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In the name of development Exploring issues of consultancy and fieldwork From the Community Development Resource Association's
Annual Report 1993/1994 |
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We have used the opportunity presented by an annual report to reflect on some of the issues and questions raised in the course of doing our work. Specifically, we address ourselves to some of the changes taking place in the South African development sector through the process of political transformation which for so long appeared beyond our grasp. Dreams and expec-tations are being realised, but the process remains a fragile one, not least in the sphere of development which has so rapidly taken centre stage. It is precisely the current expectations of development practice which give rise to new concerns and sometimes tenuous paradigms.
The following articles constitute an attempt to extrapolate theoretically directly from our experiences in the field with a wide range of organisations. Following on from these we use the impact of the perspectives they generate, as well as the results of our external evaluation, to determine our strategic planning.
PUTTING CONSULTANCY IN CONTEXT
"Development is a process by which the members of a society increase their personal and institutional capacities to mobilize and manage resources to produce sustainable and justly distributed improvements in their quality of life consistent with their own aspirations"
(Korten, 1990: 67).
Development NGOs operate in an environment which is inherently complex, fluid, contested and characterised by insecurity. Commitment to empowering people on the periphery of society by facilitating better access to and control of centralised resources is a slow, demanding task with no guarantees of "success". The dramatic changes in our society have had a major impact on the development sector, challenging even those organisations most adept at living with insecurity.
A Challenge To "Bottom-Up" Development
One of the major potential threats is a challenge to the traditional development focus of building capacity "from the bottom up". The small, creative, adaptive organisations staffed by committed activists, seeking mandates from those they serve and living from one month and one funding cheque to the next, are being transformed or are disappearing. Their successors and new organisations are being staffed and managed by increasingly skilled and "professional" development practitioners and managers looking for career paths in the field. There are demands for the sector to organise into national structures and networks, and for individual organisations to grow and "professionalise" so that large amounts of development capital can more easily be disbursed. The expectation is that quick, large scale, measurable delivery of "product" development takes place in the sorely neglected areas of bulk infrastructure, basic services, housing provision, health care, education, and training.
An Influx Of Consultants
Changes in the political and development landscape have also seen a massive influx and growing numbers of consultants operating in the field. Specialists are involved in tendering, supplying training programmes, developing means of securing community participation and support in programmes, providing organisation development services and doing impact assessments. Consultants implement programmes, provide advice and even run organisations. Some are foreigners with experience of global development agencies and the developing countries in which these operate. An increasing number of former members of indigenous NGOs work as consultants with in-depth knowledge and experience of the local development sector. And some people formerly working in the corporate and commercial sector are bringing ideas about management and organisation which would previously have been rejected by the "democratic" development organisations. Experience in the field indicates that large urban-based organisations and agencies employing consultants to do fieldwork are increasing their influence and ability to attract development capital. Community-based organisations who traditionally employed indigenous, generic fieldworkers have been under pressure.
The Need For Consultants
As a traditional NGO providing consultancy services to the development sector, CDRA needs to ask itself what this "explosion" of consultancy means and try to understand its long term effects on development. Part of the reason for this phenomenon must lie in the fact that there is a genuine need for specific skills to be made available in specific situations for limited periods of time. Development organisations are under pressure to quickly and drastically transform themselves. Immediate injections of the necessary specialised skills and expertise are available from consultants on demand. This rise in demand and the fact that reconstruction and development is a core programme of the new government has lead to an increase in the supply of service providers. Consultants can, in most cases, respond more quickly to provide new services tailored to individual need. At their best, consultants bring specialisation, mobility, variety of service and direct accountability for quality with them.
The Downside Of Consultancy
Any kind of short-term contractual relationship has inherent limitations – consultants cannot take responsibility for anything which falls outside the scope or time frame of the contract. The good practitioner clarifies the brief or terms of reference, tailors the service to meet the need of the client, delivers the service within the time-frame and the budget, and moves on to the next contract. The provision of specific skills for limited periods can be of great value. But consultants cannot do long-term development tasks which are perpetually unfolding processes rather than time- and product-related things. Building the complex institutions, organisations and relationships which form the basis of enabled and empowered communities requires a level of "connectedness" in the community and a sensitivity to their issues that someone who is just a consultant will never have.
Fieldworkers Are Essential For Development
The rise to prominence of consultants may work against the development of other vocations vital to development processes, particularly in the case of fieldworkers. Community development fieldworkers have never received the recognition they deserve. Project managers, adult educators, materials developers, researchers and consultants are sought-after, well-paid and well-recognised positions. The actual implementers of the development initiatives, those who engage with the people and structures of the community, remain underresourced, underpaid, underskilled and totally undervalued. As a result, good career fieldworkers are hard to find, and very hard to keep. Skilled fieldworkers are the only development workers who can develop the depth of understanding and empathy to properly understand the complex dynamics of development in a community or organisation, and undertake long-term capacity building.
Appropriate Roles For Consultants
Development is a bottom-up process which involves building representative and inclusive community-based and controlled organisations committed to meeting the real needs of the community. Shortcuts may fail to address real needs, are at best undevelopmental and may even precipitate conflict in previously stable situations. Ideally, consultants should work in situations where their input does not overwhelm, but is matched by the presence of strong community organisations, supported by dedicated fieldworkers. Where this is not the case, should consultants not gear their efforts to contribute towards the development of a skilled corps of fieldworkers and support structures for them? If consultants take on inappropriate roles and tasks, they will further undermine fieldwork as a vocation.
Putting Fieldwork In Front
Good fieldworkers are able to work with complex community dynamics far better than any consultant and have to live with the consequences of what they do. They cannot walk away to the next contract. Consultants committed to the real development of people should think strategically about how best to transfer their knowledge and skills to fieldworkers. Community development workers should be accorded their rightful place at the forefront of practical development, with consultants and others providing support in the background.
The fact that good community development fieldworkers are rare comes partly from the difficulties inherent in the work, and partly from problems within NGO practice with regard to fieldwork. These issues are examined in the next section.
"NGOs attempt to facilitate people’s improvement of their material well-being in sustainable ways. The key to success in this type of endeavour depends on people’s participation: people themselves must actually ‘own’ the processes of external intervention and it is they that actually ‘produce’ development, not the NGO itself."
(Fowler, 1994: 29)
FIELDWORK IN ORGANISATIONS
Fieldwork is the engine of development. Sound fieldwork practice can result in communities which are strengthened by a variety of self-sustaining and vibrant organisations. Poor or inappropriately targeted fieldwork practice results in, at best, development "projects" which remain bound to their (external) initiators. At worst these cause further community fragmentation and even conflict.
There are essential elements of fieldwork which must be adhered to if development initiatives are to stand even a chance of succeeding in the long term – of becoming "development". This paper seeks to identify the essential features of fieldwork and the qualities required of effective fieldworkers. We argue that the tendency for fieldwork to be "marginalised" is in the very nature of the work. Furthermore, the practice of NGOs in South Africa has exacerbated this tendency, effectively undermining their capacities to deliver on promises of development.
FACILITATING THE CLIENT’S ABILITY TO PRODUCE
NGO fieldwork is primarily about mediating or facilitating learning of individuals and groups, and about creating an environment in which people can risk, grow and develop.
This is achieved through assisting groups and organisations to engage in a range of activities. These might include managing and running pre-schools; planting crops and reaping the benefits; negotiating a return to the land; making bread, beads or baskets, selling them and creating a surplus; or simply offering advice. While products may arrive rapidly, the development of individual and organisational capacity is a slow process.
Ideally, NGOs should "relate to clients as the actual producers of the organisation’s product" (Fowler, 1990). It is through the development of organisational and individual capacity that clients become able to engage in meaningful and valuable activities on an ongoing basis. It is against this measure that the success or failure of the work of NGOs must be judged. Ultimately, development cannot be done by proxy, it must be "owned" and internalised.
FIELDWORK TAKES PLACE ON THE PERIPHERY
Fieldworkers have to spend a lot of time working by themselves: risking, taking initiative and shouldering all the responsibilities which come with that. Fieldwork, unlike the administration, materials development and many other activities of organisations, is largely performed outside the physical premises of the organisation. Fieldworkers sometimes have to travel long distances, particularly to rural areas, to get to their real places of work. Fieldworkers are also required to work over weekends or during evenings because this may be the only available time for the people they work with.
POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CONSIDERATIONS
Fieldwork is done within a context influenced by political and social environmental factors. During the "struggle days", fieldwork practice had to take account of the fact that target groups of NGOs were engaged in a bitter fight against apartheid. Fieldworkers had to have a certain vocabulary to be acceptable and sometimes to refrain from questioning certain practices because this might be seen as "politically incorrect". They had to be seen to belong to the "right" organisations to gain access to communities.
Arguably, the situation has become more, not less, complicated with the demise of apartheid. Now, the peculiarities and specific dynamics of local communities have become more prominent in the work of fieldworkers as the all-encompassing blanket of anti-apartheid credibility has been removed. Fieldworkers remain challenged to mediate their work through local power-brokers, yet ensure that such work is accessible to as broad a range of the community as possible. The stresses, compromises and delicate bargaining that this requires are not a part of the fieldworker’s "home" organisational life.
PARTICULAR SKILLS ARE NEEDED FOR THIS JOB
Fieldwork is a highly skilled activity. In order to be an effective fieldworker, it is perhaps most important to have an attitude of extreme patience, flexibility and consistency. The qualities of flexibility and consistency are contradictory, yet they are both necessary. Effective fieldwork requires the ability to be consistent and firm at times, the ability to "let go" of cherished notions at times, and the wisdom to know which is appropriate at a particular time. An understanding of the development process in individuals, groups and organisations is essential if fieldworkers are to build organisational and individual capacity. The fieldworker should be able to nurture and facilitate the development of individuals and groups, and should therefore have some understanding of participatory methodology and how adults learn. Furthermore, an understanding of programme/project planning and evaluation is crucial. It is also essential to have some understanding of leadership/management, organisational structure, formal and informal power, and the ability to mediate and deal with conflict.
In addition to these "generic" skills, the fieldworker also requires some understanding of the technical detail of what the client organisation or group is trying to deliver. A fieldworker who deals with agriculture should, for example, know something about soil testing, when different kinds of seeds can be planted, how to handle pests and how to deal with soil erosion. In the case of a cooperative, the fieldworker should know something about marketing, budgeting and financial accounting.
Finally, because fieldworkers often spend a lot of time working by themselves, they should have the ability to manage themselves with strong self-discipline. They need to be able to be open and undefensive when they are criticised. Fieldworkers have themselves as their only tool. Developing confidence, maturity, creativity, flexibility, coherence, resourcefulness and integrity is a life-long process. A range of skills and techniques are necessary but, perhaps more importantly, a serious commitment to self development is required.
FIELDWORK ON THE BACK BURNER
NGOs with fieldwork components should gear themselves to genuinely support their field staff, to provide development opportunities, and to commit themselves to a style of management which facilitates the difficult work of field staff. But fieldwork is often relegated to "back burner" status in organisations for a number of reasons.
Lack of focus
An organisation’s "primary product" may be unfocused, leaving the fieldworker working without a clear purpose. For example, a fieldworker may be employed by a group trying to establish literacy groups in a community. But if there are no clear goals of what the groups have been set up to achieve or who in a community has been targeted, both the participants and fieldworker will be frustrated.
Competing organisational priorities
Some organisations are focused on several things, or have organisational strategies competing with each other. The most obvious example of this is the tension prominent in many NGOs between "advocacy" and "fieldwork". An organisation working on the ground on a local level may start working nationally on the strength of its local experience. As its national advocacy strategy becomes more prominent, local fieldworkers become increasingly isolated and unsupported. Ironically those working on the macro level then lose touch with what is happening on the ground.
Lack of internal capacity building
Many organisations say that they are working with communities to increase their capacity, but they neglect the capacity of their own staff and organisations. Organisations which are "too busy" to take the time to develop better organisational ways of working and of developing staff cannot be genuinely committed to developing capacity in communities.
The prevailing attitudes, leadership and management styles, and ways of working in organisations tend to be reproduced in their fieldwork. If an organisation has endless meetings, authoritarian or indecisive leadership, or uncaring or undevelopmental attitudes, its fieldworkers are likely to reproduce these in the groups with which they work.
Inappropriate staff selection
Because the context in which NGO fieldwork is situated is difficult and complex, the selection of staff is crucial. Often, unconsciously, our fieldwork practice becomes the target of "negative affirmative action" practices. Fieldworkers may be employed primarily on the basis of their (unquantifiable) "experience" or ability to speak a language, not their experience, ability, skill, attitude or commitment to development (on the personal, organisational, and community levels). Those who are too young may not have the life experience and patience essential to the success of the slow process of capacity building. Fieldworkers must have the ability to genuinely reflect on themselves and be committed to their own development. If, for instance, they see themselves as "victims" (of the state, the employer, the family, the spouse), they are unlikely to be able to help communities to develop themselves.
Low wages and high staff turnover
The tendency to recruit people with very little capacity and skill encourages a practice of low wages for fieldworkers. This does little to enhance the fieldwork of the organisation and can only lead to high field staff turnover within organisations. The consequences of this for the actual fieldwork of the organisation are devastating because it takes time to get to know and gain the confidence of a community. Continuity is essential for long-term capacity building.
Inadequate training
Proper orientation, induction and training is often skipped or short-circuited because the fieldworker "is needed to work in the community as soon as possible". Considering the weight of expectation which fieldworkers bear – that they will "deliver" development – it is remarkable how little they are given to enable them to perform their task properly.
Good fieldworkers become managers
Good fieldworkers are often taken out of the field to become managers within the organisation, depleting the ranks of professional fieldworkers and leaving the perception that the weakest are left behind in the field.
CONCLUSION
Robert Chambers refers to a global picture of rich, urban, industrialised, high status cores and poor, rural, low status peripheries. He talks about strong centripetal forces that draw resources and educated people to the core, internationally and within individual third world countries. Within the core "there is a mutual attraction and reinforcement of power, prestige, resources, professionals, professional training and the capacity to generate and disseminate information" (Chambers 1983:4). Those on the periphery become more and more marginalised as resources move to the cores.
The concepts of "core" and "periphery" can be applied in the relationship between the NGO as an organisation and its fieldwork practice. Because the practice of fieldwork takes place primarily on the periphery of the physical boundary of the NGO, it is often accorded peripheral status within the organisation. What one cannot see, one does not prioritise and therefore does not resource adequately. Fieldwork is central to ensuring that development becomes a reality. The tendency to reinforce the peripheral status of fieldwork in NGOs works to the detriment of development itself.
"Beneath every participation programme lurks a particular social theory, paradigm, or at least a set of assumptions..."
(Kasparson, 1977: 189)
PARTICIPATION
So the stage, as it were, is set. We witness the rise of freelance consultancy and the demise of focused fieldwork. Enter the ambiguous floodtide of development capital.
BACKGROUND
For so many years development workers have been engaged in activities aimed at developing, empowering or more recently, building the capacity of individuals and community-based organisations. The ultimate objective has been to redress extreme power imbalances for more equitable access to societal resources. In a society where inequality is so deeply entrenched in the policies, structures and the very psyche of society, negotiating through the existing structures for resources was a waste of human effort that poor communities could ill afford. As a result, most development initiatives concentrated on "self-help schemes" where possible, raising funds for operating costs from foreign donors, or local sources uncontaminated by "the regime". While managing to deliver an amazing array of fundamental services denied by the state, the struggle to wrest power from the ruling minority was most often high on the agenda of development organisations. To all intents and purposes substantial development was well beyond the reach of the majority.
INFLUX OF DEVELOPMENT CAPITAL
Now the almost unimaginable has started to happen. Development capital is becoming available in unprecedented quantities. Today one hears it said that it is possible to raise enough capital to wipe out the housing backlog. In the next breath, it is added that those agencies with large existing budgets for infrastructural and technical development were unable to disburse all the funds available, ending the financial year with large surpluses. The reason given for this is that communities do not have the organisational and institutional capacity to cope with a sudden and substantial influx of resources.
DEVELOPMENT AND CONFLICT
The incidence of development schemes which have resulted in community conflict and violence are numerous – Phola Park, the Seven Buildings Project in Johannesburg, the Alexandra Far East Bank project and others in Daveyton, Zevenfontein, Crossroads and Port Elizabeth’s Northern Areas (Bremner 1994: 4). By introducing scarce resources into resource-starved communities, the power struggles are focused because individuals or organisations controlling resources command political allegiance (Hindson and Swilling, 1994: 12). The fact that development has brought disruptions to previously peaceful communities is one of the reasons for the inability to disburse available funds.
PARTICIPATION AND OWNERSHIP
Even large-scale development agencies are now recognising how vital it is that their development projects are seen to involve "community participation" and "ownership of the process". The days when infrastructural and technical development could be "delivered" without community development are commonly held to be part of that ignoble past we are all trying to put behind us. But how hard are we really trying? Is this a matter of expediency, taking advantage of being seen as politically correct so that we can spend our budgets and ensure resources for the next financial year?
LARGE AGENCIES AND PARTICIPATION
Few developmental NGOs have large budgets for infrastructural and technical development. The development agencies which do tend to be large corporate institutions, state agencies, parastatals, quasi-NGOs and international financial institutions. What these agencies have in common is a need to urgently disburse their money, a tendency to focus on "product" rather than "process", a higher respect for "suits and ties" than "rags and bones", a proactive rather than responsive orientation, and a "top-down" rather than "bottom-up" way of operating.
LIP SERVICE
Faced with the contradiction of having money which urgently needs to be spent and the need for community participation and capacity building which is inherently a slow process, the large agencies avoid employing fieldworkers who can work at community level. Instead, they try to quickly set up community committees to control the disbursement of funds for a particular package. Committees are convened and facilitated by highly-paid consultants, and they are serviced by packaged training courses delivered as the final answer to the capacity-building problem. Token "participation" is used to secure consent for projects. But "development" is the development of people, and successful participation builds the capacity of people and communities.
COMMUNITY COMMITTEES
Under these circumstances, not much capacity building takes place at all. Underresourced communities are expected to convene committees for each development agency project. Development agencies may compete with one another, resulting in duplication of committees. The same people may serve on more than one committee and those who are asked to serve are often the most overcommitted. The very notion of "community" as if it were a homogenous group speaking with one voice or represented by one organisation or civic, and the complex dynamics of what negotiated development implies, need to be carefully examined (Friedman, 1993: 2). Essentially, development agencies are inclined to take the shortest route to meeting their own objectives rather than ensuring the process performs its proper function of enabling communities to set themselves on a coherent development path.
PRODUCT AND PROCESS
Outside the communities, in the airy realms of corporate development agencies, consultants and trainers thrive. In the name of participation and capacity building the development sector has become the place to be, for some, more lucrative than the commercial sector. The finances to really make a difference to the lack of development have become available but the corporate culture which accompanies many development projects does not go beyond the motions of development. Corporate agencies tend to hold that traditional NGOs are disorganised, ineffective and sloppy in the delivery of infrastructure and technical resources. There may be some truth in this, but they, on the other end of the scale, are inclined to plan projects in advance and then use token "community participation to implement them. "Delivery" needs to be balanced with genuine community development work undertaken by fieldworkers closely linked to the ebb and flow of community. Flexible, creative and responsive NGOs should provide a support base from which these field staff can operate.
About the Community Development Resource Association (CDRA)
The Community Development Resource Association (CDRA) was established in 1987 as a non-profit, non-governmental organisation (NGO) to build the capacity of organisations and individuals engaged in development and social transformation. We are based in Cape Town, South Africa and work mostly in Southern and East Africa.
Email: vernon@cdra.org.za
Webpage: http://www.cdra.org.za
P.O. Box 221, Woodstock, 7915, South Africa
Telephone: -27 -21 462 3902
Fax: -27 -21 462 3918