Lessons Learned: Perceptions and Partnership

By Elizabeth McClintock, CMPartners, LLC

Between April and September 2012, I was involved in two initiatives in Burundi: the design and execution of a capacity building program for local implementing partners assisting ex-combatants to reintegrate into their home communities; and the oversight of an evaluation of a construction project meant to facilitate community reconciliation via job provision, training, and the building of community-police relations. The implementation of each of these initiatives raises a number of issues – some of which are obvious and recurrent, others that are particular to the project – and all of which are important to keep at the forefront of any development work in Burundi. The two issues I'd like to comment on here are the role of perceptions in program design and implementation, and the advantages and challenges of partnership.

PERSPECTIVE
Working in a post-conflict context (and frankly, any context) requires that we be prepared to constantly test our assumptions, whether we are an 'old hand' at development work or a debutante who is making their first visit to a developing country. In the first instance, returning after a year-long absence from a country in which I've worked on and off for almost fifteen years, it was easy to fall into predictable patterns of thinking: "I understand the political dynamics"; "Our contribution to the Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) program will be uniformly accepted and appreciated"; "Our work is remembered and lauded". How things change.

Articulating first to myself, then to our team and finally to our government interlocutors the value of our capacity building program was no easy task. Despite its impact, our past work was not necessarily remembered, key actors – and hence, their interests – had changed, and perhaps most importantly, the context within which we were working was no longer "post-conflict" per se. At each level, my assumptions were informing program design and implementation and not always in ways that would lead to the project's success. Shifting my own perspective was one of the first steps I needed to take upon arrival in country in order to improve the chances that the project's goals could be achieved.

On the flip side, a completely new perspective can bring welcome change. In June, I was joined in Burundi by a graduate student employed to conduct an evaluation of a (different) development project managed in part by The Bridgeway Group. Admittedly, despite her expertise, I was worried about her lack of experience working in a developing country. I simply wasn't sure how that lack of experience would impact the quality of the evaluation. In the end, the situation provided me with another opportunity to test my assumptions – particularly as regards the necessity of having relevant country experience in order to do an effective project evaluation.

The evaluator brought a fresh pair of eyes to both the country and to the specific project. Her approach was sensitive, professional, and well-informed. The questions she asked were respectful, thoughtful, and challenging – resulting in surprising answers and a great deal of learning for all of the participants: the local implementing organization; the Bridgeway Group; the beneficiaries; and, one hopes, eventually the donor. And yet, there are limits to our understanding. The filters we use to interpret the data gathered depend, in part, on our understanding of context. Without that understanding, opportunities for misinterpretation abound. The lesson I drew from this experience is typically ambiguous: context matters and…. it doesn't, at least not as much as we sometimes think. There is a fine line that we walk between having expertise to offer and knowing how that expertise applies in context. And while both are critical, it is not always easy to determine which may be more important in the moment.

PARTNERSHIP

The second lesson I took away from my recent work in Burundi was the value of partnership. While I have not underappreciated this value in the past, this particular project offered me a chance to be more intentional: Partnership with whom? For what purpose? Under what circumstances? Certainly, working in the DDR sector we had to build partnerships with the government, their implementing partners, and, by extension, the beneficiaries themselves. I also had to rebuild a partnership with the members of my own team, some of whom I'd not worked closely with in several years. These partnerships were not always easily established. For example, initial resistance to the project from the coordinator of the lead government institution surprised me, given the perceived efficacy of previous work with them. To understand and ultimately overcome the resistance required that my team first partner with individuals within the institution and then build a coalition, involving the implementing partners to demonstrate how the skills were being used in the field. It was only midway through the program that the coordinator began to appreciate how the project might help him to achieve his own programmatic goals and this realization came about as a result of seeing us work in partnership.

Perhaps more significantly, this particular piece of work has forced me to consider how we model the very "capacity building" skills that we share with beneficiaries. Throughout the project, decisions about materials, program structure, roles, and responsibilities have increasingly been made 'in partnership' with our government counterparts and the beneficiaries. While these decisions have always been made in consultation with others, the idea of 'partnership' involves a different level of engagement. It implies that, as a team, our behavior is congruent with our training curriculum, program implementation decisions, and management of external relationships – in other words, that we build our own capacity as we are building the capacity of others. It implies that responsibility for success is shared at all levels: program conception, implementation, and outcomes. And it implies that all partners have both the right and the responsibility to engage in a dialogue that will lead to more effective development projects.

Again, many of the lessons are not new. Perhaps then what is important is taking the time to reflect and becoming more purposeful in how we apply these lessons in the work that we do in Africa, and elsewhere.