Comments

I am not sure that this is a particularly helpful or effective influencing strategy. This hardly comes across as welcoming and inclusive. And I note Robin's comments on this which are all pertinent. I would ask whether the private sector has been 'asked nicely' to support this campaign in a way with which they are able and willing to engage.

Bob, I'm struck by the bridge analogy, and wonder if the original project goal was to replace the old bridge or supplement it (to provide the two-lane highway). What I'm getting at here is that the outcomes of a project might not always (or often) be the ones the funder planned for, and in some cases there may be unanticipated changes, both for better or for worse. This suggests to me that when we revisit projects to evaluate sustainability we cannot simply rely on quantitative indicators devised to measure predicted outcomes from the project proposal -- we need to be much more flexible and insightful. On the whole, my impression is that revisiting projects after completion, even very expensive projects, is the exception rather than the rule, and that such ex-post-facto evaluations are not done well or over sufficient time to judge sustainability with any sophistication. I used to teach planners and architects, and there is a well-know concept in the field known as post-occupancy evaluation, which involves visiting built structures some time after completion to compare the designers' conceptions of how the space would be used with the way that the occupants in fact use it. Such evaluations are in fact extremely rare, and most architects regard them with indifference. Hmmm.

To be fair, it's not at all obvious how a corporation would sign up to support the campaign from the web page linked above. It's pitched at individuals. One <a href="http://australianaid.org/action/host/" rel="nofollow">sub-page</a> indicates that you can support the campaign 'whether you’re a surfer, or a musician, a library or a church' but again doesn't provide any obvious way for an institution rather than an individual to sign up. And <a href="http://australianaid.org/who-we-are/#join" rel="nofollow">this</a> 'Who we are' page also provides no obvious way for an organisation to join; in fact it tends to imply that the 'we' refers to a pre-formed, closed group. It's not just that the web site asks for an individual's name; it's also that it urges people to 'pledge their vote' for a fairer world. Corporations and other institutions don't vote, and I wonder about the wisdom of this tactic in any case. It sounds almost as if a person has to make a theoretical commitment to vote in favour of the contender that's most generous on aid, which right now is certainly not the Coalition. Presumably the idea was to build a community of people who want to say that the parties' aid policies will be important to them as they decide what to do with their votes -- 'aid matters to me' rather than 'I pledge my vote'.

How predictable this is when knowing the truth behind the "aid". My expat friends and I, living in Indonesia, have discussed "aid" at length and have come to the conclusion that it is simply money transfers between entities. (Some say criminal types.) Of course Education is the first to be cut. If you educate the people they will see that corruption is taking money from them. If they are healthy they will be able to see and hear clearly that the aid that should go to them is going in someone's pocket. And, if they have good food, they will live long enough to change the society and be self-sustaining, which is definitely not good for getting more "aid" monies. As an engineering person, I see the construction is sub-par and expensive. In reality, a project is an excuse to transfer monies. Health professionals cannot understand why so much is spent and so little is being done in health care or health education. In the education sector, we have seen that there is no real education of students, everyone passes so that the monies can be issued. My friendly group has investigated many cases and found that only 40% of the "aid" gets to the designated project. 60% is spent in overhead. In the U.S., we have two organizations that have those kind of numbers; one is the mafia, with their money laundering business, and the other is the federal government, whose business is spending the taxpayers hard earned money. Which one of these does AusAid fall under? Faith-based groups and private investors get more done with less money by having less government involvement. The boots-on-the-ground people work hand in hand with those who want better lives. If there was more transparency in government and fiscal responsibility to the taxpayers (investors), the world would change in a very short time.

Gee it would be great to see the private sector get behind the Campaign for Australian Aid! Strangely, while it is a non partisan campaign open to all organisations, a quick look at the campaign homepage and organisations belonging to it reveals the private sector is conspicuous in their absence. And yet they have so much to offer in the joint effort to rebuild Australia’s aid. As my mum taught me, maturity is about sharing the load. Applications that enable companies to join the campaign can be found <a href="http://www.australianaid.org" rel="nofollow">here</a>.

Yes, one of the saddest phases of projects is finalisation when so many enthusiastic people ask where continuing support, of even the most limited technical kind, will come from. Donors and governments alike are generally unwilling or unable to provide access to continuing help of this kind. Short term and one-off training is one of the most ineffective ways to bring about sustainable change.

Thanks Simon. Yes, I agree it is an issue that has not been given enough thought. Neglect might be a more accurate description. Your question goes to the heart of the problem with sustainability. As your observations imply, it is a complex matter and I remain to be convinced that the idea of sustainability is necessarily the most helpful concept here, particularly when the word seems to be used increasingly as a 'feel good' slogan in so many contexts now. Maybe continuing benefit or continuing impact? The central idea of sustainability in projects of all kinds has been the continuation of benefits which, in the ideal situation, will be clearly and realistically defined in the project design. I wonder if they are, especially in education. The behavioural change you refer to in education should, ideally, be strong enough to survive most of the unpredictable influences and support continuing change and improvement and not be limited to the implementation of (say) one unchanging teaching method or one specific management tool. Unlike bridges, an additional complication in education is that many projects operate at several interlocking levels and, further, can also include physical infrastructure such as school buildings. All this leads to the difficult matter of how you measure sustainability. We certainly need to do much better than a lot of past practice which has been little more than a quick judgement resulting from a very limited sample of cases (districts, schools, teachers) that have received assistance. Another curiosity is the contrast between the attention given to evaluating sustainability, which has been very limited, with the attention given to impact evaluation. As you correctly observe, it seems we have not yet grasped how to think about the issues properly. Curious!

I enjoyed reading your comment Ai, and thanks for making the points on strengths and supporting local people. I'd love to hear your thoughts when the Summit is over - to see if you feel like the outcome document achieves what the Summit is hoping for and incorporates the dominant ideas from the online discussions.

Hi Paul and Jo, thank you for very interesting posts! I had been the one whom rescued by the humanitarian organizations in the past, and now work as a healthcare professional. I think I have a somewhat different views from yours. I have been participating WHS online forums and discussions from the beginning, and its agenda ( Prevent and end conflicts, respect rules of war, leave no one behind, working differently to end need, invest in humanity) is fair. I don't think WHS is ignoring the existing issues... Paul mentioned that WHS is failing by only aiming to " preserve and retain emergency capacity, instead of boosting the emergency capacity ( Please correct if I am wrong). There are other things that certainly need to be discussed at the Summit ( I am NOT saying that emergency response is less important) to mobilize and empower the local knowledge and power ( particularly in Global South) to prevent dependency on external actors/ aids/ organizations ( this was one of the most frequently discussed topics during the online regional consultations). Like Jo says, voice of voiceless needs to be heard, and I cant agree more with this remark. I believe, overall, what WHS is trying to achieve is to build the stronger resilience within the local communities ( The conflict stricken areas or disaster prone regions) by shifting the mode of working, from top-down to bottom up, or deficit focused to strengths focused.

Bob, thanks for a thought provoking post. It makes me wonder if we have really grasped how to even think about this issue properly. Just as environmental sustainability has a specific meaning other types of projects and programs may need to adopt different concepts of sustainability. The author contrasts the evident sustainability of a bridge project with the harder to demonstrate and lower reported levels of sustainability of education projects. But couldn’t this be because we are again talking about different types of sustainability? In one sense sustainability is intrinsic to a bridge. It fulfils its purpose by not falling down. Once built a bridge should continue to be a bridge for at least a minimum projected lifetime and we should regard it as a failure if it were not to do so long past the aid project that built it. On the other hand, many aid projects, including the education projects you mention, are about engendering some kind of behavioural change. Surely we cannot expect behavioural change to have the same sort of sustainability as a bridge particularly as we are dealing with human beings and the myriad of unpredictable influences that impinge on their lives. Surely this kind of sustainability, if it is legitimate to seek it, is of a different order and needs different tools to understand and measure it.

Bob, Thank you for raising this important issue. I think all the points you raise are worthy of consideration for future development assistance for education. In my experience one of the ways to improve sustainability is to provide direct technical assistance to those who need to produce something. This often means sitting with the persons responsible for a product over relatively long periods of time introducing more effective and efficient tools that allows them to perform a required task. The skills the counterparts receive through this technical assistance methodology become well ingrained and longer lasting and thus more sustainable compared with one off training.

Thanks to both Paul and Darren for these stimulating posts on an important issue. I have been a supporter of the idea to look at ways to bridge development and humanitarian work, with the ultimate focus of trying to provide for people in the most efficient and effective ways. I do think there is value in this discussion and there are areas where greater linkages/streamlining could improve our ability to help people. Yet, if the aim at the WHS is to subsume humanitarianism under the SDGs, and development more broadly, I think absolutism is unhelpful. What worries me more is Paul's comment that to speak at the Summit you had to agree. This seems almost repressive. We need different perspectives and disagreement to advance our thinking. And to deliberately limit potential opportunities to speak out against States' rule violations is a concern. Hopefully rule-abiding States will be vocal on this at the Summit. Reading across the two blogs, it seems to me that progress requires two things. We need people at the Summit who will do their best while there to: hold States to account and get other States to do so, too; and advance thinking about how to expand and improve humanitarian action, and forge sensible links with development work. But progress also needs organisations like MSF who will use their power in a different way to communicate crucial information. When the system appears to be rigged against allowing a voice for the voiceless, then somebody needs to stand outside the system and yell.