Nothing unusual in the title of the seminar that The Hauser Center at Harvard University put together just over a year ago. Everyone from academics to NGOs, government officials and even rock stars seem to have something to say on the topic. The innovation here was the choice of the lead panelist: Ndiogou Fall of Senegal, an authoritative and articulate representative of the burgeoning movement of Africa small producers who, in his words, “are both the prime victims of and the solutions to the problem of hunger”. Listening to the views of the actors most directly concerned by the problem sounds like common sense. But how often have you seen peasant leaders on stage at Harvard when food and development issues are under discussion.

Ending Hunger in Africa panel discussion, November 8. 2010, Harvard Kennedy School

The leap into uncharted dialogic territory paid off. Ndiogou Fall gave us the gift of a lucid, convincing and combative analysis of how African food security has deteriorated over the years and what is required for the continent to feed itself. The policies applied during and following the colonial period, from export-oriented specialization to structural adjustment and liberalization, have drastically dampened food production, barred small producers’ access to their own domestic markets, and reduced them to de-capitalized subsistence farming. The 2007-2008 food crisis and the attendant uprisings have had the salutary effect of dramatically exposing the failure of past approaches. What to put in their place? For Fall the horse to bet on can only be the small-scale family farmers who today provide food, employment and incomes for the majority of Africa’s population despite the neglect from which they have suffered for decades. With supportive policies and programs, and applying environment-friendly agro-ecological methods, it is possible to significantly increase smallholder productivity while helping to cool the planet and defend biodiversity.

But this requires a change of paradigm, Fall explains. African governments have to prioritize local and regional markets over the world market through trade policies that protect local producers, regulate supply, and build intra-regional exchanges. Agricultural policies formulated with the participation of all stakeholders are required. Infrastructure and communications need to be extended in rural areas and the rural economies strengthened by supporting producers to develop value chains that can generate employment and revenues. Small-scale producers need to access credit at reasonable terms – not the 25% interest rates they now have to contend with as compared with 5% in Europe. Land policies have to defend the right of rural people to the territories on which they live and from which they draw their livelihoods, blocking the galloping phenomenon of speculation and land grabs.

Ndiogou Fall passed away, prematurely and deeply mourned, on May 5, 2011. We pay tribute to his memory by making available the video recording of the Hauser Center seminar in which he participated. His message is an important one for Harvardians in a moment in which other voices advocate biotechnology as key to preventing hunger and news reports unveil the possible involvement of the Harvard endowment fund in land grabbing in Africa (The Guardian – June 9, 2011).

Nora McKeon was formerly responsible for civil society relations at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). She is the author of several publications on small farmers and food policies. Harvard Class of ’62.

Paul Farmer’s compelling new book, “Haiti: After the Earthquake,” suggests that international aid to Haiti, while providing relief from suffering during the worst of times, including in the aftermath of the January 12, 2010, earthquake, has for the most part failed to help Haiti build capacity in its own public institutions, including its public health and education sectors.

A capable, responsive and accountable public sector is essential to helping Haiti become a healthy, productive and ultimately resilient society—one better able to cope with the destructive forces of inevitable natural disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes. Moreover, Farmer argues that meddling by the West in Haiti’s internal politics has contributed to the country’s chronic political instability. Periodic withholding by the U.S. of direct assistance to the Haitian governments—including democratically elected but leftist governments—and U.S. vetoes of initiatives by international organizations to channel aid directly through the Haitian government, have steadily eroded the capacity of the Haitian public sector to provide basic social services.

In testimony to the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2003, Farmer called for an end to the de facto prohibitions of development aid to the government of Haiti that the US promoted in forums in which it held influence, including the Inter-American Development Bank. “At the time [of the testimony], influential American institutions were effectively blocking four loans to Haiti from the Inter-American Development Bank—for primary health care, education, potable water, and road improvement—because they didn’t condone the outcome of Haiti’s 2000 elections, which brought the left-leaning Aristide back to power.” (p. 97)

U.S. aid did flow to Haiti during times when Washington was displeased with the country’s political leadership, but not to the Haitian government. Instead of aiding Haitian government organizations such as the ministries of health and education, aid was channeled to international non-governmental organizations (INGOs). INGOs set up their own health, water, education and agricultural programs, with little reference to Haitian government oversight, needs or priorities. Funding channeled through international NGOs failed to help build the capacity of Haitian public institutions that must provide health, education and other essential public services to poor Haitians over the long term. “Without real and sustained commitment to strengthening the public sector—including its capacity to monitor and coordinate services offered by NGOs—who would make sure development funds were being used efficiently.” (p. 97.) At the time of the January 2010 earthquake, 80 percent of all aid to Haiti and 90 percent of all U.S. aid was channeled through NGOs and contractors.

Haiti by the time of the earthquake had become known in humanitarian aid circles as “the Republic of NGOs,” with more NGOs per capita than any developing country apart from India, according to Farmer (p. 99). The U.S. reliance on INGO-managed assistance was to a considerable degree a direct consequence of U.S. laws that prohibited direct U.S. aid to Haiti’s public sector. “Post-earthquake Haiti needed many of the foreign contractors and NGOs because its [public sector] implementation capacity has long been weakened.” (p. 99). Ultimately, only 0.3 percent of all Haitian quake relief was channeled through Haiti’s public sector. (p. 102)

Farmer was back at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on January 27, 2010, less than two weeks after the earthquake. Six months previously he had been appointed UN deputy special envoy for Haiti under the special envoy, President Clinton. Tasked with mobilizing international relief support for Haiti and recognizing that it is poverty that makes people most vulnerable to natural disasters, he argued that greater amounts of aid for reconstruction be channeled through Haiti’s public sector. Better education and public health care systems would over the long term bring greater prosperity, and in turn would reduce the loss of life and destruction of property and livelihoods in the aftermath of natural disasters.

There is an opportunity not only to build Haiti back better, but to build a more functional and ultimately beneficial arrangement for aid delivery. Over the past two decades, U.S. aid policies have seesawed between embargoes and efforts to bypass governments, including elected ones not to Washington’s taste. Neither the international community nor the United States provided credible, long-term, financial investment in Haiti. Restructuring foreign aid and forgiving Haiti’s crippling debts are essential to helping the country recover. U.S. laws, including the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and its later revisions, prevent direct investment in the public sector; we will need to revisit these policies.

Jehane Sedsky, a colleague of Farmer’s at the UN special envoy’s office, in a concluding chapter entitled “Building Back Better, provides a thoughtful discussion of why the efforts of not-for-profit community in Haiti before the earthquake often did not contribute to lasting change in Haiti or, in many cases, to even help Haitians.

• The work of not-for profits was uncoordinated and did little to reinforce the priorities of the Haitian government.

• International NGOs expended great effort determining ways to address problems they saw, but often they did not include Haitians in meaningful ways as they developed their plans.

• International NGOs are accountable to their international donors—not to the disenfranchised communities they are trying to serve.

• Often they deliver goods and services but less often pay local salaries; creating a culture of dependency rather than self-sufficiency.

• Many years of effort by NGOs has served to only weaken the already weak government, which did not, even before the earthquake, have the resources to pay its employees.

• As a result, public health and education officials are paid intermittently, hospitals lack basic medicines and supplies, and schools are 90 percent privately owned and unregulated. (p. 357)

International humanitarian NGOs do not deploy their resources or staff to work within national institutional frameworks as partners—as part of the fabric of Haitian health and education organizations. Many find it inconvenient to do so, but many of their objections to working as authentic partners, dedicated to rebuilding Haitian capacity at its core, must be answered and overcome.

Farmer and his co-authors offer a persuasive critique of the failures of international aid to engage with Haitian public sector institutions in ways that would better serve Haiti over the long term. But they don’t in my view offer enough in the way of concrete proposals for forging a new kind of relationship between donors, international NGOs, and the Haitian government. I want to offer below a few ideas, principles really, for a new kind of aid relationship.

• A considerable portion of international development and humanitarian funding should be directed to building the capacity of the public health, public education and water sectors, sectors essential to poverty alleviation and economic growth. What’s an appropriate portion of all aid? I don’t know, but for purposes of discussion, let’s consider what it would take to get 50 percent of all aid disbursements channeled through the Haitian government as general budgetary support or through projects that are administered jointly by the Haitian government and INGOs and/or contractors by 2015.

• International technical advisors and professionals—health care workers, teachers, health and education administrators, civil engineers—should in much greater number than is currently the case be seconded from aid agencies, including from the staffs of International NGOs, to Haitian ministries and agencies, filling established posts. This would mean, for instance, that Haitian health care not be augmented by building new non-profit hospitals, staffed at the top by foreigners, and drawing talented Haitian away from public institutions with better, but ultimately uncompetitive salaries. Rather, funds should be directed to building better Haitian public hospitals, and international medical staff would take up positions at the side of their Haitian colleagues.

• In addition to providing technical assistance in their respective fields, international staff will be expected to provide management expertise, including skills in financial management, reporting and program auditing. (I’ve written in a previous blog about how Botswana’s insistence that all international advisors hold established Botswana government positions left a template of good management practice that endures long after the departure of expatriates).

• Effective public service delivery in Haiti will ultimately be provided by a growing Haitian economy, capable of financing to a much greater degree than is the case today its own public services. Considerable financial aid and technical assistance should be directed toward sectors of the government and the economy responsible for promoting joint public-private investment projects, generating employment growth, and better managing public finances. Partnerships between U.S. and Haitian universities and the Haitian ministry of finance supporting training in public finance and administration of top Haitian graduates should be designed and generously funded.

• The US should consider Haiti as a partner for Millennium Challenge Corporation funding for key sectors, such as health, education and agriculture, and provide aggressive support for USAID management development projects that would help Haiti meet the pre-conditions for MCC sector funding (as is currently being done for Liberia).

Haitians deserve a better deal from their own government and from international aid organizations. The current aid system does not help deliver the kind of systemic improvements in Haiti’s public service sectors for which it is capable. It’s past time to leave behind the litany of excuses that stand in the way of helping Haiti build back better.

Steven Lawry is a Senior Research Fellow at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Oganizations at Harvard University.

In my new role as BSR’s Director of Stakeholder Collaboration, I am focused on building relationships with NGO colleagues globally to bring their insights to our member companies and develop next-generation stakeholder engagement approaches that are outcome based and take into account trends in the field. BSR created this position to deepen relationships with civil society and foster collaboration between stakeholders and business.

Over the past decade, NGO activity has been shaped by the spread of democracy and the rise of the internet opening up societies. This spurred a flowering of all types of NGOs that enjoyed support from northern governments and unfettered trust from the public. In particular, we saw the rise of western-based international NGOs (or “INGOs”) that now form a key bridge between business, government, and society.

To get a sense of what’s in store for the next 10 years, I spoke with 15 NGO leaders from around the world (with a particular focus on Brazil, India, and China) as well as BSR’s senior management team in the United States, Europe, and Asia. My aim was to get their candid perspectives on how business-NGO relations will evolve over the next decade.
Based on these conversations, what follows are five trends shaping the NGO sector, and an analysis of what these trends will mean for business and NGO engagement in the next 10 years:

1. Decline in northern government influence: The economic stagnation and relative loss of political influence among countries whose governments supported and helped build the INGO sector of today (the United States, United Kingdom, and other OECD countries) has these countries looking inward to address their own economic woes. As a result, they no longer have the same ability to support INGOs by providing core funding and influence to tackle global sustainability issues.

This loss of support will result in some INGOs becoming more open to collaborating with business on sustainability solutions. It’s also likely that more grassroots-funded advocacy groups fueled by social networks will bring issues to the table much more quickly with limited funds. INGOs also risk losing their legitimacy, as resource-rich emerging countries become obsessed with growth at all costs and curtail INGO activity on the ground. Finally, economic stagnation in the West may mean INGOs need to focus on economic justice issues at home.

2. Rise of the global South: Countries in the global South, particularly China, are gaining economic and political influence, which is changing the landscape of all NGO types in crucially important ways. The pessimists argue that this marks a black period for NGOs, with China in particular repressing NGO activity, especially on human rights, and the BRICS not making up for the funding deficit left by the OECD countries.

The optimists, however, say that the changing geopolitical stage will pave the way for more locally relevant southern NGOs to emerge and mobilize people using bottom-up approaches, just as we saw during the Arab Spring. It appears unlikely that these southern NGOs will mirror their northern counterparts when it comes to brand power, size, or operating structure. Instead, the South is starting to see the birth of social ventures and technology-enabled advocacy groups such as the Awaz Foundation in India and IBASE in Brazil.

3. The social network effect: Following the Arab Spring, there is growing interest in using social networks to generate funds and grassroots support for NGOs, particularly in the wake of institutional funding drying up. However, opinions are mixed about whether social networks will amplify or erode the power of NGOs.

One school of thought believes that loosely organized groups may compete with NGOs by using tools like Facebook and Twitter to organize people. Indeed, WikiLeaks today breaks stories in a way that was traditionally done by NGOs.
Others view social networks as effective tools for NGOs to deepen their connection with the public. This group believes social networks will play a greater role in the South, in particular, as a way for smaller, leaner campaigning groups to mobilize resources and people quickly and cheaply.

4. The era of hypertransparency: Over the next decade, universal data accessand the emergence of new reporting standards (such as the Global Reporting Initiative for NGOs) will force INGOs to achieve parity with business and the public sector on transparency standards.

The rise of companies embracing hypertransparency—with more businesses reporting publicly on ESG data and sustainability issues due to pressure from investors and others—also competes with NGOs’ traditional role as watchdogs reporting on company activities.

5. The convergence of wicked problems: In the next 10 years, the links between climate events, growing population, and unsustainable consumption patterns will be made clearer and give rise to food shortages, water wars, mounting land-use concerns, and growing inequality between the haves and have-nots. Given the magnitude of these problems, NGOs will be forced to work together on systemic solutions.
The Next Generation of NGO-Business Strategies

In the wake of these trends, NGO strategies with business will change in several important ways:

• A move from confrontation to collaboration: The most successful NGOs already recognize that real change requires campaigning against and collaborating with companies—and this hybrid approach is likely to intensify.
In terms of confrontation, companies can expect social networks to support more radical groups, bring more Southern voices into the mix, and foster greater collaboration among campaigning organizations. To remain credible, businesses and NGOs that are working together should be prepared to demonstrate measurable impact from their partnerships.

• More selectivity around partnerships: In general, both businesses and NGOs are expressing fatigue about gathering for the sake of a conversation, and many INGOs have been skeptical about the overall impact of NGO-company partnerships to date. Going forward, successful NGO-corporate engagements are likely to be time bound and focused on specific outcomes, and partnerships in general are likely to be scrutinized more.

• An increase in social ventures: In the South, particularly in India, China, and Brazil, the increasing number of social ventures funded by newly emerging, high net worth individuals and social entrepreneurs will spur innovative solutions (such as the ones we have already seen in clean tech) that also demonstrate a clear return on investment.

• More pressure on multistakeholder initiatives: The impasse on climate change and ongoing challenges with human and labor rights have created a sense that some multistakeholder initiatives need to sunset, while others need to develop a greater clarity of purpose and accountability, including a tie-in to regulation or other hard instruments.

• More collaboration between NGOs: Historically, NGOs have operated in silos based on their programmatic or priority issue areas. Given the complexity and interconnectedness of sustainability issues, however, savvy NGOs will increasingly collaborate with one another to, for instance, bring the human dimension and the cost of displacement into climate conversations.

• Rise in virtual campaigns: To date, most NGOs have used social networks as a communications tool. In the next decade, business should expect to see savvy NGOs moving from communication to mobilizing the public with viral and compelling campaigns that break human stories on the ground in a faster, more connected way.

Ayesha Barenblat is the Director of Stakeholder Collaboration at BSR. This post was originally posted on BSR’s blog. For more information about Ayesha Barenblat, click here.

The reason there are 9 “Major Groups” of stakeholders as part of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development is because these groups are the ones who are pushy and vocal.

Felix Dodds (Executive Director of Stakeholder Forum), shared his tips during a talk at the Harvard Kennedy School on November 10 2011: “By getting involved early, you can have a huge impact on influencing the policy agenda”.

Even when governments are not ready to engage and we want to keep up momentum, there are lots of ways conversations can be kept moving – from coffee chats in capital corridors to more formal discussion with officials on their priorities, constant engagement leads to a strong trust-based bond.

Naturally, the desire to get involved early must be complemented with enough substance in order to get the attention of international organizations. Some ways to do that include a) writing background papers – promoting ideas, workshops, information leading up to a major event b) providing policy recommendations for instance on how to reshape financial markets (indices, governance, incentives, state owned investment vehicles) c) building alliances with key players in industry, for instance on the issue of corporate accountability for sustainability.

While this makes sense as a broad strategy, an audience member raised a question that is likely to be an obstacle to actionable progress: How do we make sure governments collaborate, agree, and execute?

Dodds suggested that the main way had to be by instituting review mechanisms that reward delivery. “NGOs play a role in holding accountability: we have done that very badly over the years – one of the missing links is parliaments. Parliaments could be part of as an annual review mechanism. There is no reason why parliaments can’t hold the executive branch of the government accountable.”

Another useful question was understanding whether this process is replicable outside the sustainable development arena (e.g. health, human rights, etc). Dodds was unambiguous in his response – Yes. In the fields of HIV/Aids and human rights, NGOs had demonstrated that they could set the agenda.

One of the things that Dodds wants to see is more UN summits taking place away from New York. It would be particularly important to have the 2015 MDG Summit hosted by a developing country. “Once we have a pooled expertise, then we get to have a more coherent input to the process”. This winds back to his earlier point – the beginning is the most important bit – if you get things right in agenda setting, governments trust you since you’ve been working with them over a period of time, so they take your ideas.

In my own experience setting up the Office of Climate Change and Development for the Government of Papua New Guinea, I found a lot of these principles to be valid. We appreciated the expertise of NGOs understanding how to get things done on the ground, and by engaging them early, developed a comprehensive, prioritized set of stakeholder interactions in different formats for various provinces. Furthermore, the indigenous people we spoke to felt much more comfortable pursuing ambitious initiatives knowing that NGOs, international organizations and the government together agreed that it was the best course of action.

Rahul Daswani is a pursuing a Masters in Public Policy Degree at the Harvard Kennedy School.

The 17th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC COP17) is coming up, and no one harbors great hopes that the South African hosts will manage to cajole all major polluters into signing a legally-binding agreement to cut emissions. Civil society is rightly flummoxed at the glacial progress of negotiations, which never respected the pace set out by the Bali Action Plan of 2007. Failure to find common grounds on the future of the Kyoto Protocol killed off COP15, and the matter was essentially circumvented in Cancun.

In the meantime, 2012 is only a month away, and – doomsday previsions made by Hollywood blockbusters aside – calamity is about to strike. The Kyoto Protocol – flawed, limited, but also the only treaty to have ever committed countries to stabilize GHG emissions – is set to expire, and the political will among key players to sign an agreement at least as strong is nowhere to be seen.

Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) will struggle to decide which advocacy strategy to undertake. In Copenhagen, the massive effort of mobilization raised awareness (and expectations), yet by CSOs’ own reckoning, probably helped the talks collapse. In Cancun a year later, the quieter effort to help build consensus so as to sow the ground for a comprehensive agreement in Durban didn’t quite work out as expected – consensus was reached, but only because most sensitive topics were deferred to COP17.

CSOs did score some successes in Cancun. Most were on questions of principle (for example on youth and gender involvement) or on technical matters: the Climate Action Network (CAN – a coalition of like minded NGOs) worked hard to prevent the agreement on Land-use land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) from being worded so as to provide loopholes for polluting countries. Civil society also embarrassed Japan into not vetoing references to a second commitment period (albeit failed to make that a durable position). It is however evident that CSOs were most influential over matters where political controversy was low.

Unfortunately, Durban needs to resolve the most politically sensitive issues:
1- what enforceable mitigation efforts countries should take,
2- and how to include in such a process big developing countries (and the USA).

Civil society can influence the process through three different channels: by appealing directly to public opinion, by lobbying negotiators, and by setting the discourse on an issue.

In the short run, work must be done on the first two. Mobilizing public opinion will be difficult in rich economies, where economic instability has long displaced environmental sustainability in the minds of most. Nevertheless, environmental NGOs could very well link up with the ‘Indignant’ movements across the world, whose broad discontent with the excesses of finance-driven capitalism is not incompatible with the environmentalist message of combating unnecessary consumption.

Whilst lobbying negotiators is probably the most direct way to influence the final agreement, this isn’t usually the channel for fundamental change. Either CSOs also act on domestic policy-makers, or else influencing negotiators with strict marching orders from capital will not achieve anything politically radical. Lobbying must be innovative to be successful: witness WEDO (Women’s Environment and Development Organization)’s capacity to insert 8 references to gender issues in the Cancun Agreements thanks to its financing and training women negotiators from low-capacity delegations.

What these two channels may achieve in Durban is unclear. Yet beyond COP17, CSOs must keep working on discourse. CSOs are a source of new ideas, and ideas can bring about change in politics. The formal adoption of REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries) in Cancun is but one example of CSOs helping craft a concept that becomes the backdrop for a UN decision. We are in dire need to think our way out of the impasse on a post-Kyoto framework, and CSOs are best placed to do just that.

As Durban approaches, should CSOs be ‘making more noise’? And what are the possible alternative scenarios that do not entail a second commitment period for Kyoto?

Alexios Mantzarlis is a Junior Analyst at The European House-Ambrosetti. He obtained a Double Master’s from the universities of Bocconi (Milan) and SciencesPo (Paris) with a thesis entitled: “Civil Society and the UN: developing a framework to measure influence in the intergovernmental decision-making process”.

The women are sitting in a circle on the ground under a tree. They were brought together by an international development NGO. An NGO staffer is facilitating the discussion and drawing lines on a large sheet of paper.

This could be in Bangladesh, Mali or Peru. All of us working in international development have participated in or seen photos of such meetings. They are a key element of what is called “participatory programs” and have become a popular tool in development processes. Arguably, the knowledge shared through these bottom-up processes informs development policies and practices that are better adapted to the local context and targeted to the specific needs of local people.

Two weeks ago, David Bonbright and Nicholas van Praag wrote on this blog, “it is easier to listen than to act on what you hear”. The International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) has come to the same conclusion.

In its latest issue of “Participatory Learning and Action” (How wide are the ripples? From local participation to international organizational learning), IIED looks at grassroots participatory learning programs led by international NGOs (INGOs). The report looks at the impact of such processes on INGOs’ decision-making and strategic planning. It asks the following questions:

1. How do INGOs use and manage local, traditional knowledge?
2. Is this knowledge translated into wider organizational learning, and if so how – or why not?
3. Does local knowledge inform INGOs priorities and policies?

IIED found that most, if not all, INGOs do want to hear and respond to the voices of the poorest and most marginalized. They strive to contextualise their priorities with strong local input. That is why they initiate and fund participatory learning programs.

Yet, it is difficult. There are practical knowledge management issues to systematic sharing of knowledge from local to national and international levels. It is challenging to move information across national and cultural borders, and to interpret and use that information outside of its original context. The report argues that this is not only a practical, technical issue: it is also one of culture, accountability and power. It is not just a question of whose voices can be heard, but of whose knowledge and opinion counts.

IIED identifies two clear trends in the development sector, which effectively create divided loyalties and accountability for INGOs:

1. The trend toward stronger, top-down management and greater professionalization of the development NGO sector, where staff are recruited and valued for their technical management abilities more than their personal commitment to social justice. Development is increasingly seen as a technical, rather than political, process. This culture avoids discussion of the politics of poverty or power and powerlessness and presents development as straightforward, linear and predictable.

2. For those organizations analyzing the distribution and impact of power structures on poverty through a rights-based approach, the difficulty lies in linking grassroots participation and policy advocacy. While participatory processes require slow and long-term relationships on the ground, policy advocacy tends to be carried out using complex, technical language, focusing on fast-moving and highly technical policy processes. Especially in large INGOs, where these two areas of work may be carried out by different teams in different countries, listening to the grassroots – from where INGOs derive their legitimacy as the ‘voice’ of civil society – and engaging in the global development dialogue can be difficult to balance.

I think that at the heart of the problem lies the tension some see between the relevance of traditional knowledge and the prerequisites of economic growth and poverty eradication. How much do policy makers truly trust the holders of traditional knowledge to provide solutions for the development of their communities?

The insight and analysis, evidence and stories generated during participatory processes are just the kind of information which good development policy and planning should be based on. International and local NGOs as well as international development agencies have a responsibility to bring grassroots knowledge and information to bear at the international level. The logistical and ethical issues in making such information available and letting people know that it is there are great. This is why tools are being developed to help INGOs in this endeavor.

Stay tuned for more on the issues of participation, listening and learning on this blog.

Elisa Peter is pursuing a Masters Degree in Public Administration at the Harvard Kennedy School. She is a mid-career
fellow at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations.

What is the role of social media in the organization, unfolding, and diffusion of the #occupy protests? Here I argue that, as a result of the diffusion of social media, we have now entered the age of cloud protesting, where individuals and networked collective action have taken central stage.

In computing, “cloud” indicates the delivery of services such as software over the Internet. Services can be customized with reduction of costs for the end user. Similarly, the #occupy protests can be seen as a cloud where a set of “soft resources” enabling mobilization coexist: identities, narratives, and know-how. These resources can be customized by and for individuals, who can in this way tailor their participation. Anyone can join anytime, bringing along her identity, political background, and grievances; anyone fits in the broad narrative of the cloud, anyone can contribute. Identities, resources, narratives are negotiated on and offline, but they mostly “live” online, mediated by the web interface of social media.

The cloud has an impact on organizational patterns, too. If we look back at how Western movements organized since the 1960s, we can identify three phases. First came social movement organizations such as students, anti-war and women’s groups, which had organizational and symbolic control over the movement. In the 1990s informal groups and networks characterized by multiple and flexible identities and horizontal leadership originated networked movements, whereby the different decentralized nodes would participate in the creation of a narrative for the movement. In the recent Arab Spring uprisings and in the #occupy protests we have seen yet another organizational pattern at play, where many of the nodes are networked individuals connected through social media (“the cloud”).

The cloud reduces the costs of mobilization by offering resources that can be accessed and enjoyed independently by individual activists: solidarity networks, relaxed affiliations, occasions for self-expression, and the possibility to customize one’s own participation and narrative. The cloud is also the platform where the cultural and symbolic production of the movement takes place. There is no need for (and no means of) organizational control over the collective narrative of the protest, as the cloud collectively determines what fits and what does not. The cloud is the group: it provides a sense of belonging but less responsibility: the cloud comes with no strings attached.
Social media enable cloud protesting in four ways. First, they support speed in protest organization and diffusion: rallies are organized through Twitter and Facebook, and unfold on these same platforms as much as they take place in real life. Second, the cloud is grounded on everyday technology that any of the digital natives have right in their pockets, allowing also resource-poor activists to organize a grand protest. Third, the cloud influences the tactics adopted by activists, allowing for low profile sit-ins that nonetheless make the news (also thanks to the current news media fascination for social media stories).

But the main contribution of social media to the protests is to be found in the creation of a customizable narrative and a tailored collective identity that virtually fit all. By taking part in the protests and making it visible via Twitter, each individual becomes the hero of the story. She defines herself, and by extension “us”, by means of posts, tweets, links, videos. She selects other similar material posted on the web and passes on (e.g., re-tweets) what she believes is appropriate to the collective representation of “who we are”. Furthermore, social media give voice and visibility to personalized yet universal narratives, whereby everyone participates in building the collective plot. This hashtag-style collective narrative is flexible, real-time, and crowd-controlled. It connects individual stories into a broader context that gives them meaning. This is not very different from the role played by “real-life” groups in relation to individual participation in a movement. In turn, it scores very low in organizational control – thus, the cloud leaves little room for “classical” social movement organizations.

Stefania Milan is a member of The Citizen Lab, and a postdoctoral fellow at the Canada Center for Global Security Studies, Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto. A more detailed version of this post was published by The Citizen Lab on October 18, 2011. For more information visit the Canada Center for Global Security Studies or Stefania Milan’s homepage.

Is it possible to measure the inherently political issue of transforming gender norms and inequalities with highly depoliticized approaches and tools? Can complex and messy social change processes be captured with linear cause-effect frameworks?

This challenge is the subject of a recent paper Capturing Change in Women’s Realities: A Critical Overview of Current Monitoring & Evaluation Frameworks and Approaches in which Srilatha Batliwala and I put forth a challenge and call to action to donors and civil society organizations focusing on women’s rights. It is a call to deeply question the culture of measurement and accountability systems that we have created and maintain.

Our works draws from research and strategizing with activists, donors, women’s rights organizations, and feminists in a variety of settings. We show how the dominant logical-frame and results based management type of evaluations and assessments that many donors rely on do not fully capture the complex changes related to women’s rights and feminist organizations’ efforts.

In one example from our paper, a landless agricultural worker who had participated in an empowerment program describes the impact the program made on her life: “Three years ago, when the landlord in whose fields I work addressed me, I would answer him looking down at his feet. Now, I answer with my eyes on his chest. Next year, I will be strong enough to look him right in the eyes when I speak to him” (p.19).

Take a moment to reflect on this change process. Would a quantitative indicator of self-confidence have captured this successful outcome in a similarly powerful way? Would we have even been able to capture this outcome using traditional logical framework approaches? What happens to the richness of this example when we begin to aggregate?

Women’s rights organizations have identified many challenges with the dominant frameworks preferred in development work to measure change. In many cases, the current fixation with accountability and measurement in development often leads us to highly technical, logical, and depoliticized assessments of the change efforts that women’s rights organizations seek. They are based on the assumption that we can simplistically measure whether program outputs, objectives, and goals were of value and effective based on inputs, activities, and resources.

These frameworks are often very inappropriate for measuring complex outcomes of most interest to women’s rights and feminist organizations (e.g., advocacy, contested law reforms, network building, reducing gender based violence). In addition, the rigid frameworks are not flexible to rapidly changing, repressive, or unstable economic, political, and social conditions under which many civil society organizations operate— where not implementing activities according to plan equals an implementation failure (pp.10, 12).

The development of self-confidence for the landless agricultural worker did not happen overnight. Using our example, this would likely mean the program would probably have been deemed a failure since change hadn’t happened by the end of the year. This highlights the reality of the profound mismatch between the long time frame needed for transformative changes in power to take place and the short time frame in which donors require evidence of change (p.14). The lived realities and experiences of women working tirelessly in patriarchal contexts to challenge family relations and limiting social norms, increase their earned income, go to school or work in safety, protect themselves from bodily harm, etc., show that change takes time.

Another significant problem with our frameworks is their ability to capture and measure the “two steps forward, one step back” phenomenon (p. 12). The work of women’s organizations takes on the incredibly difficult challenge of transforming power relations.  Progress towards this aim – and, at times, the very act of speaking out – often results in extreme backlashes and reversals of progress, such as those recently seen in violence against women human rights defenders.

Too often the emphasis on the need for hard evidence overtakes efficiency, ironically one of the hallmarks of the “value for money” approach. Too often evaluations end up being a “one-off” product of little productive use for donors and women’s organizations alike. In fact, in some forthcoming research by Srilatha and I, one feminist in a conflict zone noted that, in the first year of her organization’s major grant with a bilateral donor, she spent nearly 70% of her time trying to fulfill the technical and administrative requirements to the specifications of the company that had been outsourced to manage grant monitoring and assessment. This wasted precious time when she could have been strategizing, supporting fellow activists in resistance and challenging rights violations, repression, and violence. Indeed, she even thought about turning the grant down as she thought that her time would be better spent on the ground.

Such examples bring to life the common struggles of civil society organizations trying to make revolutionary changes in constraining circumstances. Isn’t there a better way?

In theory, we should be conducting monitoring and evaluation (M&E) to learn how change happens and identify our role in that process, to refine our interventions, and hold ourselves publicly accountable. Too often, we merely go about the M&E process to satisfy donor requirements and to help us increase our funding revenues (pp. 7-8). This is not particularly surprising given the state of the field today, but many are searching for more.

Increasingly, a wide range of development actors are actively seeking alternatives to the current trends in measurement and accountability, and asking how we can shift towards real learning. Indeed, a critical mass is forming: AWID has been engaging in extensive action-research with women’s organizations in addition to a collaborative learning project with donors-grantees around the MDG3 Fund over the past year; Rosalind Eyben (IDS) and Irene Guijt have been leading an innovative initiative called the Big Push Forward to counter the prevailing “audit culture” in development; Gender at Work and IDS are launching the Measuring Gender Equality Initiative this week; and the International Network of Women’s Funds (INWF) are involved in research on M&E models for women’s funds.

My next post will explore some alternatives, highlighting some promising practices and initiatives that AWID and others have been developing for measuring changes in gender equality work.

Alexandra Pittman is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations and a Research Associate at the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID). She has in-depth experience writing, conducting, and designing evaluations for NGOs and donors. She can be reached at Alexandra_Pittman@hks.harvard.edu

Earlier this week, the Irish NGO Trocaire  published a report called Leading Edge 2020. The purpose of the report is to provoke discussion around the key challenges facing those working in international development in the coming decade. In particular, it asks where the “leading edge” will be for international NGOs (INGOs) like Trocaire.

It identifies and prioritises five major global trends: climate change, shifting geopolitics, demographic change, pressure on natural resources and widening inequality.

The report points to a picture of uncertainty about the “international development framework” in terms of whether aid will decline, whether new taxation will provide new finance, whether new donors like Brazil and China will provide new aid and how results-driven development effectiveness might work.

The report finally presents a recommendation of ten things INGOs need to do.

Trocaire should be thanked for sharing this report widely. Often, NGOs spend a lot of time and energy doing situation analysis and scenario projections but they seldom openly share such reports.

Judging by the large (32) cohort of Europe based individuals among the 87 influential development experts that were interviewed for this report, it probably has a European angle to it. Southern Africa based experts (19) outnumbered US (16) and the total includes only four Asians.

I do not wish to spoil your reading of the report, which I highly recommend, by telling you more about what is in there. What I want to do is to share some of my reactions, including to gaps in the report, to add to the conversation that Trocaire wants us to have:

1.  Geopolitical shifts: (i) The report shows an obsession with China. China is mentioned more far more frequently than any other country – and not in all that positive a tone or context. (ii) I think there is more to the geopolitical shifts than just China and the threat. A multi-polar world is just as much an opportunity. (iii) It is also important to realize the regional realities and power structure in the geopolitical shift. (iv) It is far too early to exclude north-south power dynamics – it exists and is real but it is true that we should also bring in south-south dynamics of geopolitical shifts.

2. The report is surprisingly silent about the pervasive power and impact of transnational or multinational corporations on people and the planet now and in future. A few passing mentions of corporations misses the point.

3. I also recommend including in our conversation the scenario that the folks at Global Dashboard project about a future dominated by scarcity, insecurity, conflict and crises. 

4. I get a sense that substantive reference to international NGOs in the report implicitly or explicitly refers to older and bigger transatlantic NGOs; not many of them are truly international in their composition, constituency or character.  I feel that those in the younger generation of innovative and small (and not-so-small) international NGOs see things differently from the middle-aged or older international NGOs. I also suspect that human rights, criminal justice, feminist or environmental international NGOs might not have been in the frame of this report.

5. The report raises a whole lot of questions and criticisms about international NGOs and I agree with them. However, those questions are mostly operational; they are not fundamental. At one point, the report talks about the validity of the post-war international institutions. I think it is time now also to ask whether the older and bigger transatlantic NGOs of pre- or post-war or colonial time will be relevant or survive without fundamental reengineering of their original genetic make-up. I say not. This is not to say that INGOs will not be relevant or needed. Far from it. I think real international or global NGOs, truly as citizens’ organizations, will be more needed in the hyper-connected globalised world in the time of increasing global governance.  In that sense, the report also fails to highlight sufficiently the emergence of global citizenship, including netizens, as well as increasing roles and influence of new social movements and citizens’ actions as the limits of electoral democracy is realized and we move more towards governance rather than governments. After all, citizens and citizens’ actions and civil society is where INGOs should be rooted.

6. I wish that this leading edge process or report had taken a longer-term view than just 2020. Considering it takes INGOs a time-cycle of 8-10 years to make any real deep or substantive change, they could do well with a vision about the future that goes beyond 10 years.

7. My biggest problem with the report is that it fundamentally still frames the development in that post-war, aid-centric concept where development was only for countries and people in Africa, Latin America and Asia. Poverty, injustice and inequality are no longer, if they ever were, the monopolies of any particular set of countries and continents. New definitions or narratives of development – based on dignity, justice and human rights – should be planetary and inter-generational. And that is where international NGOs’ relevance will be better justified and rooted.

Ramesh Singh is a visiting fellow at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard University.

I am keen on deepening my understanding of the intersection between art, culture, and social change and have always tried to be an observer of the cultural context within which social problems arise and can be resolved. How does cultural context tie into concepts and strategies for change, beyond the obvious imperative of respect for and knowledge of local culture? What methodologies and creative processes can the development sector engage for achieving better outcomes and developmental objectives?

Theater has been very effectively leveraged as a tool for social change. To give an example from first-hand experience, in rural parts of eastern India, local theatres and street plays (called jatras) are very common and serve as a powerful medium to disseminate information and educate people. I remember, when I was working with an education NGO there, several years back, one of the successful strategies employed by the NGO was to champion girls’ enrollment in primary school through staging plays in the villages.

A leading NGO in India, Barefoot College has a dedicated team of traditional and non-traditional musicians and puppeteers who are collectively known as the ‘Barefoot communicators’. They began with using live and interactive music, puppet shows and street plays to initiate discussions on socioeconomic messages and powerful themes such as drinking water, environment, communal harmony, violence against women, women’s empowerment and child rights.

Mitty Owens started the Project: Culture and Social Change which is an initiative that supports the blending of cultural and political work by: bringing together cultural activists and community organizers; sharing concrete strategies and tools for integrating creativity and passion into political and social work; and nurturing creativity and imagination for community building.

These are just three of the hundreds of examples of successful strategies adopted the world over. Studying these examples, can we gain a better understanding of how culture is engaged in public life, stimulating and engaging in civic dialogue and linking dialogue to change?

Sujeet Kumar, from India, is a mid-career Master in Public Administration candidate at Harvard Kennedy School.