceful place for its people to share in its prosperity, you have to do the internal work to know yourself first. In order to “be there” for anyone else, whether it’s your partner you sleep next to or the partner to which you give money, your own sense of well-being is the first thing that affects how effective you are in relating to and supporting others.

To meet the challenges of the 21^st century, we will have to “flip the aid system” to put more local and national actors in the driver’s seat of development. I, for one, want to make sure the next generation of aid workers is ready.

***

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Word got out, spread, and the situation was quickly resolved (within 12 hours). Whether the culprit chose to return the tomato cages by their own accord, or someone else’s urging – does it matter?

What people involved in international assistance often miss is that effective community leaders and nimble grassroots organizations know best how to operate in environments that contain and cultivate strong incentives and mechanisms for person-to-person responsibility and mutual trust. When organizations are embedded in the communities they serve, their expertise lies in knowing just how the tomato cages get back to Lillian.

In the aid context, there is an increasing number of skilled intermediary funders adept at partnering with local groups that demonstrate solid evidence of strong community ownership within their organizational systems. These intermediaries’ experience shows that when downward accountability is present, theft and corruption are a rare occurrence at the community level.

So when I hear aid workers say, “there’s too much corruption at the local level” or “grassroots organizations will just abscond with the money”, I wish they knew more about how the tomato cages came back home.

(And yes, Lillian is my grandma, Jr. my grandpa. They still live in my hometown of 248 people.)

***

To read more about how “daily, organic systems of ‘horizontal’ assistance actually function,” I highly recommend reading: Wilkinson-Maposa, S. & Fowler, A. (2009). The poor philanthropist I-IV: How and why the poor help each other. Cape Town: Southern Africa-United States Center for Leadership and Public Values.

***

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The Real Experts

Why Organizations Matter

Last week I attended the “Summit for Aid Effectiveness in Global Health: Making Country Leadership a Priority,” hosted by MIDEGO. Then earlier this week is was the InterAction Forum 2012, “Engage * Learn * Build,” and ending up yesterday at the Chesapeake Bay Organization Development Network Annual Meeting, “Shifting Organizations from Reactive to Resilient.” (You can check out my Storify-ed tweets from the events here, here, and here respectively.)

But it was the framing questions for MIDEGO’s event that helped to shape my mindset over these three meetings:

• What does country leadership mean to your work in development?
• Are you ready to let go and let countries lead?
• How will we know that US dollars are being used effectively if we let countries lead programs?
• How do we let go?

With MIDEGO’s questions in mind all week, I’ve listened to old school “experts” in suits. I’ve listened to “local champions” via Skype from the developing world. I’ve listened to people who identify themselves squarely as supporters of local activists and leaders. And in each of their presentations and in the pursuant discussions, I’ve been listening for answers to these questions for insight into how the shifts needed to make aid more locally responsive can occur.

My conclusion? The international aid industry (and the people that make it up) might need a 12-step program to overcome what ails the system in order to meet the challenges of the 21^st century.

So I offer these 12 steps, reworked for us aid workers, philanthropists, social entrepreneurs and volunteers, written as if we had successfully gone through the program and come out the other side—stronger and more devoted to our purpose.

Step 1:  We admitted we were powerless over a project-based mentality–that when we considered the changing world, our frameworks and tools as they had come to define us had become obsolete.

Step 2:  We came to believe that notions of complexity and resilience, as powers greater than ourselves, could help guide us towards more adaptive programming.

Step 3:  We made a decision to turn our will and our roles over to this reality and to the adaptability of natural systems.

Step 4:  We made a searching and fearless inventory of our character as do-gooders and of the limitations of our internal systems in relation to the people we aim to serve.

Step 5:  We admitted to ourselves, our organizations and to our partners (implementing and funding) the exact nature of our faults and misdeeds.

Step 6:  We were entirely ready to practice responsive mechanisms of support (funding and accompaniment) in order to remove our defects of character.

Step 7:  We humbly used the feedback from our partners in the removal of our shortcomings and resolved to work to remove these faults by utilizing robust feedback mechanisms.

Step 8:  We made a list of all persons we harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

Step 9:  We made direct amends to such people whenever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

Step 10:  We continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.

Step 11:  We listened, studied, and meditated to improve our awareness of the natural laws and forces that govern the real and valued contributions of changemakers at  all levels, focusing only on accountability to the people we serve and the strength to follow that pursuit above all else.

Step 12:  Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Many people and international assistance efforts have started down this path.

Folks, if you haven’t yet embarked on your recovery, what are you waiting for?

***

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The daughter tells her father:
Since you ask, here’s why I must study.
Because I am a girl, I must study.

Long denied this right, I must study
For my dreams to take flight, I must study
Knowledge brings new light, so I must study
For the battles I must fight, I must study
Because I am a girl, I must study.

To avoid destitution, I must study
To win independence, I must study
To fight frustration, I must study
To find inspiration, I must study
Because I am a girl, I must study.

To fight men’s violence, I must study
To end my silence, I must study
To challenge patriarchy I must study
To demolish all hierarchy, I must study.
Because I am a girl, I must study.

To mould a faith I can trust, I must study
To make laws that are just, I must study
To sweep centuries of dust, I must study
To challenge what I must, I must study
Because I am a girl, I must study.

To know right from wrong, I must study.
To find a voice that is strong, I must study
To write feminist songs I must study
To make a world where girls belong, I must study.
Because I am a girl, I must study.

~Kamla Bhasin

This poem originally appeared on peacexpeace.org, which invites you all to find out more about Kamla Bhasin’s women’s empowerment organization in New Delhi, India, Sangat. An interesting interview with her on the women’s movement and the role of NGOs can be viewed here.

To learn more about girls’ empowerment around the world, also see Reaching Girls at the Grassroots – A Sound Investment (Part 2) and Plan International’s campaign by the same title as Bhasin’s poem, “Because I am a Girl.”

***

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An aid worker’s poetic journey

Today’s story is an inspiration to a bigger dream and rekindling the extinguished
flame of hope.

Today’s story is a walk towards self-realisation
Sounded by the ancient drum beating in all of us
The drum that releases original creation and ingenuity
That gives birth to a people empowered
Empowered to begin the change

Yes, it’s possible!
It starts within us.

By Rumbidzai Faith Masawi

***

In mid-2007 a group of Zimbabwean NGOs undertaking a collective capacity-building programme known as the Programme for Institutional Learning and Exchange (PROFILE) embarked on an exercise to discover their relevance in promoting development. Sixteen participating organizations took on a Joint Research and Reflection exercise called the “Makadii-Linjani Journey” using the Most Significant Change evaluation methodology. The resulting insights and lessons from their work appear in Narratives of Hope ‘It Starts Within Us’: Documenting Development Through Stories of Change, published by Weaver Press.

This poem was written and recited by Rumbidzai Faith Masawi at the Orientation Training Workshop for Makadii-Linjani research teams, at Kadoma, Zimbabwe in November 2008. As stated in the book’s preface, ”Little did [Rumbidzai] know that it would become a piece of art that would serve to illuminate the journey the partner organizations were about to begin.”

“This project will be innovative.” 

The development aid sector is not lacking in ideas or methods and it’s hardly appropriate to declare one’s self “innovative,” right?

Last year when I found the one-page piece I wrote about a local implementing partner’s monitoring activity for kids in 2004 still being showcased as an “innovative best practice” by a former large aid agency for I used to work (of course by now with someone else’s name on it), I questioned whether or not innovation is even possible in these big ships that are hard to steer.

I don’t want to set the bar low, but maybe, just maybe, doing your work well and making any progress at all in challenging, changing, and complex operating environments, (let alone bureaucracies), should be considered innovative in and of itself. Maybe we should look for evidence of innovation not in the latest idea or product as in the private sector, but in the fact that individual and collective reflection processes to identify and overcome obstacles occur, resulting in changes or adaptations in our work.

Moreover, aren’t the people who intimately know a problem from the inside out, more likely to see where the possibilities for innovation lie? In the scope of action by smaller grassroots groups focused on family and community structures, is there not the potential to draw upon “innovations” for larger programs? Ultimately, where we are looking for innovation and who defines innovation is most important.

What if we can re-conceptualize “innovation” for aid? What if the thing really makes something innovative is not the idea itself, but the learning that made it possible?

***

Why does jargon matter to people? Perhaps it’s because these words remind us that we’re involved in what @Semhar Araia describes as “intellectual debates over real people’s lives.”

And maybe that’s not such a comfortable place.

I recommend checking out last month’s issue of InterAction’s Monthly Developments, “Frustrated by NGO Jargon?” now online. Among some other really great articles, my piece, “It’s Not YOUR Project: Why possessive adjectives are the most detrimental aid jargon we use” is included on page 16.

***

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“But will this be sustainable?”

This is a question I find it harder and harder to tolerate it in discussions about international development. (Luckily, due to my nature and to this blog, I rarely have to bite my tongue.)

I share this though because we as aid workers and funders need to challenge this notion of the necessity of the “sustainability” of activities within aid projects. Basic services to people must be sustainable. Training workshops must not.

I do not expect the fire house or the library down the street from me in Washington D.C. to be sustainable. In fact, I expect these public goods to be funded in perpetuity.

But by whom? That is the important question. I vote to make sure these services stay in tact in my own community.

Therefore, donors must be more careful not to employ a double standard in their expectations, especially of local civil society organizations. Let’s talk about sustainability, yes, but let’s also make sure it’s not just an empty question.

For a great read on what genuine sustainability of water and sanitation services in the developing world should mean, I recommend @NedBreslin of Water for People’s paper “Rethinking Hydro-Philanthropy: Smart Money for Transformative Impact.”

And while I’m at it, what about “innovation” in aid?

***

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