Rural Livelihoods

Before the Junior Fellows are sent to their host country, we go through an intense, week long, pre-departure training. One of the many things discussed is rural livelihoods. Here are some of the factors we look at:

1. Households are the unit of analysis, and gender plays a role. [Households operate as an organic entity with everyone contributing something as if it was a joint enterprise which sustains each individual in return for their contributions. This also involves a division of labour amongst the household. That is why, in development, we talk about households instead of individuals]
2. Households make use of livelihood diversification strategies.
3. People have assets and capabilities and it is important to utilize them and build upon them.
4. Religion and culture are extremely important to livelihoods.
5. Agriculture is of prime important to livelihoods [in rural communities this is often the largest source of livelihood]
6. Households are affected by macro-trends.

Each one of these factors can be discussed quite extensively but hopefully they are understood for my purpose here which is to flip them around. I haven’t fully worked out this idea, but its been interesting as far as I have taken it so I am sharing it with you…

The 6 Factors of Development Organizations!

1. Organizations are the unit of analysis, gender plays a role. [This is way more obvious than households. Organizations are, by definition, a joint enterprise between a number of individuals to achieve something and thus we discuss development agents in terms of organizations]
2. Organization make use of funding diversification strategies [non-profit organizations need to get money from somewhere, and those sources are not always reliable so its important to draw upon numerous sources as well sources which do not hinder your work by various requirements]
3. Organizations have assets and capabilities and it is important to utilize them and build upon them. [A lot of these organizations have existed for many years and have a great deal of experience and knowledge for their respective fields. It’s important not utilize those skills and not simply to try go around them because you think you can do it better despite your inexperience]
4. Organizations have foundational values and an internal culture which affects how it operates, how effective it is, and how efficient it is. [anyone who has had more than one job knows how different work places get be, how expectations and interactions change depending on the corporate culture, and how that culture can affect the work that is intended to be achieved]
5. Donors are of prime importance to non-profit organizations. [Though obvious, this is really key. It is quite common for an organization which wants to work in one area of development, such as HIV/AIDS, having to compromise its goals because they can’t find donors because people want to sponsor sanitation projects. Also donors usually require tangible deliverables - such as number of latrines installed – which may force the organization to work ineffectively as it is trying to meet the demanding requirements of their donors – non-profit is a highly competitive sector, there is only so much money to be had – instead of making sure that their work is having impact. How many people are still getting sick because they are not properly educated about hygiene aren’t something the donors necessarily are worrying about.]
6. Organizations are affected by micro-trends. [as stated in factor 5: the sponsors go through “fads” where everyone wants to tackle HIV/AIDS or water/sanitation or food security and if your organization is working in that area you have to change or give up. Other macro-trends also affect organizations. Perhaps this point could also be switched to micro-trends affect organizations and you could look at how differences from one group of beneficiaries to the next can compromise the replicability of a successful project.]

Something I have really learned from my volunteer experience – which I knew ahead of time but there is no learning like from experience – is that development is extremely hard. There are so many factors working against an organization. Just like the root causes of poverty exercise we do in EWB, where we list all the causes of poverty we can identify in a case study and try to link them in terms of causality – I bet you could do the same thing with development organizations. The root causes of organizational ineffectiveness.

This, seemingly obvious, reality is being pointed out to you so I can better explain what I see as the role EWB is [increasingly] taking on in the development sector. This is what I have seen and not the official word from the National Office. But as volunteers we work, mostly individual, within partner organizations and try to help them. We try to avoid positions that would lead us to be gap-fillers [doing the job that any other local worker could be doing] but search for places where we can have the most add-value and help the organization build its capacity. These leads to very diverse volunteer placements because there is no one thing we do. We try to identify areas where we can add value and then try to make it happen. So ultimately what we end up doing is not working on the root causes of poverty but the root causes of organizational ineffectiveness to help the people who do have the experience do their job better. It seems that is where EWB has found its greatest add value to the sector as a whole is.