When beneficiaries are clients — and communication is aid

BANGKOK — Information hubs, surveys, call centers, and anonymous ballot boxes have existed for years as ways for aid groups to communicate with and receive feedback from affected communities. Now, they’re being called into question — along with the strategies that presented them as catch-all communication solutions in the first place. None of these mechanisms are obsolete, and each has had a role to play in the decades of progress on feedback and accountability in global aid work. As groups race to respond to the latest outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for example, it’s lessons from communication and engagement with communities in West Africa they take with them. In Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, where nearly 1 million Rohingya refugees are currently bracing for cyclone season inside bamboo and tarpaulin shelters, communication alone can be life saving. The so-called “Grand Bargain” of 2016 committed the humanitarian sector to “include the people affected by humanitarian crises” in their decisions and to ensure that “design and management decisions are responsive to the views of affected communities and people.” Yet too often, mechanisms to do this are still implemented as optional “add-ons,” conducted at the late stages of a response — or not funded at all, according to David Loquercio, who recently stepped down from CHS Alliance to lead the International Committee of the Red Cross’ growing Accountability to Affected People team. “One of the last things I did before leaving CHS Alliance was to start exploring the reasons why — even though we’ve been talking about these different issues for 10-15 years — so little has changed,” he told Devex. Those findings from CHS Alliance are expected in September. In the meantime, Loquercio is still on the case: “One dimension is that there is this assumption that writing policy is going to be good enough, but if you don’t also try to adapt systems that can enable desired behaviors and actions, then it’s not very likely that things are going to change.” This change would require individual organizations to commit to building two-way feedback mechanisms into all stages of their work — and potentially invest in additional staff and resources to manage the process. The stickier, long-term transformation hinges on rethinking the humanitarian system so that communicating with communities is no longer a public relations exercise or a cherry on top of rigid program implementation. Under the umbrella of creating stronger accountability, it’s a movement that has birthed its own “commisaid” Twitter hashtag and sparked multiple, in-depth reports and insightful panel discussions in the last year alone. The resulting discourse is calling for more than a systems change; it demands an entire shift in humanitarian power dynamics. Redefining systems Several organizations are already adapting their systems to allow teams to work toward a more people-centric approach. From his base in Nairobi, Kenya, Nicolas Seris is reexamining the way the International Rescue Committee communicates with the people — or clients, as the agency refers to them — it serves. For years, IRC emphasized data collection, but too often failed to use it in a meaningful way due to nonexistent data management systems or referral pathways. “There were big discrepancies between the amount of information we were collecting and amount of information we were able to use,” said Seris, IRC’s client responsiveness specialist. His position was created a year ago, in an effort to more systematically listen to and collect the diverse perspectives of clients across the organization — as well as communicate with them about how their feedback is or isn’t informing IRC’s programmatic decisions. Previously, IRC’s emergency unit was often tasked with client responsiveness, while other communication work was done within sectors or integrated into the protection team. Now, IRC is in the pilot phase of testing a new framework that highlights eight “client-responsive actions” that teams should always implement to close the feedback cycle. Seris and another dedicated client response team member are on hand to help design feedback channels, collect information proactively, set up referral pathways, and visualize data. A mix of focus group discussions, hotlines, suggestion boxes or informal conversations might make up their feedback channels. More importantly, the aim is not just to interact with clients at the implementation phase, “but really something that should cut across the design, start-up, and the close-out phase of a project,” Seris said. “If we don’t have the flexibility to adapt our way of working and the way we use our resources based on client feedback … then it’s very difficult to reconcile what we want to do and what we’re able to do.” --— Nicolas Seris, client responsiveness specialist at IRC As a way to do this across their institution, ICRC is in the midst of building on the hotlines their delegations have already successfully established in several countries, Loquercio explained. “Community contact centers” in several pilot countries in the coming months will offer different channels for people to get in touch with ICRC, and allow the team to follow up on feedback and questions, irrespective of the way they were transmitted — whether in person, by phone, email, or any other channel. Creating stronger accountability doesn’t always translate to more resources or work, according to Sarah Cechvala, senior program manager at CDA Collaborative, a research and advisory organization that has advised IRC, ICRC, World Vision, and CARE International in designing their accountability systems. In the past five years, Cechvala has seen a variety of strategies, from organizations creating separate accountability teams, designating an accountability lead on a monitoring and evaluation team, or assigning program teams to own the role. “I think the most important thing that I've seen is that it needs to be ensured that the person or people in the role of managing accountability systems are seen as part of the team, and not necessarily some sort of external police force,” Cechvala explained. Kenya Red Cross spent two years mainstreaming accountability to communities in their suboffices across Kenya. They were able to do it successfully, Cechvala noted, in part because they demonstrated that “it was what staff were already doing, which is what we keep saying as CDA — that this is not new for field staff to do this. That's how you gain community buy in, gain trust. That's how you build a rapport. You wouldn't be able to deliver your programs or services if you didn't develop those things. So, in a lot of ways, staff are already doing it.” Groups who set up their own internal feedback systems have also proven to be more successful when extending those practices outside the organization, she added. “Instituting internal processes that allow for people to share feedback, and then setting timelines through which managers would look at it and actually respond, sets the tone that then, ‘oh, we have this internally, we can then mirror this externally because we understand the importance of it,’” Cechvala said. An identity crisis Accountability and communication experts agree there is a need for more open conversations with people affected by crisis about the problems they face and coping strategies they employ — rather than relying on the sector’s formatted, program-specific needs assessments. A team of 14 people at ICRC are now working full time on the Accountability to Affected People team, to help the group figure out how to use this type of communication to create more quality programming in general. The process isn’t without its growing pains — and it opens the door to a potentially scary spot for international humanitarian organizations. “If you don’t ask what people need, but you ask instead ‘what are your priorities, how do you deal with the problems you are facing?’ Then you really start having a dialogue which can be uncomfortable for us,” Loquercio said. “Then people sometimes don’t ask for the things you can provide.” People saying they need security, jobs, and education, for example, forces ICRC to think about their mandate and consider what they can do in terms of talking with arms bearers to encourage people to respect international humanitarian law, or helping to ensure safe access for children to attend school. But the ability to act on this information, or course correct programs based on carefully collected feedback, can still become tangled in the larger, established system in which humanitarian organizations have operated for decades. “The humanitarian system is built on ‘us’ telling ‘them’ what to do,” said Internews Senior Director for Humanitarian Programs Anahi Ayala Iacucci. “The Grand Bargain and accountability to affected populations, and all of this, in reality is asking us to shift and to change entirely the power dynamics.” Although there now is more donor interest for the inclusion of community engagement activities, this doesn’t always translate to more funding or the necessary time to conduct in-depth interviews at multiple stages. Internews was recently allocated just $250,000 for community engagement activities on an upcoming $2 million water, sanitation and hygiene project, which Iacucci said demonstrates that communication is still “the cherry on top of the cake.” But there are positive signs, too, according to Seris — such as donor openness to contingency budget lines that can be used adapt a program based on client consultation. It’s not yet common enough, he added, but it’s a key enabling step. Recently, due in part to donor flexibility, IRC was able to adjust a program in Kenya that provides apprenticeship, business training, and small grant opportunities to urban refugees. In-depth consultations with their intended clients before enrolling them in the program allowed IRC to establish private sector partnerships based on those particular aspirations. It’s an example of what Seris wants to see the agency do more of — especially if time built into the front end of projects to conduct early consultations becomes the norm for donors as well. “If we don’t have the flexibility to adapt our way of working and the way we use our resources based on client feedback … then it’s very difficult to reconcile what we want to do and what we’re able to do,” Seris said. CDA Collaborative has seen an increasing number of organizations reach out to them over the past few years to understand what it means to integrate accountability across their organization, Cechvala said. Still, an actual shift in power dynamics isn’t on the horizon yet, since “even the most advanced organizations are still grappling with the difference between being accountable to partners or to the local context, versus actually divesting power and ownership to the local partners or people,” she added. For Iacucci, slow progress on communication and accountability is linked to a big identity question, still relegated to whispers behind closed doors. “Some people still believe that you can do it without actually changing the paradigm,” Iacucci said. “That's where the identity crisis lies. If we don't know anymore where we fit, if our role is not anymore the one we had before, what is it? And nobody wants to ask that question.”