On the importance of scholarships

My name is Nasrat Esmaty. I am an Afghan Chevening scholar of the academic year 2012 to 2013. 

Nasrat Esmaty (centre) with Prospero Mudza (left) and Benjamin Afreh (right). All three studied at IDS with the support of scholarships

Chevening scholarship made it possible for me to study MA Poverty and Development at IDS. As I left a job to pursue my academic endeavors, this scholarship gave me the financial security I needed as a student. 

While studying at IDS, my only concern was attending to my academic responsibilities. Visiting the UK for the first time and learning about its people and culture was the icing on the cake, which turned out to be a meaningful and an unforgettable experience, too. By unforgettable, I certainly did not mean washing my hands under the two-tap sink and burning my hand in the first month of my stay, nor was I referring to my landlords.

I was referring to breathing in the clean air of Brighton, enjoying the evergreen sceneries, using the well-managed and low-cost transportation system and meeting people from around the world. The reason for venturing into an area of study in development was not just to find a job after I graduate. I wanted and still want to be part of a change in Afghanistan, regardless of how small it can be, in my future professional career. 

This opportunity and status were made possible by both the Chevening scholarship and IDS, which I will always be thankful of. As I was graduating, I came up with the term POVERTICS (an amalgamation of the words POVERTY and POLITICS) and POVERTICIAN (an amalgamation of the words POVERTY and POLITICIAN). 

I plan to take the poverty agenda into Afghanistan’s politics and ensure that poverty reduction is reflected in all the key political and economic decisions in the country. Since IDS is a well-reputed institute, I can even look into international assignments, too.

I believe that the investments made through scholarships go a long way and farther than any other investments. As one of the scholarship recipients and then seeing its effects in my life, I certainly encourage everyone to invest generously in scholarships. Such investments make it possible for capable and deserving individuals who cannot otherwise enjoy the experience of studying in some of the prestigious universities in the world. 

Chevening sponsors seven to eleven (more or less) Afghan scholars to study in the UK every year. I hope that they at least quadruple the number of recipients since Afghanistan needs more and more highly-educated individuals. I also want to request IDS to offer especial scholarships to the Afghan citizens since IDS offerings governance, poverty, gender and development studies) have major takers in Afghanistan and there is a dire need for them, too. I am sure IDS can secure funding for sponsoring Afghan students, too. In the long run, it can add a star to the already good reputation of IDS, too.

IDS have recently announced the IDS scholarships as a result of the generous support of alumni and other supporters. Please visit the website for details and to apply.

IDSers meet in Nairobi in the first of many Alumni meet ups

In the month of April 2014 the IDS alumni (henceforth IDSers) in Kenya held two informal meetings in Nairobi. The first meeting was at the Stanley Sarova Hotel on the 12th of April 2014 whereas the second one was held at the Panafric Sarova Hotel on the 25th of April 2014. 

Noticeably, in both meetings the IDS spirit of warmth and affection was very much alive; in spite of cohort and course differences alumni who had never met prior to these meetings were very cordial to one another. They were happy to share their experiences since leaving IDS and also on information on possible opportunities for the other IDSers and the IDS family in general. 

During the informal discussions, the following key issues came out:

a). The need of establishing a formal and solid platform where IDSers will be in better positions to influence public debates on key issues relevant to Kenya’s economic growth and development. Some of the areas IDSers in Kenya can play critical roles in are: devolution to local government, national cohesion and integration, recurrent spells of food insecurity and youth unemployment. 

b). Identify ‘friends’ in the media who will publish IDSers pieces on a range of development topics. There is further need to identify spaces for participation in TV discussions on development related issues on leading stations. 

c).  In addition to the contacts that IDS- Sussex already has, identify institutions and think tanks  in Kenya where IDSers can contribute to development studies’ discourses, research, teaching and course modeling and sharing of different  literature in development studies.  

d). Use possible means to influence public policy analysis, implementation, communication and evaluation 
It was further agreed that the IDSers hold another meeting as soon as possible to crystalize these ideas further and identify clear pathways for their implementation. To this end the IDS alumni in Kenya will hold its next meeting within the month of May 2014. 

Reflections on the CSP Conference on Graduation and Social Protection in Rwanda

Last week I attended the Centre for Social Protection conference on Graduation and Social Protection, co-hosted by the Ministry of Local Government of the Government of Rwanda, with support from Irish Aid, UNICEF and DFID. I would like to share some of my personal reflections on the conference. They are by no means representative of the number of issues that were discussed, and I recommend reading Stephen Devereux's  comprehensive ‘Learning Insights and Action Points’ on the conference website.

Graduation describes the moment when beneficiaries of a transfer programme (cash, food or assets) pass a threshold  and manage to sustain a certain level of wellbeing over a period of time after exiting the programme. The rationale is that the transfers and complementary interventions (skills training, microloans) will allow beneficiaries to move out of poverty by increasing and maintaining their income generating potential and productivity and become resilient to shocks. The concept was pioneered by BRAC in Bangladesh and has been adopted by programmes such as the Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) in Ethiopia and Vision 2020 Umurenge Programme (VUP) in Rwanda.

Here are my take-away points  from the conference:

1. Beneficiaries are often still poor after graduating

Despite some success stories, most 'graduates' are still poor after graduation. Maybe they managed to move from extreme poverty into moderate poverty, or from food insecurity into food sufficiency. But they are still poor and in many cases they might fall back because their context hasn't changed. They are still vulnerable to shocks, they might still have limited access to markets and basic services and in most cases after leaving the programme they no longer have access to a social safety net.

Taking into account the limitations of any single programme to address the multiple causes of poverty, maybe we shouldn't punch above our weight and claim that livelihood promotion programmes can achieve sustainable graduation?  Maybe we need to be more realistic, and call programmatic thresholds 'exits from the programme', rather than 'graduation thresholds', as the VUP programme in Rwanda already does.

2. Systemic approach: yes, but let's not overburden social protection

The challenge seems to lie in drawing a line between where social protection ends and where 'other' interventions start, e.g. supplying basic services, facilitating access to labour markets, promoting inclusive economic growth. As one participant said, "social protection cannot become the solution for all of governments' failures".  It is one part of the graduation puzzle and incomplete without the rest. We need to figure out how the different pieces fit together.

This line however should not in itself represent a point of no return, when people graduate permanently out of social protection. It rather demarcates responsibilities and highlights complementarities  between programmes and sectors.  Social protection is required on a permanent basis to help people manage the range of risks they encounter throughout a lifetime.

3. Learning lessons..

...across actors: The presentations covered a range of different approaches, from small NGO-led pilots to nation-wide government programmes across Africa, Asia and Latin America. Important lessons can be drawn from these cases on what works and what doesn't. NGOs can test different models, provide more extensive, individualised support to beneficiaries, even if only on a short-term basis. Governments are looking at more long-term and scalable approaches that are financially sustainable and reach a larger group of beneficiaries. Pooling the experiences and evidence and sharing lessons will help to design programmes that improve the chances of poor households to climb up the ladder.

...within programmes: As one participant said "Let's focus on doing it well. Let's focus on getting programme delivery right, on time, as promised." Delivering a transfer programme in itself is already quite challenging. One consultant working on the PSNP in Ethiopia told me that at the higher policy level people are discussing a comprehensive social protection framework, whilst at the district level there isn't enough capacity to allow the programme to work as it is. Comprehensive approaches are important, but  maybe we need to focus on delivering well first, before jumping ahead and complicating things?

...from beneficiaries: One panellist said "No offence to all you academics, but we do a lot of thinking for people who live poverty 24 hours a day". Much of our discussions focus on how and who to target, what kind of support to give and where to set the benchmark. Whilst these are all important issues that are part of the reality of programmes, it often distracts from focusing on the beneficiaries and understanding the range of challenges they face every day to 'graduate out of poverty'.

Thanks to the organisers and participants for sharing their experiences and making this conference possible! 

Martina Ulrichs is an independent consultant and IDS Alumni Ambassador for Canada. This blog is part of the Graduation and Social Protection blog series featured on Povertics, The VPR team blog. 

Remembering whose reality counts in IDS' Impact Evaluation Short course

Comfort and excitement on returning to IDS

The familiar hallways, familiar faces and familiar library combined to make me feel like I was coming back home. My time studying at IDS four years ago was a period of immense excitement for me. My understanding of development was ripped apart and put back together again. Every week brought new challenges to my experiences and preconceptions, and as I walked back into the building four years later for a week long Impact Evaluation Design course, I knew the same was about to happen again. 

The five day course was led by Eduardo Masset, Robert Chambers and Dee Jupp. In the first half of the week, we looked at quantitative methods, in the second at qualitative. As an IDS alumni who spent some of the most fascinating days of my master’s degree crawling around on the floor with multi-coloured seeds, discussing participatory methods, much of this was familiar territory for me. But not to everyone. Asking the beneficiaries, or participants, was sometimes perceived as the 'poor relative' of 'robust' and 'scientific' approaches.

The last day of the course allayed any fears about this as the robustness of qualitative approaches was addressed. By documenting the process thoroughly and using different methods to ensure findings are supported, we can have equal confidence in this method of research.

Challenging my preconceptions 

Since leaving IDS, I have worked for both BRAC and Children on the Edge. Multiple times I have encountered M&E Consultants who have advised a sample size of between five and ten per cent. I had come to assume, therefore, that this is best practice. I quickly realised that this is a dangerous way of calculating sample sizes that could lead to either not finding an impact when there is one, or finding an impact when there actually is not one.

The power of participatory approaches has always amazed and excited me, and I have thoroughly enjoyed using and experimenting with different approaches I learned at IDS. Last year I facilitated a participatory mapping exercise in a Ugandan slum with severe issues of alcohol abuse, child exploitation and child sacrifice. It led to fascinating insights and to new understandings for many parents about how to protect and keep their children safe.

Disseminating the findings back to the participants was key. Parents gained a new understanding of their children’s behaviour and local partners told us how they would use the information: “we have learnt that children have a great capacity to be change makers if provided with opportunities to feel empowered.”

This process was an important part of a chain of events in this slum, which has driven local people to develop Community Child Protection Committees which have since transformed the community.

Bringing it back to work

Children on the Edge is currently in the design phase of an exciting new education project for Musahar children (the lowest of the Dalit’s) in Bihar State, India. I can’t wait to return to my team and start exploring new avenues to include children in the evaluation of the project. One new method which I am keen to explore further is photo elicitation. It is my hope that through giving children disposable cameras and asking them to take pictures that represent their lives, and then discussing the pictures which they children, that we can gain a deeper understanding of their perspectives on what is important to them.

I learned as much from my course colleagues as from the front, with participants from a wide spectrum of organisations. Their combined knowledge and expertise gave enormous diversity and helped contextualise the learning.

I am challenged to ensure that our quantitative work is sufficiently rigorous and that our control groups are secure. Children on the Edge often works in extreme environments such as makeshift refugee camps or informal slums of displaced people. It was also important to realise that it is better not to implement randomised control trials (RCTs) at all if they cannot be done with sufficient sample sizes and robust control groups. Whilst rigorous RCTs are not possible working with such transient and mobile communities, there are a myriad of options which could be used to understand if these are the right projects for these groups, and what change, if any, is attributed to our interventions. 

Exploring participatory methods having now gained practical experience led to me seeing the sessions in a very different perspective from how I saw it as a student. I am now less idealistic and very aware of constraints, but am newly encouraged to continue to seek and use methods which are inclusive and empower the participants, and reminded to challenge my preconceptions of whose reality counts.

By Ashley Kuchanny, Monitoring and Evaluation Officer at Children on the Edge and IDS Alumni Ambassador for the UK

Inspiring Change following International Womens Day

The theme for this years International Women's Day was Inspiring Change which made me look back at my experiences since leaving  IDS in 1991. Some moments have been really inspiring! 

What have they been?

• When I went to Bangladesh a few months ago: Visiting the Microfinance for Marginal and Small Farmers Project. Some of the women reported that they had not only contested local government elections, but were also called upon to become members and assist in resolving cases of violence against women and girls. Some of the women had acquired land under their name during the time of the project and I saw men and women receive training in gender equality.
• In the Theni district of Tamil Nadu, India: I saw women’s federations celebrate the birth of daughters and lead a grassroots campaign against sex selection. I saw these campaigns focus on clinics that disclose the sex of a foetus and bring them to book.
• In the same state, a TV talk show hosted by Ippadikum Rose - a transgender woman, highlighted issues of sex, sexuality and relationships issues faced by transgender women. 
• In Nepal 2007: UNICEF formed women’s para-legal networks at district and sub district levels which supported women facing gender-based violence and helped them to access justice. Around half of the para-legal network members were single women. Another initiative of UNICEF in Nepal was to strengthen community monitoring of maternal health, immunisation, infant and child nutrition, mortality and education outcomes in a gender, caste and ethnicity disaggregated manner. Apart from women, men and village development committee leaders, health workers and teachers were in the monitoring committee. Supplementary nutrition, parental education (e.g. that boys and girls eat together), school and health centre reform and tie-ins with poverty reduction programmes followed. 

What did they teach me about policies towards inspiring change?

• Foster institutional change beyond sectors:  While sectoral projects and programmes are necessary, it seems absolutely essential to change institutions from a gender lens. Both the Theni community level campaign and community monitoring illustrate the importance of challenging community norms. Apart from norms is the issue of challenging power embedded in institutions. Bangladeshi women entering local governments, not as proxies but in their own right is an example of such change. So is the effort by para-legal workers in Nepal to hold the legal system accountable, or the Tamil Nadu experience of holding health markets and media to account on gender. 
• Challenge those who hold patriarchal norms, and not only men: Lessons from Theni, as well as surveys in India show that both men and women hold patriarchal values like son preference, belief that men have the right to hit their wives under certain circumstances and so on. Women are sometimes victims, sometimes agents, but at times uphold patriarchy and other hierarchical systems. Feminists and development agencies have to address this complexity in their strategies. Strategies of working with men also have to deal with men as perpetrators and supporters, go beyond issues of violence against women into gender and care, health, education, economic and political participation. 
• Recognise diversity amongst women and build diverse women’s movements:  Women are a diverse group in terms of race, caste, class, abilities, marital status and gender orientation. Hierarchies amongst women are not recognised adequately in development policy. Further, gender is seen as a binary system, and transgender persons are not taken into account in development policy or practice. Dalit women’s movements, transgender women’s movements and so on, need to be fostered, while at the same alliances need to be forged. Gender policies need to be framed in dialogue with these movements.
• Broaden MDG indicators on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (GEWE): UN Women has advocated that the MDG indicators on GEWE should include freedom from violence against women, earning their own income, percentage of women with access to institutional credit, percentage of law enforcement professionals who are women, and house and land ownership. These indicators are indeed welcome, as well as its suggestion to integrate gender into all indicators. What could be added are indicators on attitudes such as ‘absence of son-preference’ (proxy could be sex ratio at birth). Indicators on women in decision-making roles in religious institutions and traditional councils, as well as access to safe and legal abortion could be considered There could be a guideline that all indicators need to be disaggregated across axioms of diversity amongst women. Finally, the vibrancy and independence of women’s movements could be an indicator.  

By Ranjani Murthy, IDS Alumni Ambassador for India

IDS: From business card to business partner

For the past five years after my departure from MA in Poverty, I have been luckily interacting with IDS. In this post, I will look back into my work experience and share how it affects my work.

IDS is a reliable ‘business card’

“I am Ippei Tsuruga, working for Japan International Cooperation Agency, and I am also an IDS graduate.” That is how I introduce myself when I meet new people, and it works much better than just giving a boring business card.

As a staff member of a bilateral development agency, I often meet senior government officials and practitioners in developing countries. You could imagine how challenging but important the first meeting is to build up good relationships with those experienced people. Talking about IDS is always a good start for a friendly conversation. In my experience, people in the development community somehow link to IDS. Even though they are not IDS alumni, they likely have friends or colleagues from IDS or work together with IDS. All of them have a good impression about IDS and its alumni.

IDS is a powerful knowledge bank

Whenever I need information about poverty related issue, I rely on the source of IDS. In 2011, I was in Kenya to conduct a stock taking survey for formulating an assistance portfolio in response to the worst drought in 60 years. Our agency had not been involved in any interventions in arid areas. So we had no experience and no networks. I had only one week to map who was working for what projects, to find out needs, and gaps for further investment. Where should I start? That was my first reaction when I got this task.

What I did was to go to the IDS website and Eldis catalogue to learn about existing social protection mechanisms and key players for the issue in the country. I then found that the Hunger Safety Net Programme, a cash transfer scheme, was a flagship social protection scheme, and IDS’ Centre for Social Protection was involved. Having a contact, I visited the ministry in charge of the programme on the first day. It was completely successful. Beginning with the introduction mentioned above, we started very friendly discussion and I got a lot of information about the project, the overall framework of social protection in the country, and focal points at other agencies. Our mission ended up with a comprehensive assistance package at the end.

IDS is a partner

As Lawrence Haddad summarised in his blog Development Horizons, we are working on a joint research project on Quality of Growth. I join to coordinate this project and contribute one paper. I particularly like this project because of its critical perspectives.

When talking about growth, one of the biggest questions is what we expect from growth. Why do we want growth? It may be for money, savings, or wealth. Development practitioners might say for helping the poor out of poverty. Then another question comes. Growth for whom? Policy makers and development partners still tend to quickly translate ‘growth is good for the poor’, trickle-down theory. Even though they further think of the question in depth, they might be stuck at pro-poor growth discussions. Is it enough to cover the issues that we are facing today?

My passion is to work for poverty alleviation throughout my career. That is something I learned from IDS. When I left IDS in 2009, one of my dreams was to work with IDS. It has come true. IDS has given me a lot even after my graduation. I believe that my responsibility is to devote my career to poverty reduction.

This blog is by IDS alumni Ippei Tsuruga and has also been posted in The Povertist.

Welcome to 'Politics of Gender'

This is a guest blog from current IDS MA students Moe, Ana, Precious, Stacey, Mohamed, Pramita, Jungyoun, Ahra & Ulrica who are organising a mini-conference - 'The Politics of Gender' - on Monday 24 March, IDS Room 121, 10am -12pm.

• How does the law shape our understanding of gender and citizenship? 
• How do different ways of structuring political institutions affect how women and men participate as citizens and their chances of accessing decision-making positions and authority? 
• What meaning do concepts like justice and human rights have in the process of implementing gender? 

These - and many other questions - have been touched upon in the module called 'Politics of Implementing Gender'. In the course, we have been talking about the basis of politics, the state, citizenship, and democracy. How do states institutionalize patriarchal values? What are the implications of the public/private divide for women's political aspirations? We have debated representation and quota systems, and reflected on the law and legal activism. There have been many good discussions and personal reflections based on the different experiences in the group, and we are now ready to take our thoughts on the politics of gender one step further and share them in a wider context. 

As part of our assessment, we have arranged a mini-conference where we shall present on topics that have emerged from the course. 

The purpose of the conference is to reflect on how the law shapes our understanding of gender, citizenship, and identity. We will explore concepts like social justice, transformative legal reform and quota systems, as well as human rights and family law. 

We want the conference to be an opportunity for reflection and sharing, and engage the audience in exploring spaces for transformative change in policy and law to achieve gender equality. 

We want to discuss, share, and learn with you! Welcome to 'Politics of Gender'!