1292413735 Civic Driven Change

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Alternative approaches to capacity building emerging practices abroad

Case study: Holland /Dutch Aid Agency approaches to civil society capacity

building

Approach: Civic Driven Change

Relates to UK priority: Active Citizenship

Introduction

The Civic-Driven Change (CDC) Initiative is a collective thinking and discussion effort

to explore and communicate a perspective of change in societies that stems from

citizens rather than states or markets. It was initiated by a group of Dutch private aid

agencies (Hivos, Cordaid, ICCO Oxfam-Novib, SNV, IKV-Pax Christi, Context) and is

co-ordinated and hosted by the Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in The Hague

(Netherlands)

Their premise is that mainstream aid development interventions do not address the

underlying systemic problems which keep the majority of people in poverty and

unable to influence change. CDC proposes concerted programmes of action that can

generate new methods and language of civic action to help (re)claim citizen control of

the institutions that influence their lives. The logic of capacity building in these terms

is that of strengthening citizenship and civic agency to engage in local, national andglobal governance for the deepening of democracy.

The Civic Driven Change initiative is based on the premise that civic agency can

bring about social transformation, through self-organisation and socio-political

capacitation or civic self-empowerment. To build civic agency, it is necessary to

address every aspect of society. Programmes should therefore develop strategic

approaches to civic agency vis--vis markets, the family, governance, and civil

society. The initiative was developed at the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague,

in collaboration with a group of Dutch Aid Agencies. One of these agencies, Hivos, is

operationalising the CDC philosophy in East Africa through a programme called

Twaweza.

Twaweza: This is a ten-year initiative (2009-2018) to enable people in Kenya,

Tanzania and Uganda to improve their quality of life through a citizen-centred

approach to development and public accountability. It is managed through HIVOS, a


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Dutch aid agency, until 2013 when the project will become an independent East

African organization.

A. Context

Capacity building in East Africa is often fraught with issues, and experienced as an

external intervention, arising when an external agent tries to execute a project, fails,

and identifies the need for capacity building. The resulting CB programme is not

locally owned, and has not come out of an intrinsic incentive to change. In East

Africa, CB practitioners usually have to pay people to come to workshops, which

reflects their lack of belief in it, Traditional CB approaches assume that the recipient

lacks necessary skills and knowledge. They are brought to a workshop and expected

to leave with greater capacity. Twawezas analysis is that the problem is not the

individuals capacity, rather it is the institutional setting that prevents people from

acting, or makes their actions unsuccessful. The diagnostic identifies these

constraints at each level and develops strategies to work at these levels.

Section B: Logic of the approach

Capacity in this case is defined as the capacity of citizens to bring about change

themselves civic activism. It is an approach that is consistent with a rights based

approach, but differs from a purely human rights approach which focuses on legal

entitlements, rights and duties1. In the context of East Africa where public services

are poor, it is difficult to mobilise around talk about rights and duties. Twawezas

approach is a more politically informed and pragmatic, politically informed, and is

developed from an analysis of how power works, and how in the particular context

citizens can enhance their agency. Different settings will lead to different kinds ofnegotiations.

The approach begins with a diagnostic at the level of individual citizens, and asks,

what are the opportunities and constraints that affect their aspirations. What will

enable her to act in order to make a difference to her life, and what prevents her from

acting. The diagnostic considers very local factors, local government, national factors

and global factors.

1 Interview with Twaweza programme manger, 11th June 2009


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Traditional models of CB can undermine people as they are taken out of their

context, and can feel less rather than more empowered as a result. This approach

aims to develop citizens agency i.e. in relation to monitoring, influencing and

holding government to account. Capacity is understood as citizen empowerment -

capacity to exercise ones rights as a citizen.

Capacity for what?

The diagnostic that underlies this programme has identified that East African states

are failing to deliver basic services, and that while NGOs and TSOs are partially

filling this gap, they are working often to short-term goals and are poorly coordinated

with each other. There is a critical absence of long-term development strategies for

real change and reflective learning-oriented practices that can generate lessons

about what works.

The programme aims to make accessible the information and skills for citizens to

become informed and motivated to hold their governments to account and to play an

active role in improving the quality and delivery of local services and public resource

management.

The premise is that if citizens are able to exercise agency gain access to

information, express their views, take initiative to improve their lives, and hold

government accountable, this will lead to improvements in basic services (the

programme focuses particularly on primary and secondary education, primary health

care, and clean water), and exercise greater control over resources that affect those

services. The logic is that institutions, reforms, budgets etc will work if citizens have

access to information and the option to act on them. Through strategic interventions,the programme aims to improve citizens access to information, ability to voice,

opportunity to monitor, and capability to make change.

The Twaweza programme supports large-scale partnerships and initiatives

(intermediaries) and works with them as brokers to create space for direct

engagement with citizens. They work by brokering relationshipsacross a range of

institutions and networks that ordinary citizens already use to meet and share

information (mass media, private businesses, commercial product distribution


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networks, religious organisations, teachers and other trade unions, and other groups

not traditionally included in development efforts, as well as TSOs and their

networks). Twaweza sees itself as a broker that brings people with ideas together

with networks and organisations that can reach people on a large scale (e.g.

teachers union, mobile phone company), and funding. It is not a controlled, linear

project; instead it tries to create spaces for citizens to be heard and to act spaces

of possibility.

The approach is fundamentally demand-led it creates spaces for citizens to have

the opportunity to make changes that are important to them.

Change will happen when citizens are motivated and feel that they have the capacity

to act. To do this, Twaweza works with partner organisations to create a variety of

spaces which will be accessible and comfortable for a range of different citizens. In

order for citizens to have agency, they need to be motivated. To be motivated, they

need to feel that change is possible. The barrier to citizen agency is institutional, not

so much the lack of individual capacity. Twaweza therefore works to set up

institutional structures and bring about institutional cultural transformation. The

model works by creating the spaces at institutional level, and then letting people get

involved and make their own choices.

The approach builds on existing capacities as it assumes that all citizens have

capacity, and works by motivating and informing them so that they can work to

address locally identified needs (e.g. poor educational outcomes).

Twaweza programme staff foster the development of new ideas and experimentation,

and broker strategic partnerships that can catalyze big change countrywide, and

monitor progress.

Section C: Methods and processes

The Twaweza model builds strategic partnerships around achieving a focused goal

that has real meaning for ordinary citizens, such as increasing availability of basic

medical supplies at local clinics, improving functionality of water points, or making

sure that public funds arrive at schools and are properly used. The diagnostic phase

maps the existing networks and institutions that are important to peoples lives (e.g.


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teachers unions, churches, FM radio, mobile phone companies), and from this

develops a strategy which piggybacks on these to create spaces in which people can

act.

The networks and institutions themselves become sites or tools for people to get

things done. For example, the mobile phone is a fast growing industry. The

programme works with groups to use the technology of mobile to get information out

and to take action. Other institutions and networks such as the church, the radio,

unions etc are used in parallel to create alternative spaces through people can get

information and which give them different options for action. The idea is that of an

ecosystem effect, creating multiple spaces for potential action.

Capacity gets built in the doing, in the taste of success which gives confidence

(Head of Twaweza Rakesh Rajani2).

What are the techniques and methods?

A team of mentors across East Africa serve as advisers and resource persons to

partners on concepts, program development, implementation and evaluation. The

following aspects are key components of the programme:

Learning by doing

Long-term monitoring and coaching.

Placement of university students among partners to document and

communicate lessons.

Mentors advise partners

Linking groups together.

The programme runs for ten years.

In addition to expanding citizen agency and improving service delivery, the

programme aims to develop a culture of learning throughout its work and

partnerships, and to produce new knowledge. It does this by facilitating mentoring

and coaching relationships to assist and encourage partners as they reflect on and

2 Personal communication, June 2009


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refine their work. An independent entity will develop a monitoring and evaluation

framework and track change from the outset.

How is trust built? The head o f Twaweza explained that

trust is built through giving people the freedom to do their own thing they

dont have to join anything. The programme ensures a variety of ways to

engage, via church, union, etc. so that people engage in the way they feel

most comfortable. This is important because one size does not fit everyone

and people need different options. The idea is to give people confidence that

they can make things happen, not insist on how they should act3.

In other words, the programme engages with the active citizen agenda but without a

pre-established idea of what this active citizen should be doing just that they should

be active.

Section D: Outcomes

It is too early to talk of outcomes, but the CB providers have set up an independent

entity to develop a monitoring and evaluation framework, and the baseline for this is

being collected. Documentation is available of their Metrics Framework (see the

Twaweza website).

Section E: Learning

This initiative meets our good practice principles at least in its discourse it is tooearly in its programme to judge how well it puts these principles into practice. It is a

bottom-up approach that identifies local concerns and analyses them at local,

national and regional levels. It may provide lessons on how to coordinate capacity

building and learning across localities and countries.

Its approach is innovative: the change agent brokers relationships across society to

create spaces for citizens to strengthen their capacity to work with a range of

organisations that a relevant and important to them the media, government3 Phone interview, June 2009


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institutions, businesses, families, TSOs etc, to address local problems and

shortcomings in local public services.

It is in early stages and so we can only share the idea not any evidence-based good

practice.

Learning is central to the Twaweza concept in many senses one half of the

initiative. Twaweza is about enabling large scale social change anddocumenting andcommunicating lessons about social change in a self-critical and reflexive manner.

The specific activities through which learning is fostered include:

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A group of 15-20 experienced, strategic, politically astute and creative

individuals in East Africa recruited to form a pool of mentors. Implementing

partners will be able to draw from the pool to critique their thinking, develop

their work conceptually, and make it more creative and effective. This

approach allows for a flexible, responsive, contextually aware and long term

coaching relationship that is often more effective than fixed term courses or

one-time consultancies. Mentors will either be on retainer to provide specific

support or brought on board to provide specific task related services. Supportwill be demand driven rather than imposed, and depending on the needs

mentors may be brought on the front end or at later points of a particular

strategic partnership. Mentors will also be involved in some cases in initiating

or helping to craft a partnership.

Cross learning exchanges will be promoted between partners and similar

organizations. These will usually be based on getting a task done (e.g.

Citizens Guide on tax revenue written, or advertising campaign on better

quality of health services designed) to enable focus and action, rather than

exchange visits that are vaguely designed and do not lead to any change.

Key agencies (see Annex 4) with specific sets of skills and experiences in

Twaweza related issues will be requested to provide local partners with

tailored expertise, ongoing mentoring and access to their broad network of

partners. Here too the focus will be on tailoring support around specific

completion of goals and learning by doing rather than general capacity


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building. In turn the agencies will have opportunity to learn from the Twaweza

experience and deploy lessons in their contexts.

International and East African Masters/PhD level students will be placed at

partner organizations (for 3-9 months) to facilitate learning and documentation

of lessons. These will be done in a rigorous and accessible manner, with an

equal emphasis on the analytical critique and compelling narratives (telling

stories).

Linkages with international learning networks such as Logolink and academic

institutions working on these sorts of issues will be explored through e-

learning platforms, physical exchange at key meetings and sharing of

publications.

Partners will be supported through the mentors and other means, to develop

or strengthen a culture of internal learning and knowledge generation within

their organizations, and to create incentives that recognize critical reflection.

Potential components include establishing journal reading groups, weekly

learning sessions, creating time for learning, incorporating learning and

development of learning plans as part of staff assessments, and transforming

the nature of regular meetings.

1292413735 Civic Driven Change

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