Who should be leading?

Summary:

Beware of putting the cart before the horses

Who should be leading?

Roger_jg 1182422295|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Briefly, there are two main approaches to delivering assistance. One that comes from the outside and tells people what they need and what they should do, think FMI or World Bank or some (many?) NGOs. The other that comes from the people, who say “This is what we want and this is the help we need”.

What should be the approach chosen by a volunteers-run organisation? Is there a middle way? This is an important point to discuss and here is an example to illustrate the dilemna.

A small community in Africa believes that a good education helps the youths to find better jobs and therefore earn a better living which will benefit the whole community. They decide to built a school and request help from the organisation.

In the “It’s the community who lead” model, the volunteer will support the community in their goal of building a school. After all, that's what they want.

In the “FMI” model it is the organization that tells the community what to do, that needs, assets and community skills need to be assessed first and that only then the decision will be taken to built or not a school.

Who knows better? I think it is irrelevant. What is relevant is the situation. For instance, there may be a school in a nearby village that can take the children on board. This school may be 10-20 km away from the community, but it is possible that developing a bus service between the two communities will be more profitable for both communities. The organizations and teh community should be open minded to different solutions.

My point here is that there shouldn't be any narrow-minded position and that the dogma “the Community/Organization knows better is irrelevant”. The consequence of this approach is that mechanisms are needed to evaluate options and to decide in collaboration with the community which solution is better.

Roger_jg

Re: Who should be leading?

SolinaJoki 1182516098|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

At the two extremes, we have:

• the "community", who know their needs and wants better than anyone else, but perhaps have a limited view of the wider world due to limited communication links, internet access, etc.

• the "experts" (forgive the term; it was all I could think of), perhaps established philanthropic organizations who work in the particular field, who have extensive knowledge of what is feasible along with the technical expertise to make it happen, proven by experience

Somewhere in the middle we have the "organization" we are envisioning, who have knowledge of what is needed by the community and knowledge of what is available in the wider world through internet access, etc.

Perhaps the "organization" should act as a mediator between these two extremes, to work with the "community" to establish an outline for the project and find "experts" who are willing to work further with the community. Perhaps the function of the "organization" would be to have extensive knowledge of what "experts" are out there in the wider world and to match up "communities" with the "experts" most likely to be able/willing to help.

In my personal experience with volunteer organizations attempting to help, the organization is trying to re-invent the wheel with every project, whereas there are established "experts" out there who have already invented this particular wheel and are applying their knowledge and experience where most effective.

To relate my thoughts to Roger's, perhaps the "organization" could act as matchmaker between the "community" and established "experts" to define the most feasible project and match it up with the most feasible solution.

Katie

Re: Who should be leading?

Roger_jg 1182750951|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Katie,

I share your vision of where such "organization" would fit best in the world of philanthropy. Not re-inventing the wheel is fundamental too.

The advantage of "match making" is that it opens the organisation to more people, though, "expert" in one field would know better and faster where to find appropriate help, but there are a lot of basic tasks that do not require expertise!

Katie's matchmaking + Ben's online self manage knowledge distribution seems to point the "organisation" toward a capacity building role where the leader remains the community. Though there is a risk the community might not take the best direction. There is something to explore here viz. the initial question.

What you say?

~R

Re: Who should be leading?

timedesk 1182803392|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

We could learn something from this model http://openacs.org/governance/ In that community they faced the same problem with 11588 members, and developers in all corners on the globe contributing code and ideas. I have been part of the community for years and found it to work pretty well.

last edited on 1182803983|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover by timedesk + show more