Resources

This Practice Paper aims to contribute to ongoing reflections and debates taking place among aid practitioners about if, and how, big international NGOs (BINGOs) can be more effective agents of ‘progressive social change'.

It summarises a series of conversations that took place among seven members of the Institute of Development Studies Participation Power and Social Change team and staff from eight BINGOs between July 2008 and March 2009. During the conversations, participants considered how internal and external factors influence the potential of BINGOs to contribute to shifts in power relations; greater realisation of rights; and enhanced economic, political and social justice for poor and vulnerable people.

All of this was encapsulated in the term 'progressive social change'. At the end of the process, participants agreed that there is considerable scope for many BINGOs to pursue a more progressive agenda. They recommended that similar conversations need to continue and branch out, both in topical range and in participants in order to stimulate the kind of reflection and organisational learning required to do so.

This paper includes accounts of discussions, case studies shared by participants, inputs from academic critiques of BINGOs and practical tools to feed into such deliberations. It explores the types of changes that BINGOs are trying to achieve, the approaches they use - their models of change, and challenges and tensions commonly perceived to prevent BINGOs pursuing more radical social change agendas.

Provocative questions are raised as a means to help practitioners identify changes that their organisations need to make in order to more actively pursue social, economic and political justice. In some instances inspiring examples from BINGO participants suggest means to do so. References to organisational theory, meeting discussions and BINGO case studies are used to interrogate assumptions about how large complex organisations behave and to identify lessons that may be used to inform efforts to transform BINGOs into more effective agents of progressive social change.

The authors explore the use of Web 2.0 tools for development and introduce readers to the concept of Web2forDev. Web 2.0 tools are radically changing the ways we create, share, collaborate and publish digital information through the Internet. Participatory Web 2.0 for development (Web2forDev for short) is a way of employing web services to intentionally improve information-sharing and on-line collaboration for development. It presents us with new opportunities for change - as well as challenges - that we need to better understand and grasp. The authors consider learning and reflections from practice and consider ways forward.

The author describes the use of video blogging by the Ghana Information Network for Knowledge Sharing (GINKS). Similar to a blog, a video blog û or vlog for short û contains short segments of video content. Usually in the form of interviews, these vlogs help members to share information about work and experiences. The author also considers the potentials of vlogging for advocacy puposes, as well as the challenges inherent in using Web 2.0 tools in countries such as Ghana, where Internet access in still mostly limited to urban areas.

The authors recount how the process of organising the Web2forDev conference has contributed to building a community of practice. The authors reflect on the successes and challenges of adopting Web 2.0 and other ICT tools to create online collaborative spaces for the conference organisers. In addition, the authors draw on results from two conference surveys to assess what impact the conference has had on both the participants and their ways of working and in helping to form and maintain a new Web2forDev community of practice.

This article makes a case for using participatory communication in research. It introduces participatory communication as a citizen-led approach to both creating and expressing knowledge: within research this means that researchers are not simply responsible for generating information and communicating about it, neither are they acting alone. From this perspective the emphasis of participatory communication is on communicating rather than extracting or delivering information. Participatory methods can communicate research findings in new ways and add depth and meaning to articulations of knowledge. This knowledge can easily get ‘lost in translation’ when findings are synthesised or communicated through conventional research outputs alone.