Reference:Action Research Approach To Poverty Reduction/What We Are Learning

Section 8 - Example of Action Research & the Application of What We Learned – One Body of Work: Estufas (Stoves)!

One of the most difficult health problems in the developing world is respiratory disease caused by the inhalation of smoke and particulate matter from cooking fires in peoples homes. This indoor air pollution problem also has a disproportionate impact on women and children who are the ones cooking over and playing around the fires.

For more than a decade non-profit and educational institutions have been working on viable solutions to this problem. Using simple technology adobe, concrete, and metal barrels have been used to build serviceable, cost effective stoves for both cooking and heating. The stoves help prevent the crippling effects of respiratory problems, which in turn contribute to poverty and unfulfilled human potential.

The adobe stoves cost virtually nothing ($6 USD for the chimney vent), use less wood, allow for more variety in cooking, come up to cooking temperature more quickly, and save time for the women who generally do the cooking. Additionally we were told this year that they are easy to repair if they crack. You just put another layer of mud on the top. If it cannot be repaired you just break it apart and build a new one.

Our experience with stoves began in 2000 in Peru when one of our volunteers was involved in building adobe stoves as he worked with one of our partner organizations.

In 2002 the Board of Directors, Board of Advisors, Staff, and Country Directors visited a health clinic in La Liberdad, El Salvador. The Director of the clinic said that the biggest health issue they treated at his clinic was respiratory problems. These problems were virtually entirely due to smoke inhalation from preparing food over open fires inside homes. He said the disproportionate impact on women and children was frightening and discouraging.

In 2004 our staff and country directors re-discovered information about stoves made out of adobe and begin to build a few with partner organizations in Central America.

In 2006 we made a concerted effort to prepare for stove building before going to Guatemala and arranged with partner organizations to have an ongoing stove project throughout the summer. We discovered the “ripple effect.” In Guatemala HELP Volunteers build 14 adobe stoves with villagers and non-profit partners. The villagers and NGO Partners went on to build over 150 stoves.

Also in 2006 one of our Country Directors in Uganda, David Nieman, discovered a need for stoves in two of the schools in which the volunteers were serving. The staff at the schools fixed lunch each day for the children. It took a lot of wood to cook food over an open fire. David sent an urgent e-mail to our Executive Director, Jennifer, for instructions on how to build stoves. The Help Volunteers then went on to design and build two stoves with three cooking chambers, much larger than any we had done before. The stoves were put into use as soon as they had dried. When our volunteers returned in 2007 they found that the stoves were still in use and working well! Both cooking time and wood consumption had decreased significantly as a result of the stoves being used.

In 2007 the “ripple effect” is alive and well! In Guatemala HELP Volunteers taught stove building and built stoves with villagers and NGO Partners in 21 communities donating 634 man-hours of labor. At last count the villagers have gone on to build over 350 stoves. Part of the joy of the stove project is that it is a classic story of peer leadership and temporary project teams with fluid membership.

Each year our experience with the stoves is an action learning project as we adapt what we are doing to the needs of each community and family we are serving. The ability of the team members to learn from and with each other, our NGO Partners, and the villagers is a hallmark of how action research is a critically valuable tool for improving both effectiveness and efficiency.

The use of the After Action Review in Guatemala this summer was a great boost to the action research process. The AAR created the dynamic of having the whole group thinking together to create improvements and do so in a way that creates learning and improvement rather than criticism and defensiveness. The next evolution in the use of the AAR in our stove project will be to increase participation by involving NGO partners and villagers in the deliberations.

At the conclusion of each year we take what we have learned during the year and feed it forward so that the project can be more successful the next year. Before the 2008 season we will do more research on what works and prepare to move forward in new ways.

Section 9 - Summary of Insights about the Tools and Mechanisms of the Action Research and Service Learning Processes:

As we are practicing action research and service learning we have identified three levels of application of the tools, methods, and approaches.

Micro-Organizational Role:
The micro-organizational role of action research is to create a body of insight and understanding with which to guide a specific project or intervention toward greater success. This might be called a day-to-day use of action research to guide and discover the path forward.

The key tools we have identified at this level are temporary project teams, training for volunteers and Country Directors, daily and weekly project team meetings and huddles, and Country Director discussions with Project Team Leaders. Moving up a half level of analysis are several other tools that feed the micro role and creep up towards the macro role. They include project or event after action reviews, weekly coaching and problem solving phone calls, and weekly country reports. Up another half notch on the micro to macro scale is the Executive Director and Board Member Site Visits to each country. When we visit as ED or board members we get in the trenches to work with, sweat, laugh, cry, and celebrate with the volunteers. We strive to leave them a better person for our having been there. They always leave us better people for having had the blessing of working with them. But we are always looking for macro level implications of what we are doing that can be used to guide the organization into the future.

Macro-Organizational Role:
The macro-organizational role of action research is to create a body of insight, understanding, and experience which becomes a growing fund of intellectual capital (knowledge and know-how) to use in identifying and responding to the needs of people, families, communities, regions, nations, and the broader global community.

The key tools we use at this level are the annual reports from each country, the Board of Directors working sessions and board meetings, and NGO Partner Relationship Evaluations.

Human Development Role:
As we use each of the above mentioned tools, methods, and approaches there is an overlying assumption that we will have one eye and one foot in the task of supporting people in their walk toward fulfilling their potential. We find that volunteers who feel that they are contributing to the work and making connections with the NGO staffs and those we serve are happy, joyful, and fulfilled. Daily frustrations and adverse conditions melt away when people have a sense that they are constructively contributing to the lives of other people.

We are blessed with a dual human development task. In country we focus on serving and supporting our NGO partner staffs and the people we serve. At a macro scale and as our core purpose at HELP we are preparing and developing succeeding generations of volunteers to become life long social entrepreneurs with a commitment to the never-ending task of developing individual and collective human potential.

The tools, methods, and approaches of the action research and service learning processes are critical, primary levers with which we learn how to achieve these outcomes.

Broader Application:
You might recognize the names and structures of our tools and methods in the organizations you inhabit. These artifacts are common to most organizations. Temporary and permanent teams are implicit to the organizing process. Coaching discussions and written reports are common. The after action review is a valuable, broadly applied tool. Leaders have made site visits for centuries. So what is the distinction?

The distinction is the approach. When we adopt an action research, service learning approach we do so with a purposeful mindset that structures and focuses our activities toward achieving the dual outcomes of producing our product and service and deliberately learning and seeking improvement. We heartily recommend this approach as the soundest approach to creating value.

Section 10 - Examples of Current HELP International as a Whole Action Research Topics

Building a Grant Seeking Process:
We have a modest history of receiving grants. We are at an inflection point where we can choose to grow the organization significantly. We need to figure out what grant getting approach has worked in the past and learn from other organizations about their successful grant getting approaches. We then need to create a process for seeking grants that can help support program expansion.

Improving on Our Track Record with Adobe (& Other) Stoves:
Our stove projects have worked well. Our improving track record is rewarding to see and experience. However, we want to be sure we are using the most current technology and designs that provide the most efficient solutions to the villagers and schools we serve. We need to canvas the globe to find out the latest and best technologies, designs, and practices. We also need to return to the villages where we have built stoves to find out how they are working and learn from the people that are using the stoves on a day-to-day basis.

Finding Partners and Developing Partner Relationships
As an NGO that works through the mechanism of partnering with other organizations we have several key questions that we must constantly review and answer. They are:

• How do we find and develop partners & projects?
• How do partner relationships and projects evolve?
• How can we teach that process to each group of volunteers each year?

We have within our community of partners, donors, volunteers, staff, alumni, and board members a large store of knowledge capital. We have not documented and learned from that knowledge capital with sufficient discipline. We need to create a project that will design a process for gathering and documenting this knowledge about partners and projects on an ongoing basis. Further we need to develop process models and tools as well as teaching materials so that we can train each succeeding group of co-country directors and volunteers on the best ways to find and develop partners and projects.

Section 11 - Weaknesses & Critique of HELP International

Discipline in Training and Application of Action Research:
Our use of action research has not been disciplined enough to achieve the potential benefits it offers. We have not done sufficient training and follow up to ensure that we are maximizing the learning value of the work we do. We need to do a better job of setting up a research agenda, structuring a research component for each project, build in the time for reflection and analysis that is necessary to tease out the learnings, and continuously feed them forward in the current project, the current year, and into future years.

Sufficiency of Training of Co-Country Directors and Volunteers Before They Leave the USA:
We have a reputation for training our volunteers well. But we see the weaknesses in our training. We frequently realize once the volunteers are in country that they are not prepared for part of the work they are doing. We realized this year that some of our younger volunteers do not have enough background in development, our own history, and in what practices work. We need to revamp our training, redesign the delivery of training, and create tighter follow up mechanisms in country.

Tightening the Focus of the Work on Developing Economic Self-Reliance, Eliminating Poverty, and Suffering:
Some of our historic strengths, such as supporting Micro-Credit Finance Institutions (MFI’s) have receded into the background. We have taken on some activities that our NGO Partners have asked us to help with that are on the edge of the definition of the work we set out to do. We need to assess the nature of all of the projects and activities we are doing, compare them to our Vision and Values Architecture, and find the line of cause and effect between the projects and activities and the outcomes that we say we seek to achieve. We need to refocus on the work we are most capable of doing and that achieves the outcomes we seek to achieve, prepare ourselves better, and implement with tighter focus and accountability.

Section 12 - Implications for Other Campuses and Corporations – A Call to Serve & Learn

Industry has played an important role in each of the efforts of HELP described above. Among their various contributions are the following: Donated office space, board member participation, consultant interventions in helping design strategy, conducting NGO management training, and so forth. In several instances, these firms offered significant financial subsidies in getting these NGOs up and operating. At times, they were even willing to visit HELP’s programs in Latin America, providing mentoring to U.S. and international staff, as well as encouraging partner NGOs of the Third World. In most instances, the result was of mutual benefit to all parties—business schools, MFIs, and corporations. The business schools were able to deliver innovative courses and action research opportunities that are increasingly demanded by MBAs and other students from other campus disciplines. Students enjoyed powerful “real world” experience in relieving human suffering. They also learned how to apply business models to global non-profit efforts. The performance of the MFIs and NGOs HELP worked with has been enhanced by the energy of young college students, as well as the depth of experience offered by corporate executives and consultants. In turn, the companies were able to advance their corporate social responsibility and sustainability objectives and gain a unique and valuable perspective on the grass roots human impact of the global economy.

To further improve partnerships, HELP’s experience suggests the following best practices:

• The three sectors can learn much from each other. The goal becomes that of knowledge-sharing. Each party must discover what it has to offer and what it needs to learn.
• The size and scope of a project in terms of demands for time, energy, and funding ought to be negotiated up front. Generally they should create room for later add-ons as necessary during multiple rounds of discussion.
• The parties need to define what “success” means, so that they come to an agreement.
• There should be a climate of experimentation, a willingness to try things out and reject or retain learning as needed.
• The parties ought to anticipate points of dissention ahead of time and determine how problems and conflicts will be dealt with.
• Finally, organizations need to develop exit plans as to when, why, and what will happen over time.

For other business schools, the BYU experience also suggests several lessons. They include the fact that professors can actually do this kind of work with their students. It may be combined with research and field studies, as well as the teaching of courses, and it can develop long-lasting effects, not only for business students, but also in the lives of poor villagers of the Third World. Faculty need to think big and take risks. Their relationship with students needs to be participative, not like the formal control that often occurs in the traditional classroom. Based on HELP’s experience in dealing with campus administrators, it is better to ask forgiveness from them, rather than seek permission for doing this kind of work.

Both business schools and socially responsible corporations can learn how to fight poverty effectively by understanding development theories, designing action research projects, generating internal motivation, and becoming champions of change. The NGOs that will be established can serve as mechanisms for growth and sustainability among the worlds poor.