Community Driven Development (CDD) in Action: Three Case Studies of International Nongovernmental Development Organizations' (Ingos') CDD Practices

Community driven development (CDD) in action: three case studies of
international nongovernmental development organizations’ (INGOs’) CDD
practices

by
Meghann Rhynard-‐Geil

MPP Essay
Submitted to
Oregon State University
In partial fulfillment of

the requirements for the
degree of

Master of Public Policy

Presented June 14, 2013
Commencement June 15, 2013

Master of Public Policy Essay Presented on June 14, 2013

APPROVED:

Sarah Henderson, representing Political Science

Elizabeth Schroeder, representing Economics

David Bernell, representing Political Science

I understand that my thesis will become part of the permanent scholarly collection
of Oregon State University Libraries. My signature below authorizes release of my
thesis to any reader upon request.

Meghann Rhynard-‐Geil, Author

AN ABSTRACT OF THE ESSAY OF

Meghann Rhynard-‐Geil for the degree of Master of Public Policy presented on
June 14, 2013.
Title: Community Driven Development in Action: Three Case Studies of
International Nongovernmental Development Organizations’ CDD Practices

Abstract approved:

Sarah Henderson

Since the 1980s, NGOs have created a necessary niche for themselves within
developing nations addressing poverty “traps” such as: lack of infrastructure,
corruption, environmental degradation, conflict, disease, educational paucity, and
gender inequality. Due to increasing issues of dependency and failed development
projects resulting from a top-‐down, organizational structure, international
nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) are adopting what the World Bank calls
Community Driven Development (CDD), a bottom-‐up organizational approach,
which places the beneficiary community in control of development projects. Despite
its perceived success, the features of CDD have not been operationalized at an
institutional, measurable, or replicable level, and as a result, organizations are
making their own decisions about what CDD actually entails. The purpose of this
paper is to compare the current practices of three small-‐scale, independent INGOs to
the World Bank’s elements of CDD in terms of both its presence and quality within
their organizational structures and practices. Understanding what changes
organizations make to CDD and why will help evolve our understanding in regards
to what aspects of CDD are the strongest and most essential to the continued
success of individual development projects and the long-‐term goals of the
communities in which they are implemented.

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank several people for their support throughout this project:

Thank you to my family, Bonnie Rhynard-‐Buhl, Walt Buhl, and Shannah Rhynard-‐
Geil, without whom I never would have had the opportunity to pursue my academic
and professional goals. The time, love, and understanding you have given me
throughout this (rather lengthy) process have been invaluable and much
appreciated.

David Vieru, your faith and confidence in me always push me to believe in what I am
capable of and strive for more. I know I can always trust in your strength and
steadfastness to help me find my own.

Martina Hagan, Jordan Lueras, and Erica Curry, your understanding and constant
words of support were always there to get me through the rough patches.

My committee chair, Sarah Henderson, the hours and energy spent on helping me
make this a project of which I am truly proud are something I will always remember.
You pushed me to expect more of myself than I ever had before.

My committee members, Liz Schroeder and Dave Bernell, your expertise and
guidance throughout this process have been vital.

Thank you all!

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION AND STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM.............................................. 1
LITERATURE REVIEW…………………………………………………………………………………… 4
METHODS…………………………………………………………………………………………………….14
WORLD BANK ELEMENTS OF CDD……………………………………………………. 16
RUBRIC……………………………………………………………………………………………..20
SCORING…………………………………………………………………………………………...22
SAMPLE…………………………………………………………………………………………… 24
FINDINGS…………………………………………………………………………………………………... 27
COMMUNITY FOCUS………………………………………………………………………… 27
PARTICIPATORY PLANNING……………………………………………………………. 30
COMMUNITY CONTROL OF RESOURCES…………………………………………... 33
COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT IN IMPLEMENTATION AND O & M……… 39
PARTICIPATORY MONITORING……………………………………………………….. 42
DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS………………………………………………………………. 48
CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………………………….... 51
BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………………………….. 52
APPENDIX………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 55

LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1 – Identifying CDD Elements in a Project Cycle………………………………………19
Figure 2 – Arnstein’s Ladder of Participation…………………………………………………… 20

LIST OF TABLES
Table 1 – Scoring Elements………………………………………………………………………………22
Table 2 – Community Focus – Organization Performance………………………………….29
Table 3 – Participatory Planning – Organization Performance…………………………..33
Table 4 – Community Control of Resources – Organization Performance…………..38
Table 5 – Community Involvement in Implementation and O & M……………………..41
Table 6 – Participatory Monitoring…………………………………………………………………..45
Table 7 – Organization Scores………………………………………………………………………….46

1.Introduction and Statement of the Problem

Since the mid-‐1980s, as a result of Western ideological sentiments that saw states as
largely an encumbrance to development, INGOs and NGOs have enjoyed a rapid
expansion (Pinkney, 2009). This proliferation was due largely to the fact that the
voluntary sector was seen as a more expedient and efficient way to reach the
suffering populations within developing nations. The overall picture is one in which
NGOs are seen as the “favored child” and as something of a panacea for the problems
of development – “a ‘magic bullet’ that can be fired off in any direction [which] will
still find its target” (Edwards & Hulme, 1996). INGOs enjoy the advantage of
flexibility, the ability to work through local institutions, and in remote areas
neglected by governments (Pinkney, 2009). Due to INGOs’ involvement with
infrastructure building and community development, understanding the
relationship between INGOs, NGOs, and the communities they serve is important. In
1994, the World Bank recognized participatory approaches as ideal in development,
and this approach has since been widely adopted (Cooke & Kothari, 2001). The
question now is not whether the community should be involved, but rather, how,
and to what extent.

Participatory development, community involvement, community driven
development – all of these terms relate to the same concept – making development
aid an action that is owned and motivated by its beneficiaries. Despite the lack of
empirical evidence (due to faulty data and other difficulties) (Easterly & Williamson,
2011), community involvement is currently being embraced by the development
industry as the most effective and sustainable approach to development aid. The
World Bank has been the primary driver in the adoption of participatory
development, calling it Community Driven Development (CDD). One of the primary
tenets (and the assertion for why its appears to be so effective) is that it builds upon
the existing skills and capacity of a community as well as the community’s stated
goals and desires. They have a greater ownership of the project, and thus, are likely
to invest more. Experience with CDD shows that local capacity exists, but needs

empowerment. Empowering communities means that communities should have

voice, decision-‐making powers, and access to resources (WorldBank.org). The
ostensible aim of participatory approaches to development is to make people
central to development by encouraging beneficiary involvement.

The World Bank defines CDD as: “an approach that gives control over planning
decisions and investment resources for local development projects to community
groups” (WorldBank.org). With access to information and appropriate capacity and
financial support, aid beneficiaries can effectively organize to identify community
priorities and address local problems by working in partnership with supportive
institutions. Participation in itself is often considered empowering, regardless of the
actual activity undertaken; it is empowering in creating a sense of ownership and
the related perceptions of responsibility (Cleaver, 1999). However, looking at
participation as an ambiguous, whole (and obvious) concept does not create an
environment for successful duplication. The reality is that this concept is being
implemented by a dizzying array of nonprofits in a variety of different ways. For
community involvement to be adopted as a legitimate, theoretical and duplicable
approach to development, underlying similarities and best practices must be agreed
upon and understood.

The World Bank currently has a 5-‐point set of guidelines for the proper application
of CDD called the Elements of CDD. The goal of which is maintaining community
focus throughout a INGOs’ relationship with a local NGO or beneficiary community.
The five elements are: 1) Community Focus; 2) Participatory Planning; 3)
Community Control of Resources; 4) Community Involvement in Implementation
and Operations and Management; and 5) Participatory Monitoring. Each of these
elements of CDD can (and, arguably, should) be applied at every stage of a
development project evaluation (planning, implementation, and post-‐project)
(WorldBank.org). The difficulty in implementing these components is that there
really is no industry-‐wide, agreed upon way for that to occur aside from the belief
that the elements should be present. Not only is there an array of organizational
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models within the development industry, the relationship between INGOs and the
communities they serve is also complex and personalized on a case-‐by-‐case basis to
each locale making extrapolation, deconstruction, and application of CDD on a
broader scale difficult. This also makes assessing INGO performance in relation to
CDD a challenge. Research and evaluation are plagued with potential externalities
that either add to or take away from a development project’s results (Banerjee &
Duflo, 2011). However, for this aid approach to evolve, a greater understanding of it
must be reached.

Being more aware of comparisons between the theory of CDD and its application on
the ground will help reveal its strengths and weaknesses in relation to a variety of
different organizational models and types of projects, contributing to the ability to
perfect and define when, how, and why CDD approaches should be used.
This project compares the practices of three American small-‐scale development
INGOs in relation to the theoretical approach promoted by the World Bank to gauge
the degree with which individual organizations are able to carry out and maintain
CDD ideals and goals. What parts of CDD work? What parts don’t? When and Why?
Through the three case studies conducted in this paper, it was found that
organizations conducted participatory planning and participatory monitoring
practices quite well. However, due to several reasons (discussed later in this paper),
maintaining a project’s community focus, ensuring community control of resources,
and giving the community control of implementation and operations and
management proved to be more challenging. This reveals that, either the two
elements of CDD being done successfully are the easiest to implement, or they have
been independently identified by these three organizations as the most important
for maintaining CDD practices.

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Literature Review

The participatory approach to development is now the favored approach to
development aid by most bilateral and multilateral aid organizations (Platteau &
Abraham, 2002). Rather than simply focusing on the delivery of aid to communities
in need, the focus on organizational culture of INGOs to be more inclusive,
transparent, and focused on aid recipients allows us to “explore the ways in which
meanings are constructed and contested within development projects and also
draws attention to the local and international relationships that form part of these
processes” (Lewis, 2003). As it stands, three themes are important to understand
when discussing CDD practices: how and why CDD evolved, the unintended
consequences of that evolution, and the practical applications of CDD.

The development industry’s movement toward more participatory approaches can
be attributed largely to social scientists such as Escobar (1995) and Scott’s (1998)
use of Collective Action to describe top-‐down perspective as both disempowering
and ineffective. Work by Cernea (1985) showed how large organizations, like the
World Bank, could “put people first” by systematically working at the local level.
Ostrom’s (1990) work on common-‐pool resource management shifted the
perception of the potential for collective action in poor communities. Her work,
along with others, assembled considerable evidence from case studies to show that
endogenous institutions often managed common-‐pool resources quite well,
suggesting that putting faith in a community’s ability to take care of itself (if given
the right resources) was not un called for (Mansuri & Rao, 2004). It was through
studies and experiences like these that CDD was developed.

The World Bank’s CDD centers around initiating development through local people
by means of projects that enhance both the social and human capital of the
beneficiaries, assuming that, once people are empowered, development becomes
both attainable and sustainable (Botchway, 2001). As mentioned in the
introduction, though it is difficult to ascertain the correlation between community
4

involvement, empowerment, and project sustainability on a level of statistical

significance (Easterly & Williamson, 2011), it is largely assumed throughout most of
the development industry that CDD is a necessary key to project sustainability and
success (WorldBank.org). Therefore, participatory development strategies are now
being embraced by several international development organizations such as the
United Nations Development Programme (Head, 2007).

Development aid literature is, for the most part, in agreement that involving the
community is, if not a necessity, a boon to the survival and success of projects. Over
nine percent of total World Bank lending supports CDD projects (Casey, 2011). CDD
works through reducing information problems (by eliciting development priorities
directly from target communities), expanding the resources available to the poor
(through credit, social funds, capacity-‐building, and occupational training), and
strengthening the civic capacities of communities (Mansuri & Rao, 2004). CDD
attempts to reverse power relations (either within the beneficiary community itself
or between the community and INGO). By creating agency and a voice for
marginalized populations, CDD is expected to make the allocation of development
funds more responsive to community needs, improve the targeting of poverty
programs, and strengthen the capabilities of the community to undertake self-‐
initiated development activities (Mansuri & Rao, 2004).

Analysis does show that a relationship exists between participation, empowerment,
and sustainability (Lyons et al, 2001). However, despite this evidence, the concepts
of “empowerment,” “participation,” and “sustainability” are often vague and poorly
defined, causing confusion not just in regard to the efficacy of those statistics, but
also over expectations and the evaluation of outcomes. It is the imprecision
associated with these terms that have contributed to the poor understanding of how
participatory practices affect the development process (Lyons et al, 2001). Terms
describing CDD strategies are currently vague, ambiguous, and value-‐laden. The
word, “community,” itself is often “a euphemistic term that glosses over the social,
economic, and cultural differentiation of localities or peoples. It often implies a
5

(false and misleading) sense of identity, harmony, cooperation, and inclusiveness”
(Head, 2007). Currently, community involvement has more of a symbolic power
than any tangible, implementable meaning. A more explicit definition of the
theoretical approach that is “community involvement” must be decided upon by the
development industry. Something cannot be measured, evaluated, or duplicated
until there is an agreed upon rubric by which to define it.

The debate surrounding both defining and implementing community involvement
and its effectiveness often falls into means/ends classifications, which distinguishes
between “the efficiency arguments (participation as a tool for achieving better
project outcomes) and equity and empowerment arguments (participation as a
process, which enhances the capacity of individuals to improve their own lives and
facilitates social change to the advantage of disadvantaged or marginalized groups)”
(Cleaver, 1999). These two approaches significantly change the opinion with which
community involvement is viewed. One requires measurable efficacy to justify the
inclusion of the beneficiaries, whereas the other views it as a philosophical and
moral necessity regardless of outcome – where participation is the goal just as much
as the physical project embarked upon. It is seen as “empowering in creating a sense
of ownership and the related perceptions of responsibility” (Cleaver, 1999).
Emphasis is now being placed in program and project strategies on inclusiveness –
ie: recognizing beneficiary interests and viewpoints in regards to project planning
and implementation. Dialogue and deliberation among all stakeholders in the
process of deciding priorities and actions are now being stressed (Head, 2007). This
process, though it appears central to the success of CDD, is often the most difficult to
enact due to the amount of time, preparation, and additional funds it requires.

The primary concept of CDD -‐ maintaining the beneficiary community as the focal
point of development projects – is very good, but it presents significant difficulties
when instituted on the ground. Regardless of where one falls on the community
involvement spectrum, there is no denying that participatory development takes a
significantly longer time than more hierarchical approaches. To really understand a
6

community and its dynamics, the planning phase of a project must be extensive.
Though it can extend the life of a project (and increase its effectiveness and reach),
time is money, and donors like to see the results of their funds in tangible ways.
Despite an organizational culture to the contrary, donors ultimately control the
funding of projects. Without their support, nothing happens. Thus, it is very difficult
for organizations to maintain a true loyalty to the community before cultivating a
relationship with their donors. There is an inherent difficulty in incorporating
project concerns with participatory discourses. Ultimately, “a project is, by
definition, a clearly defined set of activities, concerned with quantifiable costs and
benefits, with time-‐limited activities and budgets. The project imperative
emphasizes meeting practical rather than strategic needs; instrumentality rather
than empowerment” (Cleaver, 1999). It is difficult to simultaneously follow both a
project timeline in addition to remaining loyal to an (admittedly slower) approach
that enables the community to be active and involved (Lyons et al, 2001).

It is not particularly surprising that NGOs are not entirely pragmatic and selfless in
their actions. After all, these organizations are businesses. They must make a profit
to survive, and as a result, while they may make improvements in quality of life for
their beneficiaries, it is in the INGOs’ best interest to remain relevant. There is the
constant threat that if an INGO is too selfless in its actions, and does its job too well,
they will make themselves obsolete. As a result, all too often, whether entirely
purposeful or not, NGOs often produce relationships of dependency, exclusivity, and
paternalism with those communities they serve (Sacouman, 2011).

Though INGOs are in agreement about the desire to aid the developing world, they
have antagonistic interests where output is concerned (Olson, 1965). Often, the
actions of development organizations can be interpreted as somewhat self-‐
interested. Contrary to the prevailing positive view of INGOs, financial interests are
often the motivations behind actions and strategies implemented (Sacouman, 2011).
The struggle INGOs are constantly facing is one of individual versus collective good.
While their purpose (and very existence) is supposedly for the benefit of others,
7

they must protect themselves as well, and are thus constantly caught between
motivations of self-‐interest versus the pragmatism of their mission. Often, a
difficulty that arises when utilizing CDD, is that true focus and loyalty cannot always
remain with the community. INGOs are not-‐for-‐profit organizations. Their funds
generally come from donations and grants. As a result, INGOs must often choose to
focus their energy not toward the community but rather toward funding agencies
(Sacouman, 2012), each with their own individual agendas and goals. This is a direct
departure from CDD’s definition and goals, but without donors, many aid projects
would be impossible regardless of how involved a community was. A solution as to
how to fix this issue of loyalty and focus has not effectively been addressed by the
literature to date.

That being said, an organization’s lack of knowledge about community desires and
goals may be just as harmful as not having enough funds to support grand
development projects. Failed projects and/or unhealthy organization/community
relationships and involvement due to an organization’s lack of community
awareness have begun to wear away at INGO legitimacy. Increasing case studies and
reports have revealed that all too often, aid efforts actually create dependency by
treating symptoms rather than long-‐term solutions (Lempert, 2009). These aid
delivery issues are highlighted in Sierra Hawthorne’s case study of an INGO called
PLAN and its projects in the Dominican Republic, which she called a “well-‐
intentioned but ineffectual effort to improve Dominican living standards through an
outpouring of American dollars” (Hawthorne, 2009). Millions of dollars were sent to
sponsor the construction of a primary school. However, the community was not
involved in the planning or construction. This not only alienated the community
from the project, and did nothing to address the structural reasons initially
responsible for the project. In only four weeks, local delinquents systematically
vandalized and destroyed the school. In that time, not a single community member
intervened (Hawthorne, 2009). Plan found that this community response was
common across most of their projects. As a result, they dramatically shifted their
approach to a community participation-‐based model in 2004, and since that shift,
8

the organization has seen many successes in relation to their projects in relation to
engaging the youth and community members (Hawthorne, 2009).

Hawthorne claims that the developed world’s compulsion to aid the Dominican
Republic as a paternalistic better rather than a partner caused resentment among
beneficiaries, expectations that handouts would continue, and subsequent
dependence on such handouts. Historically, the evolution of INGOs is full of the
inheritance of their predecessors – the missionaries and voluntary organizations
that cooperated in Europe’s colonization and control of Africa (Manji & O’Coill,
2005). Many assert that traditional aid strategies – often those that emphasize
subsidy and gifting over truly sustainable development and education – are actually
an extension of paternalism and post-‐colonialism; that aid and NGOs are simply
colonialism by another name (Orakwue, 2002). As a result, though Western
organizations may enter with the best intentions, they are doing so while operating
with racially charged tools that focus on assimilation and sameness as necessary
instruments for success rather than emphasizing and recognizing the autonomy of
those they serve. History and context situate current identities and beliefs in
relation to past experiences and views, and development literature and critics are
coming closer to the conclusion that motives may still stem from paternalistic
feelings of superiority and guardianship (Baaz, 2005). CDD practices attempt to
steer aid strategies away from this post-‐colonial/paternalistic influence as much as
possible.

The tenets upon which the five elements were built greatly reflect the work of
dependency theorists such as Paolo Freire. The concept CDD espouses of promoting
sovereignty and equality in relationships with serious power differentials (like that
of INGOs and the communities they serve) is not new. Theorists like Freire have
long been advocating for the independence and autonomy of marginalized groups to
creating lasting change. Freire was deeply connected with the use of education for
development and societal evolution and citizenship building (Gadotti & Torres,
2009). He developed several ideological approaches to changing the
9

oppressor/oppressed relationship that often happens between the developed and

developing world to one of dialogue and conversation between autonomous and
equal individuals.

Something that is clear in the hierarchical relationships that form between INGOs
and the communities they serve is that inequalities often shape the processes of
identification (Baaz, 2005). Those that “have” are considered socially responsible
for those that “have not.” While this may appear virtuous and moral on the surface,
it is, in fact, a very dangerous leftover of colonialism. It suggests that, as benefactors
of aid, the “Haves” get to decide how, when, and where it is given. Thus, it is their
voices, and not the voices of the communities they serve that decide the priorities
and goals that get set (Baaz, 2005).

A driving factor behind exacerbating the power differential between INGO and
community is the hierarchical structure of the organization itself. One of the primary
issues in INGO organization strategy is the question of where loyalty lies. Current
organizational approaches often prioritize accountability to boards and donors and
give weak accountability to communities despite strong NGO rhetoric to the
contrary (Murtaza, 2011). There is often the danger of too much focus on turnover
and bottom lines rather than sustainable development results (Orakwue, 2002).

The lack of attention given to a more bottom-‐up approach evaluation of the
nonprofit sector is due to both conceptual and empirical factors. Too often, INGOs
neglect the importance of the domestic actors, or identify them purely as necessary
conditions for a successful campaign when they are, in reality, resources. Aside from
the knowledge deficit, organizing projects from the top-‐down rather than vice versa
also creates a distance from the project beneficiary. INGOs may have the funds, but
in the long run, if the community feels disconnected or is unable to maintain the
changes the INGO makes, the attempted projects may fail (Hawthorne, 2009).

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CDD seeks to eliminate (or at least mitigate) the oppressor/oppressed power binary
between INGOs and the communities they serve. By creating an environment of
open discussion, debate, and questioning, community-‐focused dialogic discourse
creates a space for all local narratives to exist autonomously (Salm & Ordway,
2010). Aid strategies that function in a dialogic way allows far greater opportunities
for community independence due to the fact that INGOs must always bring their
attention back to the community before every action in regards to the development
projects being implemented. Grassroots approaches allow access to local knowledge
(Gourevitch et al, 2012).

In the past two decades, there has been a definite shift away from a managerial, or
top-‐down approach in development, toward a greater emphasis on community
engagement. The importance of building effective capacity for all to participate is
emphasized (Head, 2007). Efforts are being made to learn a community’s needs and
values through extensive research on the part of the INGO in the form of social
impact analyses and social sustainability analysis; the idea being that projects
personalized to each individual community will be more successful in the long-‐term
than anything the INGO could develop on its own. Thus, this ensures that, despite a
potentially more time and labor-‐intensive development process, community
involvement will ultimately increase a project’s efficiency, effectiveness, and
sustainability (Cleaver, 1999).

The benefits of CDD are most often framed to in terms of a project’s sustainability. A
project must be embraced by the community for it to really be maintained and
create a lasting change. The World Bank’s internal evaluation unit has found that
community-‐based development (CBD) projects in the Africa region have performed
better than the region’s projects as a whole. Yet only one in five CBD projects were
likely to be sustainable (Toledano et al, 2002), indicating the key to sustainability
has not yet been isolated. Sustainability continues to be a concern for development
projects. World Bank evaluators consider this to be due in large part to a weak
institution-‐building approach in a project’s early stages. In many project evaluations
11

conducted by the Bank, there was some allowance for participation of local people
in project design and implementation, but in most cases, projects were already
typically slated for specific sectors, disempowering communities from setting
priorities and development goals (Toledano et al, 2002). Thus, though participatory
practices were being implemented in certain aspects of a project, community
ownership was not strongly emphasized, posing problems for community
investment in the project, and, by default, in project sustainability.

The International Association for Public Participation (IAP2.org) defines Public
Participation as:

Involve[ing} those who are affected by a decision in the decision-‐making process. It promotes
sustainable decisions by providing participants with the information they need to be involved in a
meaningful way, and it communicates to participants how their input affects the decision” (IAP2.org).

IAP2’s ideals reflect dependency theorists’ emphasis on the legitimacy and necessity
of local narratives (Rozas, 2007). It is important that any rubric gauging CDD within
a development project takes into account not only the presence of CDD practices,
but also looks at how well they are actually being implemented.
Though involving the community from the start of a project may be more time-‐
intensive, potentially more expensive, and less efficient, the World Bank and other
development partners are increasingly arguing that CDD projects must devolve the
grandiosity of project goals to increase community empowerment, thus
simultaneously increasing the likelihood of a project’s sustainability in the long-‐run
(Toledano et al, 2002).

True sustainability must be considered on many different levels: financial (referring
to a project’s ability to generate resources from a variety of sources with the goal
being to eventually reduce its reliance on development funds), organizational
(meaning the capacity of organizational arrangements to continue to provide a
framework to the project through which the delivery of benefits can be maintained),
12

and benefit sustainability (which refers to continuing availability/benefits beyond

the life of the project) (Lewis, 2003). In identifying these levels of sustainability, it is
important to note that INGOs must not only avoid dependency-‐creating mechanisms
for delivering aid, but also that they must focus on capacity-‐building within the
community to encourage local ownership and knowledge of the projects. In a World
Bank report on the sustainability of CDD, it was found that “communities were
willing and eager partners in the assessment of their own development.
Nevertheless, community members often lacked the skills to organize, plan, monitor,
or evaluate their community development. Without an explicit focus on building
these skills, community development projects stood little chance of ‘empowering’
communities to realize a brighter future” (Toledano et al, 2002). Even if community
members want to be active participants in development projects, their lack of
managerial skills can be a significant barrier to productivity and independent
sustainability.

Thus, it isn’t only the implementation of a development project that the sponsoring
INGO should be involved with. It is not just the relevance of a project to the
community’s needs that determines a project’s success, but also proper community
preparation and education that truly governs a development project’s success.
Though critics may point to what appears to be an additional cost for development
projects, including capacity-‐building in a project plan, it has been concluded by the
World Bank that the additional facilitation costs comes to less than $50 per
community per year (Toledano et al, 2002). When compared with the potential
increase in longevity of a project, this seems like a small price to pay. By
encouraging skills within the community for monitoring and evaluating projects, the
communities become capable of managing their own development (Toledano et al,
2002). This can be helpful in two ways: it allows communities to independently
sustain their development process, and it creates a built-‐in external evaluation
system (of sorts) for the INGOs implementing the project.

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Methods

Despite the fact that the industry seems to have agreed participatory approaches
are optimal for determining project success and sustainability, there still hasn’t
been much time spent breaking down how to do it and why. There are several
critiques regarding the ambiguity of CDD (Mansuri & Rao, 2004), but very little in
terms of solutions to this problem. The initial stage of executing CDD was informing
the aid community about it and getting the industry to embrace the approach.
Initially, the concern was over quantity – whether organizations were employing a
community focused aid strategy or not. It did not address what means were being
taken to do so. However, it is time to move beyond that and also start examining the
quality of the CDD approaches being utilized (Sacouman, 2012). Organizations are
interpreting CDD in ways that they perceive are mutually beneficial for themselves
and the communities they serve. However, little is being done to understand how
and in what ways you can change CDD principles before threatening its efficacy as a
methodological approach. This paper seeks to look at both the presence and quality
of CDD elements within small-‐scale American INGOs with the hopes of gauging
which areas of CDD are strongest, which areas are being changed, and why, giving a
clearer idea of best practices for CDD implementation on the ground.

As stated previously, one of the reasons CDD is a difficult approach to deconstruct
and evaluate is because, by its very nature, it is personalized and local to the
community in which it is being enacted. While large organizations such as the UNDP
and World Bank fund yearly development reports, these require prohibitive
amounts of monetary resources, manpower, and reliable data collection. Currently,
there is no feasible, broadly applicable evaluation system for small-‐scale INGOs to
gauge how they are enacting CDD methods and approaches. In many cases, though
CDD may appear to be occurring, the quality with which it is performed is debatable.
CDD methods are being utilized by many small-‐scale INGOs, but the question is: to
what extent, and how well? This is important to answer because, it could be argued,
the bulk of development projects are being done by small-‐scale organizations.
14

The current belief in the development industry (WorldBank.org) is that, to promote
project sustainability and the building of human capital and marketable skills, the
community must be involved as much as possible in INGO projects. To do this, a
baseline (or rubric) that identifies markers for a “healthy” relationship between an
INGO and its beneficiaries must be established. For the purposes of this paper, a
“healthy” relationship would be one in which the INGO and the community they
serve each has an independent, equal, and interactive role in project design and
implementation. The focus must be on a clear, participatory plan of action either for
after the project’s completion or for INGOs’ continued relationship with a
community. Independence and local growth must be the primary directive (Yunus,
2011).

The aim of this paper is to evaluate CDD practices of three American-‐based INGOs
using the World Bank to pinpoint not only the use of CDD in a development
project/organization’s mission and goals, but also the quality with which it is
delivered. The purpose is not to produce a formal, quantitative analysis of the
INGOs’ CDD practices, but rather, to create a tool for building small-‐scale INGOs’
capacity to better direct their projects and approaches. It is intended mainly for
practitioners to enable them to monitor and evaluate their projects in relation to
CDD best practices and in partnership with the communities they are serving, thus
gauging the sophistication and sensitivity of their initiatives to their beneficiaries’
needs. Viewing development interventions as experiments, we need to use the work
currently being done as learning opportunities – an ongoing tool to increase our
understanding of the successes and failures we encounter (Wassenich & Whiteside,
2004). Using the experiential knowledge of small-‐scale INGOs’ operations, we can
see how CDD approaches are being implemented on a more informal basis. My
objective is to see if the actions of small-‐scale INGOs are reflective of the goals and
best practices of the World Bank’s CDD. Case studies can provide a nuanced,
contextualized picture of CDD processes in particular contexts, and yield insights
that can be difficult to generate with quantitative techniques (Mansuri & Rao, 2004).
15

It is important to see what ways organizations are meeting the elements of CDD, and
if they are not, why and how does that affect the efficacy/legitimacy of the CDD
elements they do incorporate into their model(s). Observing how they have adapted
CDD best practices to fit their individual mission statements and goals will help
create an understanding how to best evolve and sophisticate the application of CDD
in more scenarios.

World Bank Elements of CDD

The World Bank advocates using a CDD approach in the case of local institutional
failure as well as in the provision of goods and services that are small in scale, not
complex, and which require local cooperation for effective provision
(WorldBank.org). The goal is to utilize community knowledge and resources as
much as possible, while supporting these efforts with the knowledge of
development aid professionals. The success of the CDD approach is more likely
when it builds upon existing collective action initiatives, and has political champions
to support it at the local level. There is also a significant emphasis on project
planning with longer-‐term horizons and explicit exit strategies in mind which
support scaling up, sustainability, and ownership (WorldBank.org).
The elements of the CDD are informed by the umbrella themes of equity,
inclusiveness, and efficiency. Equity and inclusiveness include effective targeting,
putting resources in direct control of the community, and inclusion of vulnerable
and excluded groups. Efficiency addresses the demand for responsive allocation of
resources, better quality and maintenance, reducing corruption and misuse of
resources, and lowering costs and better cost-‐recovery (WorldBank.org).

The World Bank’s Elements of CDD will serve as the quantifying agent of my case
studies, answering the question of whether or not there are participatory elements
within the models of the organizations being studied. However, it does not
contribute to the discussion regarding the quality of services being delivered. Figure
1 is a graphic on the World Bank CDD website that illustrates the ideal CDD process.
16

It is an example of how CDD elements can be identified at each stage of a
development project: planning, implementation, and post-‐project monitoring and
evaluation. What is emphasized here is that, at each stage of the development
process, the community is the primary indicator of the health of an initiative. Below
is a description of each element of CDD. Limitations of these elements will be
discussed later in this paper.

Community Focus – A focus on communities and/or community groups (rather than
individuals). This ensures that a project’s design, implementation, and eventual goals
are aligned with the community’s developmental needs. In the planning phase, this
can by enacted through surveys, social impact assessments (SIAs), country social
analyses (CSAs), and working directly with grassroots organizations (GROs) and
community leaders. This is the element of CDD that continually ensures the project
is designed in a context-‐specific manner. This is also where community dynamics
can be observed and taken into account. Awareness of both positive and negative
impacts of “local knowledge” on project implementation and success (such as power
relations and marginalized populations) must be understood when identifying need
within a community (Easterly &Williamson, 2011).

Participatory Planning – A participatory planning process, including inclusive
consultation with members of the community. This keeps a project on track with
original goals and objectives. It safeguards against possible mission drift (due
potentially to changing donor goals), while simultaneously allowing for evolution
and the ability to adapt to local/changing conditions on the ground. This is the arena
for feedback from aid recipients to be taken into consideration (WorldBank.org).

Community Control of Resources – Resources channeled directly to the community,
although they may come through a sectoral ministry or local governmental agency.
This is, at times, a difficult element of CDD. It requires that an INGO eventually hand
over control of project funds to local project initiators and community leaders. This
eliminates a certain element of power. However, it also provides the space for the
17

community to take ownership and responsibility for a project. Accountability,

transparency, and finance management training are key aspects of this element
(Murtaza, 2012). One thing to be aware of, however, is the potential for capture of
the project by local elites (Mansuri & Rao, 2004).

Community Involvement in Implementation and Operations and Management (O&M) –
The community itself is directly involved with project implementation, generally
involving the creation of employment opportunities for members of the community.
This is where a majority of the community education occurs in relation to a project.
This can include the formation and training of community facilitators. It is the aspect
that promotes independent sustainability of a project within the beneficiary
community (WorldBank.org). This is arguably one of the most important elements
to implement, as it is the element that focuses on the education and training of
community members in how to implement and maintain a project, creating
sustainability and avoiding dependency issues.

Participatory Monitoring – The community itself is directly involved with monitoring
the progress of implementation, including the quality and cost of inputs and outputs,
with recourse to complains handling mechanisms as part of the larger CDD project
design. This is crucial for providing input for future decision-‐making and project
management. When done properly, it provides a feedback mechanism for the
community to communicate their evaluation of the project and its performance to
the INGO (WorldBank.org).

18

Figure 1: Identifying CDD Elements in a Project Cycle

Source: WorldBank.org

These five elements of CDD are important for identifying CDD principles within a
development project. They are a first attempt at operationalizing and breaking
down what it means to utilize “community driven development” when
administering development aid. However, as stated earlier, these elements identify
the presence of CDD within a project, and not necessarily the quality. It was for this
reason I use additional sources to inform my scoring of the three organizations
studied – to be discussed below in greater detail.

19

Rubric

It is important to be able to not only locate, but also evaluate participatory
principles within a INGOs’ practices. As Sherry Arnstein states: “Citizen participation
is a categorical term for citizen power” (Arnstein, 1969). Arnstein focuses on the
redistribution of power to allow previously marginalized groups presently excluded
from political and economic processes to be deliberately included in future
activities. Her “Ladder of Participation” helps to evaluate whether an organization is
approaching CDD as “an empty ritual” (Arnstein, 1969) versus with the intention for
beneficiaries to truly have an effect on the development process. The “Ladder of
Participation” (see Figure 2) is a typology of eight levels of participation (1 being no
participation and 8 being full participation). It helps to illustrate the point that is
often missed – that there are significant gradations of citizen participation
(Arnstein, 1969). Knowing these gradations helps in the evaluation of an
organization’s approach. Below is a description of each step on Arnstein’s Ladder.

Types of Participation
1-‐2: Manipulation and Therapy: The real objective of these rungs is not to enable
people to participate, but rather to enable power holders to “educate” the
participants.
3-‐5: Informing, Consultation, and Placation: At this stage, though citizens will be
heard, under these conditions, they lack the power to ensure that their views will be
heeded by the powerful. There is no availability for follow-‐through, and hence, no
assurance of changing the status quo.
6: Partnership: Enables citizens to negotiate and engage in trade-‐offs with
traditional power holders.
7-‐8: Delegated Power and Citizen Control: “Have-‐not” citizens obtain the majority of
decision-‐making seats, or full managerial power.

20

Figure 2: Arnstein’s Ladder of Participation

Source: Arnstein, 1969

Arnstein’s Ladder is helpful in supplementing the evaluation process by providing a
way to gauge not only the presence of CDD, but also the quality. Despite the
presence of CDD elements in a project, the way they are administered can still be
somewhat technocratic or paternalistic. There is the danger that community input
can be “co-‐opted and captured rather than accorded independent vitality” (Head,
2007). Using a scoring method of each element of CDD within a development project
helps reveal the quality with which it is being delivered.

It is important to be able to operationalize the World Bank’s Five Elements of CDD
beyond either their presence (or lack thereof) within an organization’s model.
Initially, for this paper, Arnstein’s Ladder of Participation was going to be used as
the rubric to gauge the quality of CDD delivery. However, not all parts of her rubric
were applicable to the relationship between INGO and beneficiary community. Thus,
her rubric was strongly used to inform a five-‐point rubric I have developed with
which to evaluate the performance of each INGO studied in relation to the World
Bank’s five elements of CDD (described below).
21

Scoring
0-‐1: No presence of participatory practices. The real objective is not to enable
people to participate, but rather to enable power holders to “educate” the
participants. Often, in these cases, community members are placed on “rubberstamp
advisory committees” (Arnstein, 1969).

2: Community members are involved and informed about purposes of project, but
lack powers to ensure their voices are being heard. No availability for follow-‐
through, and thus, no assurance views will be heeded. Risk of unilateral information
flow.

3: Community’s opinions are actively invited, though still may not hold leadership
positions. Movement toward project independence and sustainability, but no
concrete plan in relation to complete community take-‐over. In many cases, the
community itself has recognized the problem being addressed, and has taken the
initiative to build a relationship with an INGO. However, the INGO still has majority
control of the project once it is implemented and/or there are no plans for eventual
community independence/control.

4: Power is distributed through negotiation between community and INGO. Planning
and decision-‐making are shared through structures such as joint policy boards,
planning committees, and dialogic, mediatory mechanisms for resolving impasses
are in place. Community approached INGO in regards to the project, and has
maintained decision-‐making power in relation to project implementation.
Community education and training are beginning to be emphasized to encourage
eventual independence and/or culmination of that project.

5: Community members achieve dominant decision-‐making authority over a project.
They have genuine specified power, position, and responsibilities within project
hierarchy and organization. Community has full, unlimited and uncontrolled access
to project resources and funds. Community training and education are required
22

elements of a project plan, with the idea being the ability of the community to
expand the scope of the project beyond itself. There is a clear goal for eventual
project independence and sustainability without the presence of the INGO. Below is
a table laying out necessary elements for each score received. By no means is this an
exhaustive list, but these were the key practices used to score each organization
studied.

Table 1: Scoring Elements
Information Public Community Workshops/ Community Community
sessions Comment/Focus Determines Community Leadership Polling/Citizen Community
Groups/Surveys Project Trainings and Advisory Control of
Decision-‐ Committees Resources
making
1
2 A S
3 A A S S S S
4 A A S S S A S
5 A A A A A A S
S = sometimes; A= always

Having a rubric for not only the presence of CDD but also the quality of those
elements will allow INGOs to gauge and evaluate their performance in relation to
the above indicators for community participation. This is a first stab to try to
operationalize the concept of CDD on a level that most small-‐scale INGOs can use.
Though this rubric is nowhere near as exhaustive as an extensive, quantitative
impact evaluation or monitoring and evaluation system (which is what the World
Bank recommends as the best way to properly gauge CDD performance), this
provides an option to organizations too small to implement exhaustive program
evaluations.

23

Sample

As mentioned above, the findings of this study will be most useful for small-‐scale
INGOs not functioning under the jurisdiction or in partnership with larger
organizations such as the UNDP or the World Bank. This gives a relatively simple
and efficient way to evaluate performance of CDD. Often, small-‐scale INGOs are
functioning with a very limited number of staff. Thus, in-‐depth project evaluations
are the first elements to be dropped from a model. Providing a quick way to
appraise CDD elements in a program will (ideally) encourage a greater emphasis on
not only the presence of CDD within an organization’s business model, but also the
quality of its delivery.

Seven small-‐scale American development INGOs were asked to participate in the
study, and four responded: Mercy Corps, Global Ade, VIllage Volunteers, and Cross
Cultural Solutions. VIllage Volunteers and Cross Cultural Solutions utilize volunteers
both nationally and internationally. Global Ade and Mercy Corp utilize volunteers
strictly in their national office (both based in Portland, OR). However, funding
structures of the four organizations differ quite significantly. I have had previous
experience with two of the four organizations. I volunteered through Cross Cultural
solutions in 2009, and I interned with VIllage Volunteers the summer of 2012. Data
were gathered mainly through interviews with employees and founders of the
aforementioned organizations, the organization websites, and project reports.
Analysis focused on project planning, implementation, and post-‐project evaluation
practices in relation to the World Bank’s CDD elements of CDD. Originally, I had
intended to study individual projects related to a single category of aid (such as
education programs). However, the organizations’ policies and selection processes
appear to remain relatively similar across all types of projects.

I chose to drop Mercy Corp from the study due to the fact that its size, scope, and
practices are quite different from the other three organizations. Whereas Mercy
Corp generally works with communities on a more short-‐term, individual project
24

basis, the other three organizations remain in long-‐term relationships with the
communities they serve, participating in many different projects with the same
communities for several years as opposed to the prolific reach of Mercy Corp, which
serves in 14 different countries on thousands of projects and initiatives
(MercyCorps.org). The other three organizations simply do not have the scope to
compare with the actions and abilities of Mercy Corp. Below is a brief description of
each organization studied.

Village Volunteers

Village Volunteers’ model is based on all village projects being initiated, executed,
and managed by locals. It provides grant writing assistance, develops income-‐
generating projects, mobilizes the resources of international volunteers, and works
with community-‐based organizations in the implementation of development
projects. Village Volunteers has initiatives in agriculture and sustainable farming,
business development, building and construction, childcare, cultural studies,
education, environmental conservation, healthcare, public health awareness, special
needs programs, gender equality, and entrepreneurship.

Global ADE

Global ADE (Alliance for Developing Educaiton) is a non-‐profit organization
dedicated to improving education in developing countries. They fund grassroots
organizations (GROs) spearheaded by individuals and organizations that live in the
communities in which they work. Their goal is to connect these organizations with
resources from both domestic and international sources to create the opportunity
for projects to be taken on that otherwise would not be possible. Global ADE works
mainly in Cambodia, but also has a partner in Kenya.

25

Cross Cultural Solutions

Cross Cultural Solutions (Cross Cultural Solutions) is the largest of the three being
looked at. Similar to VIllage Volunteers, it has a dual purpose in that it not only
partners with communities for development projects it also sends volunteers to its
project locations. Cross Cultural Solutions’ focus is working to address critical global
issues by providing meaningful volunteer service to communities abroad and
contributing responsibly to local communities. Their model is one based on the
belief that the best approach to volunteering is one designed by the community.
Cross Cultural Solutions operates in 12 different countries, each with several
different initiatives in place, addressing areas such as: improving education for
children, assisting with the care of infants and children, improving health and the
sense of dignity among the elderly, improving the quality of care for people with
disabilities, supporting those affected by HIV/AIDS, enhancing the quality of
healthcare.

Though these three organizations are each modeled in a slightly different way, they
still all classify themselves as development organizations. This presents the
opportunity to find patterns (if there are any) in regards to which aspects of CDD
are the strongest, and which appear to be the most challenging for INGOs to
implement. This paper identifies the elements of CDD within each organization’s
model as well as evaluates them for the quality of its implementation by comparing
each element of their CDD practices against the scoring rubric I have developed
using Sherry Arnstein’s Ladder of Participation.

26

Findings

As stated previously, these case studies sought not only to identify the presence of
CDD elements, but also gauge the quality with which they were being implemented.
A few themes emerged. While all organizations exhibited each aspect of CDD, there
were areas that seemed easiest for all to execute. Participatory Planning and
Participatory Monitoring were the strongest. Village Volunteers and Global Ade both
earned a 5 in Participatory Planning and Cross Cultural Solutions scored a 4. All
three organizations earned a 5 in Participatory Monitoring. The weakest element for
all three was Community Control of Resources (Village Volunteers 4, Global Ade 3,
Cross Cultural Solutions 3). Possible explanations behind this similarity will be
discussed later. Below is a more in-‐depth discussion of each element of CDD in
relation to the organizations studied and the score it received.

Community Focus -‐ A focus on communities and/or community groups (rather than
individuals) (WorldBank.org).
Village Volunteers – 5
Global ADE – 3
Cross Cultural Solutions – 4

All three organizations espouse a community focus and make some attempt at it in
their models. However, because of each organization’s variance in mission and
ability, this presents itself in different ways, with variable success. All are strong in
program/partner selection. The organizations understand what types of
relationships will be the most beneficial (for all stakeholders involved), and do not
take on projects that do not match their mission and core philosophies. This is due,
in large part, to the fact that all three organizations do not choose partnerships and
locations, but rather require communities and organizations to approach them with
specific projects and goals. Village Volunteers looks for partners that “really get it
and understand we’re not a funding organization. People work right alongside us in
27

the marketing of their program and the choosing of projects” (Village Volunteers
Interview).

In all cases, before offering assistance, the project or partner is vetted quite
stringently. For Village Volunteers, only organizations/communities that have a
“similar, holistic point of view and the same core values” (Village Volunteers
Interview) are chosen, ensuring that there aren’t disagreements in relation to
project objectives later in the relationship. All three organizations require an
extensive application process in which the potential partner organization’s past
history and reputation is reviewed, as well as the feasibility of their future goals –
“We see how they work, look at recommendations from people who know them –
sometimes they’ve already gotten funding from people, so that’s an indication that
they passed that vetting. We also require that they are able to report on what is
going on” (Village Volunteers Interview). This selectivity helps prevent problems
with expectations later in the partnership.

In the case of Village Volunteers, partners must show they can house (and host)
volunteers. In the application, they “must be able to provide clean water, mosquito
nets, keep volunteers safe, provide quality food…we’re asking them to really provide
something decent” (Village Volunteers Interview). The Village Volunteers volunteer
hospitality fee covers these expenses, but partner organizations are required to
provide private, clean housing for the volunteers as well. This creates some self-‐
selection, which may exclude communities that have projects, but don’t have the
means to support volunteers.

Cross Cultural Solutions is more driven by volunteers, as that is where the entirety
of their funds comes from. They are even more selective of their partner
organizations in order to avoid issues of dependency – “We look for ensuring that
our volunteers can provide service and can provide the service they’re looking
for…so we look for people who understand what we do and have a clear
understanding of how they would use volunteers, or at least what will work with
28

our staff to figure out how volunteers can be best utilized because, again, that’s the
most important thing – that effective utilization will create results both in terms of
meeting their needs and mission and also really provide something for the
volunteers who are going all that way” (Cross Cultural Solutions Interview). Though
Cross Cultural Solutions does not require partners to host volunteers (Cross
Cultural Solutions provides all housing, food, and transportation to volunteers), the
only form of aid they give is in the form of volunteers. This puts quite strong
restrictions on what services Cross Cultural Solutions can provide. In order to avoid
dependency, Cross Cultural Solutions institutes a strong policy of only providing
volunteers to organizations in capacities that do not take away from potential jobs
that could be given to members of the community.

Global ADE ranks lower due to the fact that most of their initiatives are, as of yet,
very small in scale. They currently partner mostly with scholarship and salary aid
organizations (they are currently funding ten Cambodian teachers) (Global Ade
Interview), meaning they are working on more of an individual rather than group
basis. However, they do not have the international volunteer presence that both
Village Volunteers and Cross Cultural Solutions have. Because Global ADE does not
have to worry about the safety and demands of volunteers, it is able to go directly
where the most need is, whereas both Cross Cultural Solutions and Village
Volunteers must constantly be balancing the needs of volunteers against those of
the communities they serve.

Table 2: Community Focus -‐ Organization Performance
1 2 3 4 5
Village
Volunteers X
Global
ADE X
Cross
Cultural X
Solutions
29

Participatory Planning – A participatory planning process, including inclusive
consultation with members of the community.
Global ADE – 5

Village Volunteers is very strong in participatory planning. It is a primary concern in
their model, and as a result, is performed well. In many of their projects, they act
solely as the fiscal agent, merely holding the money until the local organization is
prepared to institute their project or program. Local partners are “in total control.
It’s autonomous. Each program operates quite separately from one another…their
mission is our mission…and so their long-‐term goals are already established with
what they’re interested in” (Village Volunteers Interview). Village Volunteers
cultivates long-‐term relationships with their partners, allowing for great flexibility
in the funding of different types of projects.

For example, Village Volunteers helped its partner organization, Namunyak Massai
Welfare, build the Sirua Aulo Academy. Opened in May 2008, it initially served 76
children (nursery – 3rd grade). Since then, Village Volunteers has helped sponsor
several different projects on the Sirua Aulo campus (incuding building a dining
hall/community center and new classrooms that will support 250 children) -‐ all
chosen and managed by the founder, Emanuel Leina Tasur. Village Volunteers’s
method of service delivery relies very much on the CDD tenet that “only
communities know their local conditions and issues and are best placed to decide
what their priorities” (WorldBank.org). Village Volunteers’s mission and goals focus
on a holistic approach because, “in order to affect any change at all and really impact
people, it ha[s] to be holistic in scope” (Village Volunteers Interview).

Global ADE’s projects are all managed by their local partners, also making them very
strong in both the presence and quality of this CDD element within their
30

organization – “We try to give them a lot of autonomy to create the programs that
they know will work…They’re working in these schools everyday, so they know a lot
better than we do over in the states what the schools really need…We really kind of
leave it up to the people on the ground to run the long-‐term focus of the actual
program” (Global Ade Interview). Global Ade is in weekly contact with their partner
organizations. They discuss what is working, what isn’t, and how best continue to
serve the local NGOs and GROs they work with. Because Global Ade is so small, this
still occurs in a very unofficial, personal way – “It’s just one of those things, always
being open to listening. And if they call, even if it means waking up at two in the
morning, we’ll wake up and talk to them” (Global Ade Interview).

A program in direct response to community needs is their English program. It is
open to all ages (including adults). In Cambodia, it is hard to get a job if you don’t
speak English. This program was initiated at the behest of Global Ade’s partner
organizations, and opens up opportunities for participants to work in the
travel/tourism industry among many others. Global Ade also has plans to begin a
vocational school for teachers, but that is in the future (Global Ade Interview).

However, the flexibility that Village Volunteers demonstrates in terms of project
choice is not there. Global ADE’s mission is much more focused (on the provision of
education). As a result, some of the structural or societal externalities contributing
to the difficulties faced by the population in attaining education are not necessarily
addressed. This is due in part to the size of Global ADE – it is not yet large enough to
tackle multiple issues. However, this can result in a bit of an uphill battle in regards
to truly changing the structural issues in the way of education in the first place,
leading to a continued dependence on Global Ade for education initiatives to be
sustained.

Cross Cultural Solutions scored slightly lower in this category due largely to the
hierarchical structure of the organization. Though participatory planning is a part of
their model, Cross Cultural Solutions HQ is not always in direct contact with their
31

partner organizations, but rather go through a Cross Cultural Solutions –hired in
country director. Thus, though the majority of people working in country are
nationals, their allegiances lie not necessarily with their community, but rather to
their employer, Cross Cultural Solutions, causing potential loyalty issues in relation
to community concerns. It is the in country directors that identify and work with the
partner organizations. “Basically, [Cross Cultural Solutions] find[s] that country
director figure who is dynamic…has a ton of connections, interests, and people
within the community that they already know” (Cross Cultural Solutions Interview).
While this third party grants access to the community, it also potentially creates a
barrier between the community and Cross Cultural Solutions in terms of actually
hearing what the partner organizations and community members have to say in
regards to a project or volunteer interactions. Generally, it has all been filtered
through a country director first. However, this does not always mean something
negative. In fact, it can be quite beneficial to have someone representing the
organization on the ground, able to respond quickly to any incidents that may arise.
Cross Cultural Solutions’ in country directors and program managers are in constant
contact with both the volunteers and the partner organizations, giving Cross
Cultural Solutions a very well rounded view of the activities occurring at their
various partner locations (Cross Cultural Solutions Interview).

A potential issue presented in both the case of Village Volunteers and Global ADE is
that they do not have in country, paid employees monitoring the projects. Though,
to date, this has not caused a problem, due to financing and staff limitations, most
partnerships are carried out via phone, e-‐mail, and Skype. While Global ADE
founders have visited all partners, not all project sites have been visited, or
evaluated by, an actual Village Volunteers staff member. This creates an
environment for complete participatory planning (because it is the community itself
evaluating the projects), but this also leaves all project reporting up to the partner
organization, creating a potential for deception in relation to the true achievement
of project goals and objectives. For Village Volunteers, this issue is somewhat
mitigated, however, due to the fact that they send volunteers to every project site.
32

Their reports provide an unbiased third party perception as to what is occurring on
a regular basis. Global ADE has addressed this issue by being quite stringent in their
expectations of their partners – “We require a few things from every organization
we fund. We require a monthly financial report – just how much did they spend,
what did they spend it on, things like that. We require a monthly update with that.
How is the program going? It doesn’t have to be much, just a simple e-‐mail – this is
what has happened, these are the successes we found, here’s something we can
improve on” (Global Ade Interview).

Table 3: Participatory Planning -‐ Organization Performance

1 2 3 4 5
Village
Volunteers X
Global
ADE X
Cross
Cultural X
Solutions

Community Control of Resources -‐ Resources are channeled directly to the
community, although they may come through a sectoral ministry or local
governmental agency.
VIllage Volunteers – 4
Global ADE – 3

This is the weakest element of CDD for all three groups for a couple of reasons,
primary among them being that community control of resources somewhat suggests
a greater independence between INGO and beneficiary than is present in any of
these organizations’ relationships with their partners. All three cultivate long-‐term
relationships with their partners, thus limiting the amount of autonomy and control
33

in country partners can truly have. True community control of resources would
suggest that a project was entirely sustainable within the community without the
aid/presence of its INGO partner. Village Volunteers has come closest to this with an
example being its Kenya Ceramic Project. In partnership with two other INGOs,
Village Volunteers supported the construction and development of a ceramic water
filter manufacturing facility as a social enterprise in Kiminini, Kenya. The ceramic
water filter plant has the capacity to produce 10-‐12,000 water filters per year that
eliminate 99.88% of waterborne pathogens, uses materials that are locally sourced,
provides jobs for local people, and is completely independently sustainable by the
community (VillageVolunteers.org).

Since both Global ADE and Cross Cultural Solutions provide services that fulfill a
constant need, this element of CDD is slightly less applicable to them and their
mission. Many of the organizations Cross Cultural Solutions partners with are either
orphanages or homes for the mentally/physically disabled. In communities where
resources are already scarce, it’s not uncommon for individuals with disabilities to
go without vital care and services. As these local organizations serve marginalized
members of the community and are often low on funds, they are always in need of
support (which Cross Cultural Solutions volunteers provide). At Cross Cultural
Solutions’ location in Guatemala City, Guatemala, volunteers help primary schools
watch children while parents are at work – “Local parents are very grateful because
volunteers give children the care they need while the parents go to work to earn
income” (CrossCulturalSolutions.org). Though Cross Cultural Solutions’ work is of a
significantly more difficult capacity to measure, it is still fulfilling a need within the
community – in particular, needs that are, in all likelihood, not going to be addressed
and/or eliminated in the near future due to local power relations and social
structures.

Though Cross Cultural Solutions offers a very specific service, it is the partner
organizations that determine where and how volunteers are utilized. Essentially,
“[Cross Cultural Solutions] trusts that [the partner organizations] are going to be
34

able to best identify what the goals are for volunteers in that community…what
[Cross Cultural Solutions] focuses on is really letting those in-‐country organizations
be the drivers” (Cross Cultural Solutions Interview). So, despite the fact that there is
only one kind of service offered (that of volunteers), the capacity in which they are
used is, for the most part, up to the organization. Thus, the resources Cross Cultural
Solutions provides are in control of the partners. That being said, if an organization
begins showing a dependency on volunteers, Cross Cultural Solutions makes a
significant effort to restructure the volunteer presence within that organization.
When asked if this ever caused an issue in relation to beneficiary loyalty versus
volunteer loyalty, it was said that:
“If we’re connecting the, with positive, affective, sustainable volunteer
work, 99.5% of the time, they are happy…We try to make it really clear to
volunteers that, from the very beginning, they will be helping out where
their fields and interests can meet community needs…We basically are
getting volunteers who are flexible enough in saying: ‘These are my
interests, but ultimately, I want to work to address the needs of the
community.’ And then we work with those community organizations to
know exactly what they want and need out of volunteers” (Cross Cultural
Solutions Interview).
So, though no funds are being transferred between Cross Cultural Solutions and
their partners, the organizations they work with are in control of the resource Cross
Cultural Solutions does provide -‐ volunteers.

The kind of service they provide is “not so high-‐level” (Cross Cultural Solutions
Interview). Cross Cultural Solutions provides strictly volunteer support on
community projects (such as well-‐building and agriculture) and with community
organizations that simply need manpower and support (such as orphanages,
hospitals, and schools). Rather than funding development projects, Cross Cultural
Solutions provides support for projects and initiatives already underway. In
testimonies from partners, “generally the number one thing they say is…moral
support. They like cultural exchange” (Cross Cultural Solutions Interview). Rather
than a concrete, measurable impact, Cross Cultural Solutions seems to have a much
35

more subtle one – that of exposure and interaction. Part of Cross Cultural Solutions’
mission is to “empower community organizations and affect positive change” (Cross
Cultural Solutions Interview). For example, In India, there is a group of women who
have become doctors, inspired as children ten years ago by a previous female
volunteer that tutored in their classroom who was studying biomedicine.

Global ADE’s focus is on education outreach. As the number of children needing an
education is not going to diminish in the near future, there will always be a need for
scholarship opportunities, more teachers, and more schools. Thus, it would actually
be harmful to the communities Global ADE serves if they were no longer present.
For this particular initiative, reach, growth, scope, and targeting are arguably more
important than community control of resources and independent sustainability of
the projects. However, again, Global ADE leaves most decisions in regards to
allocation of resources in the hands of their partners. “The people that know [what
is needed] are the people there everyday, the people that were born there, the
people that are working in that field in these different villages. So…[Global ADE]
funds these great organizations that are already in place and doing amazing work,
but do not have the funding they need” (Global Ade Interview).

The second challenge is that, though all organizations allow their partners complete
control in the decision-‐making process in regards to which projects to take on, once
the project is determined, the resources are quite restricted. However, that is not to
suggest this is an entirely negative aspect of the models. Rather, the lack of
community control in relation to resources is serving as a safeguard, which, given
the lack of resources for constant program monitoring and evaluation (M&E) these
INGOs have, provides a certain amount of assurance that the money and/or
resources sent are going where they need to be going.

The lack of community control of resources in relation to fund restriction also has to
do with how the INGOs themselves get (and disburse) their funding. For Village
Volunteers all funds (aside from grant money) come from volunteer donations.
36

These donations are often given for specific purposes (sponsoring a particular child
or for specific small projects such as buying school supplies), and so community
control of fiscal resources is somewhat limited in that money given is always for a
specific project. While Village Volunteers does not require strict records of where
funds are allocated within a project (such as the keeping of detailed records and
receipts), it also does not provide endless amounts of money. Funds are raised for
certain projects, and “if they run out of money, they don’t come back to us. This is
what they said it [would cost]. They need to figure out how to do it. We’ve actually
literally never had that happen where people come back and say, ‘We don’t have
enough money.’ They go as far as they can” (Village Volunteers Interview). By
working on a strict project – by – project basis, Village Volunteers has protected
itself from creating issues of dependence between the organization and its partners.
In general, projects embarked upon by Village Volunteers partners are specific and
yield obvious and measurable results, thus making it relatively easy to determine if
funds are going where they are supposed to be.

Global ADE is also very careful not to just hand out money. Their model looks at
funding projects as an investment, and the investment must be returned. For
example, in the case of their scholarship program, in order to receive the family
stipend, children are required to attend school for a certain number of days each
month.
“The students only get [the scholarship] if they are in class, so they have to
write certain reports about what the scholarship has done for them, what
they might be doing if they didn’t have it. And, it’s up to them if they want to
keep it. It’s not something we just give out willy nilly. It’s only something
they get if they work for it. School is their job, and we want them to realize
it’s their job. They could be working in the tourism field and that is a job,
but we’re paying them to go to school, so we need them to have the same
type of results that they would have if they had an actual job. So I think it’s
just kind of creating that mindset when you talk to people that it’s not just a
handout, it’s an investment in them, and they need to yield a return on
37

that…We like to say that whenever people donate, they’re not donating, but
they’re investing” (Global Ade Interview).
The amount of emphasis placed on partner accountability seems to help protect
Global ADE to some extent from money going to the wrong places or being wasted.

Cross Cultural Solutions is donation-‐free. Their organization is funded through the
volunteer fees – “Essentially, the volunteers are our donors. They’re paying their
own program fee and covering all those costs” (Cross Cultural Solutions Interview).
While on the surface this appears to give Cross Cultural Solutions quite a large
amount of freedom with their money, they have not really escaped the loyalty to
donors issue faced by many organizations. They still have to provide a service for
the money they were given and must “make volunteers feel like they are satisfied.
We want them to be happy. We want them to have the experience of a lifetime”
(Cross Cultural Solutions Interview).

Table 4: Community Control of Resources -‐ Organization Performance

1 2 3 4 5
Village
Volunteers X

Global
ADE X
Cross
Cultural X
Solutions

38

Community Involvement in Implementation and Operation and Management

(O&M) -‐ The community itself is directly involved with project implementation,
generally involving the creation of employment opportunities for members of the
community.
Global ADE – 3

This element of CDD is strongly tied to the term “sustainability,” and arguably the
most important element of CDD. It implies that community members are not only
receiving the benefits of a particular project or initiative, but also are able to take
part in implementing it themselves. How each organization goes about creating that
independence and active involvement, however, is different. Village Volunteers’
partners propose and implement most of the projects and initiatives themselves.
For Village Volunteers, creating an exponential effect is the goal – “Everything
[Village Volunteers] does has a fairly long-‐term benefit. By working with women’s
cooperatives, training in business, organic farming – all or our social enterprises are
set up to provide employment, use the local resources, and to fill a social need”
(Village Volunteers Interview). Since the projects are brought to Village Volunteers
by their partner organizations, they are initiatives chosen by the community, for the
community. The directors of the local partner NGOs and GROs are the implementers
of the project, and so (aside from the aid of Village Volunteers’ international
volunteers), the project is entirely in the hands of the community from the
beginning.

Not only are the projects independently run and monitored, but Village Volunteers
also ensures that training and education as to how to successfully maintain any
initiative is included in project planning and budgeting. Village Volunteers helps
“with setting up all their books, and training, so there is a lot of work [Village
Volunteers] does together [with the partner organizations] to train everybody and
prepare everybody for this business” (Village Volunteers Interview). An example of
39

this is Village Volunteers’ Feed Villages Sustainable Agriculture project. A program
run in partnership with the local organization, Common Ground for Africa, Feed
Villages Sustainable Agriculture promotes sustainable farming methods and
education through demonstration farms, workshops, and the development of
Moringa tree nurseries. It also establishes community seed banks and educates on
seed collection to enhance sustainable crop production and support enhanced
biodiversity. Training focuses on organic, high yield Grow Biointensive®
agricultural techniques and includes education on general sustainable farming
methods, tree propagation and development, water shed recovery, and farm
management. The program trains a few community representative farmers using a
demonstration farm located on the grounds of a school or orphanage. After the
initial training is complete, each farmer must then train five additional community
members, who are then required to train more community members themselves,
and so on. Designed to have an exponential effect, the program is entirely self-‐
sustaining once the training is completed, providing food security, reducing
environmental degradation, supporting good nutrition, and increasing
entrepreneurial opportunity (VillageVolunteers.org).

Global Ade functions a bit differently in the sense that it is not as holistic in its
approach as Village Volunteers. Their initiatives are focused specifically on
education. However, under that umbrella, they do function in quite a few different
capacities by providing scholarships to students, teacher salaries, after school
programs, school supplies, etc. That being said, Global Ade’s partnerships are also
run almost entirely by their partner organizations. Global Ade’s partners are “the
point people for the projects. They tell us their best ideas. We kind of vet it. Does it
make logical sense, can we afford it…all the questions you need to ask before you
employ the program, and then they are in charge of running it, so we purely are just
an overseer role” (Global Ade Interview). Global Ade is stricter than Village
Volunteers in knowing how and where the funds provided go. All money has a
specific purpose, and must be accounted for (as mentioned above in Community
Control of Resources).
40

Global Ade defines sustainability in the sense that, after a while, their partner
organizations no longer need them -‐ “They don’t need [Global Ade] to go in there
and fund them because they’re getting funding from…actual sustainable means,
whether that means they have a little farm attached to the school and they’re using
projects with that to pay for different books and what not” (Global Ade Interview).
However, there are not currently training initiatives in place by Global Ade that
directly encourage that type of entrepreneurial behavior, though it could be argued
that all of their projects’ outputs are children who are educated, and thus capable of
creating a better life for themselves and their families once through with school.

Cross Cultural Solutions does not score very well in this section due to the fact that
many jobs that volunteers participate in are not initiatives designed around creating
community independence and growth. Most capacities volunteers work in are
menial positions (such as childcare of orphans) for which there is not much growth
possible. That is not to suggest, however, that the service they provide is a) not
needed or b) detrimental or limiting to the community. Cross Cultural Solutions
simply does not function in a capacity in which community takes a huge role.

Table 5: Community Involvement in Implementation and O&M -‐ Organization
Performance

1 2 3 4 5
Village
Volunteers X
Global
ADE X
Cross
Cultural X
Solutions
41

Participatory Monitoring – The community itself is directly involved with monitoring
the progress of implementation, including the quality and cost of inputs and outputs,
with recourse to complaints handling mechanisms as part of the larger CDD project
design.
VIllage Volunteers – 5
Global Ade – 5

All three organizations do utilize some kind of participatory feedback mechanisms
in their model quite extensively. Village Volunteers’s partnerships are ones in which
the NGOs, GROs, and/or communities they work with truly are the decision-‐makers
of the process. They approach Village Volunteers with the projects they would like
to work on, and they have control (for the most part) of what happens to funds
received as long as they go toward completing the project they were slated for. Not
only are they in control during project implementation, but, as mentioned
previously, Village Volunteers also always makes sure to provide training and
education to community members that gives them the skills necessary to both
continue a project as well as critically analyze and evolve it. Despite the fact that
Village Volunteers cultivates long-‐lasting relationships with their partners, they do
not do so in a single capacity. The relationship lasts not because Village Volunteers
is continuously providing a single service, but rather because the communities
continue to develop and grow, using Village Volunteers as a fiscal agent to aid in
gaining funds for new projects:
“The idea of sustainable development is more or less that ever changing
and growing, and once you solve one problem, you can move into
another…[Village Volunteers] stays with [its] communities. [It’s] not a non-‐
profit that just does water and goes from community to community. These
are out partners, and so there’s always a tremendous amount of need, and
sometimes that need changes. Problems are solved; schools are built or
business are built, and then we go on to something else that’s needed”
(Village Volunteers Interview).
42

Village Volunteers is very project specific. If an organization approaches them with a
proactive solution for a problem, they will be supported. This keeps the community
in control of their own development. One potential area for discord (shared by Cross
Cultural Solutions) is if volunteers are saying one thing about the health of a project
when the partner organization/community is saying another. Though neither
organization said this had been an issue to date, it does present potential loyalty
issues. Conversely, it gives these two organizations more diversified views about
what is going on in country. This is especially helpful for Village Volunteers as they
do not have any Village Volunteers employees on the ground at their partner
locations. Thus, the only feedback they receive on projects is from the partner
organizations and the volunteers.

Global Ade, likewise, has a similar model. However, they do not have the added
benefit/complication of volunteers. One of the founders visits the project sites once
or twice a year (Global Ade Interview), but aside from that, all reporting is done by
their partner organizations. Once they partner with someone, it is that NGO/GRO
that is in control of which projects are taken on and how they are managed – “They
know, do they need a new library, is that something that’s really important, or do
they need more money for different scholarship programs, or teacher’s
salaries…That’s kind of the context of our conversations with people on the ground
to figure out what is really needed” (Global Ade Interview). A difference between
Village Volunteers and Global Ade is that, though Village Volunteers maintains long-‐
term relationships with their partners, as mentioned above, they do not generally
continue working on a single project. Village Volunteers’s work is sustained, but
occurs on multiple different development projects, whereas Global Ade is sustained
and fulfills ongoing needs for funds on single projects (such as scholarship funds or
teacher’s salaries). Regardless, through extensive communication and feedback
from their partner organizations, Village Volunteers and Global Ade are both quite
aware of how their projects are being received by their partner organizations (and
hopefully, by extension, the community).

43

Cross Cultural Solutions also places participatory monitoring as one of their
priorities in their relationships with partners on the ground. However, because
Cross Cultural Solutions is a significantly larger organizations than either Village
Volunteers or Global Ade, they are able to have a much more comprehensive M&E
process. This is potentially both a good and bad thing. As mentioned before, all
interaction between Cross Cultural Solutions HQ and their partner organizations
goes through Cross Cultural Solutions-‐hired in country directors – “[Local hires] are
very involved. Especially in terms of what’s going on in their community…Basically
everything that goes on in-‐country is done by a host-‐country national. So it starts
with the country director, who is responsible for everything that runs on the ground
in country. They will then employ office staff, so there’s a program manager who
will work with the different partner organizations, has that main relationship in
terms of that weekly connection with people, dropping off volunteers, making sure
everything’s going okay” (Cross Cultural Solutions Interview). While this gives the
benefit of having a community member who understands the society and culture, it
also presents a potential barrier between Cross Cultural Solutions and the partner
organization – “Our progam team here will provide support with whatever they
need, but if a director says ‘Yeah, this isn’t going to work out,’ that’s what get’s done”
(Cross Cultural Solutions Interview). One way Cross Cultural Solutions avoids a
potential bias is by conducting annual quantitative and qualitative surveys of their
partner organizations (CrossCulturalSolutions.org). This is where the size of Cross
Cultural Solutions is of benefit. They have the funds and manpower to be able to
carry out significantly more in-‐depth M&E than Village Volunteers or Global Ade.
However, that being said, as both Global Ade and Village Volunteers work on a much
smaller scale, they are able to be in constant contact with their partner
organizations, and so are aware in real time of what is occurring.

Again, similar to Village Volunteers, Cross Cultural Solutions also takes into account
the reports of volunteers. Both utilize their volunteers extensively in determining
what is actually occurring on the ground – “[Cross Cultural Solutions] has them fill
out different forms and sheets and kind of interview[s] them…that gives out staff the
44

ability to really know what’s been going on, what’s expected, all those sorts of
things” (Cross Cultural Solutions Interview). As mentioned before, while this helps
give a comprehensive view of what is going on, there is also the potential for
confused loyalties. However, that being said, having volunteers on the ground,
reporting on their activities and the activities of the NGO/GRO gives both Village
Volunteers and Cross Cultural Solutions a good idea of whether any dependencies
are being created – “It’s a big red flag when [Cross Cultural Solutions] read[s] things
like, ‘We need volunteers to do x, y, and z,’ or, ‘We’d be in so much trouble if you
start not sending volunteers’” (Cross Cultural Solutions Interview).

Table 6: Participatory Monitoring – Organization Performance

1 2 3 4 5
Village
Volunteers X
Global Ade
X
Cross Cultural
Solutions X

45

Table 7: Organization Scores

Village Volunteers Global Ade Cross Cultural
Solutions
Community Focus 5 3 4
Participatory Planning 5 5 4
Community Control of
Resources 4 3 3
Community
Involvement in
Implementation and 4 4 3
O&M
Participatory
Monitoring 5 5 5

Total 23 20 19

Overall, Village Volunteers was found to have a participatory approach, rating, in
most elements of CDD, between a 4 and 5, and getting a final score of 23. However,
such a heavy focus on CDD elements often cause issues with the growth and
development of Village Volunteers itself, as funds are generally restricted quite
stringently to projects rather than being able to go into the growth and development
of the organization, thus, ultimately limiting the number (and scope) of projects and
partnerships it can take on. Instituting a participatory approach does not guarantee
sustainability.

Global ADE rated between a 3-‐4 for most elements of CDD, with a final score of 20.
While their scope is limited to education, and they don’t have an incredible amount
of reach to date, their initiatives are focused, goal oriented, and sustainable. They
rate especially high in terms of project longevity, with quite a few safeguards in
place to ensure project security. This aspect is especially important in relation to
Global ADE, as much of their support comes in the form of monetary aid to teachers
and/or students. Thus, the discontinuation of any of their initiatives could cause
46

great damage to the communities they serve. Ideally, a funding structure should be
developed in which the local education NGOs they partner with could create a
means for producing funds independent of Global Ade, but there doesn’t appear to
be plans for those kind of development initiatives as of yet.

Cross Cultural Solutions scored between a 3-‐4, and a final score of 19. As they don’t
rely on donations for funds (but rather volunteer fees), they have much more
unrestricted funds than the other two organizations. However, in order to avoid
issues of dependency in relation to partner’s reliance on the presence of volunteers,
most of their initiatives are limited to activities that are rather simplistic and not
potentially as productive for the communities as the other two organizations. Aside
from identifying the presence of each element of CDD within the organizations
studied, this paper also highlights the quality of the CDD being provided. Certain
patterns arose between organizations in terms of strength and weakness of CDD.
The Participatory Planning and Participatory Monitoring aspects of CDD were the
strongest across all organizations, while the other three elements had varying
results suggesting that these two elements were collectively deemed either the most
doable and/or the most important in relation to CDD implementation.

47

Discussion and Implications

Given the above observations about quantity and quality, four themes have come to
light. Context matters when attempting to create specific rubrics and/or best
practices for CDD. Not only are the communities INGOs operate in each unique and
different, but also so are the INGOs themselves. However, the second theme is
somewhat in direct contrast to that in that certain elements of CDD were strongly
represented by all three organizations. Thirdly, proper monitoring and evaluation
(M&E) are necessary to gauge the true efficacy of a project (a reliable, cost-‐effective
M&E system has not yet been developed). Finally, the current elements of CDD do
not account for heterogeneity and potential for endogenous conflict within a
community that may affect the feasibility and sustainability of a community-‐focused
development project. In some cases, a more hierarchical, top-‐down approach may
be necessary to institute societal shifts (ex: gender inequality).

As stated above, context matters in relation to both the beneficiary communities and
the INGOs themselves. There is no clear definition for the model of a “development
INGO,” and as such, there is quite a wide array of organizational models that fall
under this title, making it difficult to create specific guidelines as to how to best
implement CDD across all different models of INGOs. This particular aspect became
especially clear when looking at the scoring of Cross Cultural Solutions. Though they
scored lower in relation to the World Bank’s elements of CDD, I do not think this is
necessarily because they are not conducting quality development projects, but
rather because their model and services do not fit as well into the five elements as
Village Volunteers’ and Global Ade’s practices do. The services they provide
(international volunteer help at orphanages, homes for the mentally and physically
disabled, and elderly homes) are much needed because these populations are often
marginalized and unable to receive support from the community.

The second theme was the presence of certain CDD elements in all three
organizations’ models – Participatory Planning and Participatory Monitoring. These
48

elements were the ones that focused on enlarging the decision-‐making roles and
processes, resource mobilization capacities, and communication and coordination
roles of the community (Datta, 2005). It is not clear, however, if these two elements
were so strong because they were the easiest to implement or because the
organizations independently determined they were the most essential elements to
maintaining a successful CDD program. Regardless, it is important to note how
strongly each was represented as opposed to the other three elements, which
differed quite significantly across all three organizations.

To that end, as reflected by the literature and the World Bank, monitoring and
evaluation of participatory development projects are necessary not only to ensure
the efficacy of the project, but also as a way to view patterns and discover which
elements of CDD are necessary across all projects and what can be changed across
different models while still maintaining the principles of CDD. As the World Bank
asserts, “despite the inherent challenges of conducting impact assessment of CDD
programs, there is a growing recognition that there is a need for evidence on the
actual impact of such programs and a need for insights on how to improve project
performance” (WorldBank.org). Both the literature and the development industry
appear to agree on the move toward more community-‐focused approaches, and as a
result, it is time for “community involvement” to be operationalized in order to
really be able to gauge the efficacy of it as an approach and replicate reliably across
different communities and INGOs.

The fourth theme was reflected in the case studies as well as the literature, and this
was the lack of attention given by the elements of CDD to endogenous conflict within
a community. Critiques of CDD for having a naïve application of complex contextual
concepts (Mansuri and Rao, 2004) became evident in examining the practices of
Village Volunteers, Cross Cultural Solutions, and Global Ade. While the rubric was
quite focused on the positive outcome of including the community in development
projects, there were not protections and/or recourse for potentially negative
situations that may arise when a community is involved, such as elite capture,
49

irresponsible use of funds, and objective project evaluation methods. As a result,
each organization had to create their own safeguards to protect themselves from
this eventuality, thus, in some cases, potentially threatening the very principles of
CDD they were espousing. This became particularly evident in relation to the CDD
element, Community Control of Resources. In theory, it is expected that when the
community is involved, it will result in an allocation of funds that is more
responsive, better targeted, and better maintained. However, this assumption is
quite significant in that it supposes a large amount of knowledge on the
community’s part as well as egalitarian sensibilities (Mansuri and Rao, 2004). One of
the reasons INGOs have become so popular is because of their ability to mitigate
conflict within a community, pinpoint need, and having access to the necessary
knowledge and tools to fill that need. It is important that, in guaranteeing the rights
of the community, the partner INGO does not become powerless and alienated.

These themes are very important for future policy implications in relation to CDD
and the development industry. Future research including, conducting significantly
more case studies, are necessary to learn how individual organizations are
modifying and utilizing participatory-‐based approaches. Identifying these patterns
are important for pinpointing key common elements and patterns in experience on
the ground, as they indicate something important may be happening (Datta, 2005).
In accordance with the development industry and CDD literature, the three
organizations examined support through their actions the currently held belief that
development driven by the beneficiaries is the best in terms of creating long-‐lasting,
effective change. However, because of their different models, each has a unique
interpretation of what, exactly, is the best way to go about fostering productive,
healthy, independent relationships between INGOs and their local counterparts.
Regardless, in all cases, there was a clear ideology based on independence by the
community from external agents in formulating its agenda and managing its affairs
(Lyons, et al., 2001). What was not always agreed upon were the ways to do that.
This indicates that we have not yet pinpointed which aspects of CDD, and doing so is
what must happen in future research to truly begin to understand which aspects of
50

CDD are necessary and which can be modified and changed while still maintaining a
community-‐focused mission and principles.

Conclusion

The literature agrees that communities can be effective channels of development if
they receive a genuine delegation of powers and responsibilities (Platteau &
Abraham, 2002), falling in line directly with the aims of the World Bank’s CDD
rubric. However, there are still several concepts within the ideology of CDD that
must be addressed such as the issues that may arise when complex and highly
contextual concepts such as “community” and “sustainability” remain largely
undefined (Mansuri & Rao, 2004). The rubric for CDD analysis has some weaknesses
in that it only ensures best practices on the side of the INGO and leaves very little
recourse for ensuring equally good behavior on the side of the beneficiary. An INGO
may receive a good CDD score, but still have significant weaknesses in the model (a
large amount of community focus can allow for easy elite capture of a project, for
example). The smaller organizations are providing their own safeguards, but the
weakness in the smaller programs is M&E. They don’t have the funds, personnel, or
training to produce viable data. As a result, they have instituted strategies in the
project planning and implementation phases to mitigate the lack of resources for
M&E. However, the question remains: If organizations are only taking elements of
CDD that apply to them and interpreting it to fit their model, are the principles of
CDD still viable? The fact that organizations are able to customize the CDD approach
is a necessary boon, but it also presents challenges in that there is no way to
maintain and ensure the validity of approaches individual organizations choose to
take. Thus, as shown by this paper, when looking at organization performance in
relation to CDD, it is essential to gauge not only the presence of CDD, but also its
quality. By doing this across multiple organizations and projects, we will begin to
identify patterns and common elements that will aid in operationalizing and
replicating productive CDD practices.

51

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Appendix

Interview Questions

1. What is the official name of your organization?
2. What was the month and year it was founded?
3. What are your organization’s mission statement and goals?
4. What were the motivations behind your organization’s founding?
5. How long have you been involved with the organization?
6. What is your role in the organization?
7. Which geographic areas does your organization reach?
8. How many communities is your organization currently partnered with?
a. How long has your organization been partnered with them?
b. How does your organization choose partners and with which projects
to be involved?
9. How many people does your organization employ?
a. Of those, how many are in-‐country hires?
i. What positions do they hold?
b. How involved are local hires with goal/agenda setting and
strategizing?
10. How much involvement do donors have in decision-‐making and goal/agenda
setting?
11. How much involvement/influence does local government have in the
planning process?
12. How does your organization decide long-‐term goals in relation to your
projects?
a. How do they differ depending upon the project and the partner
community?
13. Does the level of community involvement depend upon the project?
a. If so, what determines the level and type of involvement
(i.e.: training/education programs)?
b. What successes has the organization experienced in regards to
community involvement?
c. What challenges?
i. What strategies has the organization used when approaching
these challenges?
14. Is there an intended length/end date for your organization’s relationship(s)
with partner community(s)?
a. How does it differ depending upon the project and the partner
community?
15. What is your organization’s definition of “sustainable”?
16. Are your organization’s projects intended to eventually be independently
sustainable (in some capacity) by the partner community?
55

a. For your organization, how does “sustainability” differ depending

upon the project and the partner community?
17. Does your organization intend to maintain a relationship between your
organization and your partner community after the culmination of a project?
a. If so, in what capacity?
b. Does your organization have an exit strategy?
i. If so, what is it? / If not, why?
18. How would the organization describe the success of its project(s) in general?

If there is something that is not covered in this interview that you would like to add,
explain, or discuss, please feel free to comment.

Thank you very much for your time.

56

Community Driven Development (CDD) in Action: Three Case Studies of International Nongovernmental Development Organizations' (Ingos') CDD Practices

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Oregon State University

In partial fulfillment of

AN ABSTRACT OF THE ESSAY OF

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1.Introduction and Statement of the Problem

empowerment. Empowering communities means that communities should have

involvement, empowerment, and project sustainability on a level of statistical

oppressor/oppressed relationship that often happens between the developed and

and benefit sustainability (which refers to continuing availability/benefits beyond

community to take ownership and responsibility for a project. Accountability,

Figure 1: Identifying CDD Elements in a Project Cycle

Figure 2: Arnstein’s Ladder of Participation

S = sometimes; A= always

Cross Cultural Solutions

Community Involvement in Implementation and Operation and Management

Table 7: Organization Scores

Discussion and Implications

Arnstein, S. (1969). A ladder of citizen participation. JAIP, 35(4), 216-224.

Hawthorne, S. (2009). Benevolence and blunder: Ngos and development in the

(24 May 2013). Retrieved from www.iap2.org

a. For your organization, how does “sustainability” differ depending

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