Dialogues of knowledge in action

Impressions from Fort Portal, Uganda

Tags: Uganda, Civil Society Building

The Civil Society Building Knowledge programme supports the Kabarole Research Center in Fort Portal, Uganda to elaborate a new initiative that seeks to bring together politicians, policy makers and communities to jointly engage in development dialogue and knowledge generation. Edit Tuboly, Programme Officer at HIVOS, is currently visiting the region and participated in an open space meeting. An impression

Rwenzori Region Program Development

From 12 to 14 November, an Open Space Meeting took place in Fort Portal to begin a process of developing a regional programme for Rwenzori, West Uganda. In total, around 90 people participated from the 5 districts. Four strategic themes emerged on the first day, which were further discussed on the second day. These were: integrating a household view in development, creating grassroots linkages, regionalism/sustainability and research. Some explanation is needed to understand why people came up with these priorities. On the third day, the 4 groups presented their work in a standard format and a one year action plan. Not all groups were able to finish the work plan in time. At the end, elements of the common vision were discussed. The 4 groups took responsibility to make the first steps and all 4 will meet again in March to reflect and make the next step in developing the programme.

Open Mind Meeting

Technically, the “Big Event” was not correctly set up as an Open Space Meeting. Therefore some suggested calling it an Open Mind Meeting. In 2002, an open space meeting was held that had a lot of impact in the region. Compared to that one, I was told, this time there was less excitement and eager planning of activities, but more analysis, reflection and thorough discussion including on assumptions. Participants were also taking stock of the achievements between 2002 and now. Very obvious for all was the empowerment of a big number of people, who were now capacitated with knowledge, skills and had gained self-confidence. Secondly, there is more cohesion in the region. Unfortunately, corruption has increased in the last few years. Due to a.o. donor dependency, voluntarism had been on the decline. However, since 2 years a trend has started that more people take their responsibility for their own development which is also reflected by the increasing number of Community Process Facilitators who are semi-volunteers providing skilled services to communities.

Four thematic strategies

Household view

The most popular group was on integrating a household view in the development work. Most development agencies target communities and groups as the unit they work with. Households are considered the first and smallest social unit where individuals learn how to relate. The household is formed by “those who eat from the same pot”, where individuals learn values, have their role models and learn social behavior. Mutual support systems between family and neighbors are under pressure. But if the parents are not able to provide for their children, if NGO workers tell them what to do, they loose respect and children will look at the NGO worker as their role model. This will create even more dependency on outsiders, loss of ownership and responsibility for the own development. Even amongst the participants very few people communicate at the household level with their partner and children. Decisions are taken without consultation and a lot of subjects are still taboo i.e. the number of children a couple would like to have. By improving communication and equality in relationships within households, it is expected that people will be more able to relate and work in groups, have more self-confidence and ownership over development efforts. By promoting change in attitude at the household level, humanistic values are reinforced, such as taking responsibility for your live, respect, care and social behavior. The appropriate values and ways of communication will be based primarily on the role model families within communities. While still working with groups, these values and change in attitudes will be promoted through a household to household approach.

Grassroots linkages

It was noted that inappropriate NGO interventions right from the beginning often leads to a complete lack of ownership as they are seen to be top down and not addressing the real needs or allowing real inclusion of the people views. Failure to address citizens priority needs, the conditionality to grants of donors and governments and the centralized information collection are seen as obstacles.
The proposed strategy is about coordinated planning and harmonious service delivery at grassroots level, meaningful participation of citizens in planning, implementation and monitoring interventions and sharing of information on development programmes. This should work along the structures that are already in place and parallel to the decentralized governance structures. Information sharing, generating more local revenues and more ownership in development programmes are some of the spearheads that the group will further develop.

Regionalism/Sustainability

This group prioritized a coordinated approach, joint identification and prioritization of regional development issues, strategies and approaches, strengthening of partnerships and networks, joint evaluation of strategies and approaches as being essential in a regional program. Support for the development of regional government and sustainability plans and strategies for all regional structures are needed to make a regional programme work. Among the many obstacles, the issue of ownership, dependency, lack of transparency, lack of information, corruption and inadequate planning and reflection were listed. The action most discussed plenary was the concept of transforming NGOs and networks into social movements as a prime way of improving ownership and long term sustainability. More reflection by the group, but also by existing NGOs and networks are needed to make a strong regional and sustainable program possible.

Research

The role of research in development was discussed. In the beginning it was a struggle to keep the discussions at a conceptual level but later on it went on well, as participants began to realize that added understanding can be achieved by using research methods. Participatory, evidence based action research is needed to identify the real needs of the target group and planning, monitoring and evaluation should be built on these needs and the baseline data collected. The research need to be done with active participation of the targeted communities, the research findings disseminated and feed back into the communities for understanding and ownership over the interventions. Developing research capacity, the creation of a regional research data centre and the strengthening or creation of community information centers were seen as necessary actions to include research as a meaningful tool for a bottom up development strategy.