Etapa Experimental

Partnership has acquired considerable traction within strategic and operational directives governing development NGO practice and has increasingly featured in the discourse of development NGOs (see also section 3.3). Partnership is considered an important concept by development practitioners because it relates to the nature and quality of relationships and ‘development’ is ultimately about relationships (Taylor, 2002). However, there has not been much research into what development NGOs mean by partnership, how they practise it, and the challenges that they face in doing so (Vincent & Byrne, 2006). There has been considerable variety in the way that NGO ‘partnership’

relationships have been constructed, the ways that organisations have implemented partnership activity in practice, and the ways they have met the challenge of managing and monitoring it

effectively. However, principles of partnership practice tend to remain implicit or assumed. Definitive statements describing good partnership practices are uncommon and NGOs are not experienced at converting partnership concepts into strategic interventions (Brehm, 2001).

Judgements about ‘good’ practice notwithstanding, the variety of partnership approaches has been described by Brehm (2000) who reported on the way that ten European NGOs worked with Southern partners. Brehm described three different continuums related to characteristics that were used for recognising different levels of partnership:

 Funding – A funding continuum ranged from funding only (with no input into the application of the funds) through to a dialogue and consultative input only approach with no funding.

 Capacity – A continuum from the Southern partner needing significant support from the North through to Southern partners which were strongly autonomous with significant contributions to make based on their existing experience.

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 Trust – Effective control of the Southern partner at one end ranged through a continuum to unconditional trust at the other end (adapted from Brehm, 2000, p.3) The influence each of these factors exerted on the nature of partnerships formed was considerable and their combination created a complex array of different partnership structures. The spectrum of relationships grouped under descriptions of ‘partnership’ led to a growing criticism of the vagueness of ‘partnership’ as a term and calls were made for greater clarity in the way partnership concepts are articulated so that the diversity of organisational relationships and differentials of power could be addressed (Vincent & Byrne, 2006).

Power within partnerships has been the subject of a heated debate focussed on the ‘failure’ of development partnerships to live up to the ideals of mutuality and solidarity they espoused (Brehm, 2001). There appears to have been a persistent gap between the rhetoric of respect, equality and mutual learning and the reality of partnership practice (Fowler, 2000). Partnership often accentuated significant differences in capacity, experience, engagement and commitment and many NGOs in developed countries struggled to genuinely share decision-making with their partners in developing countries (Vincent & Byrne, 2006). The result has often been a partnership power imbalance that effectively meant the critical decisions related to the positioning of the partnerships on the continuums described above resided with the Northern NGO partner.

As a result, some NGOs in developing countries considered ‘partnership’ to be an idea that was imposed on them by their ‘partners’ in developed countries in a way that pressurised them to adopt others’ agenda with which they were not entirely comfortable. In this way, partnership was

considered to be inextricably tied to the need for aid agencies and funders in the North to establish a sense of legitimacy with regard to their operations in developing countries (Lister 2002, cited in Vincent & Byrne, 2006). The implication of the situation described was that partnership practice appeared in some instances to contradict the essence of key development principles involving engagement with, and challenging of, power dynamics and inequity (Vincent & Byrne, 2006). The issue of partnership as a development concept remains complex and contested.

A logical extension of this discussion is that meaningful, mutual learning from partnership

interactions would inevitably be compromised if the fundamental understanding of, and the basis for, the partnership are questioned. This in turn suggests that the basis for partnership relationships needs to be negotiated and established through open dialogue and honest recognition of power relationships. The partnership contracting process needs then to result in unambiguous agreement on mutual rights and obligations (Fowler, 2000; Taylor, 2002; Vincent & Byrne, 2006).

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BOND which is the membership body for a network of more than 280 NGOs based in the United Kingdom and working in international development and development education has put these principles into a more structured form. BOND suggests that the purposes and principles of 'partnership':

 Need to be explicit and negotiated.

 Include clearly defined expectations, rights and responsibilities.

 Are clear about the range of accountability demands and how they will be met.

Additionally, NGOS embarking on partnership commitments should:

 Commit to a long-term engagement with partners, so that trust can be built and learning nourished.

 Look beyond partnerships to networks and communities of practice

(adapted from BOND, 2004, p.8) The current ‘developed country’ environment of Northern development NGOs affects the freedom with which they can negotiate their positions within partnerships. Development NGOs are

accountable for their activity and have been caught by the processes of neoliberalism and

mangerialism (Tandon, 2000; Roper & Petit, 2002; Vincent & Byrne, 2006). Development NGOs are working in a wider context ‘that reinforces the culture of bureaucratic control, measurement of concepts and change, proving effectiveness to auditors, managers and potential critics’. The result has been that partnership concepts based on two-way negotiation, listening, and downward accountability have been undermined (Wallace and Chapman, 2003, p.10).

The discussion in this section has focussed on North-South NGO partnerships. There is a gap in the literature related to Northern development NGOs forming partnerships with non-development organisations in the North. However, it is reasonable to infer that the fundamental values of equity and respect that underpin development NGOs activity should extend to the wider context of non-Southern partners (Vincent & Byrne, 2006).

As a consequence, the principles of partnership involving development NGOs should apply in a developed country context and the partnerships between Plan and secondary schools should be informed by this discussion. In this latter instance however, there is also the question of whether such partnerships should be initiated at all. In a similar way to the concern described at the end of the last section that NGOs operating in schools could turn education to advocacy, some writers have expressed concerns that the ability of NGOs to define the parameters of their operations is

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compromised by working too closely with governments (or government controlled organisations).

NGOs are by definition non-governmental. Finger (1994) argues that NGOs should work outside of government and corporate interests and also outside the realm of traditional politics (Finger, 1994).