Global Perspectives 2021: Let’s Talk About Power

Listen to a series of podcasts via SoundCloud delving deeper into the themes discussed in Global Perspectives 2021

• GlobalPerspectives2021, How to co-create a grassroots solidarity revolution 

• GlobalPerspectives2021, How bilateral funders can accelerate power shift 

• GlobalPerspectives2021, Reframing risk: new visions for trust in financial management 

• GlobalPerspectives2021 opening panel: Power Shift: Past and Future 

• GlobalPerspectives2021, Decolonisation: practical approaches from other sectors 

• GlobalPerspectives2021, Decolonising aid discussions in East Africa 

• GlobalPerspectives2021, Engaging New Power Actors 

• GlobalPerspectives2021, Decolonising the future of the sector and aid 

• GlobalPerspectives2021, De-concentrating data and digitalisation

Location

Bogotá, Colombia, Latin America Hub

Key discussion points

The participants in Bogotá focused on exploring the challenges of power shift in the civil societysector in Latin America.

• The importance of building on history, technology and awareness – as long as this is turned this into effective action to change practices – and also ‘unlearning’ what is no longer functional
•  Acknowledging and stopping the large amount of money which ‘disappears’ from the system before it reaches community-based organisations and the communities they work with, and the often-paternalistic attitudes in defining what civil society organisations do with the money and how it should be spent, which undermines their self-reliance and agency
•  Creating far more space in the system for groups like children and young people to define not only what they want to change, but shaping how they want it to change and the role they want to play in that change process.

Further reading

Red S.O.S Aldeas Infantiles: an initiative created to promote and support spaces for participation, mobilisation and citizenship for young people in Bogota.

Learn more

Location

Nairobi, Kenya, East Africa Hub

Key discussion points

On Day 2, the participants in Nairobi focused on decolonising aid discussions in East Africa and how international civil society organisations can contribute to but not colonise local civil society spaces through more equitable partnerships. Some key points from the discussion were:

• The aid sector in East Africa needs to decolonise, but avoiding elite capture at all levels, so it isn’t just replacing old colonial powers with new colonial powers. For instance, close links to government can lead to lack of support for critical grassroots accountability work especially around elections,
• Local civil society should start with small ideas based on empirical research and engagement with communities and move forward seeking out the right partners, before resources. They can exercise their positional power, knowledge and voice, rather than focusing on financial power,
•  Local organisations should push back on donor demands and also say no to international civil society organisations partnership interest where these mean too much compromise in their delivery of people-driven solutions,
•  Information and communications technology (ICT) has a huge role to play as an empowerment tool in power shift and decolonisation for East African civil society to generate its own solutions, knowledge and information transfer. Building grassroots digital skills and enabling protection and security from digital threats is critical to this, as well as Africa developing its own research and continental body of knowledge on digital developments.

Further reading

iHub is an innovation centre dedicated to accelerating the application of social capital and technology for economic prosperity.

Find out more

Location

Jakarta, Indonesia, Southeast Asia Hub

Key points of discussion

On Day 3, the participants in Indonesia focused on digitalisation, artificial intelligence and the civil
society sector in Southeast Asia. Some key points from the discussion were:

• The need to work together – and with multiple stakeholders – to better understand the ethics, risks and opportunities with artificial intelligence,
• The need to include the voices, needs and data of women in decision-making to maximise the social mission of artificial intelligence (AI), and these conversations need to happen proactively now rather than only reactively later,
• Citizens are trusting tech companies more than government with their data, but need to support to understand the importance of data privacy and digital literacy,
• The potential of artificial intelligence to facilitate the sharing of knowledge and support activism and sustainable environment initiatives in Indonesia.

Location

Global Hub: Online

Overview

Day 4 highlighted that how we collect and generate, then aggregate, store and use data and the governance rights which exist over data and each step in this process is critical, including for frontier technologies. But half the time, the data isn’t there or represented – either because of the 50% of the world’s population who are still unconnected and can’t be online or producing it, because it is kept in corporate data stores for extractive, commercial purposes rather than social ones, or because there are political reasons not to collect it or otherwise suppress it.

But civil society organisations need to be very careful when deciding whether or not, and how, to fill data gaps, as groups or individuals may be made more vulnerable by that data being available on them, or the process of collecting it might expose them to significant risk. In both their advocacy work influencing others, and their own programming, civil society organisations should both champion privacy by design and make the principle of data minimisation central to their work – evaluating their whole organisational ‘data universe’ carefully identifying and collecting only the data which is needed, and only keeping it for as long as is needed for their services.

Location

Global Hub: Online

Overview

Day 5 began with a call to critically examine our attitudes in our working culture and development narratives and language if we want to dismantle colonial vestiges in the development sector. Participatory approaches, consultations and constant re-examination of power in our decision-making processes as well as centering care and solidarity can be key ingredients for re-thinking and designing our sector.

Key discussion points

•  The call for trust in youth organisations and the willingness of donors to invest in core funding to enable grassroots CSOs
•  The call for participatory grant-making, involving those at the point of intended impact in the decision making on distribution of funds
• As intermediary organisations we shall re-examine – together with our finance and compliance colleagues – how much bureaucracy and burden we can strip down and change our framing of risk (Click here to listen to the podcast on reframing risk) when working with grassroots organisations and movements
• The call to be brave and try out new funding modalities or incremental changes in managing those to push the needle – the quest for an immediate perfect solution will slow us down collectively – let’s rather learn collectively from our mistakes.

Location

Global Hub: Online

Overview

Day 6 explored how civil society engages with new power actors, concepts and approaches. In the introductory session, Jeremy Heimans, co-author of the book ‘New Power’ (click here to check out the book) described some of the major features of new (vs. old) power, and how power models and power values shape civil society (as much as commercial) organisations. A quick poll brought about the interesting fact that the majority of civil society organisations see themselves as embracing new power values, but being stuck in old power models (hierarchical, linear). The audience was encouraged to have internal discussions with their staff around such notions.

The World YWCA, the Family for Every Child and Peace Direct shared fascinating examples on engaging new power actors, how deep engagement with their constituencies challenged questions around legitimacy and led to reflections on power of their organisations, own expectations, the difficulty of giving up control and the need to consider (and change) linear paths of thinking and decision making.

Key discussion points

• The call for a serious assessment of what it means to be locally led
• Honest and valuable reflections about organisational realities vs. political ambitions.

Closing

The closing of the conference included a conversation between the Centre’s Executive Director, Wolfgang Jamann, and Stella Agara of ‘YouLead Africa’. They touched upon the many facets of power discussions that happened over the past two weeks, both in regional contexts and around cutting-edge themes in digital power shift, sector decolonisation and organisational changes and partner relationships.

The Centre wants to thank all participants and contributors, along with al the supporters

• Robert-Bosch-Foundation,
• International Institute of Education,
• MacArthur Foundation and Sightsavers International for financial support,
• Oxfam International Kenya,
• SOS Children’s Villages Colombia,
• Yayasan Plan International Indonesia and
• Greenpeace Africa for hosting and supporting the regional hubs, the sign language interpreters, and finally its staff and volunteers who made the conference possible.