Chapter 2: Identity and Purpose
Page 7
CHAPTER 2: IDENTITY AND PURPOSE In our framework for assessing organisational performance, identity and purpose are comprised of three elements: Strategy, governance and leadership. In other words, we want to know to what extent NPA has a clear identity (understanding of what it wants to achieve) and an international strategy defining thematic and geographic priorities. It is also important that key terms in the strategy like partnership and rights based approach are clearly defined, understood and internalized by staff. To translate a policy into practice, it is also essential that NPA has a leadership at HO with the ability to set direction, motivate and manage staff and make decisions in a timely manner and a Board to clarify aims and support direction. Most of the chapter will be about the international strategy. It will be discussed from several perspectives – the meaning of key concepts, how NPA staff and board members perceive the strategy (feedback from the self assessment survey and interviews) and how the global strategy has been operationalized in two countries – Mozambique and Ecuador. 2.1. NPA’s International Strategy
While some non-governmental organisations work according to objectives that limit their target groups (like Save the Children, Norwegian Association for the Blind or Friends of Uganda), it is not so obvious for NPA who their like-minded partners are – who NPA should and could work with and for what purpose. NPA has its basis in the Norwegian labor movement, but labor unions per se are not obvious partners for NPA since the International Office in the Confederation of Trade Unions (LO) has the mandate to work with and strengthen sister labor unions in developing countries. Hence, it has been necessary for NPA to carve out an identity on its own. NPA is said to have an unclear identity and spreading its limited resources too thinly.7 It has involved itself in a broad range of activities in Norway and internationally leaving an impression that NPA can do almost anything from building houses, clearing mines and lobbying for women’s rights. During interviews in Oslo, NPA was characterized as a hybrid organisation – having had several identities – that of a political solidarity organisation supporting liberation movements, that of an emergency aid organisation with a strong humanitarian mine action programme and that of a community development organisation. In a historical perspective, NPA started as a solidarity organisation before the Second World War mobilized by the fight against Fascism in Spain, moved into reconstruction in Northern Norway after the war and provided support to liberation movements in Southern Africa and popular movements in Latin America from the 1980s. With a rapid increase in funding from Norad in the 1990s, NPA became a major development NGO –with a strong operational profile in some countries. NPA was also involved in large emergency operations (e.g. Southern Sudan and the reconstruction in the Balkans) and became internationally known and respected for its mine actions programmes in Africa and Asia. 7
Interviews at HO and Pettersen (2006).