February 22, 2019 at the Posner Center
Keynote Address
Maximizing the Value of Collaboration
Joan Parker President & CEO, Counterpart International
Joan challenged us to think (and rethink) the significance of partnerships and collaboration in your work and what we need to do to maximize their value for long-term success.
Showcase Presentation
Collaborative Evaluation Design: A Case Study
Engineers Without Borders USA and Effect X: Chris Bleers and Kurt Wilson
Global development is inherently complex, as it brings together diverse actors in challenging environments working towards ambitious goals. Because of this complexity, many frameworks for leading and evaluating this work fail to capture the collaborative, fluid, and ever-changing nature of this process. Outcome Mapping was developed by Engineers Without Borders and Effect X to provide a useful framework for facilitating and evaluating development work. This presentation highlights their collaborative endeavor including how the partnership arose, the tools and approaches that strengthened their collaboration, and how it is redefining how they lead, evaluate, and communicate their work.
Catalyzer Session 1
Global Women’s Movement
Beyond Our Borders: Jo Lynne Whiting and Tifany Boyles
Beyond Our Borders has been leading a group-advised fund for 20 years, and has raised about $1 million to support non-profits working to ensure women and girls all around the world are empowered to achieve their full potential and participate fully in society. This session explored how their various strategies for collaboration have supported them to deepen their impact and the advancement of women around the globe. *Gender Track
Where’s the Water?
Global Hope Network International, Greenery Association, Z-meta Research LLC:
Joshua Knight, Mike MacCarthy, Eugene Lendzemo and Mike Zappe
Well drillers need to know what’s underground before digging, to “see” difficult rock or sought-after water. Powerful geophysical instruments exist but are expensive. This creates a need for an open-source, inexpensive geophysical meter that can be built locally. We learned about the partners’ innovative approach to building a geophysical meter and learn the strategies, online tools, and relationships underlying their success.
Community-Based Research
Laboratory to Combat Human Trafficking: Mary Landerholm and Kara Napolitano
The Colorado Project is a research-based endeavor with a purpose to empower states and communities with a model to create a common understanding of existing anti-trafficking efforts, followed by a collective approach to more efficiently and effectively focus responses to human trafficking. We learned about the successes, challenges, and implications of conducting community-based participatory action research to make and measure social change, and how they can be applied to other networked or multi-stakeholder endeavors.
Reducing Drought Emergencies
Mortenson Center, University of Colorado Boulder: Evan Thomas, PhD, PE, MPH
In the arid, drought prone regions of Kenya and Ethiopia, people are predominantly farmers and pastoralists reliant on reliable water sources for agricultural, livestock and human uses. Frequently, groundwater water pump systems fail for long periods of time causing severe water stress on people, livestock and agriculture. We learned about and discussed a series of technology, capacity building and policy tools being leveraged to improve water services in these drought prone regions of East Africa.
Catalyzer Session 2
Misunderstanding Empowerment
Regis University Master’s in Development Practice: Emily Van Houweling
This session highlighted findings from an ethnographic study of a rural water project in Mozambique implemented by the Millennium Challenge Corporation and share the ways in which women’s perceptions of change differ from conventional theories of change. We explored what this means for the role of development evaluators and the assumptions, blind- spots, and power dynamics embedded in standard evaluation frameworks. *Gender Track
Markets Working for the Poor
iDE and Whitten & Roy Partnership (WRP): Molly Goodwin-Kucinsky and Karen Genzink
We learned about an unconventional partnership between iDE and WRP and how this collaboration has changed how iDE does business while also shaping WRP’s strategy for building sales skills in the developing world. In addition to supporting improved product sales, iDE has leveraged WRP’s coaching and behavior change frameworks to build sustainable staff growth opportunities and deliver lasting impacts on some of the world’s most persistent social problems.
Networked Coordination
One Earth Future: Lindsay Heger and Conor Seyle
One Earth Future works to catalyze systems of governance that address the root causes of war. They approach the complex underlying causes by creating a networked approach to coordination. This session demonstrated how they coordinate otherwise isolated actors and integrate various stakeholders while ensuring a sustained focus on improved governance.
Global Forecasting
Frederick S. Pardee Center for International Futures and the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver: Sarah Dickerson and Mickey Rafa
The Pardee Center built the International Futures model, a long- term global forecasting software, in order to better understand how human, social, and biophysical systems interact and evolve over time. The presenters shared a case study from Uganda where this systems thinking approach highlighted key issues that were overlooked in current development plans, and have resulted in significant restructuring of USAID’s country development strategy.
Emerging Idea
A Simple and Scalable Upgrade to the AFRIDEV Handpump
Engineers Without Borders USA (Gerard Daziel)
What might it look like to greatly extend the life of the ubiquitous AFRIDEV handpump? These pumps were designed in the 1980s, and have undergone relatively few upgrades since then. This session explored this Emerging Idea, which has been funded by the Posner Center’s 2019 International Collaboration Fund. EWB-USA is partnering with Freshwater Project International to design and test a steel replacement for the main pivot point of the pump. If successful, this simple innovation has the potential for scalability and provides a modern upgrade to an important source of water for rural communities across Africa and beyond.
Chain Reaction Panel: Is Global Development Broken?
Mike Shanley, Konektid (Moderator)
Akhtar Badshah, Catalytic Innovators Group
Yvonne Moore, Moore Philanthropy
Singumbe Muyeba, Josef Korbel School of International Studies
Is global development broken? It’s a provocative question. Through a process where interviewer “becomes” interviewee (and interviewee becomes interviewer) we explored its permutations and its tangents through the lens of panel members’ expertise, experiences and views. It was an intellectually engaging game of telephone on global development!
Catalyzer Session 3
War, Women, and Power
Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver: Marie Berry, Ph.D.
Marie Berry is a leading scholar in global peace and security with an emphasis on the role of grassroots women’s activism. This dynamic session blended research and practice, with a specific focus on how development projects are designed and administered in post- conflict zones and how program development and design can either build upon or greatly fracture women’s grassroots mobilization. In this session, we (re)thought the relationship between women’s activism, post-conflict zones, and the role that NGOs and other development actors can play. *Gender Track
Community Engagement Tool
GlobalGiving and Technology of Participation: Alison Carlman and Sunny Walker
What would it look like if next time you needed to create a policy, you let your community craft it for you? In 2018 GlobalGiving tried just that to develop consensus around the topic of photo ethics. The result was an experiment using Google Docs, Zoom, and a facilitation approach from Technology of Participation to convene a global working group. In this session, we experienced ToP’s Consensus Workshop Method and saw how it can be implemented virtually to generate meaningful participation with stakeholders.
Disrupting Partnerships
emBOLDen Alliances and Partners Asia: Neena S. Jain and Eileen Moncoeur
Radical change entails identifying and disrupting key fundamental practices and principles. As a global development community, we cannot afford to waste any further resources without actively shifting our methodologies and dynamically involving the entire impact value chain from local community member to large funder. Drawing on and sharing both current and past experiences, this session will identified the critical elements to disrupt current and past methodologies and models.
LISA 2020
Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Statistical Analysis (LISA) 2020, University of Colorado Boulder: Eric Vance
Recognizing that effective development solutions are often data-driven and evidence-based, a challenge arises in how development actors can collect high-quality data and/or analyze data to generate evidence to inform action. Participants will learn how the LISA 2020 program based at CU Boulder has addressed this challenge by creating a network of 12 collaboration laboratories in developing countries to accelerate international development solutions. The session will also cover and share practical training materials to teach effective interdisciplinary collaboration.
Oxford Debate on Collaboration in Global Development
Sally Hamilton, Josef Korbel School of International Studies (Chair)
Tom Farer, Josef Korbel School of International Studies
Neena S. Jain, emBOLDen Alliances
Marty Kooistra, Housing Development Consortium Seattle-King County
Cathy Leslie, Engineers Without Borders USA
Tim Prewitt, iDE
Diana Walker, Factor Impact
Collaboration is considered a best practice in global development. This Oxford Debate pitted two teams against each other in a contest of logic, evidence, and naked persuasion, on a seemingly irrefragable proposition. The Chair summarized the proposition and survey the audience to see how many people are for or against the proposition. The Chair then moderated opening arguments, rebuttals, pose questions, and end with closing arguments. And finally, the audience determined the winner!