You can't logframe partnerships

I took some time over the weekend to read the Rural Community Network's (RCN) interesting publication, The Skills and Knowledge Needed to Take Forward the Practice of Rural Community Development over the next Ten Years. What struck me most were the number of issues and problems that bore a remarkable resemblance to problems that are faced in global international development but also specifically in rural development in developing countries, many of which I had to deal with myself. Two issues interested me in particular. These were the apparent urban biases at work in Northern Ireland rural and community development, or at least perceived by some of the groups involved in the RCN's action research project that was the basis of the above report, and the perceived difficulties in establishing 'effective partnerships' for development. In this posting I want to focus on partnerships as this is an area of practice and research interest that I have had for many years now. But not before briefly addressing urban bias. Urban bias, urban focus or urban-centric problem, call them what you may, are a global phenomenon. There are many reasons for this and it is a complex area but in most of the Asian/Pacific developing countries I worked in the problem was acute. We are talking about countries were agriculture still contributes greater than 25% to the national GDP and it was sad to see 'urban-centric' elites channel funds and resources away from re-investment in the sector. In fact, such urban bias was very much part of the initial stimulus behind the development of rapid rural appraisals, participatory rural appraisals and participation in general. That's another story, for another day!

Partnerships, where do you start? The RCN report talks about 'lip service'. That's as good a place to start as any. Like 'participation', partnerships have been very much the vogue in international rural development and among donor and implementing agencies. Unfortunately, much of this has been indeed 'lip-service' and added considerably to the rhetoric of (rural) development. Having been team leader and manager of an EU-funded DSAP project (Development of Sustainable Agriculture in the Pacific) with 16 participating countries and a vast complexity of national stakeholders and actors tasked with developing 'effective partnerships' I can confidently say that the funding body relegated partnerships to the bottom of the pile when it came to evaluation (with disbursement of funds at the top!). I found that very disappointing for a number of reasons which I won't go into at this stage. However, if like me, you believe that development is about people then there is no getting away from the need and desire to develop 'effective partnerships' as the basis for a people-centred approach to sustainable development. I feel that within the DSAP project we made important contributions in approaches to planning and nurturing 'effective partnerships'. Particularly we made important contributions in the area of evaluating partnerships and creating participatory spaces for partners to reflect on the quality of partnerships. This highlighted problems and bottlenecks but more importantly allowed us to develop strategies to move forward on these issues and develop the partnerships further. Probably our most important achievement in this area was the effort we put into developing an appropriate capacity building strategy to achieve this. Such evaluation, negotiation and mediation, and the corresponding skills building, I personally believe led to better partnerships and certainly moved us away from 'lip-service', 'rhetoric' and 'arm's length partnerships'.

There is a great deal of reference in the RCN report to developing skills in relationship/partnership building, the need for more advanced training and skills development to a 'more meaningful level'. This brings me back to the heading for this posting, You Can't Logframe Partnerships. I don't know if people are familiar with this project planning/management tool but what I am basically trying to say is that partnerships are really not something that can be simply pencilled into a project proposal and expected to evolve because there are budgets and resources. 'Effective partnerships' won't happen without political-will, commitment, honesty, trust and much more but isn't it worth the effort if we are all striving for a more sustainable development, one that is fairer and more just? In the last seven years I have spent considerable time reflecting on partnerships and developed a range of partnership tools (1,2, 3) and I would be glad to share and exchange experiences with others working in partnership development in NI. In fact, I would be delighted to hear from anyone working in the area of partnerships especially building capacity/skills training, there must be some excellent work going on especially in areas related to conflict-resolution.

For those interested, there are also some useful online resources available including: The Partnering Initiative; The IBLF Partnership's Forum; and the Partnership Brokers Accreditation Scheme. You can find excellent partnership toolkits and training opportunities here.

Endnotes:

1. Hunter (2006) You Can't Logframe Partnerships. The Secretariat of the Pacific Community, Suva, Fiji Islands.

2. Hunter, Ali and Halavatau (2007) Like a Bridge over Troubled Water; laying down the tensiometer to reflect on partnerships. The Secretariat of the Pacific Community, Suva, Fiji Islands.

3. DSAP (2007) Effective Partnerships - A Guide. Development of Sustainable Agriculture in the Pacific. The Secretariat of the Pacific Community, Suva, Fiji Islands