Participatory Strategies

Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation

Jackson and Associates is well-known for its expertise in participatory monitoring and evaluation. Two senior staff members edited Knowledge Shared: Participatory Evaluation in Development Cooperation (IDRC / Kumarian Press, 1998), and worked with the World Bank to design a course for aid managers and developing country officials on participatory evaluation at the country, sector and local levels. Senior Associates have taught this course at the Carleton University-World Bank International Program for Development Evaluation Training every year since 2001.

Lead Consultants: Sulley Gariba, Edward Jackson and Yusuf Kassam

Decentralized Poverty Monitoring

In Ghana, through the firm's DISCAP project, regional and district governments are being trained in data collection and analysis on a set of common national indicators. The decentralized system also involves a rating of the development and financial management capacity of district governments themselves. The Ghana model also includes a community or citizen’s assessment component, where focus groups and key-person interviews are used to engage the poor in evaluating the effectiveness and efficiency of poverty reduction services. Finally, a gender equality perspective cuts across all three of these components.

Lead Consultant: Sulley Gariba

Community-Driven Development

Our professional staff are committed to and skilled and experienced in facilitating community-driven development (CDD). We understand the capacity-building task for community governments and civic organizations. Their leadership, strategy, decision-making, management and financial systems must all be strengthened in order to do more for their poor citizens. Communities must learn to both demand cost-effective services from, and be accountable to, supra-community (eg. commune or district) levels of government "above" them. At the same time, the capacity building and development process must "deal in" citizens in the community who are marginilized as a consequence of their gender, race or ethnicity, age, disability or other factors. We favour a multi-sector approach that mobilizes the resources (knowledge, capital, hard-assets) of all social actors in the community--government, civil society and the private sector--toward poverty reduction and improved quality of life.

Peacebuilding and Conflict Management

Jackson and Associates has commissioned two studies of peacebuilding and conflict management in northern Ghana. In this part of the country, ethnic tensions and conflict arise too often through inter- and intra-group rivalries over chieftancy posts, land and customs. Working with the Ghana Institute for Policy Alternatives, the firm is encouraging Ghanaian organizations--with funds, knowledge and tools from external agencies--to strengthen the peacebuilding and conflict-management impact of many elements in northern Ghanaian society, including regional and district governments, the traditional chieftancy leadership, the miltary and the police, the media, unemployed youth, and other groups. State-of-the-art peacebuilding strategies are being integrated into the planning of this initiative.

Gender Equality and Decentralization

In major local-governance projects implemented by Jackson and Associates, in Vietnam and Ghana, gender equality has been a cross-cutting theme and priority. These projects have benefited from the skills and experience of effective women professionals, both as onsite staff and as consultants. And both projects have developed gender-equality strategies that emphasize women's decision-making (rather than participation) in local-government institutions. Both projects have also worked with local stakeholders to identify obstacles to gender-equality efforts. The project in Ghana, DISCAP, has established a network of District Gender Desk Officers who advocate for GE policies and expenditures by district government; these GDOs are thoroughly trained and energetically supported by the project. The project in Vietnam, CDEEP, did some of the first provincial-level planning and training in gender equality in that country, involving a dozen provincial departments and agencies.

Lead Consultant: Denise Beaulieu

Corporate Social Responsibility

To the extent that it engages the talents and energy of the widest range of company stakeholders—shareholders, employees, customers, suppliers, communities—corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a participatory strategy. CSR may aim to improve one, or all, of the following: employee satisfaction and productivity, environmental sustainability, community development, small business development, corporate philanthropy, and reputation management. Jackson and Associates is very interested in capacity building for CSR in developing countries. This involves working with individual companies, and also with associations, to align firm mission, structure and policies with CSR, and to support legal and regulatory work in the enabling environment. Jackson and Associates can also navigate and help build linkages among four main social actors: civil society, business, government and donor agencies.

CSR in Bangladesh

In 2005, Jackson and Associates was retained by CIDA to carry out a feasibility study of the potential for Canada to support corporate social responsibility (CSR) in Bangladesh. After consulting some 40 Bangladeshi organizations in the private and public sectors, civil society, academia and the donor community, the study recommended that CIDA pursue this area of programming, in alignment with the emphasis of Canada’s new International Policy Statement on private sector development.

Lead Consultant: Yusuf Kassam