An apple a day to keep the climate at bay?

A few weeks back I posted on the 400 Fruit Trees project in Kilkenny. Well, I am now delighted to see that they have documented the launch of the project and edited it into a great wee video which you can watch here. The video provides some background on the Transition Town movement as well as the Fruit Trees project itself. Happy to see that they are working with the Irish Seed Savers Association to reintroduce native Irish apple varieties. Something simple that could be easily tried elsewhere with a bit of planning and enthusiasm and the right partners.

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.

Factsheets for community development practitioners now available online

The Rural Community Network has redeigned and now made available online their series of factsheets for rural community development workers. Here are two relevant examples, Partnership Working and Undertaking Community Consultation. Many others are available here.

Research Partnerships

Tom Crowley's presentation, Degrees of freedom: applied development research in Ethiopa through a south-north partnership programme, highlighted the impact of a joint MSc Rural Development programme offered by UCC and Mekelle University. Apparently this is the first programme of its kind in Ireland which I found surprising. It is certainly an interesting partnership, built on a strong history of collaboration. The programme certainly appears to be responding to an identified need and one which seems to be diversifying as there is a growing trend in students coming from NGO sectors. The programme combines a mixture of distance education methods and face-to-face sessions. The partnership hopes to develop this further into web-based learning.

It is great to see such partnerships developing. I often wonder why there are not more such partnerships developed between Irish universities and counterparts overseas (maybe with Minister Kitt's recent announcement there will be). I also believe that distance education modes of delivery for courses such as rural development are areas where Irish universities can compete with their counterparts in the UK (such as Wye, now Imperial College), Europe and Australia.

From the research perspective such partnerships can be very productive and add significantly to the capacity building and enhancement component. In fact both go hand-in-hand as Tom pointed out, although his presentation focused on the capacity building component. I have been involved in such research partnerships myself and have seen the incredible synergies that can be obtained by bringing national, regional and international resources and staff to bear on important problems. The TaroGen Project I believe is an excellent example of such a research partnership which explored and found sustainable solutions to a critical agriculture problem facing the Pacific region. While addressing this problem it also made important strides in building capacity in respective countries and contributed to the development of relevant postgraduate courses at the regional University of the South Pacific.

Mary Manandhar described an interesting participatory PEER research approach that was used in her work with partners to research and strengthen advocacy and action for maternal survival in Zambia. I imagine such an approach would be of interest to many other practitioners.

Effective facilitation, have you got what it takes?

A good facilitator is essential for the development of successful participatory process. A massive industry of trainers, consultants and information providers has grown up around facilitation and those who can guide community and stakeholder engagement. Here are some online resources that you might find useful if you find yourself in the role of facilitating groups or meetings or trying to initiate and plan partnerships.

The University College Dublin (UCD) Adult Education Centre has excellent online resources and tips for those working with adult learners. The resources include tips for The Role of the Facilitator and Effective Facilitation. The site also includes additional useful material on other aspects of adult learning.

The Harvard Negotiation Project has an online Facilitation Handbook which has tools and tips for facilitators. Although working in conflict resolution the principles are basically the same. The handbook can also be downloaded as a pdf file.

Student Life at the University of Guelph has some clear and simple tips for Effective Facilitation, as does the University of Michigan.

The Human Rights Education Handbook has excellent sections on The Practice of Facilitation and Strategies for Effective Facilitation.

The Thiagi Group has alot of useful resources that might be valuable to facilitators. It has many freebies including Tips for Facilitators. There is also a section on the Secrets of Successful Facilitators.

The Mental Health Promotion Unit of Canada has a Train-the-Trainer manual that lays down the law in terms of what is required for Effective Facilitation.

Finally, this Training Workshop might be useful for those preparing people to undertake facilitation.

Here are some useful Icebreakers and Energizers that you might use as part of your facilitation.

Of course there is no substitute for getting stuck in and learning from practice and experience.

Here is a quick checklist and 'to do' guide from the FAO that you might want to read before taking the plunge!

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'

The 'Effective Engagement' toolkit

One of the better community engagement resources that I was able to access and use while working overseas was the 'Effective Engagement' kit developed by the Department of Sustainability and Environment in Victoria, Australia. The 'Engagement Kit' comes in three parts, all downloadable from the website:

Book 1: An Introduction to Engagement
Book 2: The Engagement Planning Workbook
Book 3: The Engagement Toolkit

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