With my research I want to help non-governmental organizations (NGOs) discover and develop better ways of doing their important work. By ‘NGO’ I mean non-profit organizations that work in specific areas of social (primarily health and education), environmental, political and economic development—in poorer areas of the world. Some have worked primarily in one ‘sector’ (e.g. a health clinic), while others attempt to work in wide range of themes around the concept of ‘sustainable’ development (a holistic mix of social, economic and environmental development) . These NGOs consciously exist to serve a purpose (e.g. often a mission in support of human development) other than their own growth and survival, and base their legitimacy on the fulfillment of that purpose.
Specifically, I want to help NGOs improve their ability to conceive of, design, implement and learn from their work in ways that:
- Reflect what the intended ‘beneficiaries’ of that work might find meaningful. The history of ‘development’ intervention is rich with examples of projects, programs and activities that are intended to make a meaningful contribution to people’s lives, but that end up not delivering on that intention. There are many reasons why development activities don’t deliver (when they don’t), but one is that they are often unwittingly designed to be meaningful to those who fund them or those who design and carry them out, and not to those who are intended to be the primary beneficiaries of them.
- Take into account the fact that NGOs often work with messy human realities in highly complex environments, with multiple factors influencing how change happens in practice—beyond the understanding or control of any particular organization. It’s worth unpacking two concepts here. Of particular importance are ‘messy human realities’ which include multiple different perceptions on what is or isn’t a real problem, not to mention meaningful solutions; and ‘highly complex environments’, in which ‘it is not possible to predict with any confidence the relation between cause and effect. Change is emergent. History is largely unpredictable. Organised efforts to direct change confront the impossibility of our ever having a total understanding of all the sets of societal relationships that generate change and are in constant flux. New inter-relational processes are constantly being generated, which in turn may affect and change those already existing. Small ‘butterfly’ actions may have a major impact, and big ones may have very little impact. (Eyben et al., 2008: 203-4)’
So development work is inherently difficult and complex, and what makes its results meaningful or not depends on who you ask at any point in the process. Which leads me to ask how do NGOs ‘conceive of, design, implement and learn from their work’? Do they take these important issues into account?
In my experience I have perceived that the NGOs I have worked with have not fundamentally changed the way they approach their work to take these issues into account. We continually go about our work in ways that mostly reflect primarily what is meaningful to us and our donors (on behalf of others), and with the use of projects and other interventions that assume the world is simple, well understandable, and with well definable, ‘hard’ problems which lend themselves to ‘engineerable’ solutions—like building a bridge. Yet the issues NGOs seek to address are often ill-defined, ‘soft’, problematic situations, such as:
What should be done to address the predicaments of street children in Lima, Peru? How might poverty and marginalization of the poor in rural Bangladesh be approached? What should be done to conserve areas of high biodiversity in Ecuador? How can education of girls in conservative regions of Afghanistan be approached?
These are not bridges or dams to be built. Each of these not uncommon problematic situations might have hundreds of stakeholders, none of whom exactly agree on the nature of the problem, nor on what might constitute a meaningful response. But the approaches many NGOs continually use assume that things are more straightforward, and that the NGO can affect change much more that it possibly could. My research, therefore, aims to help figure out what capacities (i.e. organizational abilities) should NGOs develop to make sense out of these issues in a more purposeful manner. In other words, what mix of learning approaches might strengthen the ability of any particular NGO to do its work in ways that are meaningful to its intended beneficiaries, and which take into account the inherent complexities of effectively contributing to ongoing development processes? The first half of this question (i.e. what mix of learning approaches might strengthen…), represents half of what I want to research—the methods. For my proposal purposes I have worded the methodological research question as follows:
How can systemic qualitative action research methods support more purposeful NGO capacity development?
The second half of the colored question above (i.e. …of any particular NGO to do its work in ways that are meaningful…inherent complexities…) represents the second half of what I want to learn about: how capacity development might lead to social change. For my proposal purposes, I have ‘simplified’ this question into a research question that includes the framework /lens I will be using to look at the different cases:
Can a more systemic appreciation of theories of change help NGOs better develop the capacities that are needed for achieving their purposes?
The reason I think a learning (embedded in action research—i.e. processes that attempt to learn through action) focus is needed is because I believe NGOs, in many cases, should assume that they don’t know what to do in the long term—because complexity effectively renders it unknowable. Therefore, we need capacity building (intentional strengthening of organizational abilities) approaches that help NGOs ask better questions and learn, and adjust course, continually. The second reason learning-based approached are needed is because for that which we could know (better), we should ask, and get key stakeholders’ worldviews—that which would make our work meaningful to others—into our work. In other words, I don’t want to apply more capacity building approaches whose aim is to help NGOs ‘do things better’; rather ‘to do better things’ (as the cliché goes). I want to help discover capacity building mixes that help NGOs critically reflect upon their work, question core assumptions, and strengthen their ability to do their work in more purposeful ways.
So how do I plan to go about this? Beginning in June, I will be carrying out action research processes with two organizations in Peru and one in Ecuador. I’d like to add a fourth organization in San Antonio that works with marginalized groups of people in the area, but that is TBD. One of the Peruvian organizations is a Christian NGO that works with street children and organizations that support street children. The second Peruvian NGO focuses on connecting social activists of different types with universities to promote shared action and learning. The Ecuadorian organization focuses on conservation and sustainable management of a region in the northwest of the country called the ‘Awacachi Biological Corridor’, including working with local communities which include the region’s namesake ‘Awa’ and ‘Cachi’ indigenous people. With the help of an old friend and colleague, and highly respected capacity development ‘guru’ (he would strike me for accusing him of that J), Juan Carlos Giles of Lima, we will combine interviews, workshops, and accompaniment of each organization’s own research processes to try to address the research questions. We will use methodological principles designed for working with messy human realities in complex environments (soft systems methodology), and hope to both support the strengthening of each organization (so that the process is meaningful for each organization), as well as generate enough information to be able to write up a PhD thesis. The action research will take about 9 months, and then it will probably take a year and a half or so to write everything up and build on existing theories in a way that produces useful new knowledge (a prime purpose of a PhD).
Finally, what do I hope will come of it—what areas of knowledge do I think this will contribute to? The process will reveal what the process reveals, and I need to be able to try to ‘suspend’ (Senge, 2004) my own worldviews to the extent possible and let things emerge on their own. That said, my previous work with similar methods, along with the theoretical framework (the main lens that I’ll look at things through) in my broader proposal, I think will help identify (at least) the following three things:
- If NGO capacity building processes actually support their theories of change, i.e. are their CB processes purposeful? Under what conditions and with what implications? When they do not, how could they?
- The importance of the oft ignored ‘softer’ capacities, such as relationship development, adaptive management, iterative planning, listening and engaging with primary stakeholders, etc.
Any of these, I believe, would be a worthwhile contribution to capacity building thinking and practice.
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