Interpretations of Sustainability: Self-sufficiency or Inter-dependence?

By Rick Davies, Centre for Development Studies, Swansea.

E-mail: rick@shimbir.demon.co.uk

Published in the ODA Social Development Newsletter, June 1996.

In 1992-3 the ODA Evaluation Department carried out a series of evaluations of UK NGO projects funded via Joint Funding Scheme. I was involved in three of the five sets of evaluations. These included three projects in Kenya funded via CAFOD, two projects in Burkina Faso funded via Christian Aid, and two projects in Orissa, India, funded by Oxfam. While an official synthesis of these evaluations has been written by Martin Surr (1995), and the process was concurrently reviewed by myself, and subsequently by Elizabeth Wade-Brown of CAFOD, experience since then has shown that there are still "lessons" to be learned from that experience.

Ironically they are both lessons from projects, or sites within projects, which were at the time regarded as least successful in terms of their official project objectives. Nevertheless the experiences of contacts with these two small projects do have direct relevance for how major NGOs, such as Proshika in Bangladesh, could be addressing the task of ensuring the sustainability of their impact, and in fact how they can be sustainable as organisations themselves. The two small projects were: (a) Loodokilani Livestock Restocking Programmes and Kajiado District Livestock Improvement Programme both implemented by the Ngong Diocese Development Education Team (DET), and (b) The ACECO savings and credit programme in Burkina Faso.

The lessons can be drawn by recounting three stories about the DET, ACECO and Proshika. In the case of the DET, although they only had four staff (all male), their project had a range of activities. These included para-veterinary training, upgrading of stock through cross-breeding, restocking of poor households herds , provision of hand held spray pumps (for ticks), and a veterinary drug store. As part of a wider effort to try to understand the project from the perspective of the four staff, in addition to its official presentation in project documentation, I carried out a series of ranking exercises using filing cards with the DET staff. One of those exercises involved writing the names of each of the five project activities on separate card and then asking the DET Coordinator, and his three staff who were with him at the time, to rank these activities in terms of their sustainability. I did not explain what I meant by this term, but hoped it had some meaning to them, and waited to see what it was.

To my surprise this exercise did not present them with any difficulty, and they quickly completed the task. When I asked them to explain to me what they had produced, the Coordinator said the cards were placed in the form of a column, and each card was like a stone, making up that column. If the top card was taken away it would be of no consequence to the others. But if the bottom card was taken away, it's absence would undermine all the others. They would be unsupported and fall down. The top card described the activity of providing hand-pumps at a subsidised price. The bottom card described the veterinary drug store, based in one of the more central locations of the project activities. Its ranking was justified as follows: (I) It is self-financing from its own sales revenue, (ii) It protects what people already have in terms of livestock, (iii) The income from it had already been used to subsidise the selling price of hand held spray pumps, and it was expected that it could help fund livestock restocking in the future. In the case of this project sustainability was not limited to autarky, a form of independent self-sufficiency, but extended to include the ability to sustain other activities of value in addition to itself. A significant difference.

In Burkina Faso, Christian Aid had been funding ACECO, an association of about 30 village based savings and credit associations. In the village of Korezena, one of the evaluation teams meetings was with the members of the savings and credit group, as well as other members of the village (male and female, but mainly male). Through an adaptation of the Venn diagram method five community organisations were identified and discussed. We then asked those present which of those organisations had been the most successful, in the past year. As with the Kenyan livestock project, we did not define what we meant by success but sought their interpretation through the responses to the question.

The savings and credit group was judged as the least success of all five organisations. Discussion of the reasons given for the differences in rank order suggested that the main criteria of success were: (I) the degree to which the group had secured resources from outside the village with the minimal degree of effort, and (ii) the extent to which those resources met the basic needs of a large number of people. On these criteria the savings and credit group was a failure. It was many years since it had been re-financed by the ACECO regional office, it relied primarily on local resources, and it served a relatively small number of people, in contrast to the grain bank. In the case of this village, and one suspects others also involved with ACECO, self-sufficiency was clearly not what the group thought was important. It saw the village as being engaged with the world around it and seeking to obtain the best terms in any exchanges with it. Even the Manager of ACECO, when asked to rank ACECO's objectives in order of importance, placed "village level self-sufficiency (non-dependence on external donor assistance)" as the least important out of 12 objectives. In contrast ACECO's donors clearly saw financial self-sufficiency as much more important, stressing the need to make "better (more efficient) use of existing local capital within the Oudalan region", and the potential that membership organisations such as ACECO had to fund themselves .

In Bangladesh, Proshika is one a large number of NGOs which work with poor people through structures of small groups of up to 30 members, which in turn are organised into larger hierarchically organised structures generically called "peoples organisations". In 1995 Proshika was working with 650,000 people. I was asked to look the monitoring procedures in the Proshika Phase 5 programme with a view to identify how more emphasis could be given to the use of qualitative data and to peoples participation in monitoring. One of their existing mechanisms, which was included within the scope of this review, was a large scale system for grading the performance of groups by pre-set criteria (the Group Information System). The top grade in this system is A+, and within this grade groups are considered to have "graduated" from Proshika. Graduation is seen in terms of self-reliance, specifically, they will no longer use Proshika credit or staff support for the implementation of their projects.

This definition of the achievement of what is essentially an institutional development objective (group development) was problematic on at least two fronts. Firstly, within the Logical Framework that had been negotiated with donors the Purpose level statement referred to increased resource use by Proshika members. as a desired outcome. However the GIS definition of group "graduation" seems to preclude the continued use of Proshika provided resources. On the one hand while in the early to late stages of groups development the increasing use of Proshika's services can be seen as an an indicator of group development, at the final stage of group development continued use suddenly becomes a negative indicator. The other problem is more serious. It is hard to see why, if Proshika's savings and credit services, or training services, have any merit from a users point of view, why Proshika would then expect those users to want to cease using them ! Do ordinary businesses stop taking loans when they grow in size, do they cease to invest in staff training ? Furthermore, no plans or arrangements seem to have been made by Proshika for transferring users custom to other institutions that were willing to have a more ongoing relationship.

This unresolved inconsistency seems to exist because of a continued concern by many NGOs, and donors, about a bugbear called "dependency", an idea whose deconstruction is well overdue. Are people who continue to want to use an NGO services "dependent" ? or are they people who are exercising choice based on a strategic assessment of their environment ? The interpretation of dependency easily leads to a paternalistic view that NGOs then have a responsibility to make choices for them, such as withdrawing a service they have used up to now because "they need to be independent". It also involves an uncritical and questionable assumption that their services have been of such value that beneficiaries could become dependent on them, unable or unwilling to look elsewhere.

The alternative was posed to Proshika, that it should be up to users to decide when they want to cease using Proshika's savings and credit services, and training services. The problem of Proshika's ability to afford the provision of those services should be addressed by charging a price for its services, to groups who are beyond a certain level of maturity (as defined by the GIS), which can be increased over time to gradually reflect Proshika's real cost of providing those services. The continued use of services, paid for at increasingly real market prices, would provide Proshika and its donors will real feedback - about the value of their services and the ability of the "ex" Proshika groups to mobilise the resources necessary to pay for them. More importantly, in the longer term continued use would be a indication of sustainability, in the wider sense identified by the DET. If the "graduated" Proshika groups are generating enough surplus to be able to afford other peoples services at market rates, they are in turn enabling those services to be sustained. Sustainability in this sense is about inter-dependence on the basis of different organisations respective specialisations, not isolated self-sufficiency..

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References

Davies, R (1995) Monitoring Procedures in the Proshika Phase 5 programme: The role of Qualitative Data and Peoples Participation in the context of the Logical Framework. A report for the ODA. Swansea, CDS.

Davies, R., Athayde, C., Simonazzi, A., Kibuywa, E., Mulwa, F., Young, J., Slavin, H., Bennel, B. (1994) An Evaluation of Four ODA Co-Funded CAFOD Projects in Kenya. Vol II. London. ODA.

Davies, R., Hailu, A., Wade-Brown, W. Thieba, D., Muller, E., Repila, J., Droho, A., Dicko, F., Ouedraogo, G., Compaore, J. (1994) An Evaluation of Two ODA Funded Projects in Burkina Faso. London. ODA.

Surr, M (1995) Evaluations of Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) Development Projects: Synthesis Report ODA, London.

Afterword:

1. See MacLure, R .(1995) Non-Government Organizations and the Contradictions of Animation Rurale - Questioning the Ideal of Community Self-reliance in Burkina-Faso. Revue Canadienne D Etudes Du Developpement-Canadian Journal of Development Studies, Vol.16, No.1, pp.31-53. The following abstract is from BIDS.

"In Francophone Africa animation rurale is a method of intervention which generally aims to foster community self-reliance through non-formal education and selective material and technical service support. A study of three foreign-funded NGO programmes in Burkina Faso reveals, however, that animation rurale tends to stimulate client-patron relations between rural communities and their aid agency benefactors, a consequence of the structures and methods of intervention and the prevailing socio-political context of subsistence village societies. A key problem is not the outcome of short-term dependency, but rather misguided assumptions about community self-reliance as a goal of development assistance. The paper argues that animation rurale programmes can be move effective if they aim to transform inevitable ties of rural dependence into relations of interdependence between village and non-village institutions."

2. In at least two separate forums some NGOs have voiced resistance to the idea of NGOs withdrawing from their relationships with their beneficiaries, and placed the blame for this idea on donors.

In July 1995 I attended the ODI / Aga Khan Foundation (UK) Discussion Seminar on "Quality and Quantity in Rural Development: the Challenges facing NGOs in Scaling up", held in London. In that meeting UK NGO representatives argued that "Disengagement is a fashionable term, but unclear usage impedes clear thinking. Programme proposals often include disengagement as an objective without giving a clear exposition of what is meant. Does it mean that the NGO will withdraw entirely, or change its role ? Donor agencies often view sustainability in terms of programme disengagement, whereas NGOs tend to view it differently". The reference to disengagement specifically in project proposals may be linked with the fact that "..disengagement is a donor concern and not one that is usually expressed by NGOs them selves".

In early 1966 Peter Lanzet wrote "Some Thoughts on the Mid-term Perspective of Voluntary Action for Development in India: Issues and Experiences Derived From Study/action Projects in India". In this paper he documented views expressed by "42 leaders of voluntary organisa tions and NGOs on the question of peoples empowerment and NGO Role Transformation" in India. He records that "The Conference thought that withdrawal is a donors perception, Donors push it onto NGOs, NGOs push it on to the People's Organisation. But what we are actually witnessing resembles more the transformation of the roles and functions of the organisations involved".

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