Hi Isa, could you please describe for us what the Polis Project is?

The Polis Project is a project which connects people’s initiatives and projects to the resources they need. Take a women’s group in Kenya who wants to improve rural development: they have the ideas on how to do it but they lack the materials and financial support. Through its online platform the Polis puts the group of women in touch with potential partners who can provide them with exactly this support. The women then choose the partner they think fits best their request! This is just an example of people that can benefit from the Polis Project and its simple method. Many more people are out there with brilliant ideas and initiatives and do not have access to what they need to turn their ideas into reality.

What lead you to become part of The Polis Project?

While focusing on peace building in the Middle East region for my research activities, I was astonished to see how many aid and development organisations would apply ready-made solutions to local problems without first listening to local voices. I started to develop a strong interest for initiatives and organisations promoting locally led development and I soon became convinced it was the only way international development could be effective. It is through my research on such organisations that I heard about ReSeT and the Polis Project. And as soon as I learnt more about the project, I knew that it was exactly in line with the way I was envisioning international development. I was given the chance to become part of the team first as a researcher and then as Head of research. To be honest, I could not imagine a project which would better fit my vision of what international development should look like: « local actors and global actors coming together to achieve a common goal: improving the lives of people, with local actors being in the driving seat. »

As Head of Research and Development, you are a core member of the project; can you describe your role and key responsibilities?

At the Research and Development department, our work is divided into two units: we work on the development of the project and on publications. The development of the project includes four types of activities:(1) researching and supporting the fundraising and communication teams;(2) researching similar initiatives (a market research);(3) researching relevant articles and papers for the Polis Project, and (4) developing the Polis method. The publications unit regroups all kind of publications the team is doing as well as the website content and the newsletter content. On top of that we coordinate the consultancy work the team does. To sum up, as Head of R&D I make sure my team researches and finds the information necessary to develop our project and acquire more expertise!

What is your favourite part of being head of Research and Development?

Everyday when I wake up I am excited about the things R&D needs to do because I know if we advance, the project as a whole advances and develops. Most of the time, I have a pretty busy day ahead filled with different internal researches and publications. But most importantly, I know I can count on my team to be fully committed and do their best to provide the relevant information and boost the project. Apart from the obvious fact that I very much enjoy working at R&D, the most valuable thing of my work is the team spirit we have, it is what makes us go beyond ourselves, achieve our weekly or monthly goals and be creative in the ways that we address issues and challenges we face!

What kind of publications does the Polis Project focus on?

Although most of our work is typically focused on internal researches directly linked to the development of the project, publications are also essential. They indeed demonstrate our expertise and knowledge on local-global relationships. This is why all our Polis publications analyse local-global dynamics. I guess your next question would then be: “but what do local-global analyses mean?” It means that we focus on cases where there are interactions between the global and the local level, where global actors’ actions have an impact on the local level. The local level can be understood as community level, regional level or even national level. With the Polis Publications, our main goal is to give our perspective on relationships between the global and the local level. Because this is what the Polis is all about!

How does research & development contribute to the other departments in the Polis Project?

Let’s say that we are like the backbone of the Polis team! All our activities have one common goal: supporting the fundraising and the communications teams. It can be the research we do on specific organisations related to fundraising or communications, our market research on similar initiatives, which is essential to expand our knowledge of others that work in a similar way, or some field research necessary to understand the demand for the Polis Project. But it is also feeding them with articles and papers, which are relevant for our work and project. The fundraising and communications teams know they can rely on us to provide them with the most accurate information they need. This means that all the Polis teams: R&D, communications and fundraising work together to make the project advance and develop.

As R&D, you have contributed to the development of the Polis Postcards and Polis Perspectives, can you tell us a bit about them?

Both Polis Perspectives and Polis Postcards are recent initiatives by the team to strengthen our communication with our network.
With the Polis Perspectives, our idea was to give our perspective on a different article each week which one of us found very interesting. We also share articles we enjoyed reading and our favorite tweets of the week. It is a way for us to share what we find interesting and relevant and to connect the Polis Project to the broader development sector in a different way!

The Polis is all about access and connection being available for people at the local level, right? With the Polis Postcards, we wanted to give the opportunity to local people to present their initiatives and get some exposure. It is a simple idea just as if they were sending a Postcard telling us their story! On the top of that, it is a great way for us to get in touch with people that could benefit from the Polis Project and to envision potential further collaboration.

What are your ambitions with respect to research and development in the coming months?

My ambition is to see the Polis Project further develop and to continue making the work of R&D as relevant as possible! The coming months will be an intensive period for us so R&D will need to be at its sharpest and keep their eye on the ball. We will be focusing the team’s publications on today’s current global development issues, local realities, and local-global dynamics. Through our Polis Postcards and new weekly Perspectives, R&D hope to continue analysing, exploring and informing the public of our research and connection to the field!

We live in turbulent times, where new crises hit anytime and anywhere,” said Christos Stylianides, the European commissioner for humanitarian aid and crisis management. “But our attention must not shift from ongoing humanitarian crises such as this one. The people of the Central African Republic (CAR) continue to need our help to survive and rebuild their lives.” According to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, 2.7 million people are in need of aid in CAR, 436,000 are internally displaced, while more than 460,000 people are living as refugees in neighbouring countries. The humanitarian community has received only about a fifth of the total funds required for the UN strategic response plan. On Tuesday 26 May, the European Union announced a new assistance package for CAR worth €72m following the call by interim President Catherine Samba-Panza urging European countries to help CAR to return to democracy by the end of the year. “CAR lacks a lot of money” she said, which is needed to re-establish security and long lasting peace and to organise elections. She added that CAR “cannot go to the polls without having security in the country”. All of this typifies a reaction from the international community that is too little, too late and possibly even counterproductive.

As is all too common in the case of sub-Saharan conflicts, the upheaval in CAR has been accompanied by headlines describing it as a “forgotten humanitarian crisis” and “ignored emergencies“. These types of phrases are not all that hyperbolic, with the wider world only showing moderate interest at best. What is even more “forgotten” and “ignored”, however, are underlying local dynamics before and after such crises hit their peak. The current meek reaction of the international community- with peacekeeping intervention and diplomatic pressure- is still an improvement on the status quo. Engaging local communities during those times that no imminent crisis looms, engaging local communities would go a long way in avoiding humanitarian crises in the first place, but those are hardly ever priorities. Unfortunately, without humanitarian victims, interests in long-term dynamics tend to be deep down on the agenda. As a result, international information and knowledge on grassroots realities on a country such as CAR are minimal. When a crisis then forces a reaction, national governments and other parties that can hardly be considered neutral and constructive counterparts are the only partners the international community focuses on. The result is insufficient and ineffective action. CAR is a clear example of this lack of local connections.

The international community has always had this tendency to react to conflicts, rather than help preventing them in the first place. This has direct consequences during the crisis itself. Without a network and local engagement mechanisms in place, the reaction of outsiders is almost completely dependent on their direct and centralised counterparts: government officials, rebel groups and large scale actors. They are the primary source of information, and the go-to actors for understanding the underlying problems. The true social and economic factors- only clearly understood at a local level- are unknown to, or simply ignored by, a reactive international community. As a result, any solutions brought forward from the outside tends to be a patch to stem the bleeding, rather than a constructive contribution to long-term stability and wellbeing. And thus the cycle continues in perpetuity: ignored local and national problems fester; crisis hits, political and humanitarian reaction from the international community; underlying local realities and causes are ignored; most visible problems are hastily dealt with; international community withdraws; local and national problems continue.

In these situations, the fact that central counterparts are the only negotiating partners as well as sources of information is a major obstacle for an international community not knowledgeable on the very issues they pretend to solve. With very few attempts at talking to people at a grassroots level, any action taken is biased towards those responsible for the crisis in the first place. Since the beginning of the conflict in 2013, the privileged interlocutors of the international community have been the transitional government and the main opposing armed groups (the Séléka and anti-balaka). Due to their role in the conflict these actors were given a monopolistic space within the negotiating sphere. Given that these parties are both responsible for any violence as well as using it to their advantage- as is the case in any of these conflicts- not involving and representing grassroots actors means dealing with the rotten surface, rather than finding true answers. Without representation from the wider population it is hard to believe there is a real support for reconciliation and national cohesion. Finally, this month, the CAR took an important step toward fostering national cohesion through its Bangui Forum on National Reconciliation. The Bangui Forum brought together nearly 700 leaders from diverse groups within the CAR’s society—including the transitional government, national political parties, the main opposing armed groups, the private sector, civil society, traditional chiefs, and religious groups—to define their collective vision for the country’s future. Although peace and national reconciliation have not been achieved yet, the conclusions of the forum seem to mark the beginning of a new chapter for CAR.

A good example of how, from the beginning of the conflict, the international community’s interests were to stabilise the conflict and avoid bloodshed while undervaluing the importance of local realities and its complexity, is the deployment of the peacekeeping operation MINUSCA (the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic). The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) established it by its resolution 2149 of 10 April 2014 with the mandate to protect Central African Republic civilians. If the reasons that pushed the UNSC to create the MINUSCA are understandable with regards to the violence of the conflict, it is by no means a long-term solution. Then again, the language used suggested that MINUSCA was a profound solution to the problems faced by the country. The text includes indeed the full “peacekeeping package” with sentences such as “to assist the Transitional Authorities in mediation and reconciliation processes at both the national and local levels (…)” and “to provide good offices and political support for the efforts to address root causes of the conflict and establish lasting peace and security in the CAR”. Without any deeper understanding of what those root causes were, these phrases were fanciful at best, and disingenuous at worst. Sub-Sahara African history is littered with all too many similar cases of pretension trumping reality.

More than a year after the establishment of the MINUSCA, the expected impact of the peacekeeping operation is still uncertain. The mandate of the operation is too ambitious and does not correspond to the complexity of the field. In most places in the Central African Republic, reconciliation has started between the different communities but it stays fragile. The country is still working to end the cycles of violence and reunite its people. 436,000 people are internally displaced and most cannot go back to their hometown because they fear the re-eruption of violence. On top of that, the peacekeepers’ first mission is to protect civilians, but the latest scandal about the UN covering up the sexual assault of children by French troops raises the question of trust. The success of peacekeeping operations depends on creating a bond of trust with local populations. What kind of message does an institution that covers up sexual assault on minors send to vulnerable populations? They may stop other types of violence in the short run, but the long-term outcomes may be to exacerbate the very human insecurity that leads to conflict. The unholy mix of an unrealistic mandate, absence of long-term solutions and a lack of trust by local populations is the ideal cocktail for ineffective and counterproductive outcomes.

Sadly, CAR is an all too typical example of an international community uninterested in- and therefore out of touch with- local realities in sub-Saharan Africa. Lingering conflicts that require long-term international approaches based on local networks are instead ignored until a humanitarian crisis can no longer be avoided. Reacting to the symptoms rather than the causes means a perpetual cycle of violence in which the international community is at risk of being a perpetuating influence by strengthening centralised and warmongering actors, rather than representing those suffering the consequences. Greater investment in grassroots networks and development of local human security before conflicts escalate is essential for sustainable social development. That is where the international community’s priorities need to be, rather than using the military to bring only temporary short-lived peace.

This article was written by Isadora Loreto and Balder Hageraats.

Joanna Klever: We need far fewer SDGs 

Polis Perspectives are weekly perspectives of our team on Polis-related topics. We also share our favorite articles and tweets. This week’s perspective is written by Joanna Klever on the podcast:  ‘We need ‘far fewer’ SDGs says leading development thinker John Norris’ hosted by Rajesh Mirchandani, Center for Global Development 12/05/2015

John Norris, a member of the US President’s Global Development Council, argues in a podcast by the Center for Global Development that the UN Sustainable Development Goals are too broad and too large in number. The SDGs are building on the successes of the Millenium Development Goals. Now – in the second round of global development goals – many feel that the SDGs need to be even broader, aiming higher and higher. The SDGs in their current state with 169 targets, many of which we already know are unrealistic, can only lead to disappointment, according to Norris.

We at the Polis acknowledge the inclusive, local approach that has been taken in the drafting process of the SDGs. Nonetheless, the entire process needs to be centred on local ambitions, rather than seeing locals as mere impulses. Also, there needs to be a better way to transition from the collection of local needs to a feasible global agenda. The current vision of the SGDs will most likely lead to disbursements of donor money to a plethora of implementing organisations without cohesion or focussed targets. Therefore, Norris’ suggestion to cut out the majority of targets and to focus them on specific topics such as climate resilience presents itself as a necessary turn to make the SDGs realistic and give them the possibility of success.

 Articles of the Week

Simon Tisdall: ’2015 is ‘Year of Fear’ for children worldwide, warns Gordon Brown’, the Guardian, 26/5/2015

How Matters: ‘The secret to communicating grassroots social change – anyone have it?’,How Matters, 25/5/2015

Geoffrey York: ‘Lamps shine light on a new kind of aid in Burundi’, The Globe and Mail , 22/05/2015

Our Favourite Tweets @polisproject

@owenbarder: Trending on the BBC – the shaming of people who organise all-male panels http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-32789580 … #HeForShe @huippumisukka

@geoffreyyork: Too much gloom from #Burundi these days? Here’s a brighter story (literally), shedding light on new aid trends: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/lamps-shine-light-on-a-new-kind-of-aid-in-burundi/article24578731/ …

@ithorphe: 6 ways to innovate for development in 2015 and beyond via @bkumpf http://ow.ly/Nfv3c

 

For more in-depth articles and research, visit our Polis Publications page.

Joan Okitoi: Bill, Melinda, and the SDGs

Polis Perspectives are weekly perspectives of our team on Polis-related topics. We also share our favorite articles and tweets. This week’s perspective is written by Joan Okitoi on the article: Alex Evans: ´Bill, Melinda, and the SDGs´, Global Dashboard 12/05/2015

Alex Evans’ post calling on the Gates Foundation and other foundations to clearly state their policy positions on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the degree to which with their huge budget they influence NGOs in developing countries, raises an interesting point on ‘behind-the-scenes’ consultations for the goals. The SDGs are a continuation of efforts towards attainment of rights and human dignity (as per the Millennium Declaration) but Evan’s post is a stark reminder of the conflicting interests in choosing the goals for the global framework. While it is broadly accepted that the SDGs are not for states but for people, it seems the voices of the people for whom the goals are designed to benefit is not getting the attention it deserves. The Seed Institute and African Monitor in 2010 conducted a series of poverty hearings in Kenya, Liberia, Mozambique and South Africa. Out of the testimonies given, the locals made it clear they are not interested in charity but want to have the power to decide on issues affecting their lives. A more people-centered development narrative echoed by initiatives anchored on locally-led development is therefore more likely to deliver transformative changes.

 Articles of the Week

Hugh Muir & Clár Ní Chonghaile: ´What causes conflict and how can it be solved?´ Podcast, the Guardian, 21/5/2015

The Economist: ´Development aid: it’s not what you spend´, the Economist, 23/5/2015

KM on a dollar a day: ´A flowering of approaches to complexity and development?´, KM on a dollar a day, 15/05/2015

Our Favourite Tweets @polisproject

Getting real+specific about #differentdev: a bandwagon effect taking politicians along @kwatkinsodi @fp2p @leniwild

Just launched a call for #polispostcards – Share with us your community’s development projects http://ow.ly/MZtFI  #AdaptDev @ODIdev

Entrepreneurship: the key to breaking the poverty cycle @anzishaprize @GShapersNairobi @MadeItInAfrica #AdaptDev

 

For more in-depth articles and research, visit our Polis Publications page.

Polis Perspective 15/05/2015: The Paradox of Identity Politics

Polis Perspectives are weekly perspectives of our team on Polis-related topics. We also share our favorite articles and tweets. This week´s perspective is written by Balder Hageraats on the article: Kemal Derviş: ´The Paradox of Identity Politics´, Brookings, 13/05/2015

With the forces of globalisation influencing local dynamics in virtually every place in the world, identity politics is becoming increasingly pervasive. In order to reassert people’s sense of self in the seeming chaos and grandiose scope of an interconnected planet, returning to an “us” versus “them” narrative is both an attractive and powerful tool. As people across regions are more intertwined and interdependent than ever before, we yearn for a more distinctive and even antagonistic identity. Within small groups we need to perceive unique characteristics and destinies not shared by those not invited to our localised party. Kemal Derviş of the Brookings Institution writes about this phenomenon and its political consequences. ”The problem with identity politics is that it places the ‘in’ group at odds with the perceived ‘other’”. Quite. By being brought closer together through technological and systemic changes, we are brought back in touch with our very human side which craves differences between each other. In order to know who we are, we need to know who we are not. In this way, globalisation makes it both more attractive and paradoxically harder to find true schisms within humanity, however much we hanker after such conflict. In the eternal words of Cavafy, “what’s going to happen to us without barbarians? They were, those people, a kind of solution“.

 Articles of the Week

Duncan Green: ´Which bits of advice to developing country decision makers actually listen to?´ Oxfam, 12/05/2015

Tony Elumelu: ´Entrepreneur-Led Development: A new Model for Africa´, AllAfrica, 12/05/2015

Sam Jones: ´EU Development finance needs completely completely new approach, report says´, the Guardian, 04/05/2015

Our Favourite Tweets

More African innovators are designing products/services not only for the African market but for the global markets #bmzafrica #eLA15Chat

How else can implementation be done to accelerate locally led development? #BonnConference #differentdev #globaldev @owenbarder

Sign up & stay tuned for our upcoming eNews (June 2015) on our interview with Dr. Sirolli @sirollinstitute #AdaptDev

 

For more in-depth articles and research, visit our Polis Publications page.

What led you to become part of The Polis?

The moment I heard about the Polis project I was captivated. The idea behind The Polis is incredibly simple, yet efficient. It made me wonder how sixty years of global development work have not lead to the creation of a ‘Polis’ earlier! Being part of a creative, enthusiastic and experienced team was just as appealing as the idea of joining an idea that has the power to significantly impact people worldwide.

 As a core member of The Polis, can you describe your role and key responsibilities? Can you go into detail about your experiences as Head of Fundraiser for The Polis?

As Head of Fundraising, my role inevitably comes with a number of responsibilities! I joined The Polis from its inception, which is such a rare opportunity as I have been able to be part of the whole process, experience the ups and downs, make mistakes and learn from them. As any fundraiser will know, it is a challenging role, and I have definitely perfected the art of multitasking: from managing our new team, developing fundraising strategies, connecting with potential donors and researching the general fundraising environment in our sector. Admittedly, the sector is not an easy one – we have encountered a number of hurdles: for example, the nature of our model is particularly abstract, which is both its strength and its Achille’s heel. We have also had a very short timeframe, which means we have had an intensive period of planning, networking, researching… which as Head of Fundraising, is both exhausting and exciting!

What do you feel are the main strengths of The Polis?

Before joining ReSeT, I researched the impact of IMF and World Bank policy in Latin America, and it was very frustrating: everyone observes the problems related to developmental policy, everyone criticises it, but very few clear alternatives are put forward. Then I came across the Polis project, and that was the first time that I was involved in a project that approached these issues from a completely different angle. From what I had seen, it just makes so much sense to not make these local-global relationships about institutions or large-scale agendas, but rather about very simple, effective human contact. The Polis does that: it brings together actors from different parts, with complementary skills and abilities, without any interference by politics or institutional demands. And that is exactly what is needed.

 For the Polis fundraising team, what initiatives are driving the project forward?

We have recently made a few changes in our team and fundraising strategy that has really made a difference to our efficiency and drive. We have not only expanded the team, but we have created three new departments, each with specific strategies towards a fundraising goal. Our new team-members have brought a really fresh perspective to our project, and subsequently we have developed a very solid Polis fundraising approach. The boost this has given us has increased the pace, depth of research and accelerated the networking process even further, it’s a big leap for The Polis, and a momentous time to be Head of Fundraising!

What are you looking for in a funder?

Well, there are three different types of funders that we’re looking at. The first are those whose role it is to support innovate and daring development projects, such as certain foundations and company sponsorhip. The Polis is highly replicable and relatively simple to implement while still being very ambitious. On the other hand, the problem that I am personally encountering a lot is that funders often look for something directly tangible, rather than invest in a model. A school is easy to fund from an administrative perspective; but a new way of working, not so much. So that means that we need to play around with that, and actually link it directly to existing local realities in specific regions or between specific local/global relationships.

The second category is actors (agencies, NGOs and certain companies) that are interested in specific aspects of The Polis, rather than the model as a whole. This includes specific local connections and expertise, consulting and research on local/global relations, and methods of matchmaking.

Finally, we are talking to social investors. Even though we are a not-for-profit organisation, The Polis generates its own revenue after the initial start-up period for local connections, which means that we combine the best of both worlds in my view: financial sustainability and social impact.

Most importantly: we do not look for funders who will only provide money or resources. We look for partners who are ready and willing to engage in a relationship in which we progress together and advance The Polis. We want to partner with organisations that can significantly strengthen our work and impact.

Together with the funders, global resources and local communities, what will be the full impact of The Polis in five years?

In five years The Polis will be a running project, fully operational in lots of local communities in several countries across the globe! We will look back at a history of successful connections in which the Polis model has served local communities and their ambitions. The Polis will be that springboard local communities use to implement their ideas, find their voice and prosper.

Having worked on governance and service delivery in a wide variety of countries for many years, Andrews and Wild know the traits of traditional development thinking. Andrews´ interest in PDIA was born from his observations from working in governance, both as a researcher and as an outsider from the World Bank, in which many reform initiatives fail to deliver sustained improvements because organisations and governments focus on what policies look like rather than what they actually do. Andrews: “You see laws being passed and money being moved for a health project, but you don´t see actual nurses being hired or drugs being moved into place.”

In traditional development, solutions tend to be placed before the problems. Wild: “A lot of aid programs still tend to come in with a set of solutions and look for local groups to implement them, rather than coming in to identify who are the local reformers, who is making change happen, and how can they be supported”. Fortunately there is a growing community of people who try new things and share their experiences.

DDD, successful development, and connectivity

The people and organisations within the DDD community turn upside-down two things: they put problems before solutions, and they put local actors before outsiders. In Wild´s view, fundamentally, successful development cooperation facilitates and supports the process of a project rather than managing or dominating it. Locally led means that those people who are already there lead the project; they are in the driving seat. They identify and address problems, and they have the strongest incentives to solve them. Outsiders can be invited to give their views and share information.

The term ´local´ should be widely interpreted. Wild: “It works at the grass-roots level, but also at central governments or in the private sector. We often tend to think of locals as community leaders but it´s much wider than that.”

This diversity was reflected in the workshop too. Andrews: “All these people have framed their agendas so as to empower people rather than telling people what to do. They´ve been doing that for a long period of time. The workshop wasn´t about getting them together and saying to them that they had to do DDD, because they were the ones that are doing it.”

The DDD community also serves as a teaching tool in showing practitioners what successful development cooperation looks like, but also how to actually do it. The fifty or so public servants that take Andrews´ course at Harvard are stimulated to engage with the organisations in the DDD community and to watch the videos they post online about their methodologies.

Problem driven, locally led, and flexible strategies are not new by any means. In policymaking and development studies, voices have long preached for community driven work and against top-down approaches and blueprints. Andrews: “My sense is that when those ideas (of Hirschmann and Brinkerhoff) were coming up they were completely overwhelmed by what I would call the more engineering mindset in development, where people thought that you build governments like you build a road. For a long period development was dominated by either engineers or by very mathematics based economists.”

Today the circumstances to get like-mind souls together are easier.  Andrews: “One of the things that we are trying to take advantage of, and why we had the workshop last year, and why we developed a manifesto, is that there is more connectivity between people.  And our hypothesis is actually that there´s more people doing development in this way than we commonly would think about.”

Connectivity also seems to be a key to success for local actors and their projects. As Wild explained on the connectedness of a local actor in a community scorecard program in Malawi: “He understood the dynamics happening at different levels and in different areas; he was able to appraised things at the local level and say: in this community, we don’t have the right people on the ground to do what we are going to do, so we need to stop working there or we have to find a different way of working”. Putting well connected actors in the driving seat is thus essential for success.

Donors and Measuring Success

For locally led and flexible approaches to gain ground, donors have to be brought aboard too. Some donors try to lock things in at the beginning and to remove flexibility later on. Andrews: “So during and after the workshop we spent a lot of time talking about: how do you buy that flexibility later on. How do you use things like logical frameworks in more flexible ways? I think that you can use exactly the same tools, just in more flexible ways.”

Andrews does not recognise the dichotomy between inflexible donors on one side and governments and NGOs on the other. Across the board, organisations struggle to create space for more flexibility, not only on the donor side.

One of these struggles has to deal with measuring success in ways that help us understand how people learn, rather than simply looking at meaningless milestones. Wild: “Often people are stuck with a particular set of project and reporting frameworks, so all of the things they are doing that are actually making a difference – the way they are adapting, learning, or navigating local relationships – don´t get reported on. We need some kind of benchmarks to know what a genuinely locally led process looks like.”

In Andrew´s view, many policy makers underestimate the difficulty of planning in developmental environments. In a controlled and developed environment, planning a project is relatively easy; you know your objectives and you know how to fulfill and measure them. DDD practitioners know that the reality looks different: “The problem is that if development looks like going from St. Louis to the west coast in 1803, it´s a different strategy. You don´t have any roads, you don´t know where the west coast is, and you don´t know where your milestones are going to be. And if you were to lay a 2013 map onto a team and say: “Go to Albuquerque”, they would say “where´s Albuquerque?” And then on the first day, they would find out that the road to Albuquerque doesn´t exist. So you want them to be learning step by step how to get to the west-coast. So you want to be saying: “OK, when you said you were going to get to Albuquerque, what were the assumptions that you made, and what did you learn about your assumptions? What step did you take? What capacities did you build as you were moving on?” Those things are as important (or maybe more important) than the question: Did you spend the money?”

DDD in 2015

2015 is an interesting year for the development sector, in which the world awaits a new set of global commitments. Although the CID and ODI by no means have a political agenda related to the post-2015 Millennium Development Goals, the DDD community does realise that ideas need to be cultivated, marketed, and taught. Each organisation has to look at itself and contribute to change in its own way. The website and the manifesto just help facilitate it. Wild: “We don´t want to be sitting here in 2030 or 2040 saying: Don’t we need to do things differently?”

The manifesto currently has a community of over 400 signatories from 60 countries, with more organisations (Including ReSeT and its Polis Project) joining every week. Besides people meeting in small groups, the CID and ODI frequently organise events and publish research on DDD approaches to development cooperation. The recently published DDD website also includes a blog, forum, and videos of organisations in the community. Additionally, ODI has just launched a report called Adapting Development, which picks up on many of the themes discussed in the interview.

Did your experience in Guinea-Bissau lead you to The Polis?

Yes, it very much influenced my thinking. In Guinea-Bissau I had the chance to discover all kinds of different projects financed and organised through international cooperation programs. Observe them was interesting, often encouraging, but also painful at times. A lot of effort goes into improving social and economic conditions in that country, with amazing professionals- both local and expatriates- working on important and difficult challenges. But unfortunately there were also a lot of things that went wrong, often caused by systemic failure. Like most people employed locally in the development sector, it made me feel a strong urge to find more effective ways to have an impact. It was obvious that work needed to be much more locally focused; that was one thing that was crystal clear.

So what do you like most about The Polis, when you look back at your personal experiences?

The Polis method answered my doubts (and ambition) about how to turn international cooperation into a local led path. That was the very first thing that attracted me about The Polis and the one that still amazes me. It uses a radically local led approach, and it ends the often well intended but ultimately mistaken interventionist impulses. It recognises the importance of local populations to choosing and designing the projects and their impact, and also the ways in which these projects will be done. External intervention only enters in the system when it is requested by local people and according to the basic terms they themselves set.

Could you please describe your role in The Polis? What do you do exactly?

As Head of Development my role is to design, improve and implement different aspects of the Polis model. Our model depends on various local and global actors, each with a specific role in the process of creating Local Led Connections. It is my role to develop each step in the process, starting at the local idea and finishing with a connection. I focus on understanding what makes local led processes successful and adapting this knowledge to different situations and realities.

And in doing so, which types of organisations inspire you?

There are many. For example, PUM’s expert services to local entrepreneurs, Peace Direct’s work with local peace building initiatives, or the BoP Innovation Center’s market inclusion methods. But it is not only from the development sector that The Polis takes its inspiration. The Polis is also inspired by many private sector initiatives and activities; we don’t just look at traditional development actors. To summarise in general terms: we take inspiration from what we observe works for people when it comes to connecting local to global and vice versa.

So how is The Polis different from these and other development projects?

We are not a development project. The Polis model simply connects local ideas to the resources they need. We don´t offer money and we don’t tell people what to do; there´s no developmental agenda. We just offer local ideas a platform so they can connect with organisations and expertise to bring their ideas to life.

Typical development projects work the other way around; external ideas are created before locals come into play. Even development projects that use local led strategies get the order wrong; they don’t impose ideas, but they do still approach carefully selected locals with a bag of money in their hand and.

Can you expand on that?

Typically, projects either try to “pick winners” or look to create change based on specific political or ideological values.  Humans tend to have difficulties in controlling our impulse to guide others towards what we think is right. At The Polis we believe that this filtering is not compatible with what we understand by “local led”. It is not up to us to decide what a bad or a good idea is. Even those organisations that actually put locals behind the steering wheel fail to see this. Yes, they motivate local actors to identify their own problems and to find their own way, but they still put locals in charge of spending previously lined-up money.

And how does the Polis method deal with that problem?

We do two things: the first thing that The Polis does to turn the cycle around is that local initiatives come before any money or solutions come into play. The second one is that global actors don´t select local partners; local actors select the global partners they want to work with. This forces global actors to truly serve local agendas. After all, you can´t give initiative; it´s something people take. The only role of The Polis is to look for partners willing to support local initiatives. Global actors should see The Polis as a gateway to local opportunities, while for local actors The Polis is a bridge between their ambitions and the global tools they need.

What does that bridge look like on the ground? And how do people find it?

Through Local Connectors (LCs); LCs are trained local Polis representatives who listen to local initiatives and make them visible for the global community, something they typically lack.  So LCs are in contact with local individuals and groups and gather their project ideas and requests, only making sure that proposals are legal and feasible; they do not impose or suggest ideas; they do not write proposals. They simply make sure that initiatives are sincere and complete before they are presented to potential partners, and then they introduce these initiatives into the Polis platform.

What will The Polis look like by late 2015?

At the end of 2015 I want to see Local Connectors becoming integrated in our human infrastructure, and actively working with Connected Local Communities (CLCs) to bring local project ideas to the Polis platform and the global community. I also expect the Polis team to acquire a better understanding of local-global dynamics through the interaction with local actors, global partners, and other local led initiatives in our network. In doing so, I am convinced The Polis can contribute to making local led development cooperation more successful and widespread.

Last question: what are your ambitions with respect to your own future? Do you plan to go back to Africa, to Guinea-Bissau for The Polis perhaps?

Going back to Guinea-Bissau is definitely on the cards, but it may have to be to simply visit. The Polis doesn’t let non-locals work locally like that; it’s not the way we do things. A pity.

]]> http://resetweb.org/qa-with-ivanka-puigdueta-head-of-polis-development/feed/ 0 http://resetweb.org/polis-paper-turning-aid-into-effective-cooperation-connecting-local-to-global/ http://resetweb.org/polis-paper-turning-aid-into-effective-cooperation-connecting-local-to-global/#comments Mon, 26 Jan 2015 17:19:44 +0000 The Polis Team http://resetweb.org/?p=986 A Polis Publication by Balder Hageraats and Isadora Loreto.

Instruments based on traditional development aid-thinking suffer from inherent flaw: their focus on governments and institutions rather than people. This leads to unsatisfactory outcomes. International cooperation is supposed to be about local actors and global actors coming together to achieve a common goal, typically improving the lives of people. In reality, the development sector is often too inward looking, institutionalised and unilateral to create such cooperative relations between global and local actors. In this essay we propose a model in which there exists direct and true cooperation between donors and local actors. It considers any further institutional or NGO support as service providers within that cooperative alliance between funders and populations.

Full PDF

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This is where our work comes in: The Polis connects the ideas with the tools.

Since this summer we have a full time team- with further support from other ReSeT researchers and our wider network- working to bring the project to life. The model is very simple in both its basic idea as well as its execution: it connects ideas from people to the resources needed to turn those ideas into reality. Specifically, it connects local ambitions in developing communities to global expertise and funding. There is no complicated framework, and no political agenda. The Polis connects demand and supply, and that’s about it.

We call such connections LLCs (“Local-led Connections”), reflecting the fact that it is always about local people who demand services. This happens through human infrastructure: a representative (“Local Connector”, or LC) listens to local communities and people, and takes the received information back into The Polis. There, people with access to global resources and networks (rather unoriginally called “Global Connectors”, or GC) offer the resources needed to make the ambition work. Once they have come back with sufficient alternatives, the initial local actor chooses their preferred solution. After that moment, the Polis’ work ends and all that is left is a relationship between local client and global supplier(s). Naturally we will continue to keep an eye out, ensuring that we will learn and grow through practical application.

There are of course a number of details that we are skipping here: where do Local and Global Connectors come from? How do they interact? How do you select connected communities? Where do you get the money from? How did you come up with such utter genius? You will just have to trust us that we have the details covered. Right now we only want to give you a general idea of where we are going with this.

Simple and effective, The Polis is an outcome focused method that brings together actors that complement and need each other, one type local and the other global. It does this through simple communication flows with basic online connectivity to support communications and information exchange.

The strength of The Polis lies in its dogged focus on being local-led. Unlike many developmental projects, the agenda is at no point set by global actors or large organisations. The Polis mechanism ensures that resulting projects always respond to local ideas, and never to global ideology or interests. Moreover, overheads and organisational pressures are minimal, and the model exhibits no external imposition of any kind: ideas are local, decisions are local, evaluations are local. Benefits are global.

(Editor’s note: Our marketing department worked very hard on this local/global slogan, so be prepared to find it scattered across all our publications from now on.)

Impact is global not just because the model is so simple and easy to implement, and therefore can be replicated in any potential community worldwide. It also benefits everyone involved. This is not just the group of local people who are in charge of their projects, but also the global actors who compete to supply their services and expertise, as well as observers of Polis dynamics interested in understanding underlying dynamics.

The group of interested observers would of course also include us, the ReSeT team that is so enthusiastically developing the Polis at the moment. By seeing what kind of activities and relationships grow out of the resulting dynamics, we get invaluable insights into local-global dynamics. This is one of the fundamental questions facing human society worldwide, and we, the Polis team, will have first rank seats. It allows us to better understand the nature of our work- international relations and cooperation- as well as further strengthen the method of the Polis itself.

If you would like to know more about The Polis, or if you would like to contribute ideas or connections, please contact us at info@resetweb.org.

Looking forward to hearing from you,

The Polis Team