Author: Alanna Shaikh

Choosing between China and Burma

By Alanna Shaikh | | 2 Comments |

A reader asks “How do I choose between China and Burma for my donation?”

Answer: For once, this one is easy. Don’t choose. Give to the organization’s general emergency fund. They are professionals. They’re not going to spend your donation on Tequila and Beer-Nuts. In fact, legally they can’t. So let them choose where the need is greatest and the resources most scarce.

Admin note: I am off on vacation until June 1st, so this is the last post I’ll be putting up for a while. Check out my sidebars if you need something to read, and stay tuned for a June 1st posting on thing I don’t believe in #18. (In response to Tworque)

Things I believe in #1 – Positive Deviance

By Alanna Shaikh | | 10 Comments |

In every village, there is at least one woman (usually a few) whose children are healthier than the rest. For whatever reason, that woman is better at navigating the complexities of village life and child nutrition. That woman has knowledge and skills which can be taught. You find her, you learn from her, you support her to teach her peers. That is positive deviance. Find the people who deviate from the norm by being more successful. Learn from them.

The original positive deviance programs were nutrition programs, with a specific structure and methodology. These are some nice examples. Positive Deviance remains one of the most powerful tools we have for improving nutrition in the developing world. You can also, however, use the ideas behind positive deviance for more than just nutrition.

Every systems has its positive deviants. People who are better at surviving within it. You don’t need a bunch of outsiders to or foreign experts to find ways to improve your system. Most of the knowledge you need is already there. It’s a profound and powerful idea. It means you improve education by learning from the teachers and principals of high-performing schools. It means you make childbirth safer by talking to maternity nurses and ob/gyns. It means you value the knowledge and experience of the people in the developing world.

When you want to make things better, look inside first. Learn from the people who know it best. After that, bring in your outside experts. See of they have anything add. But most of what you need to know is already there.

Blog Round-up

By Alanna Shaikh | | 0 Comments |

Real life has interfered with my ability to write long pieces, so I’ll post some interesting links:

The Global Integrity Commons links to a depressing account of Nigerian lawmakers gaming the system to conceal gains from corruption.

Kevin points out that invading Burma won’t help anybody access aid. I didn’t even realize people were calling for invasion.

The Overseas Development Institute explains the five things we have to do to address the food crisis.

Things I believe in

By Alanna Shaikh | | 5 Comments |

Here’s what I think actually works in relief and development:

1. Positive Deviance
2. Training of Trainers
3. Primary education
4. Microfinance
5. Most Significant change evaluation
6. Government partnerships
7. Rigorous financial controls
8. Respecting your community partners
9. Evidence-based programs
10. Operational research
11. hiring good consultants to review your plans and programs
12. local volunteers
13. giving your in-country staff hats and t-shirts
14. writing all of your documents in clear, simple language
15. understanding the power of the individual
16. pregnancy transport cooperatives
17. recognizing and learning from failure
18. kitchen gardens
19. conserving water
20. solar cookers
21. giving everyone on earth the ability to choose their own family size
22. literacy
23. numeracy
24. combining local and expat knowledge to create something new
25. posting your policies and organizational mission in a public place
26. bicycles
27. paying your local staff well
28. social marketing
29. educational soap operas
30. the power of angry grandmothers
31. heirloom seeds
32. working with existing institutions
33. skype
34. context-context-context
35. setting up your systems to they default to success
36. text messaging
37. social media
38. breastfeeding
39. citizen journalism
40. oral rehydration salts
41. a moral obligation to help others
42. railways
43. independent media
44. camels
45. mangrove trees

And here is what I don’t believe in:

1. Programs based on broad development theory or any other ideology
2. most volunteer doctors
3. most kinds of evaluation
4. excessive branding
5. grateful beneficiaries
6. all-powerful expatriate leadership
7. overly lavish offices
8. white SUVs
9. neutrality
10. donating your old stuff instead of money
11. living on compound when it’s not required for security reasons
12. conferences
13. conference calls
14. handover ceremonies
15. participatory rapid assessment as it is generally done
16. meetings without agendas
17. hiring your staff for zeal instead of competence
18. bringing people to the US for medical treatment
19. cancer hospitals
20. Paying your people like you think they are working for love and not money
21. technological quick fixes
22. expecting innovation to solve everything
23. computers to automatically improve education
24. having a consultant design your programs
25. jargon
26. valuing hierarchy over initiative
27. calling your field visits “missions”
28. bottled water
29. aggressive promotion of microcredit
30. writing new curricula instead of adapting existing ones
31. single-passenger vehicles
32. goats
33. processed food
34. meetings of over an hour
35. most exchange programs

Over time I will be expanding this list into a series of posts; for now you just get the list. I change my mind frequently as I learn new things, so you may well see things move from one list to the other over time.

Relief and Development, Part Two

By Alanna Shaikh | | 2 Comments |

Adrienne had some great questions in the comments on my last post; I thought they deserved a longer response than another comment would permit.

1) What happens when a relief agency realizes that the emergency isn’t over, but leaves anyway? (And a sub-question – why do they do this? Is it only about the funding?)

It’s almost always about the funding. NGOs that respond to emergency needs are dependent on individual donations and government funding. They do not tend to have endowments or any other financial capacity to fund long-running programs without outside support. Therefore, when UNHCR or OFDA decides to stop supporting their programs in Kashmir or Lira, if they can’t fundraise to keep those programs going, they have no choice but to close up shop and depart. And fundraising for long-running humanitarian emergencies is very difficult – these situations are no longer in the news and they trigger donor fatigue because they begin to seem hopeless.

There are also a few NGOs, such as Doctors without Borders (Medecins sans Frontieres), who have very strict criteria for what constitutes an emergency. They may leave very quickly, because they see their role in the response as over.

I can tell you from the inside that having to close an office where you know there is need is horrible. It’s heartbreaking, and makes you feel like you have failed everyone who depends on you. Closing an office feels like death, and not unreasonably so.

2) How many organizations claim to be in development, but are really just providing relief? (This one in particular bothers me.)

This is a tricky question. Development and relief are not a binary system, or even a continuum. They’re…more of a pie chart. And how much capacity building do you have to do before it counts as development? Also, when you say “Claim to be in development” – do you mean in an analysis of their overall portfolio of programs or the makeup of each individual program? I don’t think anyone is setting out to deceive, but every program is heavily dependent on donor intent.

There are some capacity-building things that every relief program should do. Hire your staff from your target population. Contract out everything locally that you can. Never provide direct services if you can train or support someone in-country to do so instead. Give the communities you partner with a voice in your programs – ask them to evaluate if you are succeeding. Professional organizations do these things, so nearly all provide some level of development assistance.

3) How can relief truly help? If, like you say, relief should “give aid that empowers the communities who receive it,” then shouldn’t relief be kind of like mini-development?

The problem with doing relief as proto-development is the timeframe. In Burma, for example, people need clean drinking water, anti-cholera drugs, emergency food relief, and places to live. We can truck in water, hand out drugs to clinics, and distribute rice and tents very fast (or, we could if there was access) and the faster we do it, the more lives we save. If we train people to build sturdy, sustainable houses and then sell them at an affordable price to people whose houses were destroyed, a lot of people are going to suffer, or die, while they wait for those houses to be built.

In my opinion, there are two powerful cases for pure relief activities, when they truly help. The first is in situations where functional, prosperous communities are damaged by unexpected events. Relief can then sustain life and restore livelihoods so that communities can return to their pre-disaster quality of life. The second is to keep everyone fed, clothed, and housed until the development projects can begin.

What’s the difference between relief and development programs?

By Alanna Shaikh | | 4 Comments |

The simplest breakdown goes like this:

Humanitarian relief programs are focused on rapid start-up, and rapid impact. Implementers of humanitarian programs need to gear up as fast as possible, and start providing necessary assistance as fast as possible. Their primary focus is not building local capacity, sustainability, or monitoring and evaluation. Their primary focus is getting help to people in need. They end when the emergency ends. Relief can come from the outside, and it is a response to some kind of breakdown or disaster.

Development programs are focused on achieving long-term change of some kind, with the intent of improving people’s lives and the lives of their descendants. They involve rigorous planning and ongoing operational research. They are rooted in local capacity building, because they are aimed at change which continues after the project ends. Even if it has outside support, development in the end has to come from inside.

In practice, however, it’s not that simple. (It never is, is it?) Sometimes the emergency doesn’t end. Situations that look like short-term humanitarian emergencies can go on for years, or even decades. Somalia, for example, Afghanistan, or Sudan. Programs designed to provide immediate assistance become a way of life for people in crisis. It would be nice if those programs could be converted into development programs, but it’s very hard to turn a relief program into a development program. The skill sets for the staff are different, for one thing. Building latrines and building community capacity can be a long, long way apart. You can hire new staff, though, or retrain your people. The other hurdle – usually the big one – is that relief programs and development programs have different donors.

Relief programs are generally funded by private donations and specific government donors. The US government, for example, funds emergency relief through the USAID Office of Foreign Disaster Relief. Development programs are far less popular with private donors, and they’re funded by a different set of government agencies. If you want to change the focus of your program, you have to get different different donors. Which mostly you can’t do. Donors don’t like to take over each other’s programs, you won’t be familiar with the new donor’s procedures and evaluation requirements, and development donors plan their financial priorities a long time in advance. They often won’t have money to pick up your newly transformed relief project.

Everyone’s perfect ideal for relief is to give aid that empowers the communities who receive it. Immediate assistance that also builds skills and improves quality of life for the long term. You could, for example, truck in water to a community struck by drought. Then you could dig wells and turn the wells over to local management. You could train a local engineering association or the Ministry of Water on well-digging and irrigation management and safe drinking water. We just need a funding structure that makes it happen.