International aid and development assistance has changed
dramatically over the decades, yet individuals maintain the inherent desire to
matter, to be in relationship with others and to grow. They hold their dreams
close and hope for better lives for the children and the communities they serve
with driving motivational force. As the international community looks for more
efficient and effective methods of delivering scarce resources through
international aid, a new dynamic, interactive methodology, immersion, is worth
consideration.
Immersion allows program managers, NGO’s and other aid
organization staff to get out from behind their desks, set aside pre-determined
strategic priorities, and humbly walk with their on-the-ground counterparts.
Short-term immersion teams work collaboratively in context, to innovate and
craft a new, more sustainable paradigm in the alleviation of poverty throughout
the world resulting in hubs of capacity, relationships and resources all
responding to locally inspired, community driven solutions.
Immersion teams: creating new innovations, increasing
sustainable capacity and building relationships; transforming international aid
into a network of thousands of hubs of peace and poverty alleviation. The
benefits of short-term immersion teams are many, the outcomes significant and
the impacts unlimited. This essay explores and defines 1) what an immersion
team is, and what it is not, 2) the elements that produce successful immersion
teams, 3) the benefits of immersion teams, 4) the potential impacts of the teams
and finally, 5) why immersion teams are a critical component to add to the
toolkit of international development.
IDEO in collaboration and funding from the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation has developed a Human Centered Design Toolkit 1 which
describes the importance and benefits of contextual immersion in understanding
the realities and challenges faced by people living in poverty. Dr. John Crump
and Dr. Jeremy Sugarman provided commentary in the Journal of American Medicine
related to the efficacy and benefits of short-term experiences for medical
professionals working or volunteering in countries with significant medical
needs.2 Both sources list the significant benefits of short-term
immersion experiences including;
1) Immersion
demonstrates commitment and staying power.
2) Putting
yourself in another’s shoes allows you to get beyond polite, superficial
pleasantries, to what is meant, thought and felt.
3) Immersion
provides opportunities to clear up assumptions and misconceptions.
4) Attracting
global attention to global disparities.
5) The
immersion experience may form the foundation of a career for a participant to
work in resource poor settings.
6) Strengthen
the position of an organization to recruit talented staff who are interested in
working in global settings.
7) Inform
participants about culture and realities in context.
8) Increase
attention and support from philanthropists.
9) Increase
empathy and understanding of the realities of the people being served.
10) Increase
understanding of the challenges of traveling in a foreign country.
With these benefits so prolific, why are we not including
short-term immersion teams in our toolkit of international development? This
essay asserts that short-term cultural immersion teams comprised of the
beneficiaries and recipients of international aid, who accept the new role and
responsibility of shared learning, humility and a desire to listen will
transform service delivery, build sustainable capacity and develop long-term
relationships creating a network of thousands of points of peace and poverty
alleviation with projects that are community identified and driven.
Putting sandals in the streets builds multiple short-term
immersion teams that visit countries in which they plan to invest working in
partnership with their on-the-ground counterparts. Collaboratively the
immersion and on-the-ground teams develop shared learning opportunities,
increasing capacity amongst all partners and building relationships creating
long-term, sustainable change; impacting international aid. Can it work?
In an article written for The Rotarian Magazine, “Out of Chaos,” journalist Diana
Schoberg3 describes her experiences as an embedded journalist in
Ghana on a recent international development, capacity building immersion team.
She highlights what sustainable capacity building looks like, “There’s nothing
less glamorous than a process. The team isn’t building a school or drilling a
well – just doing a lot of discussing and planning…they’ll help (the local NGO)
capitalize on its upcoming 20th anniversary, strengthening the
organization so its staff will have the skills, tools and confidence to succeed
over the next 20 years.”
After interviewing the Executive Director of the NGO which
deals with the 62,000 street children living, working and sleeping on the
streets of Accra, Ghana, Ms. Schoberg reports, “Staff thought (the immersion
team) would come in and give them a strategy, but what they got instead were
the tools to create their own…” and the Director states, “These meetings help
us grow,”…she (the Executive Director) now facilitates her own workshops and
has shifted the programming at the center.” The Executive Director continues, “If
you want to look into the future, you have to have the basics to plan.”3
During Acumen’s course, “Making Sense of Social Impact –
Acumen’s Building Blocks for Impact Analysis”4 participants were
asked to re-frame how we design evaluation and measure progress of our work with
people in poverty. The 3rd module of the four session class
describes the importance of designing evaluation measures with the
beneficiaries of service, asking these questions, “How will we all know that
this intervention has been beneficial? What will your life look like? How will
you be changed?
Although this was discussed in the context of defining
impact through the eyes of the benefiting local individual, community and
on-the-ground NGO; cultural immersion teams become recipients too, answering
those same questions. “As a result of our time together, our work, our
relationships, our shared experiences….how will each of us be different…through
our shared learning experience, what can I bring back to my work setting and
apply for a more innovative impact?” When you engage in relationship building
with others in context you will be changed. The shared learning if engaged in
humbly, as student learners, in collaboration and with uncertainty, will create
innovations and strategies that one group or one person alone would not have
imagined.
Cultural immersion teams are small groups of people who
travel to another country to be in context with the intention of building
relationships, engaging in shared learning with on-the-ground counterparts, and
capacity building through listening, skills training and resource development.
These short-term, multi-disciplinary immersion teams use strength-based, human
centered design, adult education and appreciative inquiry principles and
concepts which are developed through team training prior to departure.
The comprehensive goals of immersion teams are many and
include the following;
1 1) Build
long-term sustainable relationships.
2) Increase international understanding.
3) Improve service delivery.
4) Develop deeper understanding of strengths and resources of all.
5) Develop comprehensive understanding of needs, barriers and constraints.
6) Create stronger partnerships.
7) Increase financial fidelity and efficacy of evaluation.
8) Gain confidence in competence.
9) Generate relevant measures of outcomes and expectations.
10) Identify innovation related to poverty alleviation.
2) Increase international understanding.
3) Improve service delivery.
4) Develop deeper understanding of strengths and resources of all.
5) Develop comprehensive understanding of needs, barriers and constraints.
6) Create stronger partnerships.
7) Increase financial fidelity and efficacy of evaluation.
8) Gain confidence in competence.
9) Generate relevant measures of outcomes and expectations.
10) Identify innovation related to poverty alleviation.
Rather than program staff of foundations and aid
organizations, donors and funders sitting in their offices in Seattle, New
York, Washington D.C, or London trying to innovate ways to be more efficient
and productive with groups in other countries, or trying to figure out ways to
change others, this methodology suggests creating short-term immersion teams
that humbly, and collaboratively walk with their counterparts and experts on
the ground (the beneficiaries and NGOs on the ground) to develop new
innovations using resources and skills that already exist and by building
capacity where skills or resources may be needed that will create outcomes,
connections and relationships that will be collectively unlimited.
During TEDxHoracePark,
March 2014, one presentation, “The Power
and Responsibility of One Person”5 included a quote from a young
mother in poverty in the United States, the young mom stated, “Just because I
am poor does not mean I’m stupid.” That is a lesson that we need to keep in
mind when working in the field of poverty alleviation worldwide; the people
with whom we engage may be in poverty, but they are certainly not stupid and in
fact, often have significant resources management skills, unidentified,
unacknowledged strengths and reliance that needs to be drawn out, celebrated,
and leveraged. It is one of the three goals of an immersion team to create
opportunities to identify the strengths, and resources that their counterpart
team has access to and create the connections necessary to utilize those
available strengths and resources.
The immersion teams
have three primary goals or functions while in the field:
1)
Working
with their on-the-ground counterparts to identify strengths, assets and
resources that are currently available for the local community and assisting in
creating connections to leverage and strengthen those resources and assets.
2)
Increase
capacity and resource development through skills training; and increasing
confidence in the competence of those new skills.
3)
Developing
long-term relationships.
Most international
development models begin with assessment, looking for gaps and weaknesses and
even in the IDEO Human Centered Design Toolkit, we are encouraged to observe
and hear, looking for weaknesses and gaps and needs. Including all of those
impacted by international development into the innovation process implies that
all of the participants have something to bring to the table. All of the
recipients, all of the beneficiaries have something to offer, strengths,
resources, skills and tools and it is critical to walk humbly when working to
identify those strengths.
In an editorial published in the Journal of the American
Medical Association, author Dr. Andrew Oxman 6 takes the medical
community to task for not working more collaboratively and asks his peers to be
willing to be more humble and involve patients in their care decisions, to be
more uncertain and willing to look outside of themselves for resources and
answers and finally, to stop wasting scarce resources and begin working more
collaboratively for better health impact. The title of his article says it all,
“Improving the Health of Patients and Populations Requires Humility,
Uncertainty, and Collaboration.” The international development community can
benefit from that charge.
Without working together
to identify those strengths and resources, we fall into the trap of imposing
our own strategic priorities upon others and jeopardize opportunities for
innovative and shared creation of sustainable strategies for the alleviation of
poverty. To avoid the risks of imposing external strategic priorities the
cultural immersion teams must use the following guiding principles during the time
spent in-the-field with their counterparts:
1)
Team
members are student learners.
2)
Everyone
in the room is an expert and brings resources and skills to the table.
3)
A
willingness to walk humbly.
4)
Commit
to all trainings and experiences – to be present and engaged.
5)
Participate
in all assignments.
6)
A
willingness to develop and use new listening skills.
7)
Find
comfort in uncertainty and ambiguity.
8)
Maintain
a belief that anything can happen, and will happen.
9)
A
willingness to let the magic happen and walk away from the process when the
time is finished.
Of these nine guiding principles, the
last may be the most difficult, yet it is the component that reduces the cycle
of dependency on the team and drives a sense of urgency, increasing efficacy,
relevance and buy-in from the local community.
Incorporating the nine guiding principles
and using skills developed during the team trainings in preparation for the
immersion experience, the team focuses on an intentional and meaningful process
incorporating strength-based and affirmative inquiry concepts to work together
with the on-the-ground teams to discover and explore strengths, opportunities
and resources.
Shared learning
experiences in-the-field are the most efficient method of creating a framework
for innovation around a common language and shared vision. Delivering shared
learning experiences requires an understanding that there is not equal access
to skills training amongst partners. No skill is too basic when creating
capacity. Examples of useful skills training that may be delivered on the
ground, in-situ include the following:
1) Consensus development
2) Team
building
3) Planning
4) Visioning
5) Facilitation
6) Messaging
7) Communication
8) Other
workshops requested in advance by the on-the-ground team.
These sessions may be delivered by
a specified trainer from the immersion team or local, or team members (from
either team) who have become subject matter experts in the identified skill
set. Creating
confidence in competence is a sustainable method of decreasing the cycle of
dependency and begins when delivering skills training in context. Skills
training sessions must be delivered in a comprehensive, hands-on manner incorporating
each of these elements;
1) Train
2) Demonstrate
3) Practice
4) Debrief
5) Repeating
the cycle until the skill can be replicated in-the-field, modifying for
“reality-checks”, relevancy, and in-situ experiences.
6) To
further instill confidence in new skills, tools and resources required to
deliver the training must be brought with the immersion team, including
computers, paper, facilitation supplies (any item required to successfully
apply the new skill), and left in-the-field, establishing a resource bank or
library for increased resource development.
Both the immersion team and the on-the-ground counterpart
team must engage in these skill set trainings together to enhance the
relationship, create a common language and increase team building. Using the
newly developed skills to build the vision, plan the interventions and create a
new framework of delivering international aid will further strengthen the teams
and create sustainable capacity that will both stay behind on-the-ground and
return with the immersion team. Developing
relationships takes time, creating new innovations requires the space in which
ideas formulate, however, if the immersion team follows the nine guiding
principles and focuses on the three goals of the immersion experiences, the
possibilities are limitless.
The individual make-up
of teams vary depending on the specific on-the-ground initiatives, but it is
important to ensure that they are multi-disciplinary immersion teams to minimize
“group think” and enhance comprehensive problem-solving. Multi-disciplinary
teams create opportunities of synergy and cross-training, bringing a variety of
perspectives and skills to the table. An additional component that is important
to consider when selecting team members for the immersion experience is to
select people who have demonstrated passion for engaging with people from other
countries and considering those whose positions may not have previously
afforded them the opportunity to work collaboratively in another country. The
identification, selection, and training of immersion team members presents the
greatest opportunity for impact within this methodology.
When world leaders and
CEO’s of companies and aid organizations travel to other countries, to the
countries in which their generosity and resources are valued and critical, the
travel is typically handled in two manners; as a “red-carpet” event, or as an
opportunity to demonstrate the best, as if being evaluated and needing to put
“the best foot forward.” And, while valuable to increase awareness of issues,
emerging trends, or to strengthen a relationship amongst large systems,
governments, or groups, these types of trips are not immersion experiences.
Because of the stature and power of the people involved, it is extremely
difficult to create the setting and framework of an immersion experience. Immersion
teams give all participants the opportunity to engage on an equal playing
field, roll up their sleeves and get to the work of collaborating and
innovating from the community’s perspective, ground-up.
Selecting individuals
who can demonstrate the nine guiding principles, have a passion for interacting
with all people, and who may not usually have this kind of experience presented
to them will ensure that the benefits of the immersion experience will be
returned to their home community in unanticipated and exponential ways.
Donors, foundation staff, non-profits, contractors working
in the global setting, non-governmental organizations, individuals, and
businesses benefit from international development and poverty eradication.
Whether the benefit is financial, social or intrinsic, there is a benefit
derived from the opportunities that are created through international
development and thus, all those receiving benefits are recipients regardless of
their inputs of funding, resources or time. Collaboration and innovation occur
in this model through many short bursts of intentional, focused teams of
recipients/beneficiaries coming together to develop relationships, build
capacity and engage in shared learning experiences. The impact of immersion
teams include significant opportunities for innovation which can include
financial impact, social impact and intrinsic impact.
Sasha Dichter, Chief Innovation Officer at Acumen, describes
methods of quantifying the impact of investing in international development
through Theories of Change4 and in several articles and posts that
he has written. Components of those theories of change that are relevant to
this essay include measuring the impact of the outcomes that are created when
groups of people come together to collaborate innovatively, creating shared
learning, utilizing all inputs including identified resources, and skills.
Crosswalks and attribution can help connect the quantitative impact of
financial, social and intrinsic benefits to articulate a compelling case and demonstrate
clear benefits for all recipients of international aid.
Financial impacts are easily identifiable and can include
increases in productivity as a result of improved health, reduced time
acquiring resources or increased capital as a result of enterprise or
entrepreneurial successes. Financial impacts have a number of tools and methods
of quantifying the overall impact to determine the benefit of the investment.
Social impacts increase capacity, increase skills and access
to resources, increase resources, increase numbers of student/intern exchanges,
professional exchanges, and can be quantified into financial benefit, although
it is far more difficult to capture than a direct financial impact. In many
cases a social impact will result in several additional attributed benefits
that do have relative financial impact.
For example, a manager in a decision-making role innovates a
new method of reporting after walking with their counterpart in another
country. Armed with a new understanding of the realities of no electricity, nor
reliable computer access, demanding a report which is neither possible to
deliver, nor useful. Together, on the ground, the individuals explore new means
of communicating to share relevant results and exploring resources that are
available. After working together they choose to develop skills training in
on-line communication, together discovering connections for reliable internet
access so that updates and reports can be communicated and recorded live,
through virtual mechanisms during times of sufficient access. The live reports
are relevant and tell such a compelling story that they are used to increase
the donor base for the project, increasing the financial impact.
Additionally,
because the donors know that they will be receiving the intrinsic benefit that
they desire, they become engaged in the long-term support of the project,
developing relationships and receiving the benefit of knowing that they are
making a difference, and can see the impact.
Social impact occurs when a connection, capacity or
relationship has been made stronger and create the foundation upon which
intrinsic benefit is gained. Most of the participants of immersion team
experiences will be impacted either socially or intrinsically. Socially
impacted by bringing back to their workplaces new ideas, innovations,
confidence and skills, and intrinsically having pride, loyalty, respect,
support, understanding, and empathy. It is the intrinsic impacts that make the
immersions teams so unique and so successful.
Much has been written about the value and benefits of
short-term volunteer trips as well as professionals undertaking paid
international work experiences and those values and benefits have been
attributed and matched to the benefits and values of short-term professional
immersion teams in this essay. Likewise, the risks and perils of those same
kind of experiences have also been debated in similar articles. In Crump and
Sugarman’s article “Ethical Considerations for Short-term
Experiences by Trainees in Global Health”2 numerous risks were identified with short-term volunteer experiences,
this model mitigates those risks and others in the following manner:
1. To
mitigate the risk of placing an undue burden on the on-the-ground
recipients/partners the following guidelines must be observed: 1) Maximum time
spent between partner groups per day is 3-4 hours, 2) Maximum time spent
on-site working together each week is 4 days/week, 3) Stipend compensation for
on-the-ground team (paid to host organization), 4) Must deliver relevant/useful
skills, tools, resources, 5) Time spent must be respectful.
2. The
on-the-ground team will no doubt be pulled away from their regular daily activities
and the mitigation of this burden includes: 1) all partners walking together –
the immersion team along-side the on-the ground team, 2) Orientation and
logistics must be managed by the immersion team, 3) the groups must work in
short bursts of time, as opposed to long days of work, 4) all of the immersion
teams must be useful, 5) stipend compensation for professional services
rendered by both the immersion team and the on-the-ground teams as well as
trainers.
3. Remunerating
the teams. Most will end up working overtime or over the weekends just to catch
up with their work responsibilities. Paid to their host organization, it is a
token of respect and thanks that each participant was so generous with their
valuable time. The stipend is a professional acknowledgement paying for
services rendered.
4. Mitigating
the health and safety risks of the immersion team falls squarely on the
shoulders of the immersion team or logistics leader. The time spent in a
short-term immersion experience is fast and intense and maximizing every moment
of all of the recipients/participants time will best be accomplished with a
team that is safe and healthy.
5. While
it is difficult to plan for everything and even more problematic to anticipate
how individuals will respond to different situations and environments, there
are a few precautions over and above the standard safe travel expectations
listed on the State Department’s site, or travel clinic advisories that can be
taken to maintain the integrity of the team: 1) Stay in “western hotels” –
sleep, safe food and water are essential to the team’s well-being and will also
reduce the burden of your on-the-ground team to house and feed the team, 2)
Hire drivers and 4x4’s, one vehicle for every four people, hire the drivers for
the entire duration of the visit, 3) It is not the responsibility of the
on-the-ground team to take care of the immersion team, 4) Secure local cell
phones for every team member. There are other precautions that the immersion
team will prepare for, however, these are some of the mitigating factors to
alleviate the burden on the on-the-ground team.
6. The
difference between and risks of sightseeing vs. culture immersion includes the
following considerations; 1) The primary goal of immersion experiences are to
develop relationships and therefore it is to be encouraged to engage in
cultural activities, or risk disrespect your hosts, 2) The immersion team must
take every weekend off, to recharge, see the country in which you are immersed
and to let the on-the-ground team recharge as well, 3) If the immersion team is
successful in developing relationships, they can expect to be invited to
cultural festivals, ceremonies, etc., 4) One of the requirements of the
immersion team members is that they commit to returning at least one additional
time. In addition to building relationships, demonstrating staying power and
commitment, it also takes the pressure off of having to see everything at one
time.
While there
are certainly other risks associated with short-term experiences, many of those
are reduced greatly by both the benefits and the team training which emphasizes
walking with humility, uncertainty and collaboration. A well-trained short-term
cultural immersion team can accomplish huge impacts, financially, socially and
intrinsically and leave behind sustainable development, strong ties and a
network of capacity and resources ready to demonstrate their confidence in
their competence.
As the international community looks for more efficient and effective
methods of delivering scarce resources through international aid, engaging
short-term, immersion teams will help to create a new, more sustainable
paradigm in the alleviation of poverty throughout the world.
Walking humbly, with uncertainty and in collaboration where
all of the participants are recipients of the shared learning experience,
innovation, creative and meaningful outcomes and sustainable development will
occur. The skills training opportunities will leave behind skills that can be shared
with others, the recipients of the benefit of the development will creatively
and intentionally develop new solutions and ideas that just cannot be developed
when we sit on our offices and wonder what we should be doing to change someone
else – we must be engaged in a new way, each of these immersion teams meeting
in relationship with the on-the-ground teams will create sustainable
innovations that will have financial, social and intrinsic impact – both in the
United States and abroad.
The great news is that this model of developing capacity,
relationships and increased resources involving all recipients and
beneficiaries of international aid does not require the international community
to start over, in fact, the infrastructure is already established, the people
are in place and there is a strong desire, or demonstrated willingness, to
create new opportunities for sustainable international development. In the 2014
Gates Annual Letter by Bill and Melinda Gates 7, the authors
describe hopefulness and excitement in the progress made in the alleviation of
poverty over the past several decades stating in the opening paragraph, “By
almost any measure, the world is better than it has ever been..,,,Many nations
that were aid recipients are now self-sufficient.” And their charge to us
includes the following statement, “We all have the chance to create a world
where extreme poverty is the exception rather than the rule…” 7
We are close
to having exponential impact in the world, redefining the role of the actual
recipient, acknowledging that it is all of us who benefit from the kind of
international aid which will have life-lasting and sustainable impact, we are
all recipients and when we give our time to walk humbly, with uncertainty and
with openness for shared learning experiences, we can leverage an international
aid network and create thousands of points of connection, capacity and peace
throughout the world.
References and Citations
1. IDEO
Human Centered Design Toolkit, p.46-49.
2. John
A. Crump, MB, ChB, DTM&H & Jeremy Sugarman, MD, MPH, MA, “Ethical Considerations for Short-term
Experiences by Trainees in Global Health.” JAMA, September 24, 2008 – Vol
300, No 12 (reprinted) p1456 – 1458.
3. Diana
Schoberg, “Out of Chaos” The Rotarian Magazine, August 2014 p. 42-53.
4. Acumen’s
course, “Making Sense of Social Impact – Acumen’s Building Blocks for Impact
Analysis, June 2014.
5. TEDxHoracePark, March 2014, “The Power and Responsibility of One Person”
6. Andrew
D. Oxman, MD, “Improving the Health of
Patients and Populations Requires Humility, Uncertainty, and Collaboration.”
JAMA, October 24/31, 2012 – Vol 308, No.16.p1691-1692.
7. Bill
and Melinda Gates, “3 Myths that Block Progress For The Poor,” 2014 Gates
Annual Letter.
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