Sovereign organisation

1. Shaping Our World Making a case for Sovereign local organisations and social movements By Doug Reeler Community Development Resource Association South Africa (illustrations by Andy Mason)

3.
What kind of civil society organisations are making a difference?

4.
How are they transforming power relations in the world today?

5. In three parts
Two contrasting approaches to working with organisations in development
The idea of Sovereign Organisations
Phakamas Story

6. Everyone sees local organisations and social movements as important for social change
working through or with local partners is big
But we see two contrasting approaches

7. The Conventional Approach:
Which asks:
How do we make change happen?
PROJECTS
(or outcomes-based programmes)
local organisations O O

8.
Many Governments, Donors and larger NGOs use or work through local organisations
to deliver their development agenda
(increasingly around the Millennium Development Goals)
local organisations = outsourced service
providers
funded to fulfil the aims of others

9. Organisational Capacity Building becomes very important
Project management systems and skills
M and E systems and skills
Finance systems and skills
Personnel systems and skills
Governance systems and skills
ICT systems and skills
To fix up local organisations to be more accountable Project delivery vehicles

10.
Project management systems and skills
M and E systems and skills
Finance systems and skills
Personnel systems and skills
Governance systems and skills
ICT systems and skills
To fix up local organisations to be more accountable Project delivery vehicles
To what effect?

11. More specifically: this Capacity Building
(under an external project delivery approach)
often undermines hidden local knowledge
imposes a foreign managerial culture and systems
creates cloned organisations copying Best Practice models
professionalises community-based organisations

12.
The result?
a sector plagued with uncreative, obedient, local CBOs and NGOs
... doing what they are told to do, badly
not being themselves!

13.
Supporting local organisations and social movements
as the core purpose
starting from a different place
A different approach

15. and the people making choices and decisions about the future are those who have the power of organisation behind them

16.
Some donors and NGOs are paying more attention to Civil Society Organisations
not as Project delivery vehicles used to deliver external outcomes
but strong, local organisations and social movements, as outcomes in themselves
perhaps the truest measure of significant change

17.
Instead of local organisations delivering Projects as service providers for others
we have approaches which are focused primarily on supporting the development of local organisations and social movements
who will themselves lead the change needed, driven by their own aims and initiatives

18.
My sense is that people see organisations as vehicles through which to do things in the world, not realising
that in building organisation they
are shaping the world. James Taylor, CDRA

19. If we want to talk of sustainable development, we might ask
Who will sustain it...?
it can only be sustained if it is embedded in strong, sovereign local organisations and social movements
possibly supported by the others - donors, NGOs, solidarity networks etc.

20. If we want to talk of rights
Who will win and defend rights?
Sovereign social movements
made up of strong local organisations

21. So instead of asking
How do we make change happen?
we could ask:
How do effective local organisations and social movements emerge and develop? How can we best support them? (in whichever field we work in)

22. In our minds The ability to understand and work with organisations is a discipline (like adult learning) that should be a core capability of leaders and facilitators in all fields of development Not the sole preserve of professional Organisation Development (OD) Consultants

23. the idea of Sovereignty
Small farmers movements talk about
self-reliance, local ownership decision-making out of consciousness and free-choice free from outside interference, domination or exploitation

24. local organisations and social movements suggests:
the same home-grown resilience
an inside-out identity
the idea of an organisation being the expression of the free will of its own constituents
but open to collaboration, support and solidarity
Applying Sovereignty to

25.
It should be clear that rights like food and seed sovereignty can only exist if they are embedded in strong sovereign organisation

26. Defining a sovereign organisation:
Works with its own purpose and principles
Mobilises and expresses the will and voice of its own constituents
Not an outsourced service provider
Culturally and structurally unique (not a Best Practice clone)
Politically conscious, asks its own questions
Able to cooperate and collaborate
Able to continually learn and adapt, from its own experience

Sovereign organisation

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