One of the core competencies (buzzword alert!) for working in development is being able to use the language. You cannot write a proposal without knowing what mainstreaming is. You cannot write a donor report without speaking about stakeholders. You cannot read anything written by Greg Mortenson without being familiar with the semantics of fantasy novels.

Source: http://www.paulflynnmp.co.uk/images/jargon.jpg

Yet somewhere along the line, all of these words obfuscate (a much underused buzzword) the true meaning of what we are trying to say. Take this as an example, from a recent document that came across my desk:

“Using participatory approach to encourage PWDs’ (people with disabilities’) participation to serve their needs. This could bring the sustainability to build their capacity to manage their communities (sic) groups and also establish linkage (sic) with other stakeholders.”

What exactly is this sentence trying to say? More importantly, why do donors and international organisations force those with English as their second language to use English words with little meaning in the first place?

At the other end of the spectrum, you can find sentences that are so simplistic so as to only contain one buzzword, but are equally perplexing. This one, from fellow WhyDev stakeholder facilitation consultant, Brendan:

“To achieve sustainable development, we must sustain development”.

Can you possibly imagine this being a satisfactory sentence construction in any other situation? Imagine Martha Stewart covering an entire cooking show by simply repeating this one phrase for an hour: “To achieve poached egg, we must poach the egg.”

Here at WhyDev we love to hate buzzwords. And we know that you do too. In response to our previous post on the 9 buzzwords we hate, amazingly, over 1000 of you self-masochists responded to our survey to suggest which new buzzwords should replace the old.

This is where we would love your input again. We have two questions to ask.

1. What is the most jargon-heavy, meaningless sentence or paragraph that you have come across in your aid/development work or study?

2. How would you “improve” our selection of simple quotes below to be more jargontastic? We have kicked you off with some suggestions of our own.

Remember, we cannot continue to tear down the walls of jargon that have been built in development without your help. Please build our capacity in this area (sustainably, of course).

“There’s no such thing as the ‘voiceless’. There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard.”

- Arundhati Roy

Recent trends in disability represent what is happening in development more globally. The world of disability is at a crossroads. Amongst those working in this sector, it’s a well-known fact that disability was not explicitly mentioned in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and as such, any momentum to garner action in disability has been stymied. Funding bodies have anecdotally stated that they will not provide funds for disability projects, because they are not a priority as identified by the MDGs.

As such, competition over funding in disability is higher than ever.

Perhaps searching for a way in which to make maximum impact with minimum outlay, some funding bodies have recently indicated that they will preferentially fund innovative approaches to social change. Although advocacy is not a new method of creating change, some see it as the innovative way forward. Advocacy, they say, is a game changer. It alters the way that community and society at large perceives disability. It forces government and other stakeholders to allocate necessary resources for those with disabilities. It changes the landscape of disability.

On the other hand, finding funding for traditional services such as rehabilitation is increasingly difficult. Rehabilitation is a broad term that encompasses a range of services that aim to maximise the potential of people with disabilities. They may include therapies such as physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech, language and communication needs therapy and social work.

We can only speculate on the spectrum of reasons why rehabilitation is going out of fashion.

First, rehabilitation is, relative to advocacy, expensive. In poor countries, it involves paying staff to travel to communities, which are often dispersed across great distances, to treat children from families who cannot access services that exist only in cities.

Second, there is a growing perception in many countries that government should be the one providing these services (and they are usually not).

Third, rehabilitation requires a significant investment in time to demonstrate a result. You cannot expect to have children walking overnight, and although changes to individual lives can be transformational, the sum of these individual changes take a long time to be recognised at a societal level.

Last, and perhaps most obviously, rehabilitation just isn’t sexy. Sure, there has been huge investment into evidence of what works, guidelines from the World Health Organization on how it should be done, and it can definitely change lives for the better, but it ain’t innovative.

Without discounting too greatly the contribution of advocacy to improving the lives of those with disabilities, basic services like rehabilitation should always be the core of disability work.

A good example of this can be seen through the story of Chuon Chhon, a now 14-year-old boy who lives in Siem Reap province, Cambodia. Although Siem Reap is well known for the world famous site of Angkor Wat, and attracts 1.5 million visitors every year, it is the second poorest province in Cambodia.

Chhon is an intelligent boy who has cerebral palsy, a disorder of the nervous system that changes movement and muscle strength. It comes from damage to the brain before birth, at birth or when the child is very young.

Chhon spent the first eight years of his life in his parents’ house crawling on his belly like an animal. The community at the time used the word “snake” to describe him (an extremely derogatory term in Cambodian culture). His legs would not support him to walk, and he faced great difficulty with everyday activities.

CABDICO, an organisation that I currently work with, were the first disability professionals to come across Chhon at the age of eight.* They found him in a pitiful state. He was dirty from crawling on the ground, hidden in the back of the house which he had never left and didn’t go to school.

After receiving home-based rehabilitation weekly, Chhon gradually began to improve his mobility. Now, he is able to move around in a wheelchair, helps his family in the production of palm sugar and goes to school. He has become an active and productive family member – a far cry from his younger days as a “snake.”

Image credit: Anthony Jacopucci/Handicap International. Reproduced with permission from CABDICO.

Image credit: Anthony Jacopucci/Handicap International. Reproduced with permission from CABDICO.

Image credit: Anthony Jacopucci/Handicap International. Reproduced with permission from CABDICO.

These recent photos of Chhon do not hint at the undignified life in which he used to live, before CABDICO began working with him and his family.

Chhon’s story demonstrates the transformative power of rehabilitation, and how, in the absence of basic services, children and people with disabilities are excluded from society. All of this occurred through staff working patiently with Chhon and his family, week in and week out, and providing him with basic equipment such as his wheelchair.

Even if we can see the enormous change in Chhon’s life through rehabilitation, what about changes to the way those with disabilities are perceived?

Despite some perceptions, rehabilitation is more capable of changing the landscape of disability than advocacy. In the absence of rehabilitation, children like Chhon never leave their houses. They never interact with those at school or the community at large. They simply cannot.

If you go into poor communities that lack access to services, and you ask them, as I have done before, whether or not their community has many people with disabilities, the answer is invariably “no.” The reason for this is simple. Those with disabilities are invisible. They are unseen.

As long as these people are ignored, and statistics for those with disabilities are woefully underestimated, disability will never be a priority. Not for the United Nations, not for government, and not for funding bodies. Most certainly not for communities.

Recent research by Veterans International Cambodia asked adults with disabilities from three provinces in Cambodia to rank the services that they require the most. Out of 206 respondents, 93% request rehabilitation services. A staggeringly low 2% rated advocacy.

These results indicate that people with disabilities themselves, in parts of Cambodia at least, value rehabilitation services over advocacy by a factor of almost 50.

Research conducted by Veterans International Cambodia, with funding provided by AusAID through the Australian Red Cross.

Yet, the overwhelming message from funding bodies is that advocacy and innovation are the pathways to improve the lives of those with disabilities. If development really is all about taking a bottom up approach, then who should we be listening to here?

Surely those who have disabilities.

This point illustrates the often yawning gap between what donors perceive will work and what communities themselves actually want.

In disability, but also more broadly in development, we need to pay attention to those tried and tested ways that work, even if they are not innovative and sexy. We need to be less eager to import our own ideas, and more patient to use ideas that may take longer, but are proven to work. Most importantly, we need to be willing to listening to the voices of people who really matter.

* This project received generous funding from AusAID through the Australian Red Cross.

As someone who just sneaks into Gen Y, I’ve come to realise that we’ve had things better than pretty much every other generation before. Most of us haven’t experienced major wars. Life expectancy is getting longer, our general health is improving, and we have information literally at our fingertips. The very fact that we have ever-evolving “First World Problems” memes, Twitter hashtags and websites tells us that although we’ve got the good humour to laugh at it, our lives just ain’t that bad.

We are also one of the first generations where our parents repetitively said to us: “You can be amazing. You can be a world-beater. If you put your mind to it, you can be anything you want.” I can’t help but think that while it’s nice to be told that, with a bit of dedication and hard work, I can legitimately cycle faster than the peloton at Tour de France, it also has some downsides.

Think about it. If I grow up with someone telling me that I’m unique and interesting, chances are when I’m get older, I’m actually going to think that I am unique and interesting. But what if, as my former high school friends enjoy repetitively telling me, I’m not? Just as importantly, what if it is helpful to actively deny this?

As Gen Y increasingly fills the workforce of aid and development, there’s a growing trend amongst us about how we talk about the work we do. One could easily get the impression that, looking from the outside in, doing work in this space revolves around us. A quick scan of the internet seems to reinforce this.

You have the aid worker who, on a field trip, was put up in an expensive hotel. She posted selfies, clad in a bathrobe, standing in front of an enormous spa bath in her ensuite. Underneath was a caption, commenting on the ostentatiousness of her surroundings that she had just been posted to. On a work trip. Paid for by donors.

You have the development worker who blogs like she is a travel writer. Today I visited people in poor villages. The most amazing thing happened. A girl who could have been no older than 7 years old came up to me, and told me that she wanted to be my best friend. She placed a band around my wrist signifying our friendship, and told me that I had beautiful hair. You get the idea.

You have those unoriginally ironic “my life is tough” photos, posted from the poolside, with a cocktail and a laptop placed side-by-side on a table. Bonus points if there’s a sunset in the background. Usually, such a photo will be accompanied by a caption saying something along the lines of “my office for the afternoon” or “all in a day’s work.”

If you can’t find an exotic hotel pool, just make do, okay?

Think about it for a second. Do we really want to portray aid and development as revolving around the glamorous life of the aid worker?

Sure, these examples are extreme and they don’t prove anything in themselves. After all, working in aid and development can be exciting. You get to go to exotic places, and mix with people from different backgrounds. You will stand out (or, if you’re like me, constantly asked why your Khmer, Chinese or Malay is so terrible). Surely there’s nothing wrong with sharing this excitement with the world?

I believe working in aid and development should involve forgetting about your sense of self as much as is humanly possible. Those people who have real and complex problems, that’s what should be keeping you awake at night, not manicuring every picture on your Facebook profile to present the most attractive you.

In fact, the more you deny the very existence of your own self, surely the better job you will do.

There’s another, more extreme, possibility if we don’t constantly remind ourselves that doing this job is not about us. Stuff like this happens.

The above photo comes from an company* that provides “ethical tourism” opportunities for people to change the lives of those living in poor counties. In the picture, you will you see an unfortunate byproduct of the self-centredness I described earlier. The volunteer is digging a well, while entranced “locals” stand around and watch. The message here is clear. The white volunteer is noble. She is doing something special (clearly, no one else in the picture is capable of wielding a shovel with such aplomb). She is making a difference.

The crucial word in that last sentence should be highlighted. She.

This is not an attack on voluntourism per se, but rather how it is portrayed. Who is this all about? The volunteer, or the other people in the photo?

It is true that these forms of narcissism have been around for centuries, and it’s nothing new to think that you’re the centre of the universe. Facebook, social media, and the internet more broadly have perhaps not changed this one bit. But they have changed the avenues through which we express this narcissism. It has made it easier to share, to brag (even if it is humblebragging), to broadcast. And most importantly, all of this is done so easily, with just the flick of a finger.

It is also true that those responsible are just displaying enthusiasm for their own lives. True, it is up to us to ignore them if we find them irritating or offensive. The behaviour itself is harmless. But the mindset that accompanies it is one that takes the focus away from those whose lives we are trying to improve, and onto the person doing the work. Even if momentary, I find it difficult to accept.

As importantly, the message that it sends to the public is poor. At a time when people are increasingly sceptical of aid’s efficacy and concerned about wastage, is this really how we want to portray ourselves to those outside the sector?

Gandhi once said that “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” If you read anything about Gandhi’s life, as imperfect as he was, he always pushed himself towards removing his sense of self completely.

But what if he hadn’t? What if every time Gandhi completed something ground-breaking, he leaned over, picked up a device, and broadcasted to the world? What if others did the same?

I cannot imagine that Gandhi or Suu Kyi ever thought it necessary to broadcast their achievements. Nor would they, even for a second, want to take the spotlight away from what they were trying to achieve or those they were achieving it for, onto themselves. Sure, they never had smartphones (perhaps why they managed to get so much work done), but if they had, would they have taken advantage of them in this way?

I’m blessed to have worked alongside some extraordinarily humble Chinese and Cambodian colleagues, who are achieving some amazing things daily. The vast majority are happy to chip away at their work, but don’t broadcast in the ways I mentioned above. These are people we could take cues from, where the focus really is all about the work, and not about themselves.

Kayla McClurg had something very insightful to say about Martin Luther King Jr’s life:

When I reflect on the life and witness of Martin Luther King Jr, one thing that strikes me is obvious: he didn’t start out to be who he ended up being. He didn’t set out to be a visionary leader, intent on making an impact on the country and culture of his day. He allowed himself to be created. Slowly, layer by layer, choice by choice, he became himself. He didn’t choose “leader of a mass civil rights movement” from a list of vocational options. His identity emerged gradually from within as he yielded to the guidance of the community and listened and prayed and read and participated and took the risks of creativity that were uniquely his to take.

I can’t help but think that his approach is completely at odds with the broadcasting I’ve described above. For him, it was never about portraying an image of himself, let alone even being a world-beater. He simply wanted to become the best person he could, without thinking about where that could lead him. When the time came for him to lead a resistance movement, MLK was simply the right person for the job.

I propose that before the next time we hit “post” on that picture of our laptop, the mojito and the sunset in the background, overlooking an African beach, we pause and take a deep breath. Does the internet really need this? Or would we be better off sharing something more valuable? Cat videos, perhaps?

Is broadcasting unnecessary, harmless, just good fun or potentially damaging? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

* For the interests of transparency, this is a company that I have had professional dealings with, though they do not in any way relate to this photo, or what is happening in it.

Cross the line from adult fiction into reading children’s novels however, and you’ll be faced with a different reaction. “What can you possibly gain from a book written for children?” people ask.

The answer is simple. You can learn to think and be like a child again. This is a process that others have dubbed “unlearning” – letting go of what we have already learned or acquired.

Unlearning is a process of liberation, and it’s crucial for helping yourself to learn more. A fantastic metaphor is stripping the existing paint off a wall, so that you are able to lay down new paint over the top of it. Stripping the paint is a more arduous task than painting a new coat, yet we seem to focus more on the latter than the former.

I recently read The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster. The story centres around the adventures of a young boy named Milo, who is too bored with life to even look up from the pavement on his way home from school. For Milo, the world is full of facts and figures, which to him seems irrelevant.

The Mathemagician, who firmly believes that numbers are more important than words.

However, an unexplained package arrives at his house and inside is a cardboard tollbooth, which when set up, is a portal to another world ruled by two opposing kings. Azaz the Unabridged is the King of Dictionopolis, and his brother, the Mathemagician, rules the kingdom of Digitopolis. Both brothers are embroiled in an ongoing battle over which is more important: numbers or words.

The only solution to the problem is for a brave soul (you can probably guess who that is) to climb the Mountains of Ignorance and rescue the beautiful princesses Rhyme and Reason from their prison in the Castle in the Air. Rhyme and Reason were banished to this place because they refused to choose between numbers and words and thus infuriated both kings.

Along the way, Milo jumps to Conclusions, which turns out to be an island, swims in the Sea of Knowledge, meets the Whether man, who asks him whether or not it will rain, and spends time in jail with a Which, a kindly old lady who turns out to be nowhere near as scary as Milo imagined.When Milo orders a “light” meal during King Azaz’s banquet, he is served a plate of lightbulbs. When Officer Shrift, a police officer who is twice as wide as he is tall, wants to sentence Milo to jail, he asks him if he would prefer a long sentence or a short sentence. Milo replies that he would prefer a short sentence, to which Officer Shrift pulls out a piece of paper, writes “I am” on it, and hands it to Milo.

The heavy moralising tone of The Phantom Tollbooth sets it apart from other children’s books of the time. The message is clear; that the imagination is limitless. That experiencing new things with an open mind is ongoing, no matter who you are.

As you read the book, you cannot help but feel more and more childlike yourself. You want to be imaginative. You want to see the world as a child does. You want to appreciate simplicity.

I couldn’t help but feel how these attitudes are beneficial working in development. Taking a step back, the very concept of working in development is fairly audacious. It is quite bold to believe that you can take resources, whether they be human, financial or knowledge, and bring them to another country and culture to affect change.

We have an obsession with knowledge and learning in development. The much maligned phrases of “capacity building” and “trainings” indicate a willingness to impart knowledge that we have gained on other people. Armed with Masters degrees and limited experience in our countries of origin, we hope to bring what we know for the benefit of others.

But what if we were to approach these situations with an attitude of unlearning? What if, like a child, with eyes and minds open, we were ready to learn?

I was recently asked by some Cambodian colleagues to run a workshop on the social model of disability. This involved talking about how the definition of disability has changed, from a medical model, which highlights the impairments on bodies, to a social model, which emphasises the barriers that society places on individuals. Shifting the focus onto barriers is always an interesting exercise. We start to look towards society to see what barriers are erected by the community at large.

Milo meets Tock, a Watchdog, who helps him to unlock his imagination.

As a “trainer”, the implication is that I impart knowledge onto “trainees”. But if I allowed myself to “unlearn”, to strip back the paint off my own wall, then there was the real possibility that I could learn something valuable myself.

During this workshop, I always ask participants to collectively identify barriers that exclude people with disabilities from society.

When I held this training in China, participants tended to emphasise the physical barriers that such as lack of ramps and railings that prevented access to places for people with disabilities. However in Cambodia, the emphasis appeared to be more on stigmatisation and discrimination. In other words, attitudinal barriers seemed to be more disempowering.

Anyone who has spent considerable time in either of these two countries may not be surprised to hear these differences. But as a relative newcomer to Cambodia, this kind of information helped me to navigate working in a country and culture that I was unfamiliar with.

This is the value of reading children’s books such as The Phantom Tollbooth. They remind you that even as a so-called “expert” in a foreign country, at times, you’re more effective by relinquishing the baggage associated with what you have learnt. That seeing the world through a child’s eyes, and embracing that inner child within can help you along the way.

All it takes is ten minutes to remind yourself of the benefits of this attitude. As a start, I’d suggest heading over to read An Awesome Book, by Dallas Clayton, online via this link (thanks to Julianne Scenna for the recommendation). It’s a wonderful reminder of the power of dreaming big.

Next, you can purchase The Phantom Tollbooth here. I wish I’d read this book decades ago, but I’m thankful that I’ve read it now.

What children’s books have you read recently, and what did you learn?

One reason why the issue of disability is treated as something too specialised for the ordinary NGO is the misconception that the number of disabled people within the target population is insignificant. This myth arises because many disabled people are invisible.

- Allison Harris & Sue Enfield in Disability, Equality and Human Rights: A Training Manual for Development and Humanitarian Organisations

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), over a billion people in the world, or 15% of the world’s population, live with disabilities. This number is higher in lower income countries, although most commonly the rate is underestimated due to the lack of accurate data. If you were to try and identify some of the most poor and vulnerable members of any community, you would have to look no further than those with disabilities.

How do we best address the issue of inequality that arises amongst people with disabilities?

Previously, specific programs to address the needs of those with disabilities was the only method, but now, more and more agencies are moving towards mainstreaming disability issues into their existing programs. In terms of government aid agencies, AusAID is leading the charge on this front, following a twin track approach to disability. This means specific programs for those with disabilities, but also including the concerns of people with disabilities as part of all mainstream projects.

Image courtesy of CBM (2012) Inclusion made easy: A quick program guide to disability in development, p18-26.

I’m personally a big fan of this approach, and it’s also good to see AusAID leading the charge here. Mainstream organisations are often far better placed to address the needs of people with disabilities than disability specific organisations.

Why? When disability organisations take up work that is too far outside their core area, interventions run the risk of becoming less effective.

Let’s take the example of income generation. For a disability organisation, most of their expertise and experience lies in working with closely with disability. This may involve physical rehabilitation, getting children with disabilities into school, or analysing difficulties with accessibility amongst other things. They are aware of the barriers commonly faced by people with disabilities in accessing vocational training, startup funds for enterprise or even simply common services such as banking.

Their core work however does not involve income generation. There are plenty of organisations who already do this work, and do it well, with innovation. Integrating the needs of people with disabilities into their programs makes far more sense, and this is a perfect example where disability organisations can partner with mainstream organisations to achieve this.

There are some great examples of this already happening. The disability organisation, CBM, have produced an excellent guide on disability inclusion, which gives practical advice to mainstream development organisations on how they can integrate people with disabilities better into their work. Almost every section of development is individually accounted for, from Advocacy to WASH, from Disaster Management to HIV/AIDS.

Planning for people with disabilities early can avoid accessibility disasters like this occurring. Photo my own.

We simply cannot afford not to include people with disabilities.

My gut feeling is that many mainstream development organisations do not include people with disabilities, because they are hesitant about the time and energy needed to do so. They see people preaching about inclusion as nuisances, who add another layer of compliance that they do are unable to conform with due to limited resources.

I would like to come at the issue from another angle. We simply cannot afford not to include people with disabilities.

As an example, simple adaptations to make buildings accessible for people with disabilities are often deemed “too expensive” in countries that do not have large budgets.

However, installing appropriate access for people with disabilities while a building is being constructed costs only 1-2% of the total building costs. If people with disabilities are excluded from participating within the labor market, the International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that there is a 1-7% loss of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Putting aside the business case for including those with disabilities into the labor market, there is a greater issue at stake here, which is the human right of social inclusion. With the case of constructing buildings, as with most programs in development, considering and preparing for the needs of people with disabilities beforehand can save time, money and energy in the long run.

This often means making sure that there is a line for disability in the budget. If disability is included in the budget beforehand, it is more difficult to ignore it when it comes to implementation.

Inclusion of people with disabilities doesn’t have to be a chore. But it does involve some pre-thought and planning. If we truly want to help improve the lives of the world’s poor and vulnerable we cannot continue to ignore those that are at the most vulnerable end of the spectrum.

Let’s make aid and development truly about “beneficiaries”, once and for all.

Aid and development, as it stands, involves a triangular relationship between the donor, the NGO and, for lack of a better word, beneficiaries. Although the word beneficiary sounds a little too passive for my liking, getting to the core of aid and development is about improving the lives of people in communities that are impoverished or vulnerable. However, too often, aid and development does not revolve around them.

The donor often determines what programs get funded and therefore what kind of development work gets done. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) announced in 2000, contain no specific mention of disability. Since then, there has been anecdotal evidence that some programs developed by disability NGOs, in consultation with communities, have been refused funding.

Some agencies and funding bodies refuse to fund programs that target people with disabilities simply because disability is not explicitly mentioned in the MDGs. For the 15% of the world who live with disabilities at least, rather than foster collective action, the MDGs have promoted inaction.

We need to create an environment where communities determine for themselves what issues need improvement. This in itself is complex, because simply asking communities often ignores those who are not already in positions of power. It is up to NGOs to reach those who are typically the least heard. Women, children, ethnic minorities, LGBT, migrants, and people with disabilities would help. Let’s get NGOs to do the listening, and then spend time and energy talking to donors about what communities really need.

Put more trust in poor people.

In Just Give Money to the Poor: The Development Revolution from the Global South, the authors take a step back from looking at what reduces poverty, and investigate our own attitudes towards poor people. They ask the question: “Who is to blame for poor people being poor: society as a whole, or poor people themselves?” The variation across countries is fascinating.

Who is to blame for poverty – poor people or society? Adapted from Just Give Money to the Poor.

The data shows that the majority of people in the United States tend to blame poor people for their level of poverty, rather than society. At the opposite end of the spectrum, only 13% of people in Germany blame poor people, with 87% blaming an unfair society. Our own attitudes about who is to blame for poverty are crucial in how we attack the problem.

If we continue to see poor people as the architects of their own predicament, then “poverty eradication” will continue to be done for them, not by them. Programs will continue to be paternalistic, and poor people themselves will have little to no agency in creating a better future for themselves.

Microcredit, or the giving of small loans to people in poverty has, at best, tenuous evidence in lifting people out of poverty across the board. As economist David Roodman says, “microfinance is rarely transformational”. Yet currently, microcredit is incredibly popular. This is despite strong evidence that suggests that unconditional cash transfers (just “giving money to the poor”) may be more effective in reducing poverty, particularly amongst vulnerable groups.

Why do we favour microcredit? One reason may be that behind all of this is the unspoken belief that poor people cannot be trusted. In fact, advocates of microfinance often point to loan repayment rates as a sign that microcredit is working. One of Grameen Bank’s greatest brags is that 97% of their loans are repaid.

However, this figure is only a distraction. Surely, the success of microcredit should be measured by the effect on reducing poverty, rather than the ability of people to pay loans back. People often baulk at the idea of giving money away with no strings attached, because they feel that poor people cannot be trusted. Yet the overwhelming body of evidence suggests that cash transfers work better than microcredit. In asking why we still prefer microcredit, we have to ask ourselves the simple question: “Do we trust poor people?”

Do more to reach the most vulnerable.

In his book, Due Diligence: An Impertinent Inquiry into Microfinance, David Roodman notes that while microcredit can change the lives of some people who are poor, there is one group that microcredit almost universally does not reach: the poorest of the poor.

To boil a very complex situation down to its simplest form, microcredit is run like a business, and the ability to reach the poorest in any community has a high opportunity cost associated with it. You may be able to reach the one ultra-poor family in the remote hills away from the village, but this will come at the expense of reaching four less poor families within the village.

Similarly, aid and development as it stands today does not do enough for people with disabilities, often the most poor and vulnerable within any community.

Poverty and disability are inextricably linked. The lack of access to decent employment, the higher costs of living, the opportunity costs of caring for those with disabilities – all of these factors combine to make families of people with disabilities multiply disadvantaged. Children with disabilities are far less likely to attend school than their non-disabled peers.

Although this trend is starting to be reversed, too few mainstream development organisations and agencies include people with disabilities into their programs. I have personally met with many development NGOs who do great work across a wide range of areas. However, when asked specifically how they address the needs of people with disabilities (often 15% or more of their target group), I’m faced with blank stares.

How can we truly claim that we are working towards improving the lives of poor and vulnerable people, if we continue to ignore those at the most vulnerable end of the spectrum?

Often, organisations resist including people with disabilities because it is perceived as too difficult or intimidating. Fortunately though, there is a wealth of information available to help mainstream the specific needs of people with disabilities. Here is a fantastic guide, produced by the disability organisation CBM, to get the ball rolling.

“You’d be surprised at how unfriendly this industry can be,” Amie* confessed. “When I first worked here (at an international NGO in Melbourne), nobody wanted to help me with anything.”

Over dinner, an employee of a high profile international NGO described the unhelpful culture in her workplace. People are often surprised to hear that a sector such as development, which should theoretically value empathy and sharing, can be so competitive. Why is there so much competitiveness in development? Whether it’s jobs, resources or attention, it seems everyone’s competing against each other. In the end, it stifles collaboration.

This attitude of competition is no more prevalent than in the sphere of fundraising. At whydev.org, we’ve recently been raising funds for a project of our own. We’ve been trying to raise seed funding to build an international support network for aid workers. Our research shows that there are aid workers all around the world, who are often in isolated and trying conditions, and often feel unsupported by their home office or organisation. We believe that if we are able to connect them up, then we can give them the opportunity to support each other, through peer coaching.

Our idea is inherently about collaboration and sharing, and in some ways flies in the face of the attitude that Amie described. Yet, in raising money for this very idea, I managed to get a firsthand glimpse into the realities of fundraising that others must experience daily. With private donations, as with applications for tenders and grants, there is an inherent element of competition involved. People will compare your project to others, decide the relative worth of each, and then make a decision about where their $20 will go. Undoubtedly, healthy competition should be welcomed.

However, what I realised was that this view sees fundraising of private donations as a zero-sum game. This perspective states that there is a certain amount of money available, and each project or NGO must compete for it. However, seeing fundraising in this way may be seeing it a little too narrowly.

Peter Singer’s influential book, the Life You Can Save, describes how almost every person who is living a life of comfort can give more of his or her wealth away. In his example, the end result of sacrificing a little bit of comfort is saving lives. His website contains testimonials of people who have embraced this idea, such as the lady who was in a buying scheme where every month a new pair of shoes were delivered to her. She opted out of this scheme and instead gave all the money she would have spent on shoes towards worthwhile causes.

The bottom line is that pretty much all of us can afford to give just that little bit more. There isn’t a limited and static pool of private donations that NGOs need to fight tooth and nail over. We instead should encourage people to increase the amount of money that they’re willing to give. Taking this tact requires collaboration from NGOs, not competitiveness, so that everyone can achieve their targets.

How do you encourage people to simply give more?

One way could be by fostering a culture of giving. For too long, NGOs have focused on fundraising for specific projects as the need arises. We’ve already discussed why this is problematic when fundraising for specific disasters.

Singer argues that when you donate to a specific cause, you should be as loud about it as possible. You should be telling all your friends about your donation, whether it is through social media or otherwise. Although this may not come naturally to some, Singer says that this means other people will also be encouraged to give, and therefore, giving becomes increasingly normal. In other words, by telling others about your own generosity, you also encourage a culture of giving.

Perhaps NGOs could foster this by donating to other NGOs themselves. Although problems emerge if World Vision Australia donates funds raised under a certain pretence to MSF, what if prominent employees of World Vision came out publicly and donated to other NGOs?

Imagine for a second if Reverend Tim Costello, the CEO of World Vision Australia, publicly stated that he was supporting MSF because he believed in what they were doing and trusted them to use his donation well. As counterintuitive as this scenario seems, imagine how powerful a message it would send.

The message would be one of true support and solidarity; that it is okay to give to a cause that is not your own. Most importantly, the general public might look at such an action and be encouraged to give more.

The danger of thinking about fundraising purely for your own cause is that it is possible to lose focus on the whole notion of giving in the broader sense. Suddenly, raising funds becomes a competition with other fundraisers and the notion of collaboration disappears. But this view of fundraising doesn’t acknowledge that an untapped pool of funds may be currently ignored, by not encouraging people to give more. If we focused our energy on fostering a culture of giving, NGOs may be able to collaborate to increase their funding for all, not only for one.

What other ways do you think we can foster a culture of giving? Are there examples of NGOs already focusing on this that you can think of?

*not her real name

This site has been a work in progress since May 2010 and we’re pleased to announce that we have completely revamped it. We think that you’ll be pleased with the look, feel and navigation of the new site.

One of the main changes in the new site is that it reflects the direction in which WhyDev is moving. We’ve been known for our contribution to discussion around aid and development. Our blog posts have been possible due to over 50 contributors, mostly female, who have lead discussion and instigated over 1000 comments since our site went live. We’re grateful to each and every one of you who have helped to foster this non-judgmental platform, where participation is encouraged. Some of our most popular posts, which you can see on the right hand site of each blog page, have had over 20,000 hits. We’re very proud of our blog, and that it is here to stay.

However, for a while now, the blog has only been one part of what we at WhyDev do. The new site reflects this. You can still log right into our blog via its own URL: http://www.whydev.org/blog, when you wish. However now, our main landing page is capable of displaying all the other exciting things that are going on at WhyDev. Here’s a few of them:

• Peer coaching – For those who aren’t aware, we’re building an international support network for aid workers. Using funds that we crowdsourced, we’ve now completed the first phase of using those funds – rebuilding the website to have a space that is dedicated towards this very concept. We will use this section of the site to have people sign up, and as our main place for interaction with peer coaches. More on this will be revealed as we build it over the coming months.

• Aidworks – We’re proud to support and partner with Aidworks – Australia’s only radio program devoted to discussing aid and development issues. We want foster the same sort of learning environment that is prevalent in our blog, and showcase it in an audio form. Each week, we’ll have the new podcasts up on our site, and you’ll be able to hear Albion Harrison-Naish’s smooth voice talking to some great guests about all things aid and development.

• More. Oh so much more – As WhyDev expands (and we’ve got some pretty good ideas in the bank), the site will evolve to accommodate these changes. Remember, WhyDev is very much about you. If you have an idea that you think would fit well into our Vision, drop us a line and we’d love to hear it.

All of these changes could not have been made possible without the addition of another WhyDev team member. It is our pleasure to introduce our web guy, Daniel Drake, into our team. Apart from being a certified web guru/nerd, Daniel is a recent graduate of Pacific Lutheran University with a major in Communication and concentration in Journalism. He worked through college in TV, print and online media, and has more than five years experience creating websites and online tools. After witnessing the 2011 massacre in his home country Norway, Daniel decided to devote his skills to connecting people in international development and helping them tell their stories. He currently serves as an intern with Global Washington in Seattle.

We can’t stress how grateful we are that Daniel has stepped up to the plate just when we needed him. We’re excited to continue working with him, and we’re sure that you agree that his work speaks for himself. In fact, if you are impressed by the changes, you should get in contact with Daniel yourself, to see how he can help you.

There are also far too many other people to thank in helping us to get there, but we’d like to start with our founding members: Ellie Wong, Stuart Meney, Sam Porter, Rachel Szekely, Ross Wortham and Sally Crawshaw. Special thanks to Stuart Meney for logo design and website help. Thanks also to Shana Montesol Johnson for supporting and believing in our vision for peer coaching. And a big thanks to Albion Harrison-Naish for his enthusiasm in linking us up with Aidworks. Massive thanks to the beta testers (you know who you are) who tested our site. Last but not least, thanks to those who supported us financially and otherwise when we needed your help.

If you would like to ask any questions about WhyDev, or comment on the site, or submit your own blog post, do not hesitate to get in touch with us. Thanks for following our progress and we hope to keep improving more in the future!

Go in search of your people;
Love them;
Learn from them
Serve them;
Begin with what they have;
Build on what they know;
But of the best leaders when the task is accomplished, their work is done, the People will remark: “We have done it Ourselves”

Chinese Verse (source unknown)

I had the pleasure of working with Handicap International in China last year. As someone who had recently graduated from studying an MA in International Development Studies, it was an amazing opportunity to compare theory with practice. We all know that what we learn in a classroom is often miles away from what happens or works in practice. How it actually differs though, is something that is difficult to predict.

In my very first week in China, I gave a presentation to a group of young university students who were volunteering to raise awareness about issues related to disability. During my presentation, I spoke heavily about human rights. What I found was that there was almost no reaction to the idea that people with disabilities had human rights that needed to be realised. Why wasn’t this resonating?

While studying development, one of the central tenets stressed is the rights-based approach. For those who are unfamiliar, this approach is a conceptual framework based upon international standards that should be used to promote and protect human rights.

In her book “Human Rights Approach to Development”, Julia Häusermann justifies using a rights-based approach because it is a normative framework to protect and promote the human rights of marginalised groups. The idea is that by stipulating a set of internationally agreed standards, which are often backed by international law, this should provide the impetus for the realisation of rights. At times during my studies, we were encouraged to give trainings about human rights, and to try and get local people thinking about this issue so that they could push for change in their own communities. This concept was one that I always struggled with at the time. How is it possible for bottom-up change to occur through a set of standards that are determined in a top-down fashion by the UN? It seemed paradoxical.

In China, I soon realised how limited the rights-based approach was in trying to instigate change. Although the rights-based approach may be a good foundation and framework upon which development workers can base their own approach, thinking that it will create change in countries like China is perhaps a little naive. What strikes me about using this approach is that it falls under the information deficit approach to creating change. In other words, once you educate people about human rights, and outline the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UNDHR), they will be able to grasp this concept easily and energise themselves to create positive change. Simply not knowing about something is the reason why these rights are being ignored.

If this logic holds true, then the people who heard my presentation should be able to analyse gaps in human rights issues and demand that their government brings about change so that human rights are no longer ignored. Right? Wrong.

In China, my experience was that most people perceive human rights as a ‘Western’ concept. This means that plugging knowledge gaps with information about human rights is futile, because it isn’t locally appropriate. I learnt that Chinese people tended to have a very pragmatic view about solving problems (see photo below); if there was a problem, people wanted to know how to go about solving it (and more often than not, they wanted someone to tell them how to do it).

The pragmatic approach to solving problems in China (photo my own).

During my presentation to university students, I learnt very quickly about the gap between this “Western concept” and Chinese perspectives. The students were young people who were more likely to be “Westernised” than many of their older counterparts. I explained the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and linked that to people with disabilities. I explained that if we all accepted that people with disabilities were human beings, then it follows that they too have human rights that need to be respected and realised.

However, this topic hardly provoked any reaction. It just didn’t seem to gain traction. Puzzled, I went back to my colleagues to ask them how I could improve my talk. They were generally polite (possibly a little too polite), but one hinted that while the human-rights approach was interesting, it was a little bit too theoretical for the intended target group.

After some reflection, I decided to change my approach. Instead of talking about human rights as a conceptual framework, I decided to focus more on barriers.

I discussed how, for a child who uses a wheelchair, a disability is created by the barriers that society erects in front of this child. How it is not so much the fact that the child cannot walk in school, but the fact that there are no ramps in place, or no policy on how he or she can participate while the other children are running around during sport.

Looking at the problem from this angle is actually quite refreshing. Because no matter how clever you are, or no matter how much you care, you cannot go back in time and prevent a child with cerebral palsy from being born with that impairment. We cannot change what happens to the body. But, through society as a whole, we can lower barriers. We can promote inclusion by collectively focusing on  steps that lower barriers that prevent participation.

Immediately, I saw a change in the students’ response. Rather than talking about a conceptual framework that meant very little to them, they had a real tangible way in which they could improve the lives of those around them. It helped them see past people with disabilities as pitiable and helpless. It kick-started change and a desire for action.

The rights-based approach is not a useless concept. It can be a good start for us, particularly those with a ‘Western’ education, to wrap our heads around why we do what we do. It can be the underlying foundation for development work. But it cannot be a driver for change in a local context, when it clashes so heavily with the national psyche. Coming into a country like China and expecting to create change by throwing around concepts such as human rights is naive, and antithetical to the very nature of a bottom-up approach to development.

Thankfully, I was able to use the good advice of my local colleagues to develop a more effective strategy for promoting disability awareness. Hopefully, it enabled at least some Chinese people to begin creating their own change, and lowering barriers for participation for people with disabilities. Then, and only then, would they be able to say, “We have done it Ourselves.”

Despite all his, discussion in development rarely revolves around the most effective ways in which we can influence other people. Previously, on whydev.org, we talked about the tendency to hold onto existing biases more strongly whenever views are challenged. When a message goes against the grain of what people already believe, convincing them of this message is complex, and requires effective strategies.

Courtesy of a recent study cited in New Scientist, here is one strategy that may work better: change the messenger, not the message.

Around the middle of last year, Republican politicians in the United States claimed that the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine was a potential cause of intellectual disability, despite a lack of strong scientific evidence. Unsurprisingly, whether or not people believed them was highly correlated to their political stance. In one study, subjects were questioned on their beliefs across a wide range of issues, and then classified as liberals or conservatives. Scientists then examined their attitudes towards the HPV vaccine. When presented with balanced arguments for and against administering the vaccine, 70% of the liberals and 56% of the conservatives thought it was safe to do so.

The experimenters then created fictional experts who portrayed themselves as liberals or conservatives. With the more “natural” pairing of the liberal expert arguing in favour of the vaccine and the conservative expert arguing against it, the number of liberals who supported the HPV vaccine increased, and the conservatives who disagreed decreased. No surprises there.

The interesting result occurred when they swapped the messengers around, so that the liberal expert argued against the vaccine and the conservative expert argued for it. Under this scenario, 58% of liberals and 61% of conservatives supported the HPV vaccine. In other words, simply swapping the messenger around resulted in more conservatives than liberals being convinced by the safety of the vaccine, a complete reversal to initial findings.

This seems to suggest that it’s not so much the message that is crucial, but instead, the messenger. Recent calls from British PM David Cameron to end foreign aid to African governments who do not uphold gay rights do not acknowledge this research. Apart from the futility of such a threat, the British leader is only likely to bring up not-too-distant memories of Western imperialism and aid conditionality.

Who then, is the best messenger to convey the message we want to give? Let’s go back to the three examples that I opened with individually.

Conveying an organisation’s work to a corporate donor

Often, it is the fundraising department, sometimes coupled with someone who works “in the field”, that tells corporate donors how money donated impacts people’s lives. However, a more ideal messenger could be someone who doesn’t even work for the NGO – perhaps someone who works within the corporate sector itself. Apart from speaking about the good work of the NGO to colleagues, this person is also able to discuss the tax benefits of regular workplace giving.

Convincing the public of the merits of foreign aid

Again, having someone outside of the aid sector could be the best messenger. A trusted public figure with an average income (i.e. not Bill Gates) might be best able to explain how he or she saw the impact of aid work on a recent trip overseas. It is crucial that this figure is someone the public can relate to. Recently, Jet Li was criticised for encouraging people in China to donate more willingly to good causes, as they believed it was his responsibility, as someone wealthy, to do more of the donating himself.

Recruiting people for an HIV testing program in Zimbabwe

Rather than foreign NGO workers, a local Zimbabwean who was diagnosed with HIV and successfully treated for tuberculosis may be a more effective person to convince local people of the need for testing. Having a voice that local people can relate to could lead to the message being more influential and believable.

In life, there are many other instances where we also need to sell a certain message. It could be telling friends about the value of caring for the environment, eating foods that we think are healthy, or why watching back-to-back episodes of Glee on a Saturday night is not only bad for your social life, but also your general health and wellbeing. In development, we need to give serious thought about how the issue is being framed. But, before we even do that, we need to be selective about who it is that is doing the framing.

This post originally appeared on How Matters, a site that explores the “how” of doing development work, in all it’s shapes and forms. I highly recommend you add it to your list of regular reading.

You can follow this author on Twitter here.

Why do we think that peer coaching is so important? We know that there are many people working in the field of aid and development across the globe with minimal support and guidance. We are aware that resources are limited in the humanitarian field. However, we also know that through support networks, and specifically, peer coaching, we can increase the return on investment for these workers and enable them to be more effective in helping the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people.

We want to provide a service that matches them up, so that they are able to support and learn from each other via Skype, email or other methods. This service therefore does not require more resources to be added to the sector (in the form of professional mentors, coaches or counselors), but rather, builds on existing resources that are not connected.

We’re doing this because we think that the need is out there. And because of comments from people like this:

“I feel isolated, uncertain and a little forlorn about finding my way into development-related work, and would like to have someone to share my experience with, who is perhaps also experiencing the same thing.” – E, 18-25 year old male, Honduras.

However, in order to get this project up off the ground in a reasonable amount of time, and with good quality, we’re going to need your help.

We reckon we need at least $3000 in seed funding to dedicate a solid amount of time to building the platform, providing the right guidelines for peer coaching, and matching people together in the most effective way. Building the platform will involve spending time on infrastructure – website redesign, functioning and creating a space so that matching can occur. We’ll also need to build the database of peer coaches from the ground up and create the resources to support peer coaches as the program continues.

If we reach our funding target, we think that we could get the peer coaching service up and running within a month.

What will happen if we don’t hit our tipping point and don’t get funding? We’ll still do the program of course as we originally planned, but it might take a bit longer and may not be as comprehensive and professional as we would have liked.

So, this is where we need your help. We’ve launched a crowdfunding campaign over on StartSomeGood where people can chip in amounts of money, small or large, to help us get this project going. If you are reading this post, chances are you’re either working, studying or are at least interested in aid and development. Therefore, chances are, you’re the right demographic to understand the difficulties that aid workers can face across the globe.

You might also be wondering about how sustainable your funding is? Good question! Once the platform is built, we think that we can keep the service running by adding in a tiered system of participation, so that it is self-sustainable. But first, we need to get the service started and that’s where the seed funding comes in.

We’d appreciate it if you would consider donating whatever you can to our StartSomeGood campaign here, and spreading the word far and wide about what we’re trying to achieve.

http://startsomegood.com/Venture/whydev/Campaign

If you have any questions at all about our campaign, please do not hesitate to contact either Brendan or myself. We’d be more than happy to answer any questions.

For the final word on the topic, here is Brendan, speaking from Ghana:

You can donate to our campaign on StartSomeGood here.

Josephine Namirimu, from Uganda's Young Voices program.

Even though whydev brings a younger voice to issues and discussion around aid and development, it is rare that we have a chance to hear from a young person from Uganda. I recently had the pleasure of interviewing one of the most articulate and inspiring people I have ever met, Josephine Namirimu, who is a representative of Leonard Cheshire Disability’s Young Voices program. This program trains and brings together youth campaigners with disabilities from over 20 countries who have direct experience of having a disability and living in a poor country. It is unique in that it enables some of the most marginalised people in the world to have a voice and a direct influence over events and policy.

Although it was not my intention to interview anyone for whydev while at the conference, I was blown away by how well Josephine spoke about the topic of being young, female, and having a disability in Uganda. So impressed was I, that I simply had to hear more.

We talked about the difficulties that girls with disabilities face in Uganda, how being given the chance to have a voice has helped Josephine, and the importance of the Internet and Facebook for young people with disabilities. Our ten-minute interview can be found below, and the transcript below that. Thanks to Leonard Cheshire Disability and UNESCAP for hosting the conference.

If the audio below isn’t working, you can listen to the interview here.

[soundcloud url="http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/42100977" iframe="true" /]

Transcript

Weh: I’m here in Bangkok here at the moment at the Leonard Cheshire Disability and UNESCAP-hosted conference and I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Josephine Namirimu from Uganda’s Young Voices Program. Josephine I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about yourself and also the Young Voices program that you’re a part of.

Josephine: Thank you so much. I’m Josephine Namirimu, from Uganda, Young Voices, acting as the vice chairperson, Young Voices, Uganda. Young Voices Uganda is a part of the global Young Voices and Young Voices is part of Leonard Cheshire Disability International. It started in Uganda in 2009. We are 39 members and we are divided into 2 groups. One group is in the central and another is in the east. Young Voices is big and widely spread, especially in Asia-Pacific, Africa and other parts of the world.

Weh: So I’ve just heard a really fascinating presentation by yourself here in Bangkok. You were talking about the perspective of a younger person with a disability living in Uganda and being female. Can you tell us a little more about some of the challenges specifically young people with disabilities face and particularly girls?

Josephine:  Young Voices and women with disabilities, especially youth, are really facing a lot of trauma, in most of the developing countries. I don’t know how much it is in other areas, but in the developing countries, it’s really worse. When it comes to gender, it’s a double discrimination. First of all, we are marginalised as female, and secondly due to our disability identity, it has become really difficult. We’ve been affected in different ways. There is risk of sexual harassment, exploitation, and really there is no voice and positive response to that. Actually, due to UNCRPD (United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities) there is a kind of response and most of the countries have adopted, for instance, in Uganda, they’ve ratified it and governments are just beginning to adapt to the UNCRPD. However, if some of the issues are being worked upon, the greater part is still remaining in Uganda.

It is really, really difficult, especially to make it to school, lack of appliances, the ramps – ramps are in place but they are not in good condition. It’s like they’ve been put for formality. However, as Young Voices it is our role to keep on reminding the concerned parties to make it proper.

I still need to enlighten you more about the challenges faced by the ladies, young girls with disabilities. It happens that since we are so vulnerable, and because of that we can easily by affected and fall victims of so many circumstances. We’ve been misused, we’ve been abused, raped. For instance in Botswana, there is a story that’s been pointed out by Young Voices member in Botswana. A girl who is visually impaired. She forced in love, she was raped actually and she conceived accidentally. However, there was no kind of response or care towards this girl and it happens that this girl, her times of giving birth, no one was there. She struggled so much and after the baby was out, unfortunately, the kid passed away. This is the girl who spent almost a week in a coma, and after that, she also died. So it has been seen that there is not much concern towards women with disabilities, and young people as well. And because of that, we’ve been found to fall victims and we miss our chance to our future life. We would like to get the kind of life that we do want, just like other people. Because I do believe that there is no difference from us and other people. The fact that we cannot maybe walk from one place to another. However, we can perform in other areas. As Young Voices, we can just say that “hold me by hand and then I’ll reach to wherever I want me to go. If you hold us, if you help us, we can really perform it and we can forget all about other issues”.

Weh: And of course Young Voices gives young women and men opportunities to talk about their particular issues and lives. Can you tell me how you think Young Voices can help young people with disabilities improve their own situation?

Josephine: Young Voices has really, really done great. Has helped us and is still helping us. The limited age within the group is 16 to 25 and during that period we are trained on how to talk, how to advocate, how to present ourselves, we’ve been given trainings on ourselves. Their plan towards people with disabilities has been great and it is the reason I am able to talk to you frankly. Before, I was so shy, I could not even talk to people just because I’m disabled and I think everyone could be under-looking me. However, when Young Voices came out, they trained us, we have potential and I’m proud of Young Voices.

Weh:  It’s amazing to think that you thought previously you wouldn’t be able to communicate well, because you communicate so well now, so it’s an amazing transformation if that’s true. You also talked a lot in your presentation about technology, the internet, mobile phones and you mentioned Facebook as well. Can you explain a little more about why you think these sorts of technologies are important for young people with disabilities?

Josephine: This source of information, especially the internet is so important simply because it reaches out to us, to so many people. Especially in developing countries. Right now, most of the people they get access to internet. They read information, and since people are so busy, we are living a busy world, people have limited time. However with internet it is precise, so if we put information on the internet we are able and fully assured that it will reach out to many people. However it is slightly different from most of the countries in Africa, because most of the children and people with disabilities, I’m sure they don’t know how to use the internet. The reason being it is inaccessible in their countries, it is costly and above all, we don’t know how to use the internet. So we are missing a lot in that area. We would like to know more and more about the internet to reach the same level as others.

Weh: In order for you be able to access technology such as the internet, what sort of things do you think need to happen, what sort of role does government need to play or NGOS for young people with disabilities to access the internet more in places like Uganda?

Josephine: First of all is to avail the facilities and to make such places for internet and other sources accessible for all people including people with a disability. We need trainings. We need to know how to use the internet, how to use all the updated sources of communication. So I do believe when such sources are in place they are available to everyone, it will be easy for us to catch up.

Weh: Young people with disabilities need to be able to access internet and use sites like Facebook to communicate. How do you tell people who are from an older generation, who are often the ones in control of funding and resources, how do you explain to them that technology like Facebook is really important, when perhaps they are not so familiar with it as young people are? What would you say to these funders to convince them that it is important?

Josephine: I would really convince them, persuade them, by telling them the role of the internet today. Clearly, showing them that internet is worldwide and everyone gets access to it. It’s precise and we really also need to be on the same pace worldwide.

Weh: That’s excellent. Thank you very much for your time with us Josephine and we hope to be in touch with you in the future.

Josephine: You’re welcome. Thank you so much for your time too and the opportunity.

________________________________

Barnardo’s UK makes an active point of describing how low their overheads are.

Whether it’s spending money on groceries, mobile phones or charities, we all want bang for our buck. Telling the public that a large percentage of their donations goes to the program is an easy way for an NGO to look like they’re doing the right thing. However, in 2009, a joint press release from 8 charity-watchdog organisations stated that in trying to determine whether a charity is worth supporting, focusing on a low overhead ratio is meaningless. So why do so many NGO’s still talk about it when communicating to the public?

My guess is that it comes down to the perennial struggle between doing good development work and raising funds to support that work. Often, the former is a lot more complicated than the latter. And unfortunately, when it comes to conveying that information to the public from a quick glance at a website, or a short grab on TV, the complexities of it all often get lost.

The myth that organisations with low overheads are ones worth supporting has been actively propagated by the marketing departments of many large NGOs. Well, now there is a 20 page resource that well and truly blows this myth out of the water. Over at Good Intentions are Not Enough, Saundra Schimmelpfennig has written an excellent little eBook that will not only take just 10 to 20 minutes to read, but details exactly why stating that an organisation has low overheads is bad publicity, and also bad practice.

Possibly the easiest way to dispel this myth is by using the example that she does in her opening paragraphs. Imagine walking into a fast food chain and insisting that you will only pay for whatever costs make up the hamburger. You will only pay them a few cents for the cost of the bun, the hamburger patty, the tomato sauce and the pickles. What kind of a product do you think they would be able to produce then? Would such a business survive?

Similarly, NGOs need to be able to spend money on a variety of things if they are going to be viable organisations. They need to pay for qualified and professional staff, offices, office supplies, communications, innovation and yes, even marketing to get more funds.

Saundra goes on to tell us that not only are overheads necessary, but an organisation that claims that it has low overheads is likely to be doing this in a rather devious way – by simply fiddling with its accounting practices. An excellent and rather topical example of this is through the use of “Gifts In Kind”, where organisations take donated items such as clothing and pass them onto the recipients in their programs. As Saundra quite rightly points out, this is an example of the “tail wagging the dog”, where a type of program is chosen simply because the overheads are low, and not because it is actually needed or helpful.

As discussion continues around World Vision USA’s continued insistence on sending unwanted NFL T-shirts to African nations, Saundra states that “the mass donation of clothing has contributed to the destruction of local garment industries and high rates of unemployment”. Here is one pressing statistic that shows how destructive this practice is:

Used-clothing imports are found to have a negative impact on apparel production in Africa, explaining roughly 40% of the decline in production and 50% of the decline in employment over the period 1981-2000.

If, as Saundra states, the need to keep overheads low is pushing organisations such as World Vision USA to do bad development work, then the priority for those who care about good development is clear. We must actively dispel the myth of low overheads as an indicator of good development work. Once this irrelevant pressure is removed, we can instead start focusing on doing good development work.

So, what can donors and NGOs do to further dispel this myth? Here, at whydev, we love action points, so here we go again:

1) Download and read “Lies, White Lies, and Accounting Practices: Why nonprofit overhead doesn’t mean what you think it means” by Saundra Schimmelpfennig. Saundra has even made the price of the eBook determinable by the reader – which means you can pay nothing for it if you like (though I strongly suggest you throw even a few dollars in to compensate her for her time).

2) Get informed about which NGOs propagate this myth. This can be as easy as Googling key words such as “percent of money donated oxfam”, and then simply replacing “oxfam” with the name of another NGO. As a general rule, if an NGO is actively promoting a high percentage of money donated going to the program, you need to be sceptical about whether or not they are worth supporting. There are also a whole host of initiatives that Saundra mentions in her eBook, that aim to improve transparency, and bodies that you can complain to about NGOs that are creating this false standard.

3) Work to inform people about how meaningless this indicator is. Using low overheads as an indicator of good development work is tempting, but misinformed. This probably means that through a simple example, such as the fast food joint, we can get people thinking about how meaningless it really is. Whether it’s a dinner time conversation, or an aid forum, there is always an appropriate time to dispel such a harmful myth.

4) Instead of propagating a myth that is easy to market, NGOs should spend energy educating the public on what good development is. This sounds so ridiculously obvious when it is spelt out, but it’s often ignored rather than heeded. It’s far too tempting when people ask about percentages and overheads to simply answer with a number that they are expecting to hear. However, this only makes programs that are more meaningful increasingly difficult to run in the future, for fear of increasing overheads. In communicating with the public, NGOs shouldn’t use figures such as “for every $1 donated, $0.85 of your donated dollar goes directly to field programs that serve beneficiaries on the ground,” as has been done here.

In a class called “Ethics in Physiotherapy”, I recall learning about an old hypothetical that is highly relevant here. A patient comes to see you with chronic back pain that has lasted more than 2 years. You know that massage and other hands-on treatments are unlikely to do anything to fix this person’s problems, but rather, you need to start them on a combination of education and exercise. However, since the person has been told before that massage will fix it, they are insistent that you try that method on them. There’s also this old problem of the placebo effect – that if you do perform massage, their symptoms may be alleviated because their mind is so set on this being the correct treatment. Do you give them what they want, because you know that it may relieve them of symptoms, and therefore set up good return business? Or, do you spend the time educating them on which treatment actually has scientific evidence for solving their underlying problems?

Similarly, do NGO’s keep propagating this myth about low overheads, simply because that is now what the public wants to hear? Or do we spend our marketing dollars dispelling this myth once and for all?

You can download a copy of Saundra Schimmelpfennig’s eBook Lies, White Lies, and Accounting Practices via her site Good Intentions are Not Enough here.

You can follow this author on Twitter here.

On the program, I discussed the realities of working in development in China, the limitations of a rights-based approach, working in isolation and how whydev.org‘s new peer coach matching scheme, set up to support isolated aid and development workers across the globe, could help. The interview, which lasts about ten minutes, can be found below. If the audio below isn’t working, you can listen to it here.

Big thanks to Aidworks’ host, Albion Harrison-Naish!

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Last week, we published a post on whydev about the importance of peer coaching as a means to overcome challenges that many aid and development workers face. In partnership with Shana Montesol Johnson of Development Crossroads, we are in the process of developing a peer coaching matching service. In our recent post, we asked people to complete a survey, letting us know if they would be interested in participating in such a program.

It is fair to say that Brendan, Shana and I are absolutely overwhelmed by the positive response we have received so far. In less than a week, we have had over 130 people pass their details to us, expressing interest in being matched with a peer coach. When we first hatched this idea, we had a feeling it would tap into a need in the aid and development community — and this amazing response is a gratifying confirmation of that hunch. We’re looking forward to integrating all the feedback that we have received into a relevant and useful service.

We are grateful that many other high profile bloggers have shown their support for our concept by publishing their own posts to promote our no-cost service. Thanks also to those of you who have passed on the good word via tweets and retweets.

The more people we have signed up for this service, the greater the chance that we can find a good match for you – so please encourage anybody in your networks to register their interest and complete our survey, through promoting it via Twitter, Facebook, email or any other method.

So what have we heard from these 130 people? Here are some highlights from our survey, including concerns and issues raised by respondents which we plan to take into account as we design the program.

Why would I want to do this? Perceived benefits of peer coaching

Here are some of the ways in which respondents to our survey framed peer coaching and its potential benefits:

“A mutual source of support and sounding board.”

“A great way to make contacts in the field.”

“The chance to…clarify issues and think of approaches I wouldn’t have thought of before.”

“I feel isolated, uncertain and a little forlorn about finding my way into development-related work, and would like to have someone to share my experience with, who is perhaps also experiencing the same thing.”

“My job has been stressful at times, and in isolated environments, there are rarely people to talk to.”

“There are an enormous amount of issues and questions that crop up as I make my way into international development – I’d love to a) get some answers and b) be reassured that it isn’t just me who doesn’t know these things!”

“…it would be nice to have a productive session that doesn’t involve leaning on my overworked bosses.”

From the above, it seems that some of the perceived benefits of peer coaching are: to overcome isolation, gain support, have a fresh perspective on work issues, relieve stress by debriefing, have a sounding board, discuss work issues with someone other than a boss (or colleague), experience the solidarity of knowing someone else is going through the same thing, and expand one’s network.

Am I the right demographic for peer coaching?

whydev.org tends to be targeted at young professionals and students in the field of development. However, it’s worth noting that this peer coaching service is relevant for anybody, regardless of experience or years under the belt. As Shana wrote recently on Development Crossroads, people at all levels of experience (and ages) can benefit from peer coaching.

Here are some concerns that people starting out in development had about their suitability for peer coaching:

“I’m not sure I have enough experience to be a worthwhile coach as yet, having only (sic) worked overseas for three months, but when I do (sic) I think it would be fantastic.”

“I would love to, but am not sure I’m qualified enough to serve as a coach as I’m not full-time in the field of development. I’m more interested in human rights law. I would love to learn from a peer, but as I’m starting my career I am not sure I can serve as the best resource.”

“I would, but I struggle a little right now to know how I might be helpful. All of my experience is from volunteering and at this moment I am not even certain whether I have a viable career in development.”

Shana, who is a certified professional coach and knows about these things, responds to these concerns this way, “The effectiveness of a peer coach is not based on one’s technical knowledge, life experiences, or number of years on the job. It has a lot more to do with the ability to listen without judgment, ask good questions, and be a sounding board.”

Survey respondents at the other end of the work experience spectrum expressed concerns such as:

“I would want to make sure that my peer was that, my peer in experience and in general, in the same age-range and professional level. Otherwise, if matching experienced professionals with junior professionals that would also benefit junior professionals a lot but more then might be needed for senior level professionals…” (from someone who has 10 years of experience in international development)

“…if the person had skills of relevance so I could get/give substantive support, that would be of interest — but a hard match!” (from someone who has 8 years of experience in international development – who was one of the few survey respondents who said they would not be interested in the program)

We agree that a critical success factor in any coaching relationship is a good match between the partners. The more people who sign up for the program — from all backgrounds and levels of experience and fields within development — the greater the chance that everyone will find a suitable peer coach. We are delighted to have received survey responses so far from people with all levels of experience, and we encourage more of our “seasoned professional” colleagues to sign up.

What all of these concerns reflect is that no matter what demographic participants come from, more than likely, there is always going to be someone else who is in a similar position. If you are hesitant at signing up because you are not sure you fit the correct demographic — we’re here to tell you that there is no “correct demographic,” it’s entirely defined by the demographic that signs up.

How much time is this going to take, anyway?

Some people expressed concerns about the format of the peer coaching and the amount of time they would be able to devote to it:

“I think there are benefits of working with someone in a structured way, and it opens your networks beyond your current colleagues and friends.  However, it does seem risky in that you would give more than you would get, or it would waste your time.”

“Time constraints may tempt me to say no, but I definitely think it’s a great opportunity and I’ve enjoyed that from colleagues in the past.”

Although whydev and Development Crossroads will help provide a structure and suggested guidelines for peer coaching, there is enough flexibility in it so that the details are entirely user-defined. You and your peer coach will decide how long your peer coaching sessions will be, and how frequent. Based upon an agreement with the correct peer, you can devote as little or as much time as you like.

If you are at all interested in peer coaching, or even if you are just a little hesitant, I recommend you head on over and fill out our survey.

Because, as one particularly astute participant wrote:

“…sometimes we need to get out of the bubble of our own thoughts and have someone else give us perspective.”

The survey to help us design the peer coaching matching service can be found here.