Mind the Gap - Gender

Ireland has a long way to go compared to its Scandinavian neighbours in terms of closing the gender gap as highlighted by the Gender Equity Index. I wonder how the gender gap would appear if it was possible to disaggregate the data based on rural or urban location?

The State of Civil Society

The newly released CIVICUS Global Survey of the State of Civil Society: Volume 1 Country Profiles and Volume 2: Comparative Perspectives draws on information collected by the CIVICUS Civil Society Index (CSI) project in more than 45 countries. Northern Ireland is included as one of the sampled countries. The books explore civil society’s accountability, its relationship to the state and business, and its role in governance and development, among other issues. Development of the Northern Ireland 'country paper' was led by the Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action (NICVA) and the CSI project represents the first-ever attempt to put the civil society concept into practice in Northern Ireland.

The Northern Ireland report can be downloaded here or a brief Executive Summary here.

Partnership! - huh - what is it good for?

Anyone who has been involved in planning for effective partnership will know what a difficult job it is. While there are many benefits, there are an equal number of challenges and pitfalls. And it is managing these challenges and pitfalls that ultimately contribute to a successful partnership, one that is built on trust, honesty and openness. Further, anyone who has tried to assess and evaluate the impact or success of a partnership will equally know what a difficult task this is too. And all too often, those involved in partnership brokering don't even bother to find out. So while the language and rhetoric of partnership abounds and several such partnerships have been set up in Ireland to address issues of inequality, the effort put into assessing and evaluating the impact and success of such partnerships does not match this.

What is the evidence that such collaborations and partnerships contribute to improved implementation of programmes, to fairer and more equitable outcomes? There is not much I am afraid but that is hardly surprising. Measuring and assessing the impact and success of partnership working is difficult to evaluate. The outcomes are not necessarily tangible or easily measured in terms of number of outputs of physical entities. More often than not, the success or impact of a partnership can be gauged in terms of social capital that is built. And such intangibles may only have physical impact much further down the track.

Recently, the Institute of Public Health in Ireland has come up with a series of useful publications in relation to partnerships. Anyone involved in brokering a partnership or assessing a partnership will surely find the contents of these publications useful. How often have I heard local umbrella community organisations highlight the need for more skills and capacity in these areas of partnership working. Well, there are some useful tools and guidance here.

There are 3 publications:

1. Partnerships: A Literature Review

2. Partnerships: The Benefits

3. Partnerships: Community Involvement and Perceptions of Health Inequalities

I want to focus particularly on assessment of partnerships because the publication Partnerships: The Benefits describes an elegant and useful evaluation tool. This is called the Partnership Evaluation Tool (PET). Although developed in a health context it is practical in any partnership setting. PET involves participatory working with partnership members to identify particular benefits important in the partnership such as connections, learning, actions and impacts. Partnership members then identify a range of indicators that might contribute to realising these particular benefits. Indicators are scored on a scale of 0-5, the data can then be analysed and presented on a typical spidergram (as shown top right) or polygon.

If you are serious about your partnership and wish to avoid perpetuating arm's length partnerships or unequal power relations you might want to consider what is said in these publications and avail yourself of the useful PET tool.

The Smart Toolkit; evaluating information products and services

Communication is vital for rural development. But what makes communication effective? Who bothers to find out? Seemingly few, after all evaluation of communication tools and products is involved and complex. Thankfully some organisations involved in information documentation and dissemination have placed emphasis on evaluating the effectiveness of their products and services such as newsletters, websites, training events and databases and dossiers. The Smart Toolkit, which is a collaboration between CTA, KIT and IICD, is one example of such an evaluation toolkit. Follow the links on the left hand side of the website and it will take you to the original toolkit (which is currently being updated).

Partnership Evaluation Toolkit

The Institute of Public Health in Ireland are about to launch a Partnership Evaluation Toolkit.

'A Partnership Evaluation Tool (PET) has been developed to help multisectoral
partnerships to monitor their development, to assess emerging benefits and to
identify areas for further development. Developed as a web-based resource, the
PET will be available on www.partnershiptool.ie for any partnership to use to
support its own assessment and development, and will be showcased at the event.'

Participation and partnerships: love 'em or loathe 'em?

Preparing for a bit of teaching on participation and partnerships I am reminded of the emotion that such elements arouse when it comes to development of any sort. I have posted on this before in relation to recent policy trends here in Northern Ireland (NI) and how such 'feel good' words like 'participation', 'partnerships', 'bottom-up' 'community' and 'empowerment' have come to dominate the technobable emanating from the EU and which trickles down to all regions of the union. In fact, it is no different at the global level and such terminology dominates EU international development policy, as it does other global donors. The big question is whether such approaches to rural development in NI (and I suppose elsewhere?) really work, a question already posed by Dr Sally Shortall in the above posting. This was the type of question I was always grappling with in my project management work overseas. Although there were anecdotes of impact and lots of agency back slapping few seemed interested or willing to put in the hard work of measuring impact. How do such approaches contribute to the economic and environment regeneration of rural areas; social advancement and political stability that surely make up the arena of rural development? Such approaches do not come cheap. There have been some studies in NI on this area but from what I have read (limited!) the level of evaluation or measurement of impact has been minimal. Surely a very interesting and rewarding (and necessary?) piece of research for postgraduate study!

Personally, I belong to the school of practice that supports partnership and participatory approaches to development because I have seen benefits and positive impacts in the field, even if fairly localised (although I support more systematic studies of impact). For a good introduction to the beneficial impacts of participatory approaches to rural development in developed and developing countries, read Participation in Strategies for Sustainable Development. However, like all good development process 'good quality' must prevail. The ambiguity of meaning attached to participation and partnership mean they are open to interpretation and therefore variability in practice. Many typologies and ladders of participation have been devised as a way of categorizing levels of, or commitment to, participation with the recognition that participation by default is not necessarily a good thing. In fact, some types of involvement undermine rather than support, effective participation, leading to manipulation or at best a degree of tokenism. At its most extreme the practice of participation might be dangerous, open to abuse and possibly reinforce unfair and dishonest power structures. Even though it is almost 40 years old, Arnstein's Ladder of Participation is still an excellent example of the differences between effective participation and non-participation. Jules Pretty's Typology of Participation is another and both can guide us in the practice of 'good participation'. Clearly participation can mean different things to different people but it is only by aiming for the higher levels, citizen control and self-mobilisation, that real empowerment or transformation will occur. The irresponsible use of participatory development has been extensively critiqued in academic circles in Participation: The New Tyranny? However such criticisms have been countered and challenged by the many participatory practitioners in the field who continue to enrich development dialogue with examples of participatory development that is relevant, ethical and responsible but above all, effective. Participation: From Tyranny to Transformation is one example of recent responses to this criticism. Although both books review and critique participation in a global development context there is much in both to inform thought and analysis for rural development in NI. Of course, one of the main mechanisms for ensuring that good quality participation is practised in the field is through effective and relevant training at universities and other institutes. This takes me back again to the Learning and Teaching for Transformation initiative which I have posted and written about many times. How many Irish universities or institutes involved in rural development, or any development for that matter, critcally reflect or research areas such as 'participation', 'partnerships', 'empowerment' and so forth despite these elements dominating the international and rural development policy arena? Further, how many are really preparing rural development practitioners to be effective agents of rural development change, equipped with the necessary skills, attitudes and behaviours? Actually, I am aware of one such programme at Queen's which aims to enhance the participatory skills of students (and staff?). Despite trying to canvass others, I am aware of no similar programmes or even if the Queen's programme is continuing.

When planning for effective partnership the same principles and ethics that ensure quality participatory process obviously apply if the partnership in question is desired to be a 'real' and 'equal' partnership, not one that is considered an 'arm's length' partnership. Again, some of the information on my earlier postings on partnership will be useful in this context. Recently, I came across this postgraduate student paper on Partnerships in NI which provided some interesting perspectives on local partnerships that might be of interest to some readers working with partnerships.

Finally, I wanted to close with something rather scathing I once heard said about partnerships. I have no recollection who might have said it but I think we can safely assume that he or she belonged to the sceptical school of thought,

'partnership is the suppression of loathing in pursuit of funding'

Sustainable Measures, developing community indicators

Sustainable Measures

'develops indicators that measure progress toward a sustainable economy, society
and environment. Sustainable Measures works with communities, companies,
regional organizations and government agencies at all levels.'

You can search their extensive database on indicators for various sectors and also download training materials.

Everything you wanted to know about M&E (but couldn't be bothered searching for)

Those of you familiar with the participatory monitoring and evaluation tool 'most significant change' may be familiar with Rick Davies who was involved in its development as an M&E tool. It is a methodology that uses simple stories to capture project and programme impacts and is rather elegant and simple to use. Rick runs a couple of useful websites and blogs and these would be of great interest to those involved in M&E especially that which is participatory or wishes to involve target beneficiaries and partners in the process and as a learning/capacity-building exercise also. Firstly, there is MandE News which has current news including upcoming training events and links to useful M&E resources. Rick Davies on the Internet has links to many of Rick's publications on M&E. Finally, Rick on the Road is Rick's weblog.

Anyone involved in M&E should find a great deal to interest them here.

BRIDGE, a one-stop shop for gender

I have posted a couple of times now on work that highlights the need for improved data gathering related to gender and gender research. If not already aware, practitioners in this area might be interested in the work of BRIDGE, housed at IDS, University of Sussex.

'BRIDGE supports gender advocacy and mainstreaming efforts by bridging the gaps
between theory, policy and practice with accessible and diverse gender
information in print and online.'

BRIDGE covers a range of themes and provides an array of information types. In relation to the issue of improved data and information systems in relation to gender the BRIDGE Cutting Edge Packs may be of interest.

The specific Cutting Edge Pack on Gender and Indicators may be particularly useful. It contains both an overview of issues and resource pack which has links to relevant information available online. The pack contains an interesting section on the need for engendering statistics systems and data collection.

Has anyone had experience using the BRIDGE resources? Have you found them useful?