Ian Burbidge

‘It is simply not enough to artfully critique the now’, was a phrase of my former Chief Exec, Matthew Taylor that has lodged long in my mind. Criticism is cheap, offering practical alternatives a more taxing effort. Indeed, a real challenge of the policy process – and the art of change, as I explore though my writing – is developing practical ideas for change with some sense as to how they might be realised. In this three-part series I’ve done the easy critique, first outlining the challenges with traditional linear planning and delivery and why it’s not suited to complex challenges. This offers a backdrop against which innovation programming can be contrasted, which I covered in part two. 

Now I’ll complete the transition from critique to alternatives by sharing some practical examples of innovation programming in practice with communities in South Sudan and Guatemala. South Sudan is the newest country in the world, currently emerging from civil conflict and population displacement. In rural Guatemala the effects of climate change are revealed in an increase in natural disasters and challenges traditional agricultural customs and practice. In both, disruption and change is the norm. 

The Mayan culture in Guatemala, which until relatively recently was actively repressed by authorities (both colonial and then Guatemalan), is a unifying force. Mayan cosmology centres human-kind equally within the wider natural environment. The degree of connectivity with the universe is celebrated in the ceremonies with which every workshop is opened and closed. Respect is paid, hopes for the future and for the work to be done are raised. It’s impossible to enter into the conversations that follow in the competitive manner that often characterises Westernised meetings; collaboration is centred instead. The Mayan view is in many ways what I might call a systems view of life. It forms such a solid foundation to the communities in which we work.

By contrast, South Sudan exudes a visceral sense of communities being forged anew; the wide streets, rutted tracks, previously abandoned buildings and sense of rogue energy reminded me of scenes from A Fistful of Dollars and other Westerns. Of challenge and opportunity dancing arm-in-arm. A community coming together as time slowly leaves some of the ravages of civil war behind and encourages some of the displaced to return from northern Uganda and again take their place in the most southerly settlements of South Sudan. New communities forging their future in a new country. 

These pen-portraits are necessary (but not sufficient) to illustrate how far removed from our every-day reality these contexts truly are. We can’t understand the complexity of this context and the experiences people have lived through. Given that, we can’t design and deliver programmes of support to make life better in these communities without making some – perhaps implicit – assumptions about those communities. What’s important, what they need, why they need it, how to deliver it in ways that don’t exacerbate the challenges, that don’t infantilise but instead build a sense of agency. This is the challenge with traditional programming: donors (Governments, aid agencies, charities, etc) usually determine their answers to these questions, assessed through the filter of how these programmes fit with their own priorities, and evaluated based on arbitrary measures of what success (value) looks like for the donor’s use of funds. 

Innovation programming is a label that we place on an alternative approach. It is based on the idea that those best placed to answer the questions raised above are those who are living with them. Our role is more broker than funder, bringing together funds, delivery partners that embedded in the community and trusted by them, and the community members themselves, to collaborate around the changes they want to see. 

In Guatemala we have been working with ASECSA, a long-standing and trusted community development organisation. Their innovation team supports the community through a process of exploring the issues, discovering ideas, developing them into practical projects, and growing them based on what works and the learning that arises. They bring this to life in the community through the metaphor of the national food, corn. You explore the issues around growing corn, you discover where and how it grows best, you develop different ways of growing different types of corn, and you grow through multiple uses for the corn. 

Innovation, I learned, wasn’t a word that made much sense to these communities, as an elderly man stood up and told me ‘we didn’t know what innovation was, but it was explained to us that it is something new that benefits our families and our communities’. Hard to argue with that. I saw projects with greenhouses enabling multiple harvests, weaving providing additional income streams that were less susceptible to climate crises and organic forms of fertilisation giving new life to depleted soils. Perhaps most moving was a community beset by regular flooding that prioritised building new homes in a higher part of the community. This was taking a while to be completed, and in the meantime those the community had prioritised to receive the first houses were refusing to move until everyone in the community had a house, a real show of the values and solidarity that they held. 

In South Sudan we are at the start of this process, working with an NGO in the field to engage the communities and drive interest in engaging with this work. In community meetings people were raising the challenges they faced though I was intrigued by the way the current system shows up. On the ‘supply side’, the responses of the community were dutifully categorised by the field workers under labels understood by the system: WASH and food insecurity, for example, thus subsuming them within the current system’s lexicon. Because I didn’t know these were ‘industry standard’ categories of intervention I was baffled, wondering which community would, unprompted, vocalise its biggest problems (hunger) in this way (we experience food insecurity). It was jarring. 

On the ‘demand side’, the infantilisation of communities was an eye-opener; the local officials we were respectfully introduced to were preconditioned to ask for help, to seek to direct external spend on the issues of most local importance. As natural as a child working down their list of Christmas present ideas: perhaps you could get me this one? And, having seen the communities, of course you’d be conditioned by the system to operate this way. You can’t pass a building without being blinded by the bright advertising boards of a form of neo-colonial occupation: every physical asset, from the new health building and school repair to fresh-water wells and community hall are loudly marketed by the western funder [such as: US Aid: From the American people]. Perhaps this was a result of the complexity of a post-conflict situation, a community whose numbers are slowly swelling as people return from exile, a community that is so much in flux that it perhaps lacks the common foundations that so many of us take for granted: security, peace, a common history, rituals, connectivity… it’s almost impossible to convey the nature of this challenge in writing that is filtered through my own biases, expectations and comforts. 

Clearly, traditional approaches of linear and hierarchical investment that matches donors with needs is a form of Humanitarian Tinder that is unhelpful at best: it might create a short-term match but there is little likelihood of a sustainable, equitable and long-term relationship with such dysfunction baked in from the start. Innovation programming instead asks: how can we help you figure out how you can best meet the needs of your family and community? I saw it as a clear mechanism for empowering communities to come together, collaborate and build lasting capacity and capability for change. 

A single example will suffice. The wells provided in the community of Kaju-Keji in South Sudan were no longer viable when we visited. A team had parachuted in, dug the wells and left the community to benefit from them. But when things went wrong and the water became contaminated, the community was left to await the arrival of the contractor to fix things. Whereas what they really wanted to be trained to fix things in the wells when they went wrong. This is the classic failing of the client/contractor split: there are no incentives as the contractor to do yourself out of future payments by upskilling others to do things you can get paid to do. In such subtle and insidious ways do the systems and processes that we operate through reinforce the existing systems.  

This is how the delivery works: closely liaising with communities through local people who are from those communities and understand the historical, cultural, ecological and economic contexts. In many respects this is good old-fashioned community development, yet here they are doing it in a way which is building capabilities within the community. There are some core differences from what I have been used to in the UK, for example. They invest in individuals and families on behalf of the community (eg the greenhouses or looms) because they know that when you live in a co-operative environment (rather than our competitive paradigm) this investment benefits the whole. They think about sustainability and growth from a community (not an economic) perspective. Investing in this way is also generating resilience. It offers options for those who would otherwise be dependent on a single form of income and it breaks a dependence on external delivery organisations to do this work or fill this gap for you. 

We see that investing in innovation programming also shines a light on the potential for system change, by not only illustrating that different is possible, but also that it is so needed. Matching new ideas with old failings within the system can be a catalyst for change. But that’s for a later article.