Process-oriented Approach vs Result-oriented and Donor-driven Approach

Paradoxically, LWD’s activities are process-oriented on the one hand, yet at the same time result-oriented and donor-driven. For the process-oriented nature, the sample Community Empowerment Facilitator (CEF) with high capacities and the programme support staff exhibited such dialogical and interactive processes as posing questions, probing, giving enough space for PPs to discuss among themselves—when those staff facilitated meetings and training sessions—and coaching individual PPs. In addition, the training unit as well as programme support unit staff had high-level skills of facilitation such as the participatory rural appraisal (PRA), the use of visual images for stimulating discussion, group works and exercises, and participatory

decision-making. In East Africa, one of the crucial elements for the successful TL experiences in farmer field schools (FFSs) was facilitation by trained facilitators (Duveskog, 2013). LWD implemented strict quality control, especially for the training capacities of training and programme support staff through such ways as on-site observation and coaching by senior training officers. LWD’s RBA manual emphasises that “[a]ccountability is not only a concern for the outcome of development, but also for

the process by which it is achieved” (Lutheran World Federation Cambodia, 2009, p. 19, italics original).

On the other hand, the result-oriented nature of LWD activities together with its donor-driven nature (which are actually antithetical to its process-oriented approach, as will be shown below) are embodied in LWD’s detailed and complex financial reporting requirements as well as in its detailed, favourable and timely project reports for donors.

The detailed and complex financial reporting requirements were especially salient in Village Partnership Projects (VPPs), implemented in both research sites. The aim of VPPs is to let PPs experience the whole project process of planning,

implementation and evaluation by disbursing funds for a certain project (such as road and dam construction) so that their confidence and capacities to write proposals for such projects and manage them would be enhanced. However, CEFs and VDC members actually spent quite some time preparing detailed and complex proposals and reports. The recent localisation of LWD seems to have been furthering this impetus. The external evaluation recommended establishing newly localised LWD’s reputation over the next few years (Cossar, 2011) and hence LWD’s most recent long-range plan emphasises:

Maintaining and strengthening relations with existing Related Agencies will be a priority of LWD’s resource mobilisation plan. This will be accomplished by ensuring good programme quality, transparent and accountable financial management as well as appropriate and timely correspondence to donors. (Life with Dignity, 2011a, p. 23).

Detailed, favourable and timely project reports for donors were observed in the work of CEFs and Community Empowerment Officers (CEOs) in both programme sites. When the CEFs were conducting a commune-level quarterly monitoring meeting, in which village representatives were to learn from each other and LWD was to collect information to report to its donors, those CEFs were very frustrated by the fact that participants could not express their development results for the last three months in SMART (specific, measureable, achievable, relevant, and time-bounded) terms—the common reporting criteria for donors in the development industry. In addition, in one of the team meetings between a CEO and CEFs, the CEO told his CEF that they needed to

I repeatedly observed that CEFs and CEOs were discussing the deadlines of various project activities. For example, in the organisational reflective workshop held at one of the programme sites, the facilitator of the workshop said that if reports to donors were late, they might not fund LWD anymore. He went on to say:

Funds may be directed towards Africa. We are responsible for the poor; they may not be able to send their children to school. Funding depends on all of us. If we are given one million US dollars, but we do not make reports, then we will miss the opportunity. Thus we need to follow the system (Field notes, 12 July 2012).

According to its long-range plan, LWD is concerned about the donors’ lack of understanding of its integrated and rights-based approach, due to their tendency to favour traditional sectoral projects (such as health and education) (Life with Dignity, 2011a), which basically fall within SDA and are likely to be result-oriented. This preference by donors might have been reflected in or filtered down to LWD’s emphasis on service-delivery and result-oriented operation. This donor-driven nature or the asymmetrical power relationship between donors and NGOs deriving primarily from the financial power of donors has been well-documented in NGO literature (for example, Kimura, 2010).

It is worth pointing out here that I found attitudes of dependency on LWD’s assistance among PPs in the first research site where a considerable amount of material input was still needed, due to the devastation even after more than a decade since conflict had ceased—as in the case of the participant observation of the FFS meeting, where the participants listed all kinds of needs (Box 1 in Chapter three). Such attitudes were also found in the poorest PPs in the second research site. LWD identifies the poorest population in each village—they call them ‘Partner Households’—and gives special assistance to them following the rights-based rationale that everyone has rights to development and no one should be excluded from its fulfilment.