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Published on: 01/12/2005

Four members of the EMPOWERS team (Peter Laban, Mufleh Abbadi, Sameera Rifai, Hazem Fahmy) spent the first week of June 2005 in the Netherlands to attend with over 100 other people from around the world an international symposium, which was organized by the International Water and Sanitation Centre (IRC) and partly sponsored by EMPOWERS, on ‘learning alliances’ (LAs), and to present the experiences of the EMPOWERS knowledge community.

The conceptual model of LAs is quite simple. It consists of groups of stakeholders (platforms) at different institutional levels (national, intermediate, local) sharing a common interest in innovating and learning about an issue. The stakeholders platforms at the different levels are primarily made up of the right mix of stakeholders (typically including researchers, implementers, planners, regulators and capacity builders); and that the flow of information between the levels works effectively and in both directions.

By adopting this structure to innovation and ‘social learning’ it is believed that the route from learning to scaling-up can be shortened. This is because, in the experience of the symposium organizers (supported by that of many attendees), much of the failure of past efforts comes from innovation taking place within an unrealistic or unrepresentative environment. Projects that don’t take account of national legislation or policy. Programmes that are implemented by highly skilled and motivated teams – without thought to where these skills will be found for future replication. Communities equipped with complex technical and institutional solutions without thought as to where the long term support for maintenance will come from.

Learning alliances seek to ensure that the people and institutions who will be responsible for sustaining and replicating new approaches are involved in developing them. This of course includes communities, but also national land local government, NGOs and other stakeholders.

Four presentations, probing questions

The EMPOWERS team gave four presentations during the symposium, which helped greatly in making some of the ideas around LAs more concrete. For example, the structure of the EMPOWERS country programmes gave a good practical example of an LA – with a country team supporting smooth communication and involvement of stakeholders at national (country steering committees), intermediate (partnerships at governorate or district), and local (pilot communities) levels. On the final day of the symposium, a presentation by Peter Laban (supported by the EMPOWERS team) was used as the basis for a thorough investigation of the EMPOWERS approach during a ‘devil’s advocate’ session. In this, led by Jan Teun Visscher of IRC, the audience was encouraged to ask probing questions about the fundamental approaches adopted by EMPOWERS. Many pointed questions were asked, particularly about the legitimacy of the EMPOWERS processes, how they were started in the different countries, and the extent to which they were truly owned by national stakeholders.

EMPOWERS approaches vindicated

EMPOWERS emerged from the process with its core approaches largely vindicated! People were particularly interested to learn about the success in rapidly generating national level buy into the experiences, and how this is leading – particularly in Palestine and Jordan – to pressure for quick scaling up.

The symposium helped to clarify the extent to which the work that EMPOWERS is involved in is at the cutting edge of progress in the area of stakeholder involvement in water development. At the same time it allowed several key areas for further attention – not just for EMPOWERS, but also for other similar learning processes – to be identified.

Motor needed

Perhaps most important of these relates to how LAs are initiated, and to their legitimacy with respect to stakeholders – actual or intended. For EMPOWERS, it is clear that the project was initiated by a group of local and foreign (primarily) NGOs, in response to a call for proposals from a major donor (the EU). The extent to which such groups have the legitimacy to initiate what may be quite far-reaching processes of change was discussed animatedly and without clear conclusions. What was clear is that LAs need some form of ‘motor’- to start and then maintain the whole learning process. What is also clear is that if ownership of the process is not quickly taken up by a range of stakeholders there would be limited or no success.

Tension between initiator and facilitator

This leads to the second major question, discussed throughout the symposium, which relates to the facilitation of LAs. An early lesson of EMPOWERS is that being, at the same time, initiator and facilitator of such processes can lead to tension and conflict of interests. Discussion whirled around whether an LA stakeholder (and particularly initiator) can or should also be a primary facilitator. Or, whether such a facilitator should be entirely external to the process. Again, no conclusion was reached.

That no solution to such important issues was found is typical of the nature of the symposium and the issues discussed. LAs are a new conceptual approach to an old problem – one to which there are not easy answers. Besides these two questions, many others were raised. Issues about whether LAs can work where there is conflict between stakeholders, and about the costs of supporting and facilitating learning processes. Also, about the difficulty of achieving levels of honesty and introspection necessary for effective learning particularly in hierarchical organisations where admitting mistakes can be seen as a sign of weakness.

Despite this, the LA symposium was a success – both overall and for the EMPOWERS team. The fundamentals of the approach – involving multiple stakeholders, horizontally and vertically, in learning processes – was upheld. And the EMPOWERS experience was recognized as an important and leading example of how the approach can be implemented in practice.

Source: Patrick Moriarty, Section Head, Knowledge Development and Advocacy, IRC

Empowers Insight, Issue 1 October 2005

p 6. Networking

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