Organizing the Good: The Groundwork Shows One Day!

November 18, 2003

Presented by Sarah Newhall, Pact President and CEO at the Stengthening Capacity for Democratic Governance USAID Democracy and Governance Partners Meeting

TAPP Highlights presentation [MS Powerpoint | 589k]

Good morning distinguished guests, representatives from the government of Tanzania, fellow NGO partners and youth participants, and to our donors from USAID, who are strong supporters of this valuable work being done to strengthen civil society. It is a pleasure to be here with you today as we launch into what I hope will be a valuable, practical, and visionary look at the issues facing civil society in Tanzania, and also as we take a look at the capacity of civil society to address social change issues in a non-violent, transparent and participatory way. I was here last just a year and one half ago, in February 22, 2002, just as The Advocacy and Partnership Program (TAPP) was opening its doors. It is exciting for me to be here today with over one hundred partners and to learn and listen about the progress you have made together in a very short period of time. I am especially proud of the work of Dan Craun-Selka, Pact's country director in Tanzania and his excellent team of capacity builders. I know that they have put in a great deal of thoughtful organizing energy to plan this two day partners meeting.

I have titled my own remarks for today: Organizing the Good: The Groundwork Shows One Day! to underscore two key points. first that the role of civil society is to be a voice for the common good in society, which is often most clearly voiced at the grassroots level. Civil society organizations much reach out to and listen to the needs and concerns of citizens and then share an informed perspective on those issues and interest to the government, the commercial sector and within communities themselves. Civil society has absolutely essential role to play in organizating and communicating messages of community building and in so doing "organizating the good." Second, this is a long term process, it takes time to organize the good. It takes strong people, it takes a lot of listening and understanding; it takes a lot of risk taking and courage to be different; it takes a lot of careful thinking and strategizing; it takes a sense of good timing and new ways of implementing important policies and changes. It takes working together for the common good. It takes Active Citizenship! As we can see from people's struggles here in Tanzania, and all over the world, change takes years, but one day the groundwork shows. And when it does show, and when you have had individual, group or success in your community, there is a very special form of satisfaction one feels from helping his/her neighbors/community/nation. I know that it is "organizing the good" that gets each of us up every day. And I know from all of the stories I have heard about your work, and from the reports and case studies I have been reading, that groundwork which you are laying, already has created a strong foundation for building a healthy society in Tanzania. Pact, Inc. is honored to be your partner in the capacity building efforts here. We believe very deeply in the importance of a strong and vibrant civil society, able to work in partnership with government officials at both the national and local levels. And we believe that it is important to develop good skills for the effective use of power in the advocacy process.

The work that you are doing is vitally important to peace and stability in the world.

I hope that each of you realizes that you are part of a global movement, of citizens around the world working to improve basic living conditions in your communities, to improve health care and education, to protect the environment, to advocate for women's and childrens rights, and for transparency and accountability by government. You are part of the `social globalization' movement, sometimes called ethical globalization. You are citizen voices speaking out for balance in the distribution of resources, accountability and transparency in government practices, good public policy and just decision-making, and increased opportunity to participate. In a very basic and real way, you are designing the future of your nation. So I want you to think of yourselves this way, as creators, as truth seekers, designers, as architects of your communities and collectively of your nation. And I want you to feel how important what you are doing is right now, and for your children and grandchildren. You are the social pioneers, who have the energy, the opportunity and the commitment and drive to get up every morning and to set the public agenda. You are the peace makers of the world. So look at the person next to you on both sides of your chair and tell each other, `good job, brother or sister, you are making a difference. We need you."

Dream big dreams. And work together to shape these dreams.

Big dreams often start with baby steps, you can never know exactly when you will make your impact. It is important that we not become so busy in our own daily work that we forget to forge coalitions and networks with others doing similar work. Yet, this is so easy to do and it can lead to burn-out, exhaustion, and feelings of isolation. At Pact, we believe that the network is the organizational form of the future. What does this mean for advocacy work? Around the world, informal groups of people with similar interests are joining together in communities to work for social change. Faith-based communities are becoming more and more active and vocal, women's organizations, unions, the environmentalists, the HIV/AIDS activists, the human rights groups, are beginning to talk to each other and build cross-sectoral coalitions for change. This is a very important development. I spoke to one environmental leader here yesterday, who explained how his organization had become interested in HIV/AIDS prevention worked and had made the link between healthy environment and healthy people. It is important to talk to each other these next few days about how to link organizational and how to link the advocacy issues that you have identified together. I urge you to think big, and to dream big dreams. Work together in formal and in informal networks. You stand every chance of making these dreams come true over time. Engage youth in whatever you do and form a national coalition to create a youth development strategy for Tanzania.

Building organizational capacity is the foundation for effective development work.

Having a strong, well managed organization with a clear vision and mission, and strong ties to one's community constituency is vitally important if one is to implement high quality development programs and services. At Pact in Washington, D.C., we always say, "capacity building starts at home." We try to live what we teach. I want you to know that we have done the OCA on ourselves several times. And right now, in Washington we are working on our own strategic plan, testing our vision and mission, and setting priorities for the next two years. This takes a lot of time and energy. We are 33 years old, and we are still asking ourselves the basic questions: what do we do? where is the demand for our services? how do we involve our partners in designing our programs? what new capacity building competencies do organizations need to thrive in the future? how do we monitor and evaluate our programs? how do we document what we do and capture our methods and approaches? I know from speaking with several of you yesterday that you have done the OCA exercise, organizational capacity assessment, twice now. And Dan and his staff have described for me a number of the follow-on training sessions: notably the monitoring and evaluation workshops, the gender mainstreaming, and the participating for change: advocacy training. I was pleased that all of you said that you thought that the process had made your organizations stronger. I hope this is true. We use the OCA all around the world: in Latin America, in Asia, and in over a dozen African countries. I think it is a powerful learning tool. It requires that the leaders of organizations remain open to criticism, and this can be tricky, but very worthwhile. I encourage the leaders of organizations who are here, to stay open to criticism and to grow from it, and for the staff members of NGOs to be sensitive and brave in expressing criticism and introducing new ideas. If we cannot change our own organizations effectively, we will never be able to create change in our communities and in the world. Capacity building begins at home and it is an ongoing learning process.

The information age changes the way that we organize, share information and advocate for change.

As we all are aware, we are living in the Information Age and we are only just discovering what this will mean to our lives. But we see new changes coming almost every month. I learned yesterday that there are one million cell phone users in Tanzania!! We see the influence of the internet on our ability to acquire and transfer knowledge and information every day. We have to contend with information overload, misinformation, manipulated information, viruses, computer crashes, all kinds of new situations and choices. Managing information is an important capacity building competency area, and it is critical for successful and broad-based advocacy work. Community leaders need to learn how to use print and electronic media to positive advantage to get our message out. One very effective way to increase the speed of getting good information to the community is through community radio. Pact worldwide is working to strengthen the viability of community radio stations and to help them grow stronger. We see rural media as a critical part of the success any strong advocacy campaign. Learning to work effectively with print and electronic media is a real skill and important to any civic education campaigning.

I wanted to describe for you a relatively new, information age organization in America, called MoveON.org. It is a cyberspace-advocacy organization that reaches literally millions of people simultaneously, daily. With a very low budget, but a very big vision, a few people who started in a small, two room office, are now shaping public policy over the internet across America. They are dealing with campaign finance reform issues, gun laws, health care issues, and tax reform. They are getting accurate, reliable information out to the public and also creating opportunities for instantaneous public opinion polling. It is changing the shape of politics in America. But this isn't just going on in the USA. In Zimbabwe, under very restrictive circumstances, a women's run organization called Kubatana, is doing cyber-space advocacy. Information is transferred instantaneously to three thousand users across the country who are active in the movement for social justice in Zimbabwe. This information leads to citizen empowerment and to collective action. It is all about creating people power in the most efficient cost-effective way. A third example of advocacy in the information age sponsored by Pact recently in Indonesia and Cambodia through a program called DISCUSS. In these places internet connectivity was not widespread. But material for public policy forums was transferred by internet to community leaders, who downloaded this information, photocopied it and used it as the basis for thousand of civic education discussions across both countries.

So, I hope that you are identifying ways in Tanzania to use rural/urban radio, print media and the internet to have your voices heard.

I also hope that you know that people around the world are very interested in what you are doing here in Tanzania and of the success that you are having here. Through the media and the internet, your success stories, your challenges and concerns can be shared with many other advocates around the world. So much of the struggle is similar from place to place, community to community. Sharing stories with other champions of social justice helps to further promote those who are organizing the good.

Leaders advocating for women's rights in Tanzania are doing an excellent job!

As a woman leader myself, I always am especially interested in the progress being made by my sisters around the world. And I must say the stories I have heard are impressive, and I am looking forward to the presentations later today. The issues involving advocacy for changes in inheritance laws are critical to women's empowerment. Likewise, the understanding of the connection between economic opportunity and women being able to demand safe sex is taking root in new ways. I also have been told that organizations are successfully advocating for changes in traditional cultural practices, including reducing the frequency of Female Genital Mutilation. Placing healthy family life in the foremost of the political agenda is an important step for national economic and social growth. These issues cut across all sectors and therefore, should be embraced by all of us.

The new NGO Law and Improving the Enabling Environment for civil society in Tanzania.

It is always a long and complicated process to get a good, progressive NGO act passed. I know that many of you are working hard on this process here and that slowly, slowly progress is being made. Pact has worked with coalitions in many of the countries in which we work to pass such laws and your experience are comparable to theirs. It is very important to take the time to build up positive government - ngo relationships. There are always government officials who understand the role of ngos in community life better than others. Seek out those positive government officials and work together with them for constructive changes in behavior and attitudes. This will take time, but it is worth it. Pact Tanzania is committed to supporting the Core Group in its efforts to create a more favorable enabling environment for NGOs and CBOs.

I recall the hard work done by your colleagues in Ethiopia. By the way, over 200 NGOs in Ethiopia, in all sectors, have successfully used the OCA tool. In fact, OCA was born in Ethiopia. And also in Ethiopia, there was a very difficult enabling for NGOS. The government was in fact hostile to NGOs and very restrictive measures for registration were required. The NGOs were frustrated by the status quo, and guess what: they ORGANIZED. They put together an effective public information campaign telling about the good work they are doing for the poor and vulnerable groups. Citizens, as well as politicians, did not think that NGOS were doing a good job. They thought many NGOs were corrupt. The sector came together and tried to understand why NGOS had such a bad reputation. Quite outside of any NGO law, the NGO leaders decided that they needed a CODE OF CONDUCT for the sector. They needed standards for transparency and accountability for NGOs so that their image in the public could be changed. It took several years and careful orchestration. It included developing standards of conduct for NGOs, it involved holding media briefings to explain to the media thought leaders the role of NGOs, it involved finding allies in government and asking their help; it involved working together more cooperatively and speaking positively about each other; and it involved getting stories out about good work. I watched the change in the public and government attitude change in Ethiopia. I watched the same cycle happen in Cambodia, and now in Zambia. I know that it can happen here. Again, Pact will do whatever it can to share our experiences with you and to support you as you design your own campaign here.

Working with government to create tramsparency and accountability a key goal of advocacy.

Congratulations to those of you who helped produce the Legislative Roadmap, a Guide for Civil Society Organizations in Tanzania. I understand that since May nearly 15,000 copies have been distributed and both English and Swahili. And also I know that you have gotten a lot of positive publicity for this civic education material. Having a roadmap for working with government is absolutely critical for successful advocacy work. This booklet is an example of a best practice which you have created in Tanzania and which Pact has distributed throughout all of our country programs. Congratulations. In conclusion, let me again state how valuable your work is for creating peace and stability in the world. As we can see each day in the newspapers and on the radio, we are living in an increasingly conflict ridden world. Wherever we live there is one key ingredient that always makes life better: and that is positive people power. No other force in the world, has changed the world for the better so consistently, as every day citizens doing every day good. And therefore, I really applaud your efforts, I am honored to be here to celebrate you for the good work, you do, every day, here in Tanzania. It is making a difference!!!

Thank you very much.