Are we prioritizing SDGs above people?
We have 12 years to eradicate poverty, achieve water and sanitation for all, substantially slow climate change etc. While these are important goals, will the urgency take us back to roll-out, sweeping programs that miss out the individual context, and ultimately fall short?
The international development sector has come a long way in recent years. Many NGOs are at upwards of 80% local hires, have federated models with local country directors setting strategies and directing funding, and in many of the large and more progressive organizations the values are centered around promoting individual wellbeing through choice, business opportunities and access to lead their own decision making processes. There are many programs and funds that embed stakeholders in the organizations’ ownership, and approaches like social marketing, behavior change, positive deviance and others that center around individual contexts continue to evolve.
However, what with the state of urgency we find ourselves in today with decreasing budgets, looming deadlines and ever more information about where we’re falling short — will we fall back on old habits?
Studies show that when we deal in abstractions, we fail to empathize in the same way. What does that mean for development workers? We have already seen how roll out programs can miss the mark when they lack understanding of the cultural context (think; India and toilets being used as storage). And what happens as our competition for the limited funding gets more aggressive? Do we go back to t-shirts on the backs of those who have ‘benefited from our services’, or avoiding risk to ensure we only take on the ‘sure bets’?
I’m the last person to revert to bureaucracy, but maybe it’s time to set some standards that ensure that the citizen (formerly known as beneficiary) is actively involved in every stage of a program? This means:
At the beginning of the program –
- Citizens have been consulted extensively, and substantial research has been done to look for local existing solutions
In the middle of the program –
- Citizens give direct and live feedback and monitoring (innovative data capturing measures have been designed that now allow this, like those used by Integrity Actionand partners)
At the end of a program –
- An ongoing service, or product provision has been established, which is led by those closest to the challenges (such as Bangladesh’s Social Marketing Project, around since 1975, which serves 1 million people per month with contraceptives and ORVS)
- Impact measures stretch to identifying how the wellbeing of the affected individuals have changed as a result of the program.
For this to happen, funders would need to put significant emphasis on the responsiveness of an organization, and their ability to facilitate and design resilient systems. Would this signify a big shift from current practice? I believe so, but maybe I’m missing some innovative new measures used by progressive funders?
Our work is nothing if it does not better human wellbeing, specifically for those we set out to serve. Let’s hardwire that at the core of our practices, as we work towards these huge goals.
