I created this space to pass along some of my musings on NGO accountability. I'm an aid worker, currently in Haiti. I'm often frustrated with the (lack of) impact from our work and so have dedicated my master's thesis and free time thinking to the topic of NGO accountability. I think accountability is something that affects our lives in many dimensions, so I try to write my postings with a mix of "mes nouvelles" with some theory. Thanks for your interest and please be in touch with your feedback!
As any of you reading this know, I’m completely committed to finding a way to make humanitarian and development assistance delivered in a way that takes into account the people on the receiving end of this aid. From my small village in Guinea, I first thought the need was for better measurement – data seemed to be the missing link. In moving into a large international NGO, I realized we were collecting plenty of data, the bigger issue for me was getting that data well used – especially getting those messages back to the communities receiving the assistance. So in graduate school I embarked on an ambitious thesis process to learn about whether being held accountable to those very people might in fact get me to where I really wanted to go. Could an accountability to beneficiaries revolution actually shift our work to be more meaningful for those receiving the assistance?
So wait, you thought I was concerned about poverty and delivering aid better, so what does North Korea and resilience have to do with this? I’m glad you asked because I’ve been thinking about this for the past year. Here’s what I’ve come up with.
Both ask us to think about the enduring, long-term effects of aid delivery. Let’s say you want to build a chicken farm in rural Guinea to help people have chicken businesses and to eat more chicken. Great. But then let’s say you forgot to train anyone from that village and only trained people from the neighboring big town, or let’s say you forgot to include women because you were persuaded that they don’t even really like to touch chickens. Oh, and then let’s throw in a coup d’etat and some bad weather. Because those things happen. And when those things happen, what becomes of your lovely chicken farm plans? The chicken farm collapses. And this happens a lot in developing countries. Good ideas, good intentions, not so good results. Why? I ask myself nearly every day.
Resilience. If that chicken farm had taken into consideration the broader systems that were functioning in that village – the market system for example that connect the bigger town to the village where they villagers would have sold their eggs and chickens, or the health system that explains what people are eating and how it helps them fight disease, or governance and who would manage the farm and how national and governmental politics affect the village. I could go on, but this is after all just a blog and not my next thesis. If you’re following here, the idea is that if you had thought about those other factors within the system, you maybe would have come up with a project that could have really helped that community be more resilient to whatever vulnerability you were trying to help them overcome. That is to say, when we become more resilient, we become less vulnerable.
So when we take a resilience-focused approach, trying to listen to the many different factors affecting human life and change within a system, rather than just focusing on producing activity results, then we can help communities become more resilient and we are being more accountable to them at the same time. In other words, the two ideas are mutually reinforcing. Stay tuned for my progress in creating this culture shift within my own
I can't remember any of the graduation speeches I ever sat through and when asked to speak at my grad school graduation, I was relieved to turn it down since I was overseas. But this one I really like because it's got some nice simple life advice. Be kinder. Isn't this something we should all work on?
I'm re-blogging this advice list because it's just a great mash up of life advice for how to live a happier life. As my 30th birthday rolls around, I thought this was a good thing to share and remember. I've highlighted my personal favorites.
"Written by Regina Brett, 90 years old, of the Plain Dealer, Cleveland , Ohio .
"To celebrate growing older, I once wrote the 42 lessons life taught me. It is the most requested column I've ever written.
My odometer rolled over to 90 in August, so here is the column once more:
1. Life isn't fair, but it's still good.
2. When in doubt, just take the next small step.
3. Life is too short – enjoy it..
4. Your job won't take care of you when you are sick. Your friends and family will.
5. Pay off your credit cards every month.
6. You don't have to win every argument. Stay true to yourself.
7. Cry with someone. It's more healing than crying alone.
8. Save for retirement starting with your first pay check.
9. When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.
10. Make peace with your past so it won't screw up the present.
11. It's OK to let your children see you cry.
12. Don't compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about.
13. If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn't be in it...
14 Take a deep breath. It calms the mind.
15. Get rid of anything that isn't useful. Clutter weighs you down in many ways.
16. Whatever doesn't kill you really does make you stronger.
17. It's never too late to be happy. But it’s all up to you and no one else.
18. When it comes to going after what you love in life, don't take no for an answer.
19. Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy lingerie. Don't save it for a special occasion. Today is special.
20. Over prepare, then go with the flow.
21. Be eccentric now. Don't wait for old age to wear purple.
22. The most important sex organ is the brain.
23. No one is in charge of your happiness but you.
24. Frame every so-called disaster with these words 'In five years, will this matter?'
25. Always choose life.
26. Forgive but don’t forget.
27. What other people think of you is none of your business.
28. Time heals almost everything. Give time time.
29. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
30. Don't take yourself so seriously. No one else does..
31. Believe in miracles.
32. Don't audit life. Show up and make the most of it now.
33. Growing old beats the alternative -- dying young.
34. Your children get only one childhood.
35. All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.
36. Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere.
37. If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else's, we'd grab ours back.
38. Envy is a waste of time. Accept what you already have not what you need.
39. The best is yet to come...
40. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.
41. Yield.
What's really haunting about this story is just how personal it is. Every day I pass beggars in the streets and people suffering from serious health issues that they don't have the means to cure. In comparison, when I get the flu in Mali, I have the option to rush to a hospital and get a $10 malaria test or a full exam. This story made these health issues so real to me. Even as I work to better manage and measure the impact of the millions of dollars of aid money our organization overseas, sometimes it's the individual stories that really pull at my heartstrings. It also makes me continue questioning, are we addressing the most urgent needs or just the most massive or most compelling needs?
57 million children out of school. Hundreds of millions more not learning.
In honor of Malala Day, visit The Crisis Map at the A World At School website, an interactive feature which contains statistics about the education of young people across the globe. Learn the facts about education acces in Nigeria, India, and Pakistan, and how you can get involved in the movement.
Seeing the cat has served as a metaphor for achieving an understanding the teachings of Henry George since he set them out in his bestselling economic treatise Progress and Poverty in 1879. George sought to understand why there are recessions and poverty amid plenty and his investigation led him to identify the central role of land in the economy.
This simple way of re-framing is key to figuring out how to help communities around the world build their own resilience to shocks and stresses.
More and more people are writing about how feedback can improve the quality and accountability of aid. And we’re seeing more serious pilots about how we can use feedback systems at scale. For examp...
Accountability is Admitting What You Don’t Know –Or – Where NGOs are Getting the Mali Response Right
When I was a graduate teaching assistant for Dr. Kim Brown in international studies at Portland State University, I sat in a lecture where she told students that the real challenge in understanding the world is admitting what you don’t know. She said the international community, as with human beings, can’t understand what they don’t know. So you have to know your limits.This lesson has always stuck with me and I see it as a fundamental component of accountability. I also see it as the one thing I can say with some certainty that I think NGOs and the international community is “getting right” about the current situation in Mali. We don’t know what will happen next. We don’t know if our responses today will make life more difficult tomorrow for Malians or their neighbors. We don’t know if we’re delivering the right kind of aid. We do the best we can to get the information we need, but we know there are limits.
For the past 6 months I have worked on the humanitarian response to the situation in Northern Mali. I’ve been connected to Mali since 2007 when I was first evacuated to there as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Guinea. I fell instantly in love with the culture and had loosely followed the little news that came out of Mali ever since. To me, Mali had always felt like a bit of a success story. A country riddled with serious problems like corruption and poverty; but a country where people were proud of where they were and where people understood and accepted their place in history. In returning to Mali last year, I found myself more confused than I have been in any other country I’ve worked in. Everywhere around me was a cacophony of noise – news reports streaming in, vociferous NGOs, the UN, and other spectators. But I didn’t hear anyone claim to understand the situation well enough to truly pitch solutions they believed in. The more I listened and the more I dug for information, the more frustrated and confused I became. I’ve sat down with people from all walks of life in Mali, from locals in rural Gao to international experts. I’ve sat in countless cluster meetings. I’ve been grilled by university professors and hopeful NGO workers. What is happening in Mali? How will foreign aid help? The answer is, we just don’t know. And that’s where we need to start.
When I recently sat down to analyze some data for a report, I told the expert that we needed to include a section on limitations and assumptions. He said fine, but when I asked for his input, he said there were none. When I asked where the bias could be, he didn’t have one. That needs to change. That’s where it starts. I am yet to see another report on the Mali crisis, other than this one I produced, that starts with a section on limitations and assumptions.
We all have limits. Accountability starts with admitting our limits.
When talking with a colleague from another agency recently and recounting my frustrations, he suggested that the problem might be the lack of good information I was getting and my need to find more sources. But when we delved deeper into the sources I was getting, I realized that it wasn’t the number of people I employ to give me information. It’s a quality control on the information being collected. It’s asking the right questions in the right way in order to get answers that mean something. This is accountability. Collecting data isn’t good enough. Running fancy statistics isn’t good enough. Accountability is interpreting information in a meaningful way. But most importantly, it’s starting with the right questions. I learned this principle as a biology major in college. But I’m only now realizing how the scientific method applies to NGO accountability.
"I believe economic growth is the best way to counter militancy, not massive Western military interventions. To me, a threat exists from militancy. It is not manufactured. Yet we declare that there is no threat or we grow impatient when it is not quickly solved.
France faces months of casualties and conflict, but that should be expected. Quick solutions are illusory. So are claims that we can ignore violent militants. Countering militancy involves a combination of limited military force, expansive diplomacy and patience. We, Americans, rarely show those qualities. I hope the French do."
From Haiti to Mali - Is an Accountable Response Possible?
In mid-September of this year I headed home from Haiti after a challenging 18 months there. When I arrived at my sister's house in Portland, Oregon I was exhausted from the uphill battles I fought there to push forward programming that might actually put those billions of dollars in foreign aid to use in a way that would benefit the country. I left feeling defeated and my friends said it looked like I'd aged more than just the 18 months. I vowed to stay in the US for awhile so I could sort out how I could best apply my skills and talents to this strange and frustrating humanitarian and development industry. I unsuccessfully interviewed all over the country. I even thought about leaving the aid industry, I was so discouraged. When I got an email asking me to come support the start up of new programs in Northern Mali, I leapt at the opportunity, hardly needing to consider it.
Let me rewind a few years. I originally came to Bamako in 2007 after being evacuated from Guinea (Conakry) where I had been serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer. The political crisis had worsened in Guinea and due to the extreme lack of communication available at the time, I was sent to Bamako. The difference between Guinea and Mali was a complete shock. While just neighboring countries, the culture was vastly different. I quickly fell in love with Malian music, art, and even the way Bambara rolls off your tongue. (Just saying "Bambara" is fun, add in other fun words found in Mali like "Badalabougou" and this logophile was in bliss.)
But it was more than just those surface-level things that I loved about Mali. What was evident to me from the streets of Bamako was an entrepreneurial spirit that had lifted this mostly-desert country to be seen as a shining star among burgeoning Sub-Saharan African democracies and a place where commerce and civil society alike were flourishing.
Fast forward. I was toiling away in Haiti in March of 2012, when I heard the news of a political coup in Mali. I knew I would be going back. It took several more months to wrap up my work in Haiti and find my place in Mali, but here I am, back again, this time helping those displaced within Mali rather than being displaced myself there.
At every decision, I think to myself, how can we make our response different from the response in Haiti. Every time I read a program report, analyze program data, listen to our staff talk about the situation, sit in a cluster meeting - all I'm thinking is, can we do this in an accountable way? The response from people is a mix of frustration (why can't we just do it the same way we've always done things?) to delight (finally someone wants to listen to the local population!) - you can imagine which groups have which opinions...
Humanitarians are not all agreed on the term accountability. Even though I spent two years studying this concept, and even played a key role in defining the term for Mercy Corps, I cringe when I hear others use it. In some ways, being accountable doesn't even involve outrightly saying you are...in fact, just like the term "democratic" - when used too often, you should be concerned (see Jon Stewart's take on this in his book Earth). I've already posted a lot on what accountability means in our humanitarian context, so I'll save the space here.
But back to why Mali might be different. To me, it's the culture. While my friends and family sent concerned messages last week while I sat alone in Bamako, I had no fear. Not just out of naivety, but because the city was alive with optimism and pride, a pride based on the knowledge that when times are tough they'll bond together to overcome hurdles. Bamako was united against a common enemy. When the French military support arrived January 11th, the city cheered. French and Malian flags were fused together and motorcycles proudly displayed both flags. It was an inspiring scene.
This optimism probably won't last, especially as the impact of the crisis deepens. But I'm optimistic that if we, as NGOs, actually allow Malians to take the lead on the recovery and response - and not just rhetorically commit to this - then maybe the aid can do more.
In a press release from Haitian President Martelly about the earthquake response two years later, he said that if NGOs had focused on finding ways to create jobs after the earthquake instead of giving handouts, the situation would have been worse in the beginning and better in the long run. I'd like us, as the international community working on the Mali crisis, to shift our thinking from just crisis or development responses and to find a better, more integrated recovery and response model to optimally respond to the needs identified by the local population.
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