These are my (arbitrary, personal, non-evidence-based) rules of thumb for identifying good development work:
Bad signs
- Starting out by buying cars.
- Claiming to work in “Africa” without specifying a location.
- More than four partners in your implementation coalition.
- A local to expat ration of less than 5:1 (10 or 15 to 1 – or more – is far better).
- Planning/budgeting for more than 4 visits from HQ a year.
- Extensive use of international interns.
- Using program staff as translators and interpreters.
Good signs
- National staff in management positions over expats.
- Terrifying, highly experienced financial staff and a rigorous financial reporting system.
- Close collaboration with government on its lowest level – with city, town, and village authorities.
- Sharing of monitoring and evaluation data with the communities the projects works with, and training those communities on how to review the data.
- A clear vision of what the target area (group, community…) will look like once the project is over and what will have changed. Approval from the target area/group/community of the vision, and support for it.
- Extensive use of paid local interns.
- Specific rather than standardized indicators for monitoring and evaluation.
- Translators on staff.
PS – Thanks to Brendan for reminding me why I write.
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Photo credit: Citizensheep
Chosen because, you know, judging, justice…look, it’s not easy choosing images.
Would you mind if I add a bit to your good sign number 3?
3. Close collaboration with government on its lowest level – with city, town and village authorities, formal as well as informal ones (elders, opinion leaders whether religious or secular, etcetera.
This is fantastic.
There we go, now I feel better!
Thanks for writing.
B
good! you are writing again. I like the list, esp the third point. a negative could also be working excessively with the highest level of Govt: a sign that you are out of touch with the real world.
oh dear. I’m doing a consultancy for a couple of months for an outfit that ticks most of the boxes in the first list. Another useful one is the ratio of programme to admin staff. With my current client, it is approximately…….. 1:1. Un-freakin’-believable
@Phil and Brendan – thanks for kind words. I hope to do better.
@Michael and kfc Both good additions.
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Alanna, you’ll be unsurprised to know that I’m with you on the cars point. A really good list, I would only add that I think the local to international staff ratio is a good indicator of value for money, but that the ultimate aim in a staff mix is value for money. The ratio is not important in and of itself. Do you think that’s fair?
Philip – I think the core of all of it is value for money and lasting impact. Not enough local staff makes me doubt the lasting impact, but it’s not hard-and-fast.
I love reading, happy to see a new post!
Alanna – I’m also glad to see these blog posts again!
Can I recommend adding to the “Good” list something like “Clarification of shared core values and/or guidelines, with specified areas for local customization”?
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