Concern India context: Key lessons learned and areas for improvement

Thursday, 1st June 2006

Despite achieving considerable success over the last planning period there remain a number of areas where we need to improve during the next period.

Concern wants to be a seen as a small strategic and innovative agency working in India, to do that we will need to focus our work in certain areas where we feel we have a comparative advantage and where we can build core competencies.

Greater Focus on Outcomes and Impact

We need to be clearer on assessing the impact of our work, and not just narrowly focussing on the outputs of what we do.

We need to develop a comprehensive impact assessment framework,which will enable us to demonstrate better that the work of our partners is strengthening the poor.

One of the key lessons that we have learned is that whilst maintaining a project focus can bring about specific changes to programme participants and communities, the scope for bringing about wider structural change is limited.

Whilst we recognise that we need to be realistic about the impact that we can have with the resources that are available there is more that we can be doing with our partners to challenge structures, policies and performance of Government and other institutions.

It also means that we and our partners are focussed on outputs and activities rather than outcomes and impacts, this necessarily reduces our work to a set of events as opposed to a set of processes.

It also encourages partners to record and report on things that can easily be measured (activities and events) as opposed to things that are harder to measure (changes in social structures, power dynamics, women's involvement in decision making).

In order to encourage this we need to look at reducing the workload which current systems place on both partners and Concern staff. We also need to ensure that there is better sharing and learning across our projects, particularly where these projects contribute to a wider programme.

Equality and Gender

We need to be better able to demonstrate that we have mainstreamed gender and equality within our programmes and that programme participants can point to the concrete benefits of having done this.

Currently our work on gender and equality is too often seen as an add on to existing work rather than an integrated part of it.

Greater Analysis

Too often our analysis of the problems and our proposed actions only seek to address some of the symptoms of poverty, thereby leaving untouched the real causes.

During the next planning period we need to give greater attention to our analysis of poverty, particularly the power structures and systems that create and maintain it and then develop programmes to address these.

Better analysis will lead to better responses.

Advocacy Approaches

As our programme has shifted towards a focus on changing structures and systems we have necessarily developed our advocacy work, both at the local and the national level.

It has become apparent that we need to better link the national and state level advocacy with our work at the grassroots, including involving the poor directly in advocacy work.

HIV&AIDs

Whilst we recognised the increasing importance of HIV/Aids as an issue of poverty, during the last strategic plan it was not highlighted as a strategic focus area of our work.

This has meant that we have not given sufficient attention to this sector instead we have tried to manage it within our existing programmes and partnerships.

As a result we did not create the necessary human resource capacity to lead our work in this area.

The current plan looks to rectify this. HIV/Aids has emerged as a specific focus area and Concern will recruit the human resources needed to lead and manage this work.

Building Emergency Response Capacity

One of the biggest challenges we face is how we increase our capacity to respond to emergencies and how we work to reduce community vulnerability to disasters.

We will no longer develop specific emergency preparedness programmes, which have an exclusive focus on community preparedness, rather our livelihoods work will incorporate a disaster risk reduction perspective in order to strengthen livelihood security.

We will continue to work with and to strengthen state and national coordination mechanisms for improved emergency response and management and promote internationally recognise standards in emergency response.

We will revise our emergency guidelines in light of these changes and the lessons we have learned.

Concern India country strategy 2006 - 2011: Contents