FGEO's Approach to Self-sufficiency and Social Change

FG has a history of self-reliance and community empowerment that is based on a participatory and inclusive decision-making processes; gender equality, transparency and accountability and sustainability. It has used its proven approach (SEED-SCALE) in its target areas in Afghanistan. SEED is an acronym for Systems of Self Evaluation for Effective Decision-making. The focus of activities from the beginning is to facilitate sustainable community based, community owned socio-economic and systemic change in resource-poor settings. Rapid expansion occurs with systematic promotion of training and support with ideas but with minimum outside funding to build self-reliance, community capacity, changes in behavior and social norms and community empowerment. The SCALE is an acronym for Systems for Communities to Adapt, Learn and Expand in rapid extension from successful local sites, then transforming the best successes into Learning Centers, which extend to new regions to form a network of Learning Centers for national coverage. The SEED-SCALE is the FGEO Framework for action that allows communities to analyse their conditions in relation to national dynamics, take appropriate actions based on their priorities and resources and lasting change.

FGEO specializes in a partnership-based approach that strengthens linkages and skills among communities (bottom-up human energy), government (top-down enabling policies and financing), and non-governmental organizations (outside-in technical support) to address the needs of people living on the margins of society and protect fragile ecosystems. The core of FGEO's work is a system that communities and governments can use to shape their futures. In its entire project portfolio, FGEO stresses the importance for self-reliance and empowerment of local communities. The institution’s intention is to create the attitudinal and behavior changes that will improve the lives and livelihoods of community people. In our approach, efforts to instill in all activities a “You can do it” set of convictions builds capacity in our entire target areas.

It is common these days to speak of methodologies of self-reliance and empowerment – almost all organizations in the world claim to do or at least promote these. But most organizations attempt self-reliance and empowerment by giving services. Self-reliance is not giving to, but rather it is building out from people. Future Generations has an exemplary world-encircling evidence base of achieving both self-reliance and empowerment. Distinctive about the Future Generations approach is that it is based on scholarship begun with funding from UNICEF in 1992, which continues today. The methodology that has been developed is known as SEED-SCALE that the process was first presented in two monographs at the 1995 United Nations Summit in Copenhagen and more recently articulated in the book Just and Lasting Change: When Communities Own Their Futures. It continues to be refined through ongoing research, collaboration, and field application. FGEO implements SEED-SCALE theory of change that offers a process for each community to develop its own services and enhance its efficacy and control. The approach uses resources all communities have, and builds from actions that have already started. The SEED-SCALE process activates the energy and resources of communities (SEED) and expands successes across large regions through government partnership (SCALE). SEED-SCALE is a framework to understand how to enable community empowerment as well as methodology (complete with guiding principles, action steps, and evaluation criteria) that can be taught to and used by communities functioning at the most basic level.

The essence of SEED-SCALE approach is the recognition that community members are the primary authors and actors for addressing their socio-economic problems, and awakening them to a possibility for a better life and self-reliant actions. FGEO will ensure its humanitarian and development programs with communities are:
Targeted the most vulnerable – for their Self-sufficiency that is the ability to provide everything one needs in sufficient quantities to save life and livelihoods.
Dynamically Transformative - community members uncover their own definition of human well-being and the direction they themselves define as most desirable to ensure it. This shifthelps them to move away from dependencies.

Empowering - communities through participatory planning, implementation, and management of local development activities.
Improving – local leadership will be strengthening to become more accountable and inclusive.
Connected – although arising as local initiatives, strong linkages and partnership are forged with regional and national development actions.
Iterative – so community initiated success leads to another and then to another until community networks are established district wide, regionally and nationally.
In all its humanitarian and development works with communities, FGEO will not present itself as a source of funding, but as a facilitating partner and capacity builder. The SEED-SCALE approach has enabled the FGEO to focus communities on how they themselves can channel their social and human capitals towards overcoming socio-economic problems rather than always looking for outside sources of support and funding. This means the work of FGEO promotes self-sufficiency in the emergency or humanitarian situation and moves toward self-reliance and empowerment.

Crops grow through a cycle that is followed the world around: prepare the soil, plant the field, irrigate for germination, nurture its production, protect it from invasion, and then harvest. Social change apparently also follows a cycle. We first found this cyclical approach to be globally applicable in UNICEF, with the triple–A process of assessment, analysis, and action. The three larger steps of triple-A became more specific as the global SEED-SCALE task forces crafted the seven tasks. Twenty years of field trials for the seven –task cycle have shown it to work across cultures and economic circumstances, a universal process to evolve site- specific solutions for building capacity (assessment), choosing (analysis), and getting the desired results (action).

1. Building Capacity: Three People –Nurturing Tasks

   1. Evolve leadership. Leadership is likely to be more effective if it is not limited to one person. A coordinating committee gathers the community together to plan action using local data, get cooperation from both long- standing and recent faction, and points to changed behaviors. Once communities feel they are reaching commonality, action strengthens. The initial committee is reconstituted as people rotate off and others fill their places. So, the first task is to create a local coordinating committee to supervise the other six tasks.

   2. Determine what has worked already. The community s desired future will seem more achievable if it grows out of past successes. Action draws on that experience and confidence. People are continuing processes they know and, being familiar with these process, have the skills to start improving. A second task is to find local successes.

   3. Learn from other; don’t try to originate action alone. Encourage people to visit other projects and learn from them. When people see an idea and learn what is involved in it, they are more likely to try and experiment with it. Onsite visits are one way to gain knowledge, but with the Internet, cross-community learning is easier, faster, and less expensive. A third task is to learn from the experiences of others.

2. Choosing Direction: Two Evidence –Based Tasks

   Every community has the opportunity to decide its direction (and as doing so at some level already). Growth occurs by moving from what the community has (SEED) toward what is desired (SCALE). This requires evidence, which, as decisions are being made, shapes them to be more effective. AS communities review their direction (self-evaluation), they identify successes and challenges and produce a functional analysis from which jobs are assigned to everyone (effective decision – making). These are evidence- based decisions, specific to that community.

   4. Self–evaluation involves cyclical assessment of households and socio-environmental conditions, using key indicators to grow increasingly complex understandings over time. Such assessments are most accurate with a diversity of inputs from women, students, men’s groups, and experts. Communities can conduct independent assessments, but in trying to act alone, they miss using techniques that experts can assist with, such as existing evidence bases a community may not about, and key indicators to survey. A fourth task is use self– evaluation in understanding your community.

   5. Effective decision-making analyzes gathered evidence to create work plans that are doable. There are three steps in this: causal analysis, functional analysis, and role reallocation. In making work plans, the objective is to involve all partners and to balance needs against the uses of time, finances, government services, and natural resources. The outcome produces tasks that people will perform in the coming year. Plans have a negative value if the work is not done; their proposals must be doable.
      The fifth task is to create a community work plan.
      This is a public document – a simple chart assigning roles that target the achievement the community aspires to. There should be roles for all: community, exports, and the government. A good work plan can be read at a glance, showing what each participant must do, and when to do it. Some communities may want a one –year work plan, but our growing experience with SEED-SCALE indicates that plans are more helpful when done quarterly or even bimonthly. Consider posting the plan in public place, such as on the side of a building or a sign coming into town. Select a place that prompts discussion and remind those who have not done their jobs that they need to act. This document is the community s future, and an inventory of past work plans outlines the community s history of social change.

3. Getting the Desired Results: Two Tasks to Do and Re-do

   Actions always elicit a choice between paid- for and volunteer work.
   Each type of actor has value. Paid –for actions require a source of money, and money is a scarce resource, so this choice may limit the work that can be accomplished. Thus volunteers are helpful to all community plans. The major advantage of volunteers, however, is not free labor, but the fact that these people are acting from self-interest, where the work itself viewed as something to improve their live.

   6. As people agree on a priority, action should start. If a group gives itself a name, this builds pride and justifies their actions. The term we use is action groups, but many other names are possible for groups of people who are acting for the community instead of acting for themselves. Failures will be frequent- getting the action right is not as important as getting the action going, discovering flaws, and then making it better.
      Thus a sixth task is to act according to the work plan.
      As communities move forward, they must also look sideways and backward. Because communities thrive on anecdotes and not on evidence, rumors and stories will abound. A countervailing forum of formal discussions, based on evidence, is one way of stemming their harm. This 360- degree perspective will guide adjustments in goals, finances, training, and oversight to ensure inclusiveness and sustainability. Discussions stemming from multiple perceptions are recursive –going forward, stepping back, looking around- and create a momentum that grows into actions.
      The key is to keep moving. A community going forward with its successes calls in outsiders at the same time as it gathers up insiders. Patience will be needed to keep time –driven outsiders (who report to other outsiders with other priorities) from taking over. One exciting feature of SEED-SCALE is when communities that are investing their resources experience this energy draws in others. The community feels it is part of the bigger world, a very different feeling from being victimized. Those who labored in the early stages, however, will often think that the new-comers are taking advantage of their earlier work. This is an unfortunate dynamic, and its negative consequences should never be underestimated.

   7. Effective midcourse corrections make the next cycle of community activity more affective.

      A good midcourse correction may (but need not) adjust what is being done to reach the work plan target, which is the usual expectation. In SEED-SCALE, midcourse corrections always shift actions toward strengthening the four principles. Community commitment grows and keeps going forward when principles are strengthened. Thus the cycle of seven tasks come to its final task, to make midcourse corrections.

      The sequence in which the tasks are accomplished does not matter, and this sequence should be adjusted for differing situations (Humanitarian and or Development). What is important is that all seven tasks be done, and doing an excellent job of any one tasks (or all of them) is not a priority. Doing them all again, and making the cycle better the next time, is what counts.