Please note - this article was originally published on the id21 website which has now closed. This and other articles produced by id21 were archived by Eldis in 2009 and are not actively maintained. If you find links and references which are no longer valid please email eldis@ids.ac.uk.

Rights-based approach to development transforms a major international NGO

Fighting Poverty Together is the name of ActionAid’s (a British aid agency) rights-based approach to development. ActionAid introduced several changes in the way it functions to reduce dependence on child sponsorship, decentralise its internal management and simplify its organisational structure. But has this brought about any real changes at the grassroots level?

A study was conducted by ActionAid to assess the impact of its new Accountability, Learning and Planning System (ALPS) that was introduced to support the new strategy. It examined the implications of ALPS in Ethiopia, The Gambia, India and Kenya, for the ability of local people to participate, lessons being learnt from them and how the organisation could respond to their needs.

ActionAid realised a need to change the way the agency interacted with local people, gave and received information and made management decisions. Its previous planning and reporting systems were centred on its own needs and that of its donors. It did not promote learning from poor people. Following the restructuring ActionAid does not directly implement sector-specific and separate projects any more. It now supports local people and partners to take responsibility for implementing their own development programmes.

ActionAid programmes in 30 countries now follow ALPS and are no longer required to write formal annual reports to their headquarters. Instead, they now devise strategies and programmes through participatory review and reflection processes that are held with all - local communities, partner organisations, staff and donors. Different programmes now find what is most useful for them, develop their own methods to promote learning, record achievements and look at what works and why.

The researcher shows that there have been changes in the working environment:

Learning about programmes and devising strategies that was traditionally centred on donor needs has given way to learning from poor people.
Building good working relationships – characterised by gender sensitivity and respect – is now a priority because staff and others are challenged to look at their own behaviours and attitudes.
Staff no longer waste enormous amounts of time preparing and rewriting reports in English, which is a second or third language for many.
Field staff, local partners and community groups are now more willing to talk about failures, difficulties and challenges, which were previously concealed from general knowledge.

Traditional approaches of most aid agencies do not allow the development of local people and partners. Full disclosure of financial information is essential to give local people an opportunity to raise questions. It also ensures that aid agencies are transparent and accountable. For example, sharing budget, grant and expenditure information and translating documents into Swahili enabled local people in Kenya to voice concerns about priorities and to then demand that ActionAid’s local partner similarly open its financial transactions to scrutiny.

Lessons from this experience suggest that development agencies need to:

identify and tackle systems, structures and processes within their own organisations that weaken their relationship with field staff and local communities
give greater power to field staff and leaders of partner organisations and be more proactive in responding to local-level concerns
demonstrate accountability similar to the way governments and businesses already have to
acknowledge that they may not know all the answers to developmental problems
promote internal learning, self-critique and honesty
be less dependent on the English language as the primary form of communicating, documenting, sharing and learning and instead encourage appropriate communication – drama, stories, proverbs and role plays – that allow a better local-level analysis of problems.

Source(s):
‘An international NGO’s staff reflections on power procedures and relationships’ in ‘Inclusive aid: changing power and relationships in international development’, edited by Leslie Groves and Rachel Hinton, Institute of Development Studies, pp 108-121, by Charles Owusu, 2004

Funded by: ActionAid

id21 Research Highlight: 26 April 2005

Further Information:
Charles Owusu
(Formerly with Impact Assessment unit of Action Aid)
Now with:
Christian Children's Fund, Inc.
PO Box 26484,
Richmond, VA,
USA

Tel: +1 804 756 8998
Fax: +1 804 756 2718
Contact the contributor: Cowusu@CCFUSA.org

Actionaid, UK

Views expressed on these pages are not necessarily those of DfID, IDS, id21 or other contributing institutions. Articles featured on the id21 site may be copied or quoted without restriction provided id21 and originating author(s) and institution(s) are acknowledged. Copyright © 2009 IDS. All rights reserved.

id21 is funded by the UK Department for International Development. id21 is one of a family of knowledge services at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex. id21 is a www.oneworld.net partner and an affiliate of www.mediachannel.org. IDS is a charitable company, No. 877338.