CDRA Lets Go!

​…an organisation closing and a call for contributions to a final CDRA publication on developmental practice

​from Farid Esack, CDRA Chairperson

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Yes, dearest friends, fellow travellers, co-sojourners, practitioners, after 33 years we have  decided to let go!

Since 2012, our director Nomvula Dlamini, with a small group of associates, have been holding the core of an increasingly dispersed CDRA while looking for an organizational form appropriate for the times. Since reluctantly accepting Nomvula’s resignation at the end of last year, the Board, in consultation with the remaining practitioners, has reflected on its role in holding up the CDRA’s concerted attempts to find a new form. While there is still important work being done by those who have been holding the core, it is clear that the work inspired and supported by the CDRA increasingly lies widely spread and held in the web of relationships spun out of the organization over the past thirty years.

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Planning, Monitoring, Evaluation & Learning courses 
"Learning & Staying Alive To Change"

This course is about demystifying PMEL as a technical exercise - done to satisfy donor needs – so that it can be better understood, appreciated and used. We promote learning orientated M&E because we believe that if M&E contributes to organisational learning and adaptation you will produce better and more sustainable impact. By attending this course, you will gain greater clarity on what learning- oriented PMEL may look like for your organisation and how this could be implemented.

Cape Town, South Africa      14-18 Oct

For more information and to register, have a look at under the "courses" tab of our website.

The Truth of the Work:
Theories of Change in a Changing World

by Doug Reeler and Rubert Van Blerk,
the Community Development Resource Association

Following a series of learning sessions with practitioners from various organisations in Cape Town we wrote this reflection on the use and practice of "Theory of Change" being demanded by donors, and the problems and possibilities practitioners are experiencing.
The writing touches on:
  • Why have theory? 
  • Ways of understanding theory and implications for practice 
  • Building theory beyond empiricism 
  • Participation and complexity 
  • Principles of life, values and principles of action 
  • Theory and imagination 
  • Consciousness and humanity 
  • Theory: models or archetypes 
  • Theory and impact

Download the article 
CDRA's latest Annual Report

Our  Annual Reports   give an account of our strategic alliances,  partners and programme collaborators, of the assignments we implemented,  achievements, lessons learned and challenges we continue to face.

​Annual Report 2017-2018

Previous reports:
Annual Report 2013-2014
Annual Report 2014-2015
Annual Report 2015-2016

A FINAL PUBLICATION :

A gathering of community; a process of reflection; a publication on practice.​

In the coming year, and as its last public organisational  activity, CDRA will host a process that supports reflection on the context that gave birth to and called it forth for three decades, the practice that emerged and the practices and organisations that it contributed to, as well as CDRA itself. This will result in a publication (online and in hard copy) that shares the outcomes of these reflections and in so doing, offers a contemporary perspective on the condition of organisation today.
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Practitioners and colleagues who have been in some way reached by CDRA or touched by its work, or who, in some way, might consider themselves part of the broader CDRA community, are invited to submit proposals for their contribution to this publication.

This   call is now closed.

​READ MORE...
Download from our Writings - numerous articles on the practice of social change and development

​Hire the CDRA Workshop venue

The Latest Barefoot Guide

The Barefoot Guide 6:
Generative Leadership

Releasing Life in a Turbulent World

By The Sixth Barefoot Guide
​Writer’s Collective

Click here to download the guide for free!
Every single aspect of every corner of every human institution and network is in radical and dynamic change. Too many of the leaders we have are not only failing us but have become a danger to humanity. We share the anguish of how some people’s self-seeking ways and powers seem to be able to ride the waves of change while staying aloft on their privileges.

​But we feel less inclined simply to fight what we fear and much more inclined to see where the hidden flows of life are present and leading—so that we can spend our energy on crafting lives and roles that are worthy of what comes next.
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This book is the fruit of eighteen months of intense, lively collaboration by twenty-three people from seven countries on five continents! It is not about heroic leadership but, quite the opposite, about leadership that works generatively with life.

​We invite you to read, to share and to converse about a subject as important as any other facing humanity.