Relationships for Aid

About this book

Events such as Live 8 and the G8 Summit focusing on aid and poverty relief have turned the world spotlight on these issues like never before. Yet the top-down international aid system is failing to respond to the needs of the very people it purports to help, and is thus failing in the task of reducing poverty and building global security.

This book, authored by an internationally renowned group of aid practitioners, cuts to the root of the problem, which is that policy prescription and an overwhelming concern with measuring financial results means that aid organizations treat recipients as powerless, voiceless entities rather than active partners in a working relationship. The solution is for aid agencies to reorient their priorities and learn how to build lasting partnerships that transfer power to the very people locked in poverty. More than just a critique, the authors offer a practical framework for understanding relationships in the international aid system and look at the relevance of organizational learning theory that is widely used in business.

Contents

Introduction; Learning for Development; If Relationships Matter how can they be Improved?; Learning to Change in Brazil; Participatory Learning in Stockholm and Nairobi; Making the Shift in Peru; Making Organizational Systems Part of the Solution; Learning from People Living in Poverty; The Power of Financial Procedures: The Impact on Learning and Relationships; Relationships Matter for Learning Social Change; Bibliography, Index.

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Biography

Rosalind Eyben CBE is a development social scientist at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) with a career in international development policy and practice. She has long-term overseas experience in Anglophone and Francophone Africa, India and most recently in Latin America and was DFID's first Chief Social Development Adviser.