A recent post "If you can flip a coin, can you be an expert?" got a mostly favorable response, but I want to elucidate and emphasize a few things in this post and the next.
First, listening to communities should be the foundation of any aid initiative. What community members want for their lives should be the starting point. Though aid agencies may not be equipped to address a problem such as security, the fact that security is of great concern to the community should inform what projects get funded and how they are designed. For example, if security for women is a big issue, then the design and placement of wells or standpipes is critical. Or if social tensions are high between certain groups, then great care needs to be taken to design projects that don't exacerbate these tensions.
Second, though there are some outstanding exceptions, as a rule we don't yet do enough listening. A recent study by Alex Jacobs and Robyn Wilford concluded that "most NGOs do not manage 'participation' or 'downward accountability' in a systematic way." It noted that a "number of pioneering innovations are emerging...[but] most are still in the experimental stage..." It cites the Humanitarian Accountability Partnership's 2007 Standard as offering a constructive approach, along with pilots being conducted by the NGO Keystone. GreatNonProfits is also piloting an approach that listens to a broader set of stakeholders. NGOs are not alone in not listening enough. I can speak from long years of experience that listening is an even greater challenge for official aid agencies such as the World Bank, ADB and USAID.
Third, most aid workers are trying to do the right thing, but they usually have to spend a lot of time and energy managing upwards within their own bureaucracies. The Jacobs and Wilford study cited above discusses these dynamics, which will be familiar to staff of NGOs and official agencies alike. In short, the incentives for listening to communities are attenuated at best.
Fourth, listening is hard. Power dynamics sometimes mean that community members don't say exactly what is on their mind. In response to a question, they may say what they think the donor or implementing agency (or local official) wants to hear. With support from the Rockefeller Foundation, we are working with Cognitive Edge on an indirect approach that relies more on storytelling to infer what people really think. More details on that will follow. Though this approach is by no means the whole answer, the initial results are encouraging.
Fifth, listening is messy.- There is no single "community." Community members usually differ on what is most important to them, and the question arises about how to decide to whom you should listen. Should initiatives be decided on majority vote? In addition, sometimes donors or implementers with a lot of experience feel strongly that a certain approach desired by community members won't work, and that there is a better way. Should the donor or implementer over-ride the wishes of the community, or should they err on the side of accepting the community's wishes so that learning can take place if the project does not work? Again, there is no easy answer to this -- there needs to be a balance. On this topic, I recommend David Ellerman's Helping People Help Themselves.
I suspect that the ability to listen is one of the most important factors determining whether aid workers can have a positive -- and lasting -- impact on a community. That is why we are trying to help the project organizations on GlobalGiving listen better to the communities they serve. As always, I welcome comments on this topic.
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We found that most donors and aid agencies do not spend much time listening to local people’s perspectives or reflecting on the impacts of their work, much less the cumulative effects of their and others’ interventions. While many talk about the need to listen more, they don’t always know how to do it and they have a hard time doing it in a systematic and effective way. And the issue of incentives is very important. You can read much more about what we have heard and a paper on The Importance of Listening at our website at www.cdainc.com
Thanks for your comment. I particularly liked the following part: "Several people in different places said, “no one has ever asked us our opinion of aid before this.” I have found that people from large organizations (including NGOs and official aid agencies as well as businesses) - ie, that management has never asked their opinion of a process or product before. So listening is a generalized challenge that affects the productivity and impact of organizations around the world.
Dennis
Note to readers - here is the correct URL: http://www.cdainc.com
In regards to your third point, I think you will be interested in this series from Shotgun Shack titled "This is For My Corporates" http://shotgunshack.wordpress.com/2010/09/04/this-is-for-my-corporates-lesson-1-watch-your-language/.
I wanted to ask you a question. How do you think that we get from listening to the communities to conveying these messages to donors and finally have the donors listen to the communities? The importance of listening is unquestionable, but if potential donors (as I assume you are intending to read this) do not listen as well there will be a disconnect between need/want of community and want of donors.
It concludes by saying:
"You feel like you are spitting into the wind, but you plug along with the conviction that what you are doing really does matter, because when you listen to staff and community members, they are telling you what the obstacles are, but they are also saying that they don’t want you to leave."
How to get from here to there is the $64,000 question. I don't know think we know the answer yet. The first step is to reflect on the scope of the problem and the reasons for it. Most aid workers are good and dedicated people, trying hard to do the right thing, but their incentives and work load often make it very difficult to listen - much less respond - to community concerns. (Your blog posts describe this dynamic very well.) I think the cost-benefit analysis for aid workers will change as the "cost" of listening goes down via the new technologies that are coming.
But as you say the key to changing incentives is getting donors to care. Devesh Kapur and I argue in a forthcoming article* that donors should have direct access to feedback from the community so that it is not massaged by intermediaries. Since donors have never really had access to community views on a wide scale before, we will have to see how they respond to the increased availability of this information.
*Devesh Kapur & Dennis Whittle, Can the Privatization of Foreign Aid Enhance Accountability?, 42 New York University Journal of International Law and Policy 64** (2010)