Articles by CDRA staff



			Writing from CDRA practitioners

CDRA's Annual Report 2009 -

Pursuing a Learning Agenda

Between 2007 and 2009, CDRA underwent an extensive period of evaluation, including self-evaluation, external feedback, a facilitated OD process and several rounds of strategic review. In this period, we aspired to incorporate evaluation into our ongoing learning and strategising, to balance self-evaluation with external perspectives, and to balance internal evaluation with review of impact and strategy. In addition to creating the conditions for a comprehensive organisational overhaul, this evaluation period offered an incubated experience of evaluation as a self-directed and managed activity. Of the many evaluation outcomes, one has been a decision to shift the focus of the annual report to one that provides a platform for a broad community of practitioners to reflect on and write about practice. Therefore, in this, the last of CDRA’s Annual Reports in its present format, we offer an account of the evaluation process and outcomes, through sharing extracts of the material that was generated in the course of the year.

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This is what we need more of:

messages on organisation and creativity

from the CDRA Biennial Practice Conference 2009
by Sandra Hill, CDRA, August 2009

"During the Biennial, we asked ourselves and each other, “What do we need more of and what do we need less of for organisations to enable creativity?” We shared our findings on the last morning in five presentations. This is some of what we came to:"

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A Three-fold Theory of Social Change - and Implications for Practice, Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation

by Doug Reeler of the CDRA, 2007

"Most significantly, and ironically, the very Project approaches that donors insist be used for planning, monitoring and evaluating practice and impact, like Logical Framework Analysis and its cousins, have tacitly introduced a misleading and self-defeating theory of social change."

This paper puts forward a different theory of social change that goes beyond implicit conventional theories, providing a different framework for seeing and working with the complexities of change.

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The Wave and The Anchor

by Sandra Hill, CDRA, September 2008

Which presents the essential elements of CDRA's approach to organisational learning.

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CDRA's Annual Report 2008 - Points of View

This year's writing offers a faceted reflection on the state of organisation in development. In looking at this theme, we pursue two angles on "organisation.' We are interested in organisations - as things, entities, structures. What is their condition, their status and their health? In asking this question, we find differing, sometimes contradictory answers. Organisations are in crisis. Organisations are blossoming like never before. Much depends on how you look at things. This Annual Report also offers another perspective - a larger interest in and concern with the activity of 'organisation' within development. What is happening there? To what extent are we managing to organise ourselves - from the grassroots through to major national and multi-lateral agencies - in ways that offer appropriate and adequate responses to our times? Where and how is organisation- as-activity happening? Where is it not happening? And why?

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Sovereign Local Organisations and Social Movements - holding rightful power

by Doug Reeler of the Community Development Resource Association, June 2008

Plus a PowerPoint presentation developed out of the paper

"If development is about shifting or transforming power there has to be a clear concept of where power can be rightfully and sustainably held - sovereign local organisations and social movements are an obvious location."

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Being at the CDRA biennial: blending colours, blurring boundaries - reflections of a novice artist

by Sandra Hill, CDRA

A personal account in which Sandra Hill reflects on her participation in CDRA's Biennial practice conference (May 2007) held on the premise that bringing thinking practitioners together into a developmental process contributes powerfully to an emerging developmental discipline.

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Towards "better evaluation" - an account of one internal practice

by Sue Soal, CDRA

Key note address to the Australasian Evaluation Society (AES) Conference, September 2007, Melbourne

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Dreaming Reality - The future in retrospect

....reading social intervention through the CDRA Annual Reports, 1990-2003; and its relevance for the future

Compiled by Allan Kaplan

This year, to celebrate CDRA's 20th anniversary, we decided that, instead of an annual report, we would produce a book. Compiled by Allan Kaplan, founder member and former Director of CDRA, the book tracks a 13-year journey of exploring and describing development practice as done by CDRA. It is introduced with an essay by Njabulo S. Ndebele, an author and Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of Cape Town. The book also contains a number of photographs, providing a beautifully illustrated journey through the years.

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South Africa is squandering a valuable and unique NGO resource

by James Taylor of the CDRA - from the Cape Times - August 21, 2007 Edition 1

"NGOs, in the past, supported spaces in which freedom of expression and freedom of association were actualised. Now, judged only in terms of their usefulness, their contribution to the delivery project, the cadres of community workers and activists, generated through struggle, are not being replenished or institutionalised."

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Honest Conversations about the feminine and masculine spirit

By Desiree Paulsen of CDRA 2007

"Recently CDRA held one of its open days which are dialogue and networking events bringing together groups of people around a theme. This one honoured South African Women's day to "celebrate the feminine spirit". We invited women together to focus on: “Women sharing experiences and learnings about the unique orientation and qualities that we bring to the world and reflecting on how these contribute to our practice, organisations, communities and the society in which we live and work..."

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CDRA's investigation into development practitioner training in South Africa, with a focus on tertiary institutions

By Sandra Hill of CDRA, July 2006

This investigation has yielded a picture of where and how development practitioners are being trained or schooled in South Africa, focusing on tertiary institutions. It provides insights into the context of development practitioner training and the emerging more conscious profession of dedicated development practitioner training,

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Transparency of Process - Monitoring and Evaluation in Learning Organisations

By Nomvula Dlamini of the CDRA

"Learning, we should remind ourselves, is the process through which an organisation sustains the interconnections through which it knows what it knows and therefore becomes an effective, competent and thinking entity that can realise its transformational impact. Monitoring and evaluation that is integral to the life of an organisation contributes meaningfully towards sustaining the interconnections. Monitoring and evaluation therefore should not become something that organisations do when they stop doing or are doing nothing else; it should be integral to the process of 'doing' - these practices should continuously inform and shape that process of 'doing'."

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Emptying and doubt

By Rubert Van Blerk of the CDRA

"Doubt and uncertainty are as much an aspect of the client's experience as they are the practitioner's. In today's world the tendency is to seek an antidote for doubt, even settling for denial in the quest for certainty. Therefore the client demands certainty and the practitioner offers it. Doubt can begin to become a quality when the act of not knowing can be as deeply valued, if not more so, than the act of knowing."

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The Complete CDRA Annual Report 2005/2006.pdf (over 2 megs)

Horizontal Learning - Engaging Freedom's Possibilities

Doug Reeler, from CDRA Annual Report 2004/2005

Exploring transformative practices of horizontal learning and community exchanges at the creative margins of the development sector

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Experiencing freedom's possibilities: Horizontal Learning in CDRA's Home Weeks

Doug Reeler, From the CDRA Annual Report 2004/2005

How continuously and rhythmically 'grounding' itself internally is at the heart of CDRA's practice and organisational structure.

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CDRA and Accreditation - learning from hard experience

Why we have decided to discontinue our application for accreditation for our courses through the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA)

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Measurement in Developmental Practice - from the mundane to the transformational

James Taylor and Sue Soal, CDRA, 2003

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Emergence - from the inside out

James Taylor, from CDRA Annual Report 2003/2004

Our view of the kind of practice it takes to shift those relationships in society
that exclude, diminish and impoverish

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Conjuring the invisible - stories from practice

From CDRA Annual Report 2003/2004

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Seeking the eye of the needle

Sue Soal, from the CDRA Annual Report 2002/2003

Bringing to life the intention and impact of our work

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as a .pdf file (the full report in colour with photos)

How do we know what difference we are making? Reflections on measuring development in South Africa.

By Sue Soal, CDRA, 2001

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Unlearning - Facing up to the real challenge of learning

By Doug Reeler, CDRA, 2001

"Unlearning involves a conscious individual confrontation of the past with the future, involving paradigms or beliefs that come from the fully formed past at odds with those that come from a future, still in formation. The risk, the vulnerability of not having answers, of being in-between ideas, of acting in the face of the unknown, has to be faced as unlearning takes place. In this way unlearning prepares the ground for a deeper kind of learning."

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A sabbatical journey

By Allan Kaplan