|
Editorial, volume 3, number 1, 1993
It is a sad paradox that the need for effective communication is so much taken for granted that relatively little attention is paid to assessing and improving the communication skills of development workers. Staff training offered by NGOs tends to focus on the organisations' own needs as institutions, rather than on those of the women and men whose lives will be affected by the interventions they make or fund. Since accountability is, in practice, seen as essentially one-way - from the NGO to its donors - the kind of communication which is recognised and valued revolves around what takes place between the field workers and their head office. These needs are, in turn, translated into demands on the people seeking assistance: they too have to present themselves in a way which the NGO can understand.
Systematic analysis, consistent documentation, and proper management are clearly essential to any relief and development NGO. Without them, decisions are arbitrary, with few guiding principles and little possibility of accumulating and building on experience. However, if accountability is seen as genuinely two-way from the NGO to its recipient, as well as to its donor constituency then the communication imperatives necessarily shift. Learning to listen effectively becomes more important than being able to take immediate decisions. After all, it is far more time-consuming to hear what women and men want to say than to devise rapid methods to extract information from them, so that it can be presented in the appropriate institutional packaging.
The contributions to this issue of Development in Practice illustrate in different ways how, in the haste to meet our own institutional goals, people involved in development work persistently fail to listen, observe, and interpret with disappointing, even damaging, results. In particular, the temptation to take short cuts means that we ignore what those who are not confident and articulate might have to communicate. Our own need for clear-cut results means that we often discard what is significant in favour of what is tangible.
Drawing on her use of oral traditions in communication work with peasant women in Honduras, Rocio Tabora argues that we are defeating our own purpose if we deny subjectivity: since self-esteem is our point of departure, we would do better openly to incorporate people's feelings in the process of development than to see them as an irrelevant distraction to it. Odhiambo Anacleti similarly contends that, rather than seeking to replace them, development must build on the values, skills, and organisational systems which rural communities already possess; and that to do so will entail putting `book knowledge' to one side. Shiney Varghese's article about popular resistance among Dangis in India shows how their failure to understand the underlying cultural motives for the role played by women has meant that, in spite of their radical claims, NGOs unwittingly reinforce patriarchal structures instead of helping women to challenge them. Tom and Francesca Scanlon and Maria Luiza Nobre Lamarao describe in frank detail the realities of working with street children in Brazil. Difficulties in communication here are only partly determined by the practical considerations of everyday survival. The children's profound self-deprecation proves a far more intractable constraint; helping to establish their self-esteem requires almost limitless patience and trust - not the kind of work which will yield quantifiable results within the conventional life-span of a development project. Anne LaFond, in her analysis of the failure of immunisation programmes in Somalia, shows how the determination to achieve targets at all costs was precisely what led the government to rely on coercing mothers, rather than on eliciting their cooperation.
The faith that delivering messages is the same as influencing behaviour has long been rejected, yet, as demonstrated by Alan Rogers (in his article about adult education) and by Hilary Hughes (in hers about health education), it still informs much development practice. In the same way, Duncan Wells illustrates that in the field of information technology, NGOs continue to behave as though delivery of the equipment were itself enough to ensure the full and creative use of its potential.
Deborah Eade
Oxfam (United Kingdom and Ireland)
November 1992
 Previous |
Next Abstract 
|
