All IACD members will have received the April 2020 Newsletter with a special focus on our Country and Youth Correspondents. You might know your Country Correspondent — but did you know about the creation of the role and its history?
History of IACD’s Country and Youth Correspondents
IACD met up with former President Charlie McConnell and former VP Randy Adams to talk about how the role of Country Correspondent was started and what purpose the role continues to play today.
IACD: What was the impetus behind the creation of this role? Was there a particular need this role was created to address?
Randy: The idea came for a number of reasons and from a number of sources and experiences. First, I noted that most of the Board members and countries from which they came were Commonwealth countries. Most of our publications dealt with the activities in these countries, which left a great gap from various parts of the world.
The IACD had for quite a while wanted to try to develop a data base of national CD associations as well as of graduate D education and training programs. This was a much more difficult exercise than first anticipated because many countries did not use Western terms, like community development. Needless to say, language barriers were also an issue. We did begin the research and discovered a number of issues that we felt the IACD needed to address to assure a truly international network was included in the membership. A report on that endeavour was presented to the Board.
At the same time, as a sociologist with a specialization in both social movements as well as evaluation research, I was drawn to the evaluation community’s professional “infrastructure model!” Over the past two decades, there have been many national evaluation societies formed, which in turn created regional societies, all tied together with an international oversight body.
I think the turning point for me was during the first Practitioner Dialogue in India. We were meeting with a fishing cooperative that was struggling with environmental degradation of their fishing grounds. They were being counselled by a very creative NGO that Dst/Pune introduced us to. When we asked what the IACD could do for such groups as theirs, their President’s response was, “We know what we need to do. We don’t need your help here. However, we need organizations like yours to publicize our plight and fight globally!” (Probably not a direct quote, but close enough in my memory.)
Charlie: The rationale behind creating the role was one of greater accountability to the field. There was history here as IACD became pretty atrophied in the 1980s and early 90s with a self-electing Board (Michelle’s Iron Law). This led to the 1997 putsch and transfer of the association’s secretariat from Belgium to Scotland and to its relaunch conference 21 years ago this April.
We posted a call amongst members, inviting requests to become a CC (one or two per country, but more for larger countries, e.g. US. They would feed in news, help promote the association locally and be an antenna for the association. From the outset we were keen to see a close working link between Board members responsible for a global region and CCs appointed from within their region. A good example is Africa where meetings have taken place between Board members for the region and CCs there. Mohammed Bello Shitu was very proactive here. A model for others to follow.
IACD: Was the creation of the role a result of a formal strategy for IACD?
Charlie: CC’s were one element of our strategy to have a closer understanding and links with what was happening in CD around the world. The other was to forge partnerships with national CD networks. I had initially pushed this when I was running IACD in the late 90s early 2000s, when we signed the very first MoU, with CDS in the US. From 2014, we more actively forged partnerships e.g. with EUCDN and national networks in Scotland, Ireland, New Zealand, Nigeria, etc.
In my view it was essential for our field’s international body to have such partnerships. Indeed, we explored whether we might amend the constitution to allocate Board places to established national CD networks and not simply to have elected individuals as Board members. We looked at what other international associations did in this regard such as the IFSW (International Federation of Social Workers).
Randy: It struck me that the IACD needed to expand its vision to be more active in further developing its global outreach and inclusion – and sharing their stories, challenges, and successes. First, we needed to find individuals in all countries who were either community leaders, practitioners or academics interested and engaged in community development locally. Second, invite them to write about their national stories of community development activities – successes and challenges. Third, assist and support, where possible, the founding of a national community development society, e.g. in Nigeria with Mohammed Bello Shitu. Fourth, invite them to affiliate with the IACD network – whether already formed or in need of assistance! Hence, the Country Correspondents concept evolved as the first step of inclusion and systems building.
IACD: How was the role of Youth Correspondents created?
Charlie: The idea for Youth Correspondents came out of a requirement by the UN for accredited INGOs to include some sort of youth voice, unless we could demonstrate we had no younger members. We asked Board member Tony Kimbowa to lead on this, however we unintentionally raised expectations that YCs might attend consultative meetings at the UN in New York or Geneva, when clearly we had no funds to realise that. However, it did lead us to push membership amongst students studying to enter a career in CD, following the Jesuit maxim of catching them when young. We did a few membership drives and I’m delighted to see now that so many IACD members are indeed CD students.
Randy: In coming up with the role of Youth Correspondent, Charlie was extending the original idea to future practitioners and academics. We tried to find local UN youth representatives in NYC and Geneva, with little success.
IACD: Who was the first Country Correspondent?
Charlie: That would be Hung Suet Lin for China. She also was one of the most recent recipients of IACD’s Global Ambassador Awards at the 2019 World Community Development Conference in Dundee.
IACD: Any final thoughts on the role?
Randy: Charlie and I used to joke that why are community organizers so difficult to organize! In some respects, many practitioners are parochial. They tend to think too locally or not have the network to know and learn from others how they have grappled with similar issues. My own career has been built on what I learned from some 40 countries I have consulted with – not so much as offering my opinion but sharing promising, not best, practices that I learned from other countries that my local client would still have to reshape to fit their own socio-economic environment, leadership, and resources. I dislike the term best practice because it sounds like there is only one way to do something. While the principles may be transferable, the local context, leadership, and resources will be different.
Charlie: The sharing of what Randy calls promising practices from around the world and the sharing of news about what is going on in CD in different countries has been one of the successes of having Country Correspondents. It’s wonderful to see that we have around thirty I believe from all continents. They together with the closer partnerships IACD has been building with national CD associations, helps our international body to better understand what is going on in the field and thus be better attuned to providing the supports practitioners need, whether that be conferences, publications, practice exchanges etc.
More Reading
Join us today to get access to the full April 2020 Newsletter!
