Reference:Action Research Approach To Poverty Reduction/Action Research Roles & Tools

Section 7 - Micro and Macro-Organizational Role of Action Research and Service Learning Processes

This section of the paper will deal with the practical day-to-day application of the methodologies, tools, and mechanisms of working that support the use of action research within the context of the projects that HELP International is currently doing in the developing world. These “practices” have arisen from a decade of “sandals and sneakers on the ground” development work. We will start by getting very specific as we briefly describe three projects conducted in 2007 and identify key elements of each project.

Project Example #1:
This year in Guatemala a young woman named Andrea Despain took over a library creation project from the technical expert and project creator (Phyllis Hall) when that person left the country. Andrea identified several more communities that needed and wanted libraries, worked with community leaders to design the projects, enlisted other volunteers to work on different aspects of the project, and found a new source of books and funding to help make the libraries meet the needs of the children and adults in the community. She exercised initiative to extend the project and broaden the scope of the books and multi-media materials placed in the library. When Andrea left Guatemala she handed the project off to Rachel McKneely, one of the Country Directors, for follow up action.

Key Elements:

• Conducting project handoff / transition
• Diagnosing needs
• Building relationships with NGO leaders and staff, village leaders, moms, and children
• Exercising initiative, creativity, and project management
• Influencing without authority
• Using participation to build commitment and ownership
• Extending project scope
• Using temporary project teams with shifting membership and roles

Project Example #2:
One of the young women in El Salvador, Blanca Rodriguez, decided she wanted to organize and execute a big project. She collaborated with one of our partner NGO’s, Alpimed, to create a program to educate families and children of people who have left their village of Suchitoto to go to the USA to work. The primary focus of the project was on how to better use the remittance money that the family members sent back to El Salvador. She and other volunteers went into community schools and worked with the teachers and students to organize a contest to create skits and murals to illustrate not only the wise use of the remittances, but also the dangers and risks of illegal immigration, and the need for education. The classes and schools competed for the opportunity to perform their skits and display their murals on a Saturday the 7th of July 2007 in the town square for the whole community. They were rewarded for their efforts with learning materials awarded for each individual class member and for their classrooms. The mayor of the city spoke to the crowd both before and after the performances. The day was hot and uncomfortable in the bright, unrelenting El Salvadoran sunlight, but the enthusiasm of the children, teachers, and parents made it all worthwhile. All of the volunteers willingly participated in the Saturday activities.

Key Elements:

• Partnering with NGO leaders and staff to create a complex project
• Building strong working relationships and doing tight coordination with NGO leaders and staff, city and school leaders, teachers, and children and HELP volunteers
• Exercising initiative, creativity, and project management
• Influencing without authority
• Using participation to build learning, commitment, and ownership
• Using temporary project teams with shifting membership and roles

Project Example #3:
A young woman named Natalie Roe, who was not fluent in Spanish, was given extra training in adobe stove building (estufas) and became the team leader (La Reina de las Estufas) on the stove building project in Guatemala. She managed the stove building calendar, working closely with the local NGO leaders who arranged with the indigenous communities for stove building activities. With a group of 6 to 20 of her colleagues she would go to a village, working with the men and women of the village, teaching them how to build low cost adobe stoves by building one or more stoves with them. In 2006 the volunteers built 14 stoves and the villagers went on to build more than 140 stoves. In 2007, under Natalie’s leadership, the volunteer teams build about 45 stoves and the villagers built over 400 stoves. As the summer wore on, stove-building requests increased and came from new sources as word of mouth spread about the benefits of stoves and the availability of training on how to build and use them.

Key Elements:

• Mastering the technical knowledge necessary to design and execute the project
• Partnering with NGO leaders and staff to create a series of small but complex projects
• Sustaining enthusiasm and commitment over a long period of time
• Building relationships with NGO leaders and staff, village leaders, moms, and children
• Doing ongoing, persistent, constructive coordination with NGO partners
• Exercising initiative, creativity, and project management
• Influencing without authority
• Using participation to build commitment and ownership
• Extending project scope
• Using temporary project teams with shifting membership and roles
• Demonstrating openness to reflective thinking and feedback through the use of After Action Review, an action research and action learning technique
• Demonstrating innovation, flexibility, and adaptability

Temporary Project Teams (TPT):

The work done by our volunteers rides on the back of the use of temporary project teams with fluid membership and roles. As mentioned in the previous section there are numerous projects that volunteers create, organize, and execute while they are in country. When they arrive in country they are usually put to work on existing projects that the co-country directors or other volunteers have organized. In virtually every instance these projects are done in partnership with local NGO’s that have ongoing programs that are aimed at creating economic self-sufficiency and eliminating poverty and suffering. We provide staffing, and in come cases funding, to these projects.

We expect the volunteers to exercise initiative within existing projects, to extend projects beyond their initial scope, and to identify new needs (diagnosis) around which projects can be created. There is a strong, explicit organizational norm that volunteers are expected to exercise initiative and be self-starters in their approach to the work whether their role is that of a team member or team leader. The data gathering tools of observation, informal conversation, formal interviews, and reading are all critical elements of exercising initiative in the diagnosis and follow up phases of action research.

Additionally team leaders are expected to exercise a collaborative approach to leadership that is characterized by both humility and boldness. Team leaders on the one hand must clearly identify the needs of both the NGO and the people being served. They need to move boldly to organize the response to the need, but do so with humility and gentleness, and deference to the role of the individual, family, and village in creating self-reliance for themselves. And it all must be done in support of the NGO through whom we are working.

Cultural sensitivity is clearly an imperative! All this work is done in the context of the family, village, and country. Slow is faster. When you work to build relationships of understanding and trust learning increases, confidence builds, and commitment and ownership begin to jell. Cultural sensitivity is a key element and is constantly examined.

In regard to their teammates, the team leaders must also exercise humility. They must elicit the willing support of their colleagues. It is not a command and control environment. On the one hand it is clearly necessary to make sure the work is done with discipline. On the other hand motivation must be approached from an intensive, participative perspective that generates commitment on the part of their colleagues.

The team structure and process can work only if all of the volunteers know and accept that they are expected to be flexible, adaptable, and responsive. One day they will be the project leader on one project, the next three days they will be a team member on other projects.

Action Research/Service Learning Interpretation:

The temporary project team structure and process is the primary organizational vehicle through which the action research and service learning processes are enacted. As they work in these temporary project teams an action research mindset is an important sieve through which to judge how to learn and adjust to emerging situations.

Season Set Up:

Training for Volunteers & Country Directors:

Developing capability and competency in the Country Directors and Volunteers is a key issue that is struggled with each year. Everyone in the group comes to the HELP experience with a different personality, preferred learning style, background, experience, and education. Each year we need to do some level of “mass customization” in aiming our development process at the specific needs of the individual volunteer. And yet training classes and materials have to be somewhat generic. Our response choice to these issues is that we use experiential exercises and dialogue in our training as much as possible. We also depend on the follow-up reinforcement of on-the-job coaching in country to round out and shape the learning experience for each volunteer throughout the season that they spend in country.

The newest challenge is that as time goes on more and more of our volunteers are spread across the length and breadth of the USA. We are therefore doing more virtual training and teleconferencing than we have ever done before. We are also taking training to clusters of volunteers in different geographical locations.

In designing and executing our learning activities we are using the resources of Board Members, Advisory Board Members, Other NGO’s, The Economic Self-Reliance Center (BYU – Marriott School), Staff, & Volunteers.

Day-to-Day Action Research/Service Learning Tools (TPT Level):

Daily and Weekly Project Team Meetings:

Each project team leader has informal “huddles” (Merrill, 1979) and sit down meetings as often as they see it is necessary. As the teams gain experience working together their “team maturity” and individual competency increases. The need for formal meetings usually decreases and the “huddle” becomes the tool of choice. However, with each shift in the team membership or new wave of volunteers project team leaders will need to adjust their practices. Meal times are often spent sitting around a table discussing the week and days activities in an informal setting. A lot of last minute coordination and adjustment occurs in the morning as people scurry around grabbing breakfast, preparing lunch, and getting ready to head out for the days work.

These “huddles” and team meetings are the day-to-day setting in which the data is sifted and analyzed and action is planned as a part of the action research process.

Co-Country Directors Discussions with Project Team Leaders:

The Country Directors and Project Team Leaders stay in communication with each other as necessary. Most meet at least weekly to review challenges and accomplishments and plans and look for parts of the work that need to be adjusted.

Project/Event After Action Reviews:

From time to time a more formal after action review (Dixon, 2000) is conducted. The purpose of an after action review is to openly and non-defensively learn from a situation. It is meant to be a positive process that acknowledges but does not dwell on deficiencies. It is a setting in which every person from worker to leader to big boss are equals and have an equal obligation to appreciatively contribute, listen, think, and learn. The focus of the process is to answer these core questions:

• What did we set out to accomplish?
• What did we actually achieve?
• What went well?
• Why?
• How could we do more of that?
• What could have gone better?
• Why?
• What could we improve for next time?

While Pete Sorenson was in Guatemala this summer he conducted such a review with the volunteer team that had participated in stove building in Chicacau. The group of about 15 people had traveled for 6 hours each way on the “chicken busses” to get to the site where the stoves would be built. It was exhausting and the build conditions were not the best.

The AAR was conducted a couple of days after the trip. The group was anxious to talk about their experience. Since we had built four stoves and different people had been participating in different aspects of each build none of us had the whole picture of what had happened. The discussion evolved into a dialogue of learning where virtually every one was contributing observations and comments and many questions were asked and answered from volunteer to volunteer. The topics covered included every aspect of this experience and lead to lessons being highlighted that could be applied to other projects. Natalie Roe, La Reina de Las Estufas, told us that the AAR had been an extremely profound learning experience for her.

The AAR is a very effective action research tool. The authors have some AAR support materials that they would gladly share.

In Season Reflection and Coaching (Country Level):

Weekly Coaching/Problem Solving Telephone Calls between the Executive Director and Co-Country Directors:

Each week Jennifer Boehme Kumar, HELP’s Executive Director, has a phone call with the Country Directors in each country to discuss the week’s activities. These calls are information exchanges and coaching sessions. Some of the discussion is mundane and routine, but most of it focuses on critical issues and opportunities and how to make forward progress. Over the years this weekly call has become a critical element in weaving the organization together with learning together, making adjustments, and assessing results. It mirrors the action research process.

Weekly Country Reports:

In addition to the weekly phone call each pair of Country Directors creates a written weekly report. Life in country is fast paced, hectic, and at times chaotic. It can be easy to get caught up in the dynamism of the flow of events and not stop to gather data and reflect. By committing the week’s activities to paper the country directors are pushed into carefully gathering and documenting data, analyzing it for trends and patterns, and reflecting on it for opportunities and places where a nudge here or a nudge there can make a difference. The report preparation process also creates a level of follow through and accountability that lead to constructive improvements.

Development work is a process of constant adaptation and improvisation. But there also needs to be a rudder in the water so that a course is loosely charted and followed. The weekly phone call and report are key mechanisms and tools for doing that.

The reports are also a critical communications mechanism that conveys information to the other Country Directors, the Executive Director, and the Board of Directors. This data gathering, analysis, reflection, and improvement are steps in the action research/service learning process.

Executive Director and Board Member Visits to Each Country Each Year:

Each year either the Executive Director, Board members, or both visit the countries and projects. The purpose is to meet with volunteers and Country Directors, NGO Leaders, and the people we serve. Additionally, when we make these trips, we go out to work on projects. There is a lot of discussion and coaching that takes place. In the visits the reinforcement of mission, purpose, values, and approach to the work are emphasized.

There is also a component of motivation. Pep talks, clearly communicated appreciation and deep listening to the experience the volunteers are having are important parts of the visits. This year Board members Janet Tanner went to Uganda and Pete Sorenson went to Guatemala and El Salvador. Both came back with the observation that our volunteers are amazing people doing amazing work. We also came back with “sneakers and sandals on the ground” fodder for our board level action research process.

After Season Reflection, Learning, and Feed Forward (HELP International as a Whole Level):

Annual Reports for each country:

Each pair of Country Directors files a detailed Country Annual Report that is to be turned in during September of the year. The data gathering, analysis, and reflection required to complete this report is a big as well as rewarding task. The report becomes an historical record of the organization and a diagnostic tool for changes and adjustments that must be made to the effort in each country and in the HELP approach overall.

Board of Directors Working Sessions & Board Meetings:

In the Board of Directors off site and meeting just held on 29 through 31 August 2007 we have taken several actions as we have learned from the years experience and reflected forward in the activities we anticipate doing next year and into the future. This is the “action research feed forward process” where we deliberately tease out and apply learning from the current and previous years to adjust our approach to the next year.

This year the Board has decided to experiment with an intensive two day training session for all volunteers before they leave the US. We are in the design process of that session as we write.

We are also designing learning materials on at least two topic areas based on the experience of our volunteers and the needs of our partner NGOs. The two topics are Microcredit lending and action research. We need to do a better job at being rigorous about our action research and we have found several NGOs that need Microcredit lending support that we are not currently prepared to offer. But we will have it ready by next summer!

We will also draw more broadly on the experience and talents of several of our supporters and contributors on whom we have not previously called. Warner Woodworth will also have several projects for his students in his classes to work on that will support this training effort.

There are several key instructional and learning design issues associated with the training. What is the content information that people need? What delivery format should we use? How should the training be delivered? Who will design the training? Who will deliver the training? The topics evolve over the years. The learning from each year is factored into the design of the training content (Action Research Feed Forward).

NGO Partner Relationship Evaluations:

Periodically we need to evaluate the relationships that we have with each NGO partner organization. In the past we have been rather informal about these reviews. To get the most out of the reviews we need to tighten up this process and build in a more rigorous action research approach to partner relationship development.