Reflections on 25 Years of ABCD with Gord Cunningham

REFLECTIONS ON 25 YEARS OF ABCD WITH GORD CUNNINGHAM ABCD Kitchen Table Talks May 11, 2022

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Women's Empowerment & Active Citizenship ABCD Kitchen Table Talks: Reflections on 25 Years of ABCD with Gord Cunningham | 1

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Reflections on 25 Years of ABCD with Gord Cunningham ABCD Kitchen Table Talks, May 11, 2022 Hosts: Eric Smith, Robin Neustaeter, Gord Cunningham (Coady Institute)

Introduction If you have come to Nova Scotia, you will notice that we often do a lot of our talking and decision-making informally at our kitchen tables. The Antigonish Movement was organized around them and Moses Coady and Jimmy Tomkins, our founders, were known for them. We wanted to revive these discussions around the burning issues that are keeping us up at night about ABCD approaches. These talks are provocative, candid, and critical discussion circles on how to deepen our practice and thinking on ABCD. On May 11, 2022, Coady Institute hosted a kitchen table “Old wine in new bottles? The practice discussion in honour of its retiring Executive Director, Gord of communities driving their own Cunningham. Gord presented a history of asset-based development has existed in every part of community development (ABCD) at the Coady Institute the world since time immemorial. Some and reflected on his 25 years at Coady. The webinar is part of the names for is are Konbit (Haitian of the larger five-year ENGAGE! Women’s Empowerment Creole), Harambee (Kiswahili), Debo and Active Citizenship collaborative project among Coady, (Amharic), and Barn Raising (English).”

Christian Commission for Development in Bangladesh - Gord Cunningham (CCDB), Haitian Centre for Leadership and Excellence (CLE), Organization for Women and Self-Employment (WISE) in Ethiopia, Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) in India, and Tanzania Gender Networking Programme (TGNP). This project, supported by Global Affairs Canada, applies an ABCD approach to promote gender equitable change.

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The History of ABCD at Coady In 1998, Gord attended a lecture by John McKnight, founder of the ABCD Institute in Chicago, IL. In the 1980s, McKnight and his associates travelled across North America visiting urban communities to learn about citizenship and community development in low-income neighbourhoods. The term ‘asset based community development’ was born out of this work.

Following the event, Gord invited John McKnight to visit Coady and speak with diploma participants and the local community. His talk resonated with Coady participants, many of whom noted the examples that McKnight referred to were North American urban communities. The participants challenged Gord to find examples in a Global South context.

He began by asking participants for stories from their own communities. Participants shared stories from their past, their communities, and volunteer work and Gord challenged them to learn from the examples they provided.

In 2000, Gord wrote an article on ABCD for the Coady Institute’s newsletter. The article was seen by Coady graduate, Dr. Anselmo “Boy” Mercado, founder of the South East Asia Rural Social Leadership Institute (SEARSOLIN) in the Philippines. Mercado modeled SEARSOLIN after the Coady Institute and he wished to incorporate the ABCD approach into the Institute’s training programs. The two institutes worked together to develop tools, focusing on participatory rural appraisal (PRA), and finding strengths in communities. The material developed served as the foundation of Coady’s ABCD certificate program.

In 2003, Alison Mathie and Gord published the article From clients to citizens: Assetbased community development as a strategy for community-driven development in the Development & Practice journal. This article added to the critique that standard development practice led to a demeaning view of the ‘developing world’ and advocated for shifting the focus away from deficits and problems to people’s assets and strengths. In communities, this means recognizing what works, identifying how communities have organized in the past and present, and identifying the assets and strengths that people can mobilize themselves.

The article generated significant interest, and Coady’s first ‘project’ explicitly using an ABCD approach was in Ethiopia.

This work caught the attention of Oxfam Canada and resulted in subsequent work to organized workshops with the NGOs involved in the Oxfam project. These in turn led to theories of change and discussion about how an ABCD approach would shift development practice. Tools were developed and the Leaky Bucket was born.

Soon after SEWA – a longstanding Coady partner – contacted Coady with an interest in the ABCD approach. SEWA was involved in relief efforts and wanted to transition back to community development. It believed the ABCD approach would assist in the transition and saw a good fit with Coady. This relationship continues to this day, through a variety of different relationships and projects.

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A few years later, the Center for Development Services (CDS) in Egypt contacted Coady for assistance with developing case studies on community-driven development. Coady provided ABCD training to CDS staff and worked with them on case development. A case study manual based on success stories in Egyptian communities was published.

In 2005, the Comart Foundation expressed an interest in ABCD and funded a case study written by Gord about Jambi Kiwa in Ecuador. Jambi Kiwa works with rural and indigenous families that produce medicinal and aromatic plants and spices. Impressed by Jambi Kiwa’s success, Comart provided additional funding and in 2008, Alison Mathie and Gord’s edited book, From clients to citizens: Communities changing the course of their own development, was published by Practical Action.

Over the years, Coady has taken a three-pronged approach to its ABCD work. Education programs and incorporating ABCD into the Coady curriculum is the most efficient way to reach as many people as possible. Finding resources to bring participants to Coady is another approach. The final approach is producing and supporting research and publications via Coady and its partners.

“What’s the best way of doing it, what’s the most effective, and what’s most likely to be internalized by people, adapted by themselves, and driven by themselves rather than an outside organization making the decisions?”

- Gord Cunningham

ABCD courses have been offered on and off-campus for the last twenty years. The most recent offering was at CCDB in March, 2022. Courses and workshops have been offered in several countries in Africa, Asia, North America, and South America.

On a global level, Coady has taken a role in convening and publishing ABCD research. In 2009, Coady Institute hosted an international conference on ABCD. The gathering brought together networks of the ABCD Institute and Coady Institute to share ideas and experiences, as well as invite emerging networks into the discussion. In 2018, Coady graduates organized the ABCD Imbizo Festival in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. The festival brought together hundreds of ABCD practitioners to deepen their understanding of asset-based community development.

Coady has developed a range of ABCD tools including the Leaky Bucket tool which has been used extensively in Coady’s work to help grassroots people and local communities better understand their local economy. It enables them to identify the main flows of money going into and out of a community.

Coady supports a network of ABCD alumni and partners by strengthening their capacity to adapt and design their own ABCD practice, training and action research. As the network grows, so does Coady’s reach. At this time, Coady is incorporating the ABCD approach into other areas including value chains, indigenous communities, human rights, peacebuilding, and climate change.

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A Deeper Dive into Practice Egypt In the early 2000s, the Ford Foundation and the Centre for Development Services (CDS) were interested in developing a series of case studies on communitydriven development. Coady trained CDS staff on the ABCD approach and worked with them to develop and write cases. A book was published based on success stories in Egyptian communities. Included in the book was an ABCD how-to manual.

“In a way, ABCD was really about learning from what communities did themselves.

The audiences were organizations that were working with communities, not community leaders themselves.”

- Gord Cunningham

Ethiopia Coady’s first contact was with the Furra Institute of Development Studies, who was connected to the Sidama Development Corporation (SDC) in Awassa. Coady worked with them to develop an ABCD approach. This work was noticed by Oxfam Canada, a funder of SDC. Coady and Oxfam Canada developed an action research project that was funded by Oxfam. Workshops were held with the three NGOs involved in the project – the Relief Society of Tigray (REST), Hundee in Oromo, and KMG Ethiopia. REST was serviced-based and Hundee was a grassroots organization promoting gender equality. KMG Ethiopia’s work was with FGM and discrimination against women. Theories of change emerged as well as discussion of how an ABCD approach shifts development practice.

As communities invested more resources to achieve greater things, there was a need for capacity building and more support. ABCD facilitators needed to connect communities with supports to help them achieve greater success and overcome barriers. Coady has worked closely with our partner Organization for Women in Self Employment, which drew on the experiences of another Coady partner – SEWA – and works reduce urban poverty through women’s economic involvement. It focusses on three areas to build women’s leadership: promoting financial inclusion through savings and credit cooperatives (SACCOs); organizing women only spaces within SACCOs to help women exercise their rights and leadership; and the provision of trainings in key areas that advance women’s leadership role in society.

Aster Tefera from WISE shared that they are expanding ABCD Training of Trainers in Ethiopia and have manuals in three languages (English, Amharic and Oromo). They are also piloting an action research project to refine ABCD tools in urban areas of Addis Ababa, help community members identify small projects as well as wider projects that support marginalized people.

They are looking forward to developing cases and sharing the project once it is completed.

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Haiti The Centre Haitien du Leadership et de l’Excellence (CLE) CLE’s origins lie in the recognition that following the 2010 earthquake, the Haitian people were sidelined from all humanitarian and reconstruction efforts, seen as lacking the institutional capacity, organization, resources, skills, and particularly the leadership to be regarded as key players in their own country’s reconstruction. CLEW believed in civic-minded leadership, leaders who are more interested in the welfare of their own communities than their own careers.

CLE was founded in 2011 in close partnership with the Coady International Institute to combat this leadership and capacity deficit, and make a sustained and significant investment towards the emergence of a new kind of leadership in Haiti through action and innovation, leadership education, and awareness raising. CLE made the decision to work first with women and youth in local communities. Community contacts were developed and videos were produced to draw attention. CLE’s work with Konbit (co-operative community labour) and young people has been instrumental in driving the work forward.

India Coady has a longstanding relationship with the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA). SEWA is a member-based organization of over 1.9 million self-employed women workers of the informal sector in India. Since its founding in 1972, SEWA has evolved into an “ecosystem” of unions, cooperatives, producer companies and services, reflecting the integrated needs of women: finance, markets, physical health and safety, childcare, insurance and technical services.

Following the 2001 Gujarat earthquake, SEWA provided relief to support the hardest hit districts. SEWA wanted to shift back to community development and believed the ABCD approach would provide a smooth transition. SEWA saw a good fit with Coady and together the organizations developed approaches

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“If we can document how each of us has used ABCD tools, this would be a very good learning for and from each other.

SEWA leaders have been using these tools, especially leaky bucket tool along with how participatory monitoring tools are developed and applied.”

- Smita Bhatnagar

and manuals for field staff in local languages. This adapted ABCD approach is being used extensively by SEWA for conducting PRA in all districts using tools like the Leaky Bucket and Chapati Diagrams The approach has also been used for PRA with members from several states in India like Jammu and Kashmir, Assam, Meghalaya etc. SEWA has also adapted the producerled value chain analysis for use with vegetable and salt farmers.

Kenya Coady worked with the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) who recognized that without livelihoods and regular income, farmers weren’t willing to invest in long-term work such as tree planting. ICRAF acknowledged the need for approaches that provided quick returns for farmers and communities and over time, the organization built trust and capacity with residents. ICRAF has adapted and applied ABCD extensively while refining a suite of participatory tools to collect farm-level data, and understand how that business data can be made accessible to smallholder farmers for investing in and planning their businesses.

ICRAF has recently started a strategic collaboration with the Regreening Africa project, to adopt land restoration practices, alongside a more widely framed efficient, sustainable and circular resource use at individual and communal levels based on the ABCD principles.

South Africa In the mid-2000s, Coady engaged with community leaders in South Africa who were active during apartheid and were now working in government. This left a leadership void in local communities. Frustration emerged with the government who was unable to deliver the services to communities who had been denied for so long. Community members protested over the lack of community development.

Community leaders and government officials recognized the ABCD approach as a language that held governments accountable. It emphasized what communities could do for themselves and how that work intersected with responsive investment both from governments and the corporate investment world.

ABCD has taken root in South Africa. The corporate and public sectors, Department of Social Development, and grantmaker Ikhala Trust took on ABCD and a community of practice emerged among activists and practitioners. Academic institutions include the University of Johannesburg, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, University of Cape Town, and WITS University. Coady’s current focus in South Africa is a research initiative that applies an 6 | ABCD Kitchen Table Talks: Reflections on 25 Years of ABCD with Gord Cunningham

action-research methodology to assess the effectiveness of an ABCD approach in mobilizing citizens for engagement in service delivery and social accountability with local (municipal) administrations. In particular, the research will explore how ABCD can be leveraged at the ward-level to engage previously excluded groups (notably women and youth) in local governance.

Vietnam Recently, StFX awarded an honorary degree to Minh Kauffman for her work in improving relations between the United States and Vietnam after the war, as well as her work promoting higher education and scholarships for people in Vietnam to attend institutions aboard. Through the Center for Educational Exchange with Vietnam (CEEVN) Kauffman challenged scholarship recipients to look at options to improve life in Vietnam in a socially just way.

“Often the language may get confusing or corrupted, so we need to draw on our insights to think through experiences that shine a light to the audience that we are intending to engage.”

- Lucia di Poi

Starting in 2006, Minh partnered with Coady, a collaboration that included co-creating social justice fora to bring CEEVN alumni cohorts together to work for the betterment of Vietnamese society. Training in ABCD approaches were provided for Vietnamese Alumni of the Ford Foundation’s International Fellowships Program and their local partners. Since, broad-based networks and communities of practice have emerged around ABCD while Coady is seen to be facilitating policy dialogue on development approaches across civil society, government and private sector actors.

A Focus on Practical Tools With partners, Coady has continued to develop ABCD tools and manuals with our partners. A focus is on practical, useful tools that can be adapted for different people and communities.

Some more recent tools include Nobody has Nothing, Language and Labels, Principles and Proverbs, Most Significant Learning, Stories of Change, Community Economic Analysis Role Plays, digital leaky buckets, and farmer-led dashboards. Our partners have adapted and designed their own manuals and facilitator guides. These manuals are frequently written in their own languages, have been built from extensive practice, are often where the real learning occurs and the real richness is in the practice of ABCD around the world.

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The discussion turned also to the importance of documentation, articles, writing thought pieces rooted in our experience, and producing reports that can engage donors and governments. The language of ABCD is not what donors or governments expect, so we need to document the process and results to show that investments in these types of processes is more effective than a projectized approach to development. Much of the interest in ABCD has been driven by books, articles, case studies, briefs and manuals that brought attention to the approach and tools.

Mainstreaming ABCD at Coady (and elsewhere) ABCD began as a unifying approach to community development but has since become much more diffuse, while remaining true to its underlying principles. It has now been adapted and taken in very different directions. Some of these areas include: • ABCD and Producer-led Value Chain Development • ABCD and Indigenous Societies and Culture • ABCD and Human Rights Based Approaches • ABCD and Peacebuilding • ABCD with Faith-based Communities • ABCD and Climate Change • ABCD and Agroecology • ABCD and Stigma

ABCD and feminism There have been debates within ABCD and with partners how to build feminism in, while also responding to community-driven development. In an Oxfam project, Coady took the approach of asking if ABCD helps recognize the assets of everyone, including women. A goal is to create a space in which everyone’s contributions are recognized, and how the leaky bucket can be gendered to lead to conversations about who owns what, who makes which decisions, and who controls which assets. ABCD can be a useful approach by embedding practices which leads inquiry and conversations in a certain direction to achieve the results much more sustainably if its people seeing for themselves and concluding for themselves that things must change.

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Discussion Following Gord Cunningham’s presentation there was a lively discussion about the future of ABCD. Participants discussed how they have seen ABCD taken up by government departments, other NGOs and within universities.

There was a consensus that ABCD should be promoted within NGOs and levels of government. Training should be offered to these institutions to create a greater awareness of ABCD which could lead to grants and future funding. Educational institutions should consider incorporating ABCD into their curriculums so students and youth have opportunities to learn about it and apply the concept to their work.

Some participants referred to small community projects incorporating ABCD and expressed an interest in developing case studies to capture the learnings. A suggestion was made

by ENGAGE partners to document their learning and use of ABCD tools and to share the documentation with each other. This idea would compliment the ENGAGE project, partners assisting each other to develop documentation.

Following the suggestion of ENGAGE partners working together, Gord reflected on his experience with relational partnerships. These partnerships are unique and create space for growth and shared learning between the organizations involved. This type of relationship can last indefinitely with the partners relying on each other for advice and support, practicing ABCD from within.

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