Attack? Equivocate? Engage? How Big Food responds to a tough new campaign

Chris Jochnick, director of Oxfam America’s Private Sector Department (twitter: @cjochnick), reflects on the different corporate responses to our ‘Behind the Brands’ campaign launch

Companies have had decades to hone their engagement strategies with activists, but still struggle to find the right approach.  Initial reactions to Oxfam’s Behind the Brand campaign offer an interesting case in point.  The campaign is only a week old, so these are early days – but already we can see certain styles emerging.

Behind the Brands is an aggressive effort to link consumers and the public with their most popular food brands around the enormous environmental and social “footprint” of the food and beverage industry.  The campaign launched last week in countries around the globe with a flagship report, a scorecard (below) ranking the “Big 10” food and beverage companies, an interactive on-line platform to encourage public action, and various “visibility” activities at company headquarters.  Media took notice, with stories in the NY Times, BBC, NPR, Businessweek among dozens of others.  In the first 24 hours, 250,000 people visited the web-page; after a week, 10,000+ have taken some kind of action directed at the companies.

Oxfam was not out to blindside or gratuitously offend. We’ve worked with F&B companies in the past and expect to collaborate in the future.  We spent months consulting with the companies about the Scorecard and let them know in advance what they could expect.

So how have the companies reacted?  Typical responses to a campaign can be grouped into three categories:  (a) defensive (b) equivocal and (c) engaged.  In this case, we’ve seen evidence of all three.

On the defensive, Associated British Foods, the Scorecard’s worst performer, came out swinging to the Guardian: “The idea that ABF would use a “veil of secrecy” in order to hide the “human cost” of its supply chain is simply ridiculous. We treat local producers, communities and the environment with the utmost respect. As for transparency … our next CR report in autumn 2013 will confirm significant improvement in disclosure.”  Mondelez wasn’t too far behind, issuing a short response and sending police out to greet our pamphleteers.  Only one company – Danone – opted to ignore the campaign completely – a form of passive defensiveness.  These are pretty modest steps (to get a contemporary flavor for what companies are capable of, see this bit about Chevron), but do suggest a path of resistance that will only provide the campaign with grist for escalation.

Most companies have taken an equivocal stand, publicly recognizing the importance of the campaign issues, offering olive branches, and touting their corporate citizenship bone fides.   The official response from Mars is typical: “Mars takes a comprehensive approach to this issue, with a strong focus on the entire farming community specifically in the area of cocoa sustainability. Our leadership has had a positive impact on the women, children and families of smallholder farms. Oxfam highlights important issues in their report and we look forward to working with them to address these critical issues.”  As a first step, equivocating may make most sense.   It avoids any commitment and keeps a door open to engagement.

It is too early to characterize any of the companies as “engaged”, but there are some positive signs (see responses here).  Pepsi’s CEO went out to meet Oxfam pamphleteers at Pepsi headquarters and spent 30 minutes discussing the campaign.  Nestle provided a fairly substantive response and, along with Pepsi and Mars, has been receptive to immediate dialogue.  These are helpful openings.

In the face of protests, companies will often start defensively or equivocally, hoping to wait out a campaign.  Oxfam has found that even companies with visionary leaders, scoring high marks on corporate social responsibility, will often balk reflexively at outside pressure.  Pride, inertia, fear of the unknown may all contribute. We saw it play out with the iconic CSR leader Howard Schultz, who resisted for months Oxfam’s push to dialogue with the Ethiopian government around coffee branding rights, even in the face of media, shareholder, barista, consumer and public pressure.   In conversations with Starbucks executives afterwards, it was evident that their deeply-rooted belief in the “goodness” of the company made it more difficult to “hear” or respond to outside criticism.

Companies will also resist campaign demands that require ceding some control.  All of the Big 10 voice support for small farmers and sustainability, and many have good projects in the field.  Companies are responsive to pressure around these projects and will eagerly (necessarily) partner with NGOs.  Campaigns for transparency, due diligence, and worker/stakeholder rights – those issues at the heart of Behind the Brands – are a tougher sell.  Companies are reluctant to identify suppliers, or sourcing volumes or auditing performance; to measure and report on how women and small-holder farmers are faring; or to acknowledge their human rights responsibilities.  But these are the building blocks of real accountability.

Behind the Brands aims to overcome this resistance by strengthening consumer and public voices.  Consumer-facing companies like the Big 10 have to balance accountability concerns with risks to their brands – by far their most valuable asset.  Defensiveness in the face of reasonable public demands will eventually take a toll.  Oxfam knows that many consumers care about where their food comes from; if we can get enough of those consumers to think twice before making choices, companies will have to take notice.

Some company leaders already recognize a business case for treating farmers and planet well.  And they know that transparency in this age is unavoidable.  These companies will see dialogue with credible critical voices as an opportunity.  Oxfam is counting on a handful of these companies to fully engage with the Scorecard – and all the issues underlying it — as a means towards strengthening their brands and business.

How do we work out the returns to campaigning? Nice example from the Philippines

Like any campaigning organization, Oxfam has limited funds, and so needs to know whether its investment has paid off. The push from everyone and their dog to pursue a ‘results agenda’ and ‘value for money’ has added further momentum to that effort. That’s fine if you’re doing something that’s easy to measure, (say vaccinating kids, or cash transfers), and where attributing an effect to a particular cause is relatively straightforward, even if sometimes technical and expensive to establish. But what about influencing government policy, where there are dozens of voices, numerous events, and establishing any causal chain is both elusive and (inevitably) disputed (did anyone else grind their teeth watching Bono and Bob making poverty history the other night………?)

This matters because Oxfam increasingly sees a big part of its role as working with others to influence government policy, especially in developing countries, through programmes, partnerships and advocacy.

I got involved in a brain-bending conversation about this when trying to help out with a ‘killer fact’ on some smart campaigning by our team in the Philippines. At first glance, the success of the campaign for a ‘People’s Survival Fund’ was ideally suited to the task. Oxfam and partner iCSC (Institute for Climate and Sustainable Cities) commissioned research, and then launched a campaign in July 2010 calling on the government to set up a climate change adaptation fund. We did all the usual stuff – backgrounders for policy makers, popular mobilization, media work, celeb endorsements etc and (voila!) a US $25m a year People’s Survival Fund (PSF) was passed by the Philippine Congress in June 2012 after a two-year campaign. Result!

But was it value for money? At first glance it seems pretty easy to calculate the return on the money invested in the campaign – it’s just how much cash reaches poor people over a period of time, compared to the amount Oxfam spent on the campaign, corrected to take into account the fact that Oxfam wasn’t the only organization campaigning on the issue, and so shouldn’t take all the credit.

In mathematical terms, it’s even easier: Return to Campaign (RtC) = (AxBxC/D)

Where

A = The total new expenditure on climate change adaptation resulting from the PSF.

B= the proportion of that money that reaches poor people.

C = plausible % of attribution to the Oxfam campaign

D = Oxfam’s expenditure

We calculate the value for A, B, C and D as follows

A: P$1bn a year, taken over say a five year period, making it P$5bn (about US$125m).

B: If the money is equally distributed among all the people in the areas receiving PSF funds, some 45% would go to poor people (based on the 30-60% poverty rates in the relevant areas). But experience suggests that richer people may be more likely to get their hands on the cash. As we are looking for a conservative estimate here, we therefore assume that only 20% of the money would go to poor people

C: As the main funder, and lead agency in the lobby effort that led to PSF, it seems reasonable to take half the credit for the victory, so D = 0.5

D: Oxfam’s total expenditure over the three years of the campaign comes to P$7.4m

So using $Pm as the unit of calculation

Return to Campaign = (5000 x 0.2 x 0.5)/7.4 = 68

i.e. over a 5 year period, Oxfam’s campaign generated at least 68 times more resources for climate change adaptation than we invested in the campaign/for every $1 we spent we generated $60 for climate change adaptation for poor people.

Enter the nagging self doubt (otherwise known as Claire Hutchings in our monitoring and evaluation team). Every single one of those terms can be challenged:

A: assumes all the budget is disbursed and that none gets eaten up by overheads – any underspend or overhead costs would obviously reduce the amount available to reach poor people.

B: how do we know if that is a reasonable estimate of the proportion of the PSF that will ultimately reach poor people?

D: but what about all the other money Oxfam has spent globally and within the Philippines on raising awareness of climate change, supporting partners etc – didn’t that play a role in the victory?  What about cost of programming we’ve done in the Phillipines and other countries that have contributed to building the Oxfam brand, enabling us to ‘sit at the table’, participate in these conversations, influence etc.

And then we get to C: let’s assume for a moment that we can get an accurate costing of all the resources Oxfam has spent national and globally that have contributed to getting this issue on the agenda in the Philippines, and can reach a credible estimate of the proportion of PSF that will reach poor people.  The question remains how can we credibly attribute a % of any decision to the influence of the campaign?

For example, suppose years of global and national campaigns, by Oxfam and others, had got the issue to a tipping point, where only a small nudge was needed to persuade the government. Should the credit go to the patient slog of a multitude of actors, or the last minute glory-grabbing campaign (back to Bono and Bob)?  A light touch approach might be to ask people – staff, partners, government officials and perhaps most importantly, independent experts – to give us an estimate. But such questions risk being pretty leading (‘please attribute a percentage of attribution to the campaign’ is likely to get an inflated estimate), and open to bias. But doing something more rigorous, to investigate the main factors that contributed to the Parliament’s decision, would be expensive and still may not find the evidence needed to reach credible conclusions.  Now there’s a whole measurement challenge around evaluating campaigns and advocacy efforts, and through our Effectiveness Reviews we’re investing in trialing and refining an impact assessment approach for this work, one that builds from process tracing, to explore what it takes to reach credible conclusions about the contributions of our work to policy change (watch this space).

Let’s assume (for the moment) that such evaluations would allow us to credibly attribute our influence.  The fact is that these evaluations take time and resources.  Do we really need to commission an evaluation any time we want to talk about the resources that are being leveraged through our campaign work?  Or can we identify a rule of thumb, with all the necessary caveats and qualifications, that’s ‘good enough’, at least for cases that seem pretty clear cut.

What would be good enough in this case? Your thoughts please

Remember when Oxfam took on Winston Churchill, apartheid, the Labour government, Big Pharma and the pesticides industry?

As Oxfam celebrates its 70^th anniversary, head of advocacy Max Lawson discovers its radical roots, and urges it not to lose its edge

January 1942. The second World War was at its height.  The Axis Powers had occupied almost all of Europe. In Greece, people were dying of starvation at a rate of 2000 a day.  Winston Churchill completely opposed any lifting of the naval blockade to allow food in, as he claimed this would prop up the Nazis. In Oxford, a small group of activists came together to form the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief, and together with other famine relief committees across the UK campaign for Churchill to lift the blockade.  Under considerable domestic pressure, which won support from Canada and the US, the Churchill government did eventually let some food through, but not until 200,000 people had died of starvation.

Taking on the most powerful people. Saying what has to be said. Campaigning for what is right.

Born in a spirit of proud quaker radicalism, Oxfam had arrived.

Seventy years later we brought together figures from Oxfam’s past last week to discuss our radical roots, and it was truly inspiring.

Oxfam campaigning built rapid momentum throughout the sixties. Oxfam, the new kid on the block, a brazen arriviste compared to its far older and more established peers like Save the Children, pioneered many now-familiar methods – harrowing newspaper adverts, celebrity vigils in Trafalgar square (with backing from both the Beatles and the Stones), tens of thousands lobbying their MP.

In 1979 in Cambodia, millions faced starvation following the insane Communist dictatorship of Pol Pot. He had been overthrown by the Vietnamese army who had invaded Cambodia to stop the genocide.  Western governments refused to help the new Vietnamese-supported government, scandalously agreeing that the Khmer Rouge should maintain their seat at the UN despite categorical evidence of mass murder in the killing fields.  Ignoring the opposition of the UK Labour government, Oxfam organised the first shipment of food to Cambodia, turning the tragedy into global front page news, and forcing action by international agencies to support the new government in Phnom Penh.

From the early eighties Oxfam began taking on the excesses of the private sector, whether it was the pharmaceutical giants marketing steroids or nestle pushing baby milk in poor countries. Internally there were huge debates and a fear of risk and litigation.  A report accusing the pesticide industry poisoning farmers was suppressed by management, only to have their decision overturned by the board. Throughout we stayed true to our radical roots, taking those risks, taking on the powerful – and winning.

After a year of detailed planning, Oxfam announced in 1985 that it was going to stop using Barclays Bank because of their support to apartheid South Africa. Oxfam’s break with Barclays was followed by student organisations across Britain and many others, and a year later Barclays pulled out of South Africa – a major victory as they were present on every high street in South Africa and it was a significant market for the company.

This active support of sanctions led to Oxfam being censured by the UK charity commission for being too political.

In the 1990’s we took on the World Bank and IMF, challenging their structural adjustment strictures, handing out packets of pills at their annual meetings saying ‘wrong diagnosis, wrong medicine’.  These should now be dusted off and translated into Greek or Spanish.  We fought hard with many others for debt cancellation. Again we were angrily dismissed by ‘experts’ for being wildly unrealistic and naive.  Ten years later and $100 billion of debt was cancelled.

One of our proudest moments was siding with others such as the Treatment Action Campaign, to face down the pharmaceutical companies on the issue of allowing generic medicines to treat HIV/AIDS- a huge victory which has led directly to 8 million people being alive today on free treatment.  Taking on big pharma was no mean feat.  And we won.

Taking on the powerful. Saying what has to be said. Saying the uncomfortable.  Expecting to be dismissed out of hand. Staying true to our radical roots and moral vision.  A common thread since the beginning.  What does this mean for us today? Huge shoes to fill for a start. Have things changed? Is the world not less black and white?  I don’t think so- it was as complex then as it is now, just different.  The risks were at least as great.  It is true some of those we have targeted have improved their actions.  Many more have improved the way they present themselves. We must beware the wolf in our clothing.  The fights are now as much in developing countries themselves as they are about north and south. These days we should be shaming the 60+ Indian billionaires for accepting that 450 million of their fellow citizens exist on less than a dollar a day as much as we challenge the UK to back a Robin Hood Tax. The issues have changed and evolved but not the fundamental principle. We are entering an age of scarcity, insecurity and grotesque inequalities.  The importance of our responsibility to stay true to the radical heritage of Oxfam, to campaigning against the powerful – is greater than ever.

Campaigning on education and the Robin Hood Tax (and wise counsel from Dilbert)

Keeping it visual and campaign-y today. First a nice 10 minute video on the role of civil society organizations in lobbying for better education (see previous education wonkwar debate if you want more analysis)

They certainly know a thing or two about campaigning in Germany, recently getting major German banks to drop commodity funds and (contrary to the stereotype) they even use humour, albeit in a rather disturbing way. Check out this new Robin Hood Tax video for a taster 

But if you think campaigning is just about ’speaking truth to power’, it’s probably worth pondering this Dilbert cartoon.

The only interesting question on Kony 2012 – why did it get 60 million hits?

Like everyone else, I watched it, albeit skimming, and was fascinated and appalled. Fascinated (and yes, envious) at the skill of the storytelling. Appalled by just about everything else – the use of his son, the cheesy self righteousness of the tone, the depiction of Africa, the profound ignorance and lack of interest in why things are the way they are. I won’t go on. But virtually every Hollywood film about (or at least set in) the developing world leaves me feeling like that (though the feeling is usually less extreme). In the end, the only question that has stuck with me is why has it been so successful as a viral phenomenon (the 60m will doubtless have gone up by several million the time you read this)? Some thoughts, but I would really like to hear those of others.

First it’s a steroidal version of the ‘recipe for campaign success’ a former boss once gave me – all you need for a good campaign is a problem, a solution and a villain. Kony 2012 delivers that in stark relief – problem: this guy turns kids into killers; solution – take him out; villain – enough said. No mess, no nuance. It’s Robin Hood v the Sheriff of Nottingham and we are all Robin Hood.

Second: it adds dollops of Hollywood feelgood schmaltz to that equation – ‘we can do it!’ ‘Hey, they’re just like us!’ ‘Feel the love!’ ‘Kids are cute!’

Third: celebrity twitter massively ramped up the viral spread (see chart).

Fourth: momentum – famous for being famous.

No idea what the legacy of all this is. Millions of mainly young people around the world have just absorbed a particular, highly distorted story about what is going on in Africa. For many, it will be the first time they have taken an interest in a human rights or development issue. What happens next?  I just hope it sows the seeds of a new generation with a real interest in how Africa and its people can progress, in understanding why the world is like it is, not ‘lots of Africans just kidnap and kill each other, but white people can help.’

Oh and if you want to actually know about Northern Uganda and the LRA, Chris Blattman (who tragically, has been on a junk in the South China Sea when one of his big issues went galactic) provides some reading.

For a minute by minute live blog on the phenomenon, check out the Guardian on Friday, including the thoughts of our protection guy in Goma, Stephen Van Damme:

“What we want to highlight is the lack of development in the area that we’re talking about, where people have a lot of concerns – including the lack of access to hospitals, roads and schools – with this impacting massively on these people,” Van Damme said. “And so, any solution has to look at wider development in the area, and that seems to be where there’s a lot less attention and a lot less funding and political support. The LRA problem goes way beyond a purely military solution and has to tackle all of these matters that basically boil down to a very underdeveloped region.”

But then reality is just too messy and complicated sometimes isn’t it? And no, I’m not linking to it (a futile gesture – it went up by two million while I was writing this - but what the heck).

INGOs in Economic Diplomacy – adapting to a new world order

One of the lectures I most enjoy giving is to the LSE course on Economic Diplomacy, (part of its International Political Economy MSc), where most years I trot along and ramble on for half an hour about International NGOs (INGOs) and advocacy. The questions and discussion that follow are invariably fascinating (for me anyway). The course has now been turned into a book, The New Economic Diplomacy, with chapters from negotiators  and academics on the theory and practice of economic negotiation. If you’re involved in advocacy, it’s well worth taking a look. Here’s some excerpts from my chapter, co-authored with Phil Bloomer, which used Oxfam’s climate change campaign as a case study.

There are a number of doubts and ‘challenges’ (as problems are now known) about the evolution of INGO advocacy work. The shift to a more variable geometry of campaigning, combining shifting combinations of national, regional and global advocacy, is a proper response both to the increasingly multipolar distribution of power, and the recognition that national decisions continue to dominate many development issues (the importance of global processes has sometimes been exaggerated in the past).

But it also creates some real tensions: global campaigns move rapidly from one event or policy target to another. In contrast, national campaigns often move to a slower rhythm, spending years painstakingly building alliances between dissimilar groups. Such tensions were epitomised by the 2005 ‘Make Poverty History’ campaign, which declared victory and closed down after some significant achievements on aid and debt relief at the Gleneagles summit in 2005, even though the anti-poverty coalitions it had worked with in many developing countries saw their jobs as very far from over.

Most effective INGO campaigning either involves asking for more money (aid, debt relief, climate finance), or is focussed on ‘stopping bad stuff happening’ (e.g. premature trade liberalization via the WTO). Often, it follows a basic campaign recipe of clearly defined ‘problem, solution and villain’. Positive, propositional campaigning is much harder – alliances easily fragment over what level of reform is sufficient; political and ideological differences surface over what kind of world the INGO seeks. Nowhere is this starker than on climate change, where huge differences persist on the kind of ecological, economic and political models required to avoid catastrophe.
 
Despite the recognition of the reality of multipolarity, the 1970s division of the world into rich ‘North’ and poor ‘South’ remains deeply rooted in the hearts and minds of many INGO staff, as well as in the rhetoric of developing country governments. This makes it particularly difficult for INGOs to speak out over conflicts between developing countries, where disparities of power and influence can lead to deeply lop-sided agreements on a range of issues. In the case of climate change, Oxfam struggled with divisions within the G77 umbrella group of developing countries, a problem that will only grow greater as the emissions of emerging countries such as China grow, along with the damage to the most vulnerable countries.

A similar tension occurs on naming key southern governments that are failing their poor people. INGOs like Oxfam are adept at criticising rich-country governments for their failings on climate, aid, trade, debt, but often shy away from criticism of other governments’ appalling record on poverty reduction or climate adaptation. This is partly because of issues of legitimacy, partly due to sensitivities around not occupying the space of national allies and partners, but also partly because of concern about the future of Oxfam’s country programmes, which rely on government acceptance. Nevertheless, this can lead to INGOs not being effective in challenging the greatest blockers to poverty reduction at a national level.

A further consequence of multipolarity is that INGO tactics that have evolved to influence largely open, accountable governments may be of little value when targeting more closed systems, especially those in countries where space for civil society is limited. How to influence Chinese policy in Africa, or Gulf countries that fund land grabs in Africa?

INGO campaigns continue to privilege the economic and the technocratic, over the political. Insufficient attention is given to power analysis, with many campaigns instead exhibiting ‘if I ruled the world’ advocacy, divorced from real world distribution of power, and decision-making processes. There are institutional reasons for this – an overly political stance carries high risks for many INGOs, whether legal, financial and physical, as well as the more subtle reputational risk of losing the ear of decision makers.

Linked to this focus on the economic and the technocratic is a weak understanding of models of change. Pushed partly by the world of fund-raising and programming, large INGOs inhabit a ‘planners’ world’ of 5 year strategic plans and continuous and predictable change. The larger the INGO, the more Byzantine the processes for adapting and changing those plans. This can lead to a degree of inertia that makes it hard to react to opportunities for influence, such as events, shocks, changes of government etc.  A good example of this was the lack of agility many organisations, including Oxfam, showed in moving fast to link the global financial crisis with the need to promote a transition to a low carbon economy, the so-called ‘Green New Deal’. There were a small number of fleet-of-foot organisations that were capable of making this rapid shift. But for many larger organisations, it took too long to turn the super-tanker around.

Of course, agility is now facilitated greatly by digital communications technologies. These offer both opportunities and challenges to large INGOs. Viral campaigning and communications offer massive potential for citizens’ empowerment and participation, but compared to the past, these are much more on citizens’ terms than Oxfam’s. This demands that INGOs like Oxfam reduce control of their campaign messaging and let their constituencies play with and adapt the campaign to suit themselves and their on-line communities. This implies a profound shift in its campaigning approach, away from one of ‘pushing’ campaign messages out to supporters, and ‘giving’ them campaign actions to take; towards ‘facilitating’ supporters to campaign in their on-line networks and for them to design how they want to go about it.

Where is the world of INGOs headed? The growing obsolescence of the North-South frame will only deepen. INGOs must adjust if they are to be capable of persuading the G20, rather than the G8, of their cause.

The sustained rise of citizens’ power and digital communications means that INGOs must work in effective networks and coalitions across countries and regions, supporting national voices that relate to their campaigns. The rise of continental organisations like the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA) and other international networks of like-minded NGOs, along with agile, global, digital organisations like Avaaz challenge the financial and political dominance of their large northern colleagues.

With growing maturity, recognition, and influence will come greater demands for public scrutiny. INGOs that get involved in campaigning need to ensure they are transparent and accountable, something that is only fitfully occurring at the moment in many organizations.

Finally, the recessions in many of the richest countries mean that INGO income is down or flat, either through less generous public donations, or through cuts in government funding. For INGOs that became dependent on the latter, the implications can be severe, though perhaps healthy in the long term. Either way, fiscal austerity will restrain the expansion of INGOs, and perhaps the civil societies of the BRICs and similar will grow to take some of that space. In the long term, that is surely inevitable anyway. 

But overall, INGOs and other non-government actors will continue to complicate and complement (though seldom compliment!) the work of diplomats and decision makers, who will need to invest in both understanding them and learning how to work together for common goals.

Power and change – how do they fit in development work?

This is a summary of a briefing paper I bashed out for last week’s discussion on ‘how change happens’ with Oxfam’s big cheeses (with thanks to Jo Rowlands and Thalia Kidder for their help). It’s work in progress, so all comments and suggestions very welcome.

In the last few years, ‘how change happens’ (HCH)  has gone viral as a development fuzzword. In meetings and documents, people earnestly enquire ‘what’s your theory of change?’ and you’re in trouble if you don’t have an answer. So, apart from being able to answer your tormentors, why should we be thinking about HCH?

• Making explicit our assumptions and default preferences about HCH, and comparing them with other possible models of change helps us to challenge, discuss and improve our analysis of the shifting spaces and possibilities for programming and advocacy.
• Recognizing our preferred theory of change and understanding those of others (often very different from our own) is essential in building understanding and trust between staff and with allies and partners.
• Funders increasingly want evidence that any proposal has a thought-through change strategy, along with ways to test and improve it

First, some caveats:

• There is no one ‘Theory of Change’. Nor is it a one-off ‘do the HCH, write the document and tick the box’ exercise. It is a permanent way of thinking, seeking to introduce new ideas, more rigorous analysis and faster feedback loops in recognizing and expanding the range of tools we use to bring about change.
• Often, the problem confronting poor people (and Oxfam) is ‘How Change Doesn’t Happen’. HCH is equally relevant to analysing stasis as progress.
• Not all change is good. HCH and power analysis can be just as helpful in ‘trying to stop bad stuff’, as in promoting positive change.

Power Analysis
Power is subtle and pervasive force field connecting individuals, communities and nations, in a constant process of negotiation, contestation and change. It takes different forms: visible, invisible (norms and values) and hidden (behind the scenes). It operates in different spaces – decisions made between different fractions of the elite, or where poor people are invited to participate by those in power, or where in contrast, they demand and create their own space (more here).

Power lies at the heart of change or its denial. Oxfam’s work is based on the understanding that unequal power relations are one of the main underlying drivers of injustice, poverty and suffering. One of Oxfam’s aims is to transform power relations, so that poor men and women have greater influence over the policies, structures and social norms that affect their lives.

However, unequal power relations manifest themselves in many different ways: from unfair trade regulations that disproportionately benefit rich countries, to the social norms that cause young girls to suffer malnutrition because they are only allowed to eat after their brothers have had their fill. One way to disentangle this complex web is through power analysis.

A power analysis identifies and explores the multiple power dimensions and actors that affect a given situation, so as to better understand the different factors that interact to alleviate (or reinforce) poverty.

Some key questions to ask

1. WHO? Actors, Organisations, Institutions
Who are the main actors involved (poor communities, decision makers, private sector companies)? Beyond these leading players, what other individuals or institutions (media, religious institutions, intellectuals, traditional leaders, celebrities) are relevant and influential, either as potential allies of change, or as blockers, or as ‘shifters’ – potentially important players who can be convinced to support the change.

2. WHERE? Levels, Spaces
In what kinds of “spaces” are those seeking (and blocking) change operating? Is it formal/closed, invited, created/claimed from below? Do the relevant changes and decisions take place at household, community, local government, national government, regional or global levels?

3. WHAT? Sectors, Issues, Power
Which aspects of poverty and marginalisation are being addressed? What change is Oxfam and its partners trying to affect? Which kinds of power relations are relevant? (e.g. visible, hidden, invisible/internalised). What are the gender dimensions of these power relations?

4. HOW? Strategies, Methods, Models
Power analysis helps us arrive at some hypotheses about how the desired change is likely to occur, and what initial change strategies Oxfam could adopt to help. There is a potentially endless range of models of change, and strategies to apply. Some of the key parameters that need to be discussed include:

Alliances: What combination of likely and unlikely allies will maximise the chances of success? A traditional partnership with a local CSO or NGO? Building broad NGO coalitions? Forging relationships with sympathetic individuals or ministries within government? A joint approach with private sector companies?
Approach: What is most likely to influence the target individuals and institutions whose support is necessary to bring about change:  is the barrier to change created by laws and policies, or social norms, attitudes and beliefs? Is the issue one of providing rigorous research evidence for the benefits of the change we seek? Would a successful example (e.g. a pilot project or evidence from a neighbouring country) persuade? Or is this more likely to be about contestation than cooperation – political mobilisation, numbers of people in the streets etc?
Events: Is change most likely to occur around a specific event, whether foreseeable (e.g. an election campaign) or unforeseeable (eg the death of a leader, a natural disaster, economic crisis or conflict)? How do we prepare for and respond rapidly to the opportunities to promote change created by such ‘shocks’?
Complexity: Is the change we seek relatively simple (government abolishes user fees), or complex and messy (How to help people feel less disempowered and excluded from decision-making)? The former lend themselves to traditional approaches such as demonstration pilots and public campaigning. The latter are less predictable and will require more improvisation and experimentation, e.g. supporting a range of experiments to identify successful models, competitions and prizes for good ideas etc (see this example from Tanzania).

Understanding where we are coming from: the importance of frames
Discussions are almost never entirely neutral, objective and rational. Instead, the people in the room bring to the discussion their underlying and enduring ways of seeing the world and its motors of change. Part psychology, part intellectual formation, the deep frames underlying our thinking are often unacknowledged (and sometimes explain why we feel like we are ‘talking past each other’). Recognizing and learning to accommodate them is useful; trying to ‘convert’ those with different paradigms to our own probably isn’t. Some common frames:

• Conflict v cooperation: Does change come about through struggle or through discussion and mutually-agreed reforms?
• Optimist v pessimist: Do we see progress everywhere, and seek to accelerate its path, or is development really a losing struggle against power and injustice, where defeat is highly likely?
• Bottom up v top down: Is lasting and legitimate change primarily driven by the accumulation of power at grassroots/individual levels, through organization and challenging negative norms and beliefs? Or can it be achieved more simply by reforms at the levels of laws, policies, institutions, companies and elites, or simply by identifying and supporting ‘enlightened leaders’
• Market-based development: improving poor people’s incomes and assets, for example through enhanced power in markets.
• Modernization v tradition: is the aim of development to include poor people in the benefits of modernity (money economy, technology, mobility) or to defend other cultures and traditions and build an alternative?

Conclusion
Running an HCH analysis is not a one-off exercise, a magic crystal ball that enables you to plan unerringly for the next 10 years. Instead it is a feedback loop for constantly checking and improving our models of change (see diagram). Running a programme or campaign in an uncertain world is more like sailing a boat along a coast, with bad visibility and poor navigation tools (Thanks to John Ambler for this analogy). Storms blow up, and require adjustment. The boat springs a leak and needs repair. Crew members leave and new ones arrive. At regular intervals you need to stop, take stock, and adjust course. HCH analysis is the compass that provides those course checks and corrections.

Advocacy v Service Delivery in Russia: FP2P flashback

Next up in this holiday week selection of largely unread posts from the early days of the blog, a story from Russia

Contrasting case studies from Oxfam GB’s Russia programme, which has tried different ways of supporting Russia’s estimated 5.6 million disabled people. Traditionally, we have run a microfinance programme which has benefited a total of 40,000 people – 5,500 recipients plus other beneficiaries, such as family members. Total expenditure to date some £2m ($3.1m and falling…..). Recently, however, we tried something different – advocacy.

Up until this year, disabled people in Russia had to register every year in order to be entitled to work and to receive benefits from the Russian government. This proved to be both time consuming (up to six months of every year), humiliating and sometimes ridiculous. Someone with an amputated leg had to prove every year that the leg had not magically grown back over the intervening twelve months. And only then would it be possible to get entitlement to benefits.

Natalia, the leader of a self help group for disabled people in Russia, supported by Oxfam, told us what this meant for her, “I am permanently disabled, and yet every year I have to go through a six month process to prove to the government that I am disabled – this process is humiliating and tiring. You go back and forth and back and forth to the doctors and go through so much bureaucracy. I am young and fit so I am able to do this process but imagine if you are a pensioner in an isolated village – it is impossible. Those who have been injured and have lost limbs, still have to prove every year that they are disabled – it is a degrading system!”

Working with the Global Call to Action on Poverty (GCAP) coalition in Russia, Oxfam staffer Vitaliy Kartamyshev included the issue of registration for disabled people in a more wide-ranging report on healthcare in Russia. The report proposed a change to the regulation so that people who are permanently disabled only have to register once in their lives.

In March 2008 the report was launched at a national press conference. This was followed by intensive lobbying of senior government officials at the Ministry of Health and the parliament (Duma). The regulation № 247 on “introducing changes in the rules of recognizing disability” was passed on April 7, 2008 by the Ministry of Health . The government adopted the precise change in regulation concerning disabled people proposed by GCAP.

Total cost of the campaign, in terms of Oxfam spending? About £100,000 ($155,000). This change will affect tens of thousands of people, including an unknown number that have simply given up registering because of the hassle, and may now be persuaded to claim benefits.

It’s hard to compare the two approaches – service delivery is pleasingly concrete, and so it is easier to assess its impact. Advocacy work often suffers from issues of attribution (did the Russian government change its law because of the campaign, or would it have done so anyway?) and impact (how do you measure the impact on people’s wellbeing of not having to waste six months a year wrangling with officialdom?) Advocacy more closely resembles a venture capitalist approach – of ten such campaigns, maybe only one or two will achieve their aims, but they will ‘win big’, whereas service delivery appeals more to the predictable world of logframes and planners. What’s clear from this example, though, is that both have their place in the NGO armoury, which is why, over time, advocacy has become more significant in Oxfam and other NGOs’ work (though it still remains a small proportion of the total spend).

This post was first published in October 2008

Why is the new Oxfam campaign called ‘GROW’? The importance of framing

What kind of a campaign calls itself ‘GROW’? Answer, a different kind. My first reaction on hearing the aural equivalent of puffs of smoke was a small jolt of surprise, and then a pleasurable ‘hey, that could be interesting.’ I’ve seen the same baffled curiosity on a few other people’s faces when they hear the name, so I’ve talked to some of the people responsible to find out how Oxfam arrived at ‘Grow’ rather than some variant on ‘Hungry for Change’ (Oxfam’s 1980s food campaign) or even (shudder) ‘Food Justice in a Resource Constrained World’ – the new campaign’s working title for the last year or so.

The campaign’s identity, summed up in its strapline ‘Grow: Food, Life, Planet’ marks a significant shift in thinking about how public campaigning brings about change. It moves from a focus on specific policy changes (e.g. on trade rules or debt relief), to something much deeper – changing the way people think. And not just (or even mainly) activists – the target audience is a much wider global audience of ‘world aware’ people. The intention is to tackle the underlying issue of ‘framing’ – the way people see the world, rooted in individual and collective psychology, culture and experience, not just the comparatively restricted and arcane world of ‘evidence-based policy making’ that we normally inhabit.

To be honest, as more of a policy wonk than a campaigner, I struggle to grasp the full implications of framing, but it’s prompted a lot of interest among NGOs (see this paper co-authored by Martin Kirk, head of Oxfam’s UK campaigns). What I think it is saying is that any campaign has to operate on multiple levels – sure you target bad guys, policy changes, etc, but over the long haul, the messaging has to reinforce the kind of world views that are needed for lasting progress, and not undermine them. And for that, tone matters at least as much as content. Positive or negative? Threat or opportunity? Caring or angry? The classic example is fund raising – ‘poverty porn’ images of misery and starvation may raise more cash in the short term, but they create a frame of passivity and hopelessness that is both misleading and insulting, and which undermines long term progress.

Where it gets interesting is that when we (or rather some professional pollsters) went out and tested these theories in eight countries, five of them developing (India, South Africa, Brazil, Indonesia and Mexico, along with the USA, Netherlands and Spain) we got a common response on the kind of frame that would attract people to a campaign – a positive vision for the future, with a focus on sharing. None of the original ideas for the campaign identity worked on this level, so we ditched them. ‘Grow‘ emerged from the subsequent soul-searching/brainstorming and then stuck in people’s heads.

What about all the normal language of activism – justice, rights, end this, stop that? Turns out it is just that – the language of activists, but non-activist-but-potentially-sympathetic people (North and South) often find it harsh and offputting – all throwing rocks and donning hair shirts, and not much joy.

Yet to achieve ‘food justice in a resource constrained world’ a degree of conflict is inevitable. Greed, short-sightedness and the increasing likelihood of distributive conflicts over land, water or license to pollute make that certain. Food riots in 30 countries in 2008 show the limits to the Big Hug approach. We will need to make sure that the emphasis on positive, sharing, win-win type campaigning does not downplay the struggles that are unavoidable if we are to end poverty while staying within planetary limits.

That means finding a language that works both for that wider public and for activists. It won’t be easy – I felt that tension in the media work around the launch, where being repeatedly asked ‘who are the bad guys?’, ‘what’s the problem?’ etc reinforces a crisis narrative that rapidly squeezes out any positive vision.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the campaign title is the way it deliberately takes on the issue of economic growth. We want to reclaim the ‘grow’ in ‘growth’ for what really matters – growing good food to eat, watching your children grow up healthy and fulfilled, ensuring that planet and people flourish in the long term. That means recapturing the true meaning of ‘grow’ from the dead hand of GDP, which still holds sway over decision makers, despite doubts creeping in on the margins, expressed in the ‘beyond GDP’ and well-being work of Stiglitz, the OECD and others. On the other side of the debate are the hairshirtists and degrowthers, whose negative framing – limits to growth, degrowth etc – has signally failed to get much purchase. In the run-up to the Rio+20 Earth Summit next June, we’ll be trying to find a way through this minefield. Daunting but very exciting.

My only remaining fear? An avalanche of bad puns on the go/grow theme – grow figure; grow well etc etc. This could get ugly.

So over to you, the target audience (sort of – you’re probably all a bit too wonky). Vote on the poll to the right and let’s see if ‘Grow’ passes the test (no idea what we do if it fails……..).

And here’s a nice little animation that illustrates what we’re on about.

GROW: Oxfam’s new Global Campaign

As promised, here’s the outline of the new 4 year Oxfam mega-campaign, GROW. The website is here, with the launch report ‘Growing a Better Future’ and lots of background papers and case studies.

The point of departure for Grow is that the survival and flourishing of humanity in this century will be determined by its success in rising to two historic challenges: ending hunger and learning to live within the planet’s ecological boundaries.

The warning signs of a gathering emergency are clear. We have entered an age of crisis: of food price spikes and oil price hikes; of scrambles for land and growing water stress; of climate change that Oxfam can already see affecting its programmes around the world. The threat that now faces us contrasts with steady, indeed historically unprecedented, development over the last 60 years. This constitutes a profound challenge to our existing models and understanding of development.

GROW has a simple message. Together we can avoid this grim future, but it will require decisive national and international action. We must simultaneously meet three challenges:

The sustainable production challenge
The food system must be transformed. By 2050, demand for food will increase by 70 per cent. This demand must be met despite flat-lining yields, increasing water scarcity and growing competition over land. At the same time agriculture must rapidly adapt to climate change if precipitous declines in productivity are to be avoided, and its carbon footprint must be slashed.

The equity challenge
In the developing world, nearly 1 billion of us go without enough to eat. Meanwhile an obesity epidemic is rapidly spreading from industrialized to emerging economies. Fair shares and social justice matter just as much as production. Moreover, how we grow the extra food required will matter as much as how much food is grown. Key to meeting the equity challenge is investing in small farmers. Hunger and poverty are concentrated in rural areas. Unlocking the potential of small producers represents our single biggest opportunity to increase food production, boost food security and reduce poverty and vulnerability. Background paper from Swati Naryan on India’s dismal performance on hunger here.

The resilience challenge
The food system is increasingly fragile. Oil price shocks are transmitted to food prices through input and transport costs. More frequent and serious weather events, a sign of climate change, are disrupting farming. But perhaps most shocking is the role of governments in triggering, rather than averting, food price crises. Policies of narrow self-interest and zero-sum competition such as land grabs, biofuel programmes and export bans make a bad situation worse.

We must radically change how we collectively manage risks and build resilience to shocks and volatility. But the institutions needed to protect the most vulnerable are often inadequate or entirely missing. Correcting this institutional deficit will mean building what the GROW campaign calls a ‘new prosperity’. This will require three big shifts.

Build a new global system to avert food crises
Governments must develop integrated strategies to build poor people’s resilience to hunger, by creating jobs, adapting to climate change, investing in disaster risk reduction, and extending social protection. Globally, we must regulate for resilience, building a system of food reserves, increasing market transparency, putting in place rules to tackle export restrictions and ending trade-distorting agricultural subsidies. The annual $20bn subsidy to biofuels must be overhauled. Finally, we must build and reform the international institutions we need to manage risks and respond to shocks. Food aid must be untied and, along with a new global climate fund, properly funded. Background paper from Alex Evans here.

Build a new agricultural future
Donors, international organisations and national governments must prioritise the needs of small-scale food producers in developing countries, where the major gains in productivity, sustainable intensification, poverty reduction and resilience can be achieved. This particularly applies to women farmers, who in many countries grow most of the food, yet are largely excluded from support from the agricultural system. Companies must embrace the opportunities provided by smallholder agriculture. Donors and international organisations must continue to raise agriculture spending within aid budgets (down from 20.4% of aid in 1983 to just 3.7% in 2006). Rich countries must end their trade-distorting agricultural subsidies. New global regulations are needed to govern investment in land to ensure it delivers social and environmental returns. And national governments must invest more in agriculture, while carefully regulating private investment in land and water to ensure secure access for women and men living in poverty. Background papers on agroforestry in Bolivia and improving food security in Nepal.

Build a new ecological future
National governments must intervene to speed up and direct the low carbon transition, for example by investing R&D in clean energy. There is a long way to go – currently global subsidies for renewable energy are just $57bn compared to $312bn for fossil fuels. They can create incentives through the use of subsidies and tax breaks to guide private capital to where it is needed. They can tax undesirables – such as greenhouse gas emissions – to direct economic activity towards desirable alternatives. And they can regulate: for example, to stop companies polluting or to encourage them to provide goods and services they otherwise would not. But ultimately our success or failure in building a new ecological future will depend on a global deal on climate change.

Achieving this new prosperity will take all the energy, ingenuity and determination that humankind can muster. The scale of the challenge is unprecedented, but so is the prize – a sustainable future, free of hunger. That future will have to be built from the top down and from the bottom up. From the top, ambitious leaders will drive success, overcoming the opposition of vested interests. Far-sighted corporate leaders will break ranks with damaging industry lobbies. From the bottom, networks of citizens, consumers, producers, communities and civil society organisations will demand change. Oxfam will work with these groups, and others like them, to build a growing global movement to end hunger and set a path towards a new prosperity.

Excited? I am, as is Alex Evans. And Lula – see below, who as president of Brazil, delivered extraordinary progress in reducing hunger. Join the campaign here (tell your friends) or start by signing the petition to the G20 leaders here.

Coming up next: some top killer facts, and why on earth did we call it GROW?