Failure Files by IDR

In this workshop-led session, Rachita Vohra and Sneha Philip from IDR worked with the participants to help articulate failures at multiple levels i.e. at the organisational, programmatic, and project levels. The purpose of the workshop was to sensitise stakeholders and to create lessons from past failures.

Through the exercise, participants were faced with questions like — how to communicate effectively, highlight the gaps and correctly estimate the success and failure of a proposed programme. If organisationally the programme isn’t feasible, how to enable a process that would bring along other stakeholders and organisations to collaborate on the project?

The workshop highlighted the need for a structure and a mechanism in place towards better communication with stakeholders, project execution, and applying lessons from past failures to build the correct narrative.

A role-playing exercise in three parts that involved stakeholders from a funding organization and a grassroots NGO as the implementing organization. The first part of the workshop was a conversation between the project manager representing the NGO and the program manager representing the funders. The second part included a conversation between the CEOs of the respective organizations. Both the parts helped highlight the power dynamics, lack of information transparency amongst employees can lead to discrepancy in program implementation and impact assessment .

The approach of the workshop was to portray initial conversations for program design and implementation. It also showed the different stakes the stakeholders have considering there context. The workshop helped highlight how the lack of transparency can lead to a mismatch between the funding partner and the NGO rendering the goal and impact of the program absolutely obsolete.