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Category: Knowledge Hub

Breaking circles through youth employment

Posted on by Irene Garoës

Irene Garoës is a feminist youth activist and a member the The Southern African Alliance for Youth Employment (SAAYE) working group, representing young women, LGBTI issues and youth-led civil society in Namibia. SAAYE, an advocacy network, was formally established in February 2016 with support from the Commonwealth Foundation. SAAYE’s vision is a Southern Africa where young people have access to gainful and productive employment that enables them and their communities to be lifted out of poverty. 

As a young black lesbian woman living in a developing country, the challenges one faces are interlinked. As a young women growing up in a society that is rooted in religious and traditional believes, my voice is often silenced. Due to the apartheid element in the history of Namibia, being black can also put you in an economically disadvantageous position. I am lucky enough to grow up in a family where education for girls is encouraged but the issue is affordability. If you cannot afford quality education, you do not have access to a good paying job which in turn means you cannot afford access to health, education and good housing. Not only for yourself but for your family members. And the circle keeps going. Likewise if you are a young entrepreneur, you cannot access finances because you don’t have collateral even if you have the skills to start a business. That is why access to information is such an important aspect of living in this world for me, especially for young women who don’t know about their basic human rights or how to empower themselves and others, economically or otherwise.

“If you cannot afford quality education, you do not have access to a good paying job which in turn means you cannot afford access to health, education and good housing.”

If one takes time to listen to what’s happening in other African countries you get the sense that Namibia is in a better situation. It often is. But this view does not account for the fact that 39.2% of youth who can work are still unemployed. The women’s movement in Namibia has done a lot, evident today in the fact that 47% of parliament is female However, during the liberation struggle women in general suffered from torture, imprisonment, rape, social and economic hardship as their rights did not matter compared to the common good of the people – which was to fight for the independence of the country first. This and other factors such as religion and cultural practices has translated into a post-independent Namibia where women remain marginalised.

“How can you bring about change if your approach is not gender sensitive or gendered?”

It is therefore important that any struggle that we as young people develop and get involved with today is informed and shaped through gender lenses. Women make up more than half of our population and yet they are the ones that are most disadvantaged, so how can you bring about change if your approach is not gender sensitive or gendered? These are exciting times, young people of Africa are rising and demanding spaces in political and economic spheres, the time to rise and act is now, for the future of our continent and the world. Access to information is on the agenda, youth issues are on the agenda, women’s issues are on the agenda. And SAAYE is here to drive that. We need to be conscious of what is happening around us, develop those around us, and march on!

About Women’s Leadership Centre
Established in Windhoek in 2004, the Women’s Leadership Centre (WLC) is a Namibian-based feminist organisation that envisions a society in which all women actively engage in shaping the politics, practices and values of both public and private spaces. The WLC facilitates the voice and expression of Namibian women through information sharing, education, research, writing, photography, and the publishing of critical feminist texts that we distribute within Namibian society.

Adaptation, or justice? Climate action in the Pacific

Posted on by Gillian Cooper

ABOVE: Butaritari, Kiribati – Islands in the Pacific are particularly venerable to the effects of climate change.  Photo Credit: KevGuy4101

What does ‘climate justice’ mean for Pacific Islanders? This was one of the main questions the Foundation aimed to understand with colleagues in Fiji, Tonga and New Zealand earlier this year.  Because of climate change’s cross-cutting impact on people, society and livelihoods, our small delegation met with a range of actors: leaders of civil society organisations, writers and other creative practitioners as well as staff of government agencies and academics working on climate change adaptation (CCA) and disaster risk reduction (DRR) programmes.

The immediacy of the impact of climate change to Pacific Islanders was clear after my first few meetings. It is happening right now – yesterday. Coastal communities in Fiji have already been relocated due to sea-level rise, with many more communities on the list. Many of the legal ramifications related to relocation such as title and ownership rights, and compensation have yet to be worked out. Some of the existing information on land ownership is ambiguous and if title deed goes way back, perhaps doesn’t exist.

The situation of Kiribati is particularly dire.  Kiribati occupies a total territory of 370km, but of that, 2% is land – low lying coral atolls; the rest is sea – its EEZ or Exclusive Economic Zone.  Kiribati’s main economic industry is its tuna fishery. At current emissions rates and sea level rise, Kiribati predicts that many of its islands will be under sea by 2080 and they would be uninhabitable well before then. The Kiribati President has already sanctioned the purchase of land on Fiji to relocate the entire Kiribati population of 100,000+ people. If this happens, it would be the end of a sovereign state due to climate change.  Another dilemma facing the nation of Kiribati is how to secure continued access to its tuna fishery for the economic and social development of its people. However, because the Law of the Sea states that the EEZ is determined by distance from land it is unclear what will happen to its EEZ if the land is underwater.[1]

“The immediacy of the impact of climate change to Pacific Islanders was clear after my first few meetings. It is happening right now – yesterday.”

For people whose link to the land is closely tied to their livelihood and identity, relocation could have far deeper ramifications. Fijian writer, Mary Rokonodravu, shared her concerns with me on the lack of attention given to the social and cultural implications of relocation. She referred to the historic case of the displaced people of Banaban from whom we could learn many critical lessons on the complexities and pitfalls of relocation. Back in 1945 when the island of Banaba was mined of its phosphate resources by the British Pacific Phosphate Company, the Banabans were forcibly relocated to the island of Rabi over 3000 km away. The provision for their re-settlement and adjustment to an entirely new environment and lifestyle was inadequete, leading to high levels of poverty.[2]

The response from the international community towards the impacts of climate change on Pacific islands has been to put vast amounts of financial support into the Pacific Islands for adaptation and risk reduction. Most of the bilateral and multilateral donors have funded large scale projects. This has created a highly complex landscape of agencies, donors and projects spending significant amounts of money, particularly at the regional level – so much so that those working in the sector seem fatigued by the complexity of the landscape. While there is immense capacity for the technical aspects of implementing CCA and DRR in the regional hub-countries, there is equally enormous and growing demand. The Green Climate Fund, which will bring millions in funding, will bring additional challenges for delivery.

The dominant narrative of climate change has therefore become climate change adaptation and risk reduction. Civil society, for the most part, has also had to frame its participation in the climate change response within the narrative of adaptation. However, none of the funding available from the main climate change adaptation funding pots is available to civil society. According to Krishneil Narayan, Coordinator of the Pacific Islands Climate Action Network (PICAN), currently no civil society organisation from the Pacific, arguably the region most impacted by climate change, is involved in the Global Climate Fund Board – or as observers, where decisions and assessments are made on what will be funded nationally. So even where Pacific civil society could help influence the adaptation agenda and to determine how funds might be spent for the potential benefit of vulnerable communities, they are excluded from the decision-making table. Pacific civil society seems confined to the ‘consultation’ box for adaptation programmes and CSOs viewed as deliverers for climate change awareness projects.

“The narrative of adaptation and risk reduction is ‘crowding out’ the space for questioning the inevitability of climate change.”

Coastal communities at the frontline of climate change impacts undoubtedly need support for adaptation.  But where is the discussion of climate justice? Although climate justice is not a static concept and still evolving, a crucial aspect is the discussion of systematic transformation to tackle the root causes of climate change. But within this dominant narrative of adaptation and risk reduction, the inevitability of climate change becomes accepted. The narrative of adaptation and risk reduction is ‘crowding out’ the space for questioning the inevitability of climate change.

In addition, the space for solutions is limited to those with geopolitical and financial power and transformative change becomes obfuscated.  In discussing the case of Kiribati, one of the technical staff at the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat said something that stuck in my mind. Rather than focus on relocation, support should be on development – so that Kiribati has the prosperity to make innovative solutions and be resilient to the changes ahead. However, within the current framework of climate change adaptation and relocation, those on the frontline become portrayed as always in need of humanitarian relief – needing to be helped rather than as co-creators of the solution.

So, what does climate justice mean for Pacific islanders? I wasn’t convinced that the question of ‘justice’ which challenges and advocates for transformative change of fossil-fuel based, consumption-hungry economies was foremost on the minds of civil society. However, what I did find was that civil society in Tonga were challenging the dominant narrative of adaptation and risk reduction in another way. They were considering the response to climate change not as an adaptation question but as one of resilience and ‘green growth’. Although it is still early days and small scale, for Tongans, green growth means building prosperity for people in Tonga through the sustainable use of their resources.

In November 2016, in a meeting organised by the Civil Society Forum of Tonga (CSFT) and the Oceania office of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Tongan government representatives, civil society and regional organisations identified seven principles of a green growth strategy: (1) development (2) justice (3) dignity (4) earth integrity (5) inclusion (6) governance (7) resilience (8) efficiency (9) inter-generational. Enhancing Tonga’s organic agriculture and the productivity of its fisheries through the protection and management of critical fisheries habitat are some of the first steps to realising their vision. A proposed local governance structure to establish structures and processes for a resilient governance arrangement is also being trialled. The challenge however is ensuring that green growth doesn’t just remain a niche but that it becomes the driver of the national adaptation response.

Studies have already shown that despite the commitments made by industrialised countries at the UNFCCC’s Paris COP21 in December 2015, to do all they can to limit temperature rise to 1.50C, just burning fossil fuels from projects presently in operation will produce emissions that will put the globe well past 20C of warming this century. Fiji is the chair of the next COP23 to be held in Bonn, Germany.  Pacific civil society already see this as an opportunity to raise the profile of the climate change struggle in their region[3]. But will the issue get the attention it deserves? Can the stories of relocation and loss in the Pacific Islands help promote a more meaningful conversation from mainstream media in countries of the Global North about transformational change? Or will it reinforce perceptions of humanitarian need and climate change inevitability in current mainstream media discussions?

The Suva Declaration[4] prepared by PICAN and taken forward by the Pacific Islands Development Forum prior to the Paris COP21, is perhaps one of the clearest statements of asks from civil society and Pacific Island governments targeted at industrialised countries. But in addition to the asks, the narrative also needs to change. To do this, civil society needs to build its constituency to shape people’s world view.  This is a challenging task across the islands of the Pacific, but it’s something that PICAN has begun – to strengthen its network of civic voices across the frontline countries of Kiribati, Tuvalu and Fiji. Linking with other networks and movements in high CO2 emitting countries, who are putting pressure on their own governments for systemic change, will help to build their power, influence public discourse and change the narrative from a discussion around adaptation to one of systemic change.

[1] For more on this, see: https://www.ted.com/talks/anote_tong_my_country_will_be_underwater_soon_unless_we_work_together

[2] See more: http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2015/10/14/our-heart-is-on-banaba-stories-from-the-forgotten-people-of-the-pacific/

[3] http://www.fijitimes.com/story.aspx?id=391260

[4] http://pacificidf.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Suva-Climate-Declaration-final_USB.pdf

Bringing the sustainable development goals home

Posted on by Commonwealth Foundation

The Commonwealth Foundation (CF) spoke to Namhla Mniki-Mangaliso about her role in domesticating and implementing the sustainable development agenda in African countries. Namhla is the Director of Africa Monitor, which currently acts as the Africa Working Group (AWG) secretariat, a broad regional coalition of African civil society organisations. The Commonwealth Foundation has funded and supported AWG since 2014.

CF: Namlah, welcome to the Foundation. Could you start by introducing Africa Working Group (AWG) and the Africa Monitor’s role as secretariat?

Namlah: Thank you so much for having me. Africa working group is a coalition, or let me say it’s a platform, of well over 150 civil society organisations operating in Africa, working on various aspects of sustainable development. We’ve been in existence for the last 4-5 years and working to make sure we can inform and shape the evolution of the sustainable development agenda in Africa. We started during the negotiation process and now we are very well positioned as civil society […] to influence the accelerated implementation and domestication of the sustainable development goals [SDGs]. African Monitor is one of the founding members of the working group and is also the secretariat. Our work at the organisation is to enhance sub-Saharan African citizen agency […] to build the capacity of ordinary citizens to engage well with their governments. And so there is a complete alignment with what we do and the intentions of the African Working Group in making sure that African Civil Society is engaged and influences the policy direction that Africa takes as it correlates to the sustainable agenda.

CF: What are the benefits and constraints of the work of the AWG as a loose association of organisations?

Namlah: It is a loose network. We did not want to institutionalise it and turn it into a [formal] organisation: it is a coming together of a multitude of organisations. […] We wanted the likeminded to come together, as long as they care about sustainable development and as long as they cared about improving the real lives of people on the ground in Africa. I think the benefits have been the automatic commitment that organisations have to the cause because it is the coming together of the likeminded. The way that things happen in the African context is that there is a lot of influence in the collective […] you can achieve a lot more if you operate as a collective than if you operate as individual organisations. […] The challenge I think has been to work through how then do you put in place systems for accountability, governance and transparency. How then do you make decisions? Particularly the strategic [decisions] around what you focus on. And I think we had to be very careful in […] how you govern and coordinate, how you spread the responsibility of doing the […] work throughout the members. But I dare say that we’ve done much of that now. The AWG has a secretariat, there are core group of organisations that are Founding advisory members, there are working groups within the AWG, and there are co-chairs within those working groups. And so there are continuous processes of engagement, we do [web conference] calls and those kinds of things, so that we are continuously talking […].

CF: The Commonwealth Foundation supported AWG engagement with colleagues at the UN in New York while the SDGs were being negotiated – could you describe that and tell us about the impact of that work?

Namlah: Let me contextualise New York a little bit. When we did the New York mission […] at the time the negotiation around the SDGS were starting and […] accelerating. The United Nations (UN) system is set up in such a way, that the African Group [AG], in other words the African ambassadors [had] no systematic engagement with […] African civil society, in fact there was barely any presence of independent African civil society within the UN system. And so the Commonwealth Foundation came at the perfect niche, the perfect time in terms of the support and the boost we needed to get going with what turned out to be a fairly important relationship that we established with the African Group. And that was about three years ago already now and I think since then, not only were we able to continuously engage with the African Group in New York to the extent that they now know who the AWG is, which means that we continued to have the political space to shape […] the sustainable development goals. What that means for us is that the perspective of African people, our constituents, found voice and space. We wanted to make sure that the agenda on the SDGs is about people, is about the poor, is about the excluded and the vulnerable. The terminology of ‘leave no one behind’ was at the core of some of the things that we were negotiating for. We wanted to make sure that there is a very strong focus on young people, because Africa is a young continent. And we wanted to make sure that there were real conversations around structural issues, that make economies function well, […] inclusive economies, economic justice and so on. And then we wanted to make sure that governance was a central part of the agenda and so some of the big, big achievements I think [reflect] what we had been fighting very hard for. So New York was the beginning of something that continued up to December 2015 where we continued to engage. What that meant was is that we had impetus, as the civil society network, to continuously position ourselves and get ourselves organised [and] to go back as civil society leaders and say there is a real need for our continued engagement in this space, and so how do we shape that engagement with the African Union [AU], how do we shape that engagement at the national level with our presidents and our ministers and so on and I would say that moment was a really important accelerant to the work we’ve been able to do since then, […]. I think once the negotiations were completed and September 2015 happened a number of other amazing things and big milestones were achieved, I can sit here and say in most of the countries that we work there are SDG civil society platforms that exist, that have in large part been initiated by African Working Group members. So whether you are thinking about Tanzania, Cameroon, Ghana or South Africa, the SDG platforms that exist in those spaces are in fact initiated and co-coordinated by AWG members. Beyond that civil society networks at the national level are actively engaging with their own governments to ensure that the SDGS are domesticated, that accountability and review mechanisms [are in place] to ensure that the SDGs are going to be implemented. Another angle that I think AWG are working very hard on is around the issue of data. In other words, what’s the role of citizens in producing the kind of data and knowledge that can actually inform and influence review processes? So citizen driven data is a strong element of what we’re working towards both to improve national accountability systems and therefore improve national governance mechanisms, but also to improve global and regional accountability.

CF: Why were Cameron and Tanzania selected to localise the SDG agenda and what have the successes and challenges been?

Namlah: So both Tanzania and Cameroon exist within the context [of] AWG […] working across all the major countries to ensure that the SDGS were domesticated. The civil society organisations both inside Tanazania and Cameroon are a part of the Africa Working Group, so we already had very fertile ground in relation to the engagement of civil society in those spaces. When we started last year we said that we wanted a pilot programme, something that essentially would give us a model on how civil society can engage in the domestication agenda. Now you must remember that the background to this is that we had spent three years in policy advocacy trying to shape the agenda, and then we were realising that it was time to implement and to make sure that it comes back to the national level. That meant a couple of things. It meant that there needs to be policy integration, that we need to take the 17 SDGs and make sure that they are integrated with the national development plans. There [also] needs to be the institutionalisation of multi-stakeholder systems that would make sure we can jointly plan and jointly make decisions and review the SDGs. And then implementation approaches so the SDGS can be implemented […]. Tanzania being in East Africa and Cameroon being in West Africa … also gave us a really nice spread in terms of the geography of the continent. We also wanted to make sure that we could learn from the results of what was happening in both of those countries and it’s been exciting because I think there are a couple of milestones that we can look at that have happened. The first of those, was can we make sure that civil society gets its act together and positions itself well to engage as a value creating partner in the SDG agenda? What does that mean? That essentially means the establishment of the civil society SDG platforms… this idea of saying that all of civil society […] engaged in the SDGS must come together and think creatively about how to effectively engage.

Interestingly in most of the countries, civil society has come to the same conclusion about their role in monitoring and review in the data processes, […] in joint planning, joint decision making processes… and that’s the first milestone that I think we were able to achieve in each of the countries. In Cameroon they developed what I think they called the civil society chatter that essentially was a framework of how civil society would engage with other stakeholders, particularly government in the SDG process both from the policy integration perspective and the joint planning perspective as well as the monitoring and review perspective. Interestingly in Cameroon, the government hadn’t begun to think about how it was going to engage with other stakeholders, and so the process that civil society started, with the support of the Commonwealth Foundation, eventually ended up being endorsed by the planning ministry as a way forward in terms of making sure that there was going to be multi-stakeholder engagement.
In Tanzania, a similar process unfolded where civil society set-up what they called the civil society SDG platform and developed a monitoring and evaluation framework that then was the basis for negotiations with government. Because the Tanzania government decided that the institute for sustainable development would be the lead agency for the domestication of the SDGS, they’ve got political commitment to establish a multi-stakeholder forum, where government, business and Civil Society Organisations come together to work on the SDGs. The AWG members that are presented as a part of the CSO collation.

So [these are] huge millstones that would not have happened if civil society wasn’t organised and hadn’t positioned themselves well. The big task is that it’s not enough to have the institutional systems in place, the SDGS are about implementation. What do you prioritise? How do you budget in such a way that those that are in the frontline are now in the position of benefiting from implementation and services? That’s what we are engaged in now […] now the institutions are in place, how do we prioritise, plan properly and implement so that we leave no one behind. The next 13 years is going to tell us how successful we are.

CF: What aspects of partnership with the Foundation have been valuable to the AWG and the localising process? What distinguishes the Foundation as a partner?

Namlah: I think probably the most important characteristic is something that we’ve found very difficult to get funders to understand, because funders work in very traditional ways […] they look for an organisation and they look for established track records and there is usually very little understanding of how change works in the African context: that you need to operate by coalition […] and the model of the African working group is very unique in that sense, because we are not an institution, we are the coming together of different organisations and networks that want to make an impact in Africa. I think what, for me, distinguishes the Foundation has been the ability to understand those organic processes and the willingness to listen to what would work and why we are organising this way […]. I think this fits in very well around the new strategy of the Foundation, which is around civic voices because it’s about understanding the very many ways citizens can organise themselves, in order to improve governance and in order to improve democracy, not for its sake but to make real impact in the lives of people. Being able to work together in that space and being able to co-lend and co-create together has been wonderful, and we talk about development effectiveness and the idea that the solutions for problems must come [from those] at the helm of those problems and I think that the Foundation has an amazing ability to come in, listen in, and say what are the big problems, what aligns with our strategy, what can we add value to, while leaving the decision making powers to those that are involved and I think that has been our experience. I mean we are talking about a modest sum of resources, but I think it has given us the impetus that we needed at critical moments […] to make important impact. I do hope that becomes the example [for] more funders […]. […] It is important to safe guard civil society and civic space in Africa, we can’t talk about democracy in Africa without talking about how you protect civic space […]. [Funders] understanding why that’s important, I think would make a huge difference.

CF: What does the future hold for the AWG in the context of civil society supporting SDG? Could you identify gaps and potential gains?

Namlah: The bottom line is that we want the lives of African people changed in radical ways, and […] while we are still in the continent with the most young people in the world, the most resources under the ground, we still are faced with absolute poverty, huge unemployment issues and huge problems with governance. The SDG framework provides an opportunity within which that can change, but that’s not going to change by having the right policies in place, it’s going to change by implementation. And it’s our job, because we are civil society and we are independent from governments, [that] we work as a value creating stakeholder within the sustainable development agenda. It is our job to hold our governments accountable, to make sure that the resources that belong to the peoples of Africa are actually used to benefit Africa. […] so we’re not just going to challenge the status quo at the national level, we’re going to challenge it at the regional level [and] you can be sure we are going to challenge it at the global level because we know that it is the global dynamic that creates the mess in Africa, in terms of global resources [being] used and stolen and hidden […] and I think that the responsibility of the network is to be useful, directly in the lives of people, but also […] in giving voice to Africa’s aspirations globally and regionally.

CF: Namlah, thanks for giving us this insightful interview.

Namlah: Thank you.

ENDS

The Foundation’s Network Effectiveness Framework: what’s it all about?

Posted on by Gillian Cooper

Over the last few years I’ve had the privilege of working with a number of the Foundation’s civil society partners across the globe.

Many of our partners have initiated exciting projects to address some of the most pressing issues of our time: youth unemployment, sustainable energy, climate justice. For civil society, one of the ways to increase its power and recognition is by connecting and collaborating with other organisations, individuals, and experts to build a stronger voice and network for change.

Networks have always been important mechanisms through which civil society can increase its power and voice. However, they have gained increasing relevance in the last few years. For one, the power of technology has made the ability to connect people, attract support and to get the message out that much easier. Some well-known networks and social movements such as Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA), Living Wage Campaign, Black Lives Matter have demonstrated that a strong message, effective use of online media and in many cases a distributed and devolved network leadership, can challenge and create powerful change.

Over the last little while, the civil society sector has faced more than its usual share of disruption. Shifts in funding and aid arrangements and shrinking of the operating space for civil society have meant that the sector is considering new ways of connecting and collaborating. Networks and movements that use more agile, fluid structures for organising and connecting actors can provide a way in which to advocate for some of the urgent issues we face.

But, if you’ve ever worked as part of a network, you’ll know that working collaboratively is never straightforward. Because networks are made up of independent organisations and actors, each with their own purpose and way of working – managing their different interests and finding a common vision or voice can be like ‘herding cats’!

So what is the Foundation’s Network Effectiveness Framework (NEF) all about? Recognising the challenge of maintaining the momentum of collaborative working and sharing a vision across different interest groups, we hoped that by developing a tool, our partners could analyse and assess their progress as a network as well as identify areas and needs of capacity to improve the effectiveness of their change agenda. At the same time it needed to provide the Foundation with monitoring benchmarks to show progress to its own funders. I began to research networks and evaluations on what makes them effective. What key elements determine their success? What is and isn’t a change network? How can you keep network members keen and motivated? Is it possible for all participants to have a stake?

Drawing on the research as well as the work of our partners, we see that most networks that work towards a social change, policy reform purpose are facilitated by an identifiable supporting entity – the network leaders – a steering group, organiser or secretariat that provides strategic leadership and administration. From a central ‘core’, membership is often diffused. In well-developed social and policy change networks, membership can be multi-layered with sub-structures, such as a technical advice committee or geographical hubs, allowing for decentralised forms of decision-making.

The Foundation’s NEF aims to look holistically at all aspects of network effectiveness – leadership, structure, impact. The framework breaks down network effectiveness into four main areas or ‘elements’. Ideally, all four elements should be analysed to provide a holistic view of where you are as a network and where you’d like to get to, to effect change. The four elements and their ideal ‘state’ are as follows:

1. Vibrancy: A vibrant network has clarity on the change it wants to see, devolved leadership, actively addresses gender and power imbalances in its structures and learns from its experiences.

2. Connectivity: A connective network has structures that allow for a diversity of connections required to make decisions and achieve its outcomes.

3. Resources: A well-resourced network values, utilises and cultivates funding from members as well as external funders and is transparent in its management of funds.

4. Policy advocacy strategy and impact: An effective strategy has a clear problem identification, is backed up by research evidence and is targeted where power lies. A network has made an impact when the media adopts its messages, decision-makers engage the network in determining the policy agenda and its recommendations has led to changes in policy.

Each of the four NEF elements is broken down into key characteristics:

Vibrancy

Characteristics:

  • Shared vision
  • Recognition of gender and societal power imbalances
  • Distributed leadership
  • Learning and development
 Connectivity

Characteristics:

  • Structure
  • Connections between core members
  • Linkages with wider constituents
Resources

Characteristics:

  • Financial resources
  • Skills capacity
 Policy advocacy Strategy and impact

Characteristics:

  • Strategy
  • Influence of the policy debate
  • Engagement with decision-makers

We developed a number of questions to probe and help network leaders and members reflect on the main attributes and capacities of each of the above characteristics. These are presented in the The NEF matrix. The framework is designed for network leaders and members to undergo a self- assessment process, ideally working in groups, using the questions in the matrix in a facilitated workshop setting. The workshop should also outline targets and agree on actions and responsibilities to improve. These can be recorded on the NEF Record Sheet, developed on Excel. Ideally, the targets should form part of the network’s workplan.

In the end, each of the characteristics is rated using a red-amber-green status and scored to provide an overall tally. Both the rating and scoring should be helpful to quickly demonstrate progress and change to network members. Although the ranking is helpful, it is the discussion, reflection and consensus between core members on each of the characteristics and on the strengthening needed that is the most important result of the framework analysis.

It is important to say that a key aspect of this framework is the recognition that there is no one-size-fits-all with regard to network structure and operation. Different structures will be appropriate for different purposes and contexts. Network leaders are encouraged to assess and experiment with the structural needs that best serve the change they want to see. The NEF questions have been designed to help networks reflect on this.

So far we have found NEF’s application insightful in probing and pinpointing capacity support needs in the developmental stages of the Southern African Alliance for Youth Employment (SAAYE). We hope to apply NEF with other Foundation partners in 2017.

I hope that organisations and network leaders will find this framework useful. I really believe that making connections, finding common ground and making linkages through networks and collaboration with tried and tested partners as well as forging new and different relationships will become more and more important in this new political and development era. As Naomi Klein put it in her acceptance lecture for the Sydney Peace Prize in November last year, ‘Intersectionality … is the only path forward.’ The enormous problems of inequality, human rights abuses and climate change are all linked; so we need to do better at linking up and working with others to find solutions.

I would be very grateful to have any feedback on any use of the NEF, which can be left in the comments section below. We would be keen to know how you’ve used it but also:

  • Are you or your organisation currently part of a network and what do you think are the strengths and weaknesses of this alliance?
  • Do you feel that the NEF can help your network build on its strengths and address the weaknesses? If not – why not?
  • What’s missing from it?

The Network Effectiveness Framework is available for download here.

Photo: Flickr CC: Rosmarie Voegtli

Strategic Planning – Can it Really Make a Difference?

Posted on by Vijay Krishnarayan

A couple of months ago I was drying the dishes with my Mother-in-Law after a good Sunday lunch and she asked what kind of week I had coming up. I told her that we were working on the draft of a new strategic plan, a document that would guide our work over the next four years.  She asked “Will it make any difference?” Her response troubled me.

I’ve worked with civil society organisations for a long time and frequently on matters of capacity and organisational development. I’ve seen strategic planning exercises from different points of view: as driver; an informant; and as a facilitator. I confess that on many occasions a small voice inside whispered what my Mother-in-Law said out loud.

I took that sense of doubt with me into the process of developing the Foundation’s current strategic plan back in 2012. At the 2011 Heads of Government Meeting we were asked to re-launch the Commonwealth Foundation. That started with the development of a new strategy. We reviewed and consulted and came up with a plan that struck a chord with what others were saying about civic engagement in governance and development. The process also made us ask tough questions: What will you prioritise?  What will you stop doing? What resources will you need? When I reflect on the strategic planning processes that haven’t made any difference it is the ones that haven’t asked or answered these tough questions.

A plan can also fail because the process that formulated it didn’t engage the people with an interest in its outcomes – whether they be staff, board members or partners. The phrase “bad process – bad product” was never more true. For the Foundation, staff ownership has been a hallmark of our strategic plans and we’ve seen the benefits in implementation over the past four years.

The Foundation’s current plan runs through to June 2017. It has people’s participation in governance at its heart and commits us to: developing the capacity of civil society organisations to engage with institutions; improving the quality of that dialogue; supporting creative expression as a means of shaping public debate; and sharing the learning generated along the way.

At the end of 2015 and with 18 months of the current plan period remaining we understood the need to base its successor on what we have learned over the past four years. We commissioned an external evaluation, which was comprehensive for an organisation the size of the Foundation. It drew on: 60 interviews (with staff, Board and partners); inputs from 30 stakeholder institutions through an online survey; and field work in the Caribbean where grants and projects were appraised.

The final report acknowledged that participatory governance for development was a long term project and found that the Foundation was making good progress. Our main themes resonated with what the global development community was saying. It recommended the alignment of our new strategic objectives with 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and SDG 16 in particular. It also identified areas for improvement, each of which raise tough questions for the next period. The recommendations included the need to:

  • Develop the capacity of civil society organisations where there was a real chance of lasting change rather than focussing exclusively on engaging with regional institutions such as ECOWAS or CARICOM

  • Assess whether civil society was getting enough out of the various established set piece engagements with Commonwealth ministers such as the Commonwealth Health Ministers Meeting

  • Place greater emphasis on grant making that tests new approaches and offers the prospect of learning from experience

The evaluation flagged the need for the Foundation to continue making tough choices about the way we use our resources. It urged further focus in grant-making and programming given the scale of the current budget. It concluded that if choices needed to be made between quality and quantity, we should choose the former, because it will result in deeper impact, and attract new partners in the longer term.

The new plan commits us to strengthening “civic voice.” This is a new term for us and we have used it to respond to the ways in which civil society continues to evolve. Increasingly citizens are engaging directly with institutions via social media. Institutions are reciprocating with the increased use of referendums.  The Foundation wants to support those voices that are not heard in these exchanges. The term will also enable us to explicitly include writers and story tellers in our work. There will be strong emphasis on developing civic voice so that it can engage constructively with institutions.

We will focus on civic voice in order to:

  • Enable broader participation in policy processes from research and analysis to advocacy or active involvement in reform

  • Improve the accountability of institutions in relation to the implementation of policy or the delivery of services

  • Broaden the public conversation on policy issues through dialogue and creative expression

We secured Board approval for the new strategy at the beginning of December. Their agreement validated the findings of the evaluation and endorsed the place of participatory governance for development at the heart of the Foundation’s work. The concept remains as relevant now as it was in 2012. It resonates even louder now with the Commonwealth Charter and the SDG Agenda both of which highlight the importance of inclusive and accountable development.

Ultimately we want to see effective institutions that deliver better development outcomes as a result of civic influence. Partnership and dialogue between stakeholders is universally accepted and civic voice is central to that. Over the past 12 months Commonwealth initiatives on climate change, gender equality and countering violent extremism have each acknowledged the importance of civic engagement. This requires a People’s Commonwealth that is better equipped to both broaden and deepen the ways in which institutions tackle the development challenges of our times.

The coming six months will see the Foundation add details to the outline that the strategic plan provides. We will develop indicators to help us gauge the plan’s success and map out how we will deliver it through a biennial workplan. We’ll also review our resources to make sure that we are in the best shape to implement. It has taken a year to get to this point but in many ways the work starts now.

Photo: Flickr CC Samuel Mann Strategic Planning Workshop

Reflections on the 11th Commonwealth Women’s Affairs Ministers (11WAMM) meeting

Posted on by Diana Atungire-Ocaya

What is the role of civil society in working closely with governments to address the challenge of gender inequality? 

I travelled with this question to the 11th Commonwealth Women’s Affairs Ministers meeting (11WAMM) held 7-8 September 2016 in Apia, Samoa.  This triennial Ministerial meeting provides the opportunity for ministers, senior officials, civil society, private sector and partner agencies to discuss critical issues on advancing gender equality and women’s empowerment.

Commonwealth Ministers meet under a number of different themes, but this one on women’s affairs is different. Outside the UN meetings around the Commission on the Status of Women and regional caucuses, there isn’t really anything quite like this opportunity for governments and civil society to talk with each other about how best to advance gender equality.  The last Minister’s meeting I had attended was back in 2013 in Dhaka, Bangladesh.  That conversation with Ministers came at a critical time, when we were two years shy of the beginning of a post-2015 era and taking a critical look at what we had achieved thus far with the Millennium Development Goals.  Civil society had rallied to advance the call for a standalone goal on gender equality.  This was achieved with Goal 5 of the 2030 Agenda, and the Commonwealth Foundation can lay some claim to supporting civil society to better articulate clear asks of their Governments.

11WAMM was now taking place a year after we have agreed these global goals, an important juncture for Commonwealth Women’s Affairs Ministers to agree on key priority areas for action within the broad spectrum of what is needed to achieve gender equality.  It is known that governments alone will not achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).  The United Nations has made a resounding call for stakeholders to work together.  

In the discussions at 11WAMM, Ministers agreed that gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls is critical to the achievement of the SDGs.  The discussion on an inclusive Commonwealth was important for the context as it offered the possibility of integrating a diverse set of perspectives to achieve women’s economic empowerment. Direct contributions were given by civil society representatives to this Ministerial discussion.  A case in point was the Ministerial discussion on women’s rights and the elimination of violence against women and girls (EVAWG).  The civil society representative from the Pacific, a key discussant for the session, used the platform to put forward a key ask from civil society that ‘all policies and programs on EVAWG use language that is focused on Women’s Human Rights and women’s experience of violence, putting  women survivors at the centre.  This they went on to emphasise should also include interventions that address VAWG to adopt approaches that are rights based, gender responsive and gender transformative. Part of my question on the role of civil society was partly answered at this juncture with civil society offering and proposing evidence based solutions.

This ministerial platform is one way by which Commonwealth countries are domesticating global recommendations into regional and national policies. Inclusivity is a key tool to generate partnerships. Policies should incorporate important lessons learned from the Millennium Development Goals – goals that recognise the importance of better resourcing and platforms to ensure civil society can partner with government.  

In line with key lessons learned, the 11WAMM communique from Ministers, para 15 acknowledges the importance of working with all groups including civil society organisations as key partners. Within the Commonwealth family, the Commonwealth Foundation has the remit to support civil society. The Foundation plays a pivotal role as an intergovernmental Commonwealth organisation with a non-governmental mandate, advancing the partnership between civil society and government and improving people’s participation in development processes.  It is in light of this mandate that the new four-year Strategic Plan 2017-2021 of the Foundation will continue to reflect a deliberate effort to promote gender equality in line with the SDGs.   

Partnerships that include all key stakeholders are key to how we begin to address the challenges we face when working towards the realisation of gender equality.  The reference to civil society organisations makes sense because civil society bring local knowledge, innovative ideas and solutions, provide technical expertise, leverage social and political capital as well as participatory approaches to analyse and solve problems.  Partnership also indicates that no one will be left behind.  However, a mere reference is not nearly enough.  Governments must commit to change and embrace the different voices that can contribute to the process.  

In the end, it is not really about governments, civil servants or private sector working towards the realisation of the SDGs and gender equality, it is about me, you and us collectively bringing about the change for women, girls and society we want to see in our homes, our families, our societies, countries, regions and the world at large.

Diana Atungire-Ocaya is governance programme manager at the Commonwealth Foundation. She attended the 11th Commonwealth Women’s Affairs Ministerial Meeting from 7-8 September 2016. Photo: Andrew Moore, ‘Clocktower Sunrise’, Flickr CC. 

We still have options: co-creating feminist futures & reflections on AWID 2016

Posted on by Gloria Kiconco

I was recently in a poetry workshop. In the mornings as we, the participants, waited for the facilitator and the camera crew to set up we would engage in spirited debates about feminism. By which I mean arguments that nearly rose into brawls. During one of these arguments, an exasperated man exclaimed, “Feminists want to take over the world!”

In Brazil, when I shared this anecdote, someone replied, “well, what’s wrong with that?” What’s wrong with feminist’s taking over the world?

At my day job I’m a content developer. I spend hours demystifying valuable information and simplifying it for low-literacy audiences. It’s simple to me. Knowledge is power. Binding power in complex vocabulary is a way of warding off the masses.

The first feminist text I ever read was Bell Hooks’ “Feminism is for Everybody.” Her writing was clear and concise. It didn’t make me feel like an idiot and she explained feminism with no gimmicks.

The word feminism is a word that translates differently in every culture and country. In Uganda, thousands are not familiar with this word. Many who do know it, regardless of gender, interpret it as a lifestyle/philosophy/belief that intends to disrupt and corrupt culture. I also believe feminism intends to disrupt culture, but only to free me from it. Since culture is something created by humans, it can also be rewritten.

Maybe we need new words, a feminist vocabulary, a way to rename ourselves on our terms.

But perhaps, first we need to be careful with our use of the words we already have. I think we need to first make feminist discourse available in the simplest form to everyone in every language possible. Is that too ambitious?

On the first day of the conference, I attended a young feminist session led by two young women from Egypt who started a platform called Ikhtyar, which means choice. Their session was titled, “Egypt: Why we choose to utilize feminist non-conventional knowledge production as a tool of resistance”. This session spoke to me more than any other because it centred on two ideas that are central to my personal feminism: feminist knowledge production and choice.

Now I will write from my context as a Ugandan. I believe the decisions we make are based off the knowledge we have, which informs us of the choices we have. The information that comes to us is very selective because of the patriarchal powerhouses that control our media and the remnants of colonialist knowledge that are flooding our schools and bookstores with European and American textbooks, self-help books, and an excess of Christian literature deeply based in prosperity gospel. So as a country, we don’t imagine we have any choices beyond capitalism, religious fundamentalism, superstitions about western homosexuality infiltrating African soil, and subscribing to tyrannical governments.

There’s a part of me that imagines a lot of Ugandans think of feminists the same way Americans used to regard witches in Salem or how they regarded communists in the 60s. They simply don’t know what it’s about and believe what the available media has told them.

The way he phrased his fear told me he knew nothing of what feminism can be. Taking over the world is a very patriarchal approach to change. The feminists I encountered in Brazil spoke more of decentralized decision making. Feminists cannot change the world if we use the same path to power as patriarchy.

The second day of the conference, I participated in one of the co-creation sessions led by the organisation, Frida. We were imagining our feminist future through co-creation. While I’m not a big fan of the caravans suggested by multiple (European) participants, I fully got behind the idea of co-creating the feminist future. It’s taken me nearly a month to crystalise the ideas in my mind, but I want to resubmit my contribution.

What does a feminist future look like for me?

It looks like distributing feminist knowledge produced in the global south by citizens of the global south representing the full spectrum of gender. It looks like policy that supports more women artists and writers of colour to take their work to larger platforms, because art is one way of creating access to universal experiences. It looks like development from a feminist perspective, preferably with an intersectional approach. It looks like informed choices because we all have the choice not to continue living in oppressive systems, some of us just don’t know it yet.

One of the tools I often use in co-creation is reversing approach. I think in striving for this feminist future, we have to take a hard look at the systems we are using now and ask if they are working. If they are not working, we have to not only ask, what can we do different? Also, what if we try the opposite of this? Instead of trying to write gender equality into the system, what if we create a system with decentralised power that actually represents the spectrum of gender and the interests of the population?  If we have consistently approached change through systems from the global north, why not try systems from the south?

I don’t know much about politics, but I do know that we wrote the existing systems and we have the power to rewrite them. In other words, we still have a choice. Ikhtyar. It’s never too late to co-create a feminist future.

Gloria Kiconco is a poet, journalist and author and attended the Association for Women’s Rights and Development Forum (AWID) in Bahia, Brazil, as a part of the Commonwealth Foundation delegation in 2016.

Feminist futures: diversity, vitality and boldness in Bahia

Posted on by Nana Afadzinu

The theme of the 13th AWID International Forum, held in Costa do Sauipe in Bahia, Brazil from September 8-11, 2016, was ‘Building collective power for rights and justice’.

It offered a forward looking perspective, of demanding boldness and embracing diversity: and the forum imbibed that spirit. The colour, beauty, diversity, vitality and boldness was evident in everything. From the sheer number and variety of participants, to the rich programme content, and even the living and working spaces.

I attended this AWID Forum, my first, with great anticipation and my objectives for the meeting were mostly external to myself. I looked forward to finding out more about the future of the women’s movement and exploring how my organization, the West Africa Civil Society Institute (WACSI) could play a significant role in strengthening the capacity of West African women and women in West Africa to face this future. I was concerned about how WACSI’s work would benefit more women’s and women-led organisations in West Africa, and how we could find more innovative ways of mobilizing resources to do this.  The forum also offered the opportunity to connect with other organisations; especially other Commonwealth Foundation partners that were going to be a part of the delegation, to find common strands and strengthen our partnerships for greater impact.

The forum provided those opportunities…and many more. It offered a space for deep self-reflection. And I underestimated the depth of knowledge that could be shared, in less than ten days, between a motley group of women from Colombia, Canada, Barbados, Nigeria, Uganda, South Africa and Ghana, that made up the Commonwealth Foundation delegation. A truly amazing outcome was the bond formed between these women, who had different but in many ways shared experience.

The AWID Forum sessions were interesting, but perhaps even more enlightening and engaging were the times my delegation met; over breakfast, lunch, dinner, in meetings and between meetings, as we walked together to different sessions and congregated after them to debrief. It was in those spaces that I learnt the most. It was in those spaces that I shared the most. It was in those spaces that I got the answers to questions that had bugged me for years, and some that had even arisen during the AWID Forum sessions that I had not been able to get answers to.

I learnt for the first time about the place of women in the Afro-Brazilian struggle and why having the conference in Bahia was itself a statement of solidarity. I was challenged to think more broadly and innovatively about what strengthening civil society meant; going beyond organisations, and embracing other forms of organizing within civil society and thinking of ways in which to strengthen that. I had sometimes questioned my own identity as a feminist; and my tussle with whether I could be a Christian and still be a feminist was firmly resolved as one of us shared why that was not a contradiction ‘Feminism is about choice’ she said, and fighting power and structures that hinder that choice. My own understanding of feminism was broadened to embrace it as a more holistic philosophy rather than a narrow one of women’s rights. My journey as an African woman executive and its challenges were not peculiar to me, and I listened with admiration as my sisters described how they had faced the same issues, and how they had dealt with them in turn.

I left Bahia not only having met the objectives I had set for the meeting but with much more; I left with a better consciousness of self, and how I could and should engage in building collective power for rights and justice. I owe that to the interesting AWID Forum sessions I attended but mostly to those other six women who shared that space and time in Bahia with me. It is to them, and to the Commonwealth Foundation that made this opportunity possible, that I am eternally grateful.

Nana Asantewa is Executive Director West Africa Civil Society Institute and a friend and partner of the Commonwealth Foundation. 

Suspending disbelief to imagine feminist futures

Posted on by Reineira Arguello Sanjuan

In times when the collective power, enhanced by social media, has echoed an increased public skepticism of politicians and institutions, would you suspend your disbelief?

Would you suspend your disbelief despite the fact that in the 21st century as a woman and a representative of the world’s majority population, you still have to fight for equal pay and create a movement such as Say Her Name?  #SayHerName, which campaigns against police brutality and violence against black women, challenges the Afro-feminisation of poverty as is the case for Afro-Brazilian women. This is a world where we still have to advocate for sexual health, reproductive rights and gendered budgets.

With this defiant invitation the organisers of the 13th Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) International Forum brought together more than 1,800 feminists and female human rights defenders from around the world. The Forum included grassroots activists, human rights advocates, representatives from multilaterals such as the Commonwealth Foundation and policy makers.

It was four days of intensive discussions in the form of plenaries, side events, caucuses, small gatherings, story-telling sessions, dance and cabarets, in which representatives of multiple feminisms accepted one of the challenges presented to the Forum: to design ways to govern our own village.

Governing our village

In response, Forum participants envisioned a village in which policies finally work for the realization of women’s rights, and all women’s choices. A village in which diversity would be valued and the fluidity of our identities on gender, sexuality, and more would be recognised. Religious fundamentalism would not have any say in the definition of policies in this village, as its governance would be secular. 

Representatives from the black feminist forum brought to the village epistemological analysis that challenged colonialist notions of history, and the passivity and lack of agency with which African women are depicted. They presented art and story-telling as a political act able to reaffirm different notions of identity where blackness would be celebrated, a village in which all life matters.

With a feminist internet, and perspectives from indigenous knowledge, the village would improve the interaction between humans and planet, and a deeper sense of gender justice would have the final say on the distribution of resources.

With a firm rejection of militarized responses to 21st century global challenges a feminist village would seek alternative ways of conflict resolution salvaging fundamental principles of participatory democracy to redesign the functioning of political systems and institutions, which have to be better able to address systemic dynamics that perpetuate power imbalances and reinforce discrimination.

Increase solidarity amongst movements as a democratic response to reach the envisioned feminist futures

With the complexity of the current reality, it is no longer possible to pretend that a recipe for change is in the realm of a political actor, an institution or a movement. There are multidimensional issues affecting women’s lives and a multidimensional response is required to make a reality of the envisioned feminist futures.

While the  women’s movement recognized the significant role played by global frameworks in amplifying demands of the women’s movement, for example: the Commission on the Status of Women established to promote the advancement of women throughout the world; the historic Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW); and the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, it is still clear that women’s demands are being left behind and women’s rights continue to be ignored.

AWID showed that women are not waiting for change to happen passively. With a call for an increased solidarity amongst movements, feminists are working actively to make change happen. The suspension of our disbelief led us to imagine a feminist future, however a consistent element of reality during this exercise was the strength and clarity of women’s voices, and the certainty that working better together as a movement is central to achieving the transformation envisioned by feminist futures. 

Reinera is an expert on women’s rights and gender, with more than 20 years of work experience in international development. 

Restoring the social bargain. Some reflections from IDS’s 50th Anniversary conference

Posted on by Gillian Cooper

Last week I attended the 2day IDS 50th Anniversary conference: States, Markets and Society: Defining a new era for development. It was a great opportunity to listen to and participate in discussions with some well-known and respected thinkers in the development field and a handful of practitioners from various corners of the globe. Concurrent panel sessions were structured around the five themes of the conference: Inequality; finance and business; sustainability; institutions and the reinvention of democracy; and, citizen voice. Indeed, these are some of the biggest issues and questions of our time, making it difficult to choose between sessions!

 

The themes were especially relevant against the backdrop of the Brexit vote in the UK the week before. In fact, an important conclusion from the conference was that the discipline of ‘development’ which has been focused on the global South, applies now, more than ever, to the Global North.  Ten years ago, when I began my first job in urban regeneration in London’s East End following an early ten-year career in participatory development in the Caribbean, I was struck by the lack of development knowledge transfer from the South to North.  What is stopping this technical transfer? Why are the linkages with the development community of the South practically non-existent with regeneration and inequality programmes in the North?

 

Tackling issues of inequality, fostering greater innovation in the finance and business sectors, building democratic institutions, ensuring the participation of citizens and moving to a greener development agenda are critical elements for a post-neoliberal world in the UK as much as in Uganda. ‘Development as empowerment that rejects orthodoxy’ in the words of Adebayo Olukoshi, Director of the African Institute for Economic Development and Planning.

 

The conference challenged participants to think about the triad of state-market-society and how the relationship between these three institutions needs to be reconfigured to address the five themes. This question, as the conference title suggests, underpinned all of our discussions. Without question, it was agreed that neoliberalism, the privileging of the market, its policy rigidities and narrowing world of possibilities, has damaged the social bargain between state and society. Sadly, I learned that there are few, if any examples where the relationship between state and society has been radically redefined. Even in some countries of Latin America that have provided the first wave to challenge neoliberal economics, central government policy has remained largely immune to civil society. Despite the rhetoric of participation and sharing power, new pathways for governance and participatory democracy have not been found.

 

‘Alliances’ and ‘hybrid forms’ between state-market-society were the buzzwords of the conference. Although there were few concrete examples, at least in the sessions I attended, this was offered as innovative ways in which to rebalance the relationship and enable a more universal understanding of development. This framing is closely related to the Foundation’s approach to constructive engagement between institutions in governance and civil society and its work around regional civil society driven networks for policy advocacy.

 

While hybrid forms may be a helpful new ideology, not enough was said about the social bargain between civil society organisations and society. As we have learned in the capacity development work at the Foundation, even if configured in new alliances, the legitimacy of CSOs is critical. As in the words of Sunita Narain, Director General, Centre for Science and Environment, India, ‘the term ‘society’ is inadequate.’ Critical for the triad of state-market-society are the capabilities at the bottom of the pyramid. CSOs have an enormous role to play in ensuring that policies and that government and corporate investments are pro-poor. Again from Sunita: ‘We need to talk about empowering the poor to demand more. Sustainable long term change will only happen when the poor demand change.’