Theories of change - beyond automatic responses and tools

As many Dutch development organisations are making conscious efforts to define their role and added value in complex development processes, theories of change have become quite popular. British NGOs and institutes, like the Institute of Development Studies (IDS in Sussex) are seen to be well-advanced in their thinking and practice regarding development issues and social change. So, the fact that PSO invited Rosalind Eyben and Katy Oswald from the Participation, Power and Social Change Team of IDS to facilitate the session on theories of change raised quite some expectations.

Social change is a complex process. Its course and outcomes depend on many different forces, actors and contexts. But how do we actually envisage processes of change through civil society promotion, especially in relation to programme interventions or partner support? In this workshop participants developed a shared understanding about what theories of change are and explored assumptions on how change happens.

Participants

Participants that attended the workshop were managers and staff of Both Ends, Cordaid, HIVOS, Healthnet TPO, ICCO, IKV Pax Christi, SOS-Kinderdorpen, STRO, War Child and PSO. The set-up differed from usual events organised by PSO. For purposes of sustainability, we requested to have two employees from each participating organisation to take part in the workshop, one manager and one staff member. At the end of this workshop, homework was given to those that would also take part in the follow-up session on the 20th of  April.

The workshop proved to be quite appealing to participants. Reactions were, for example “I feel energized to take our organisation one step further” or “I understand now that building a relationship is as important as working on outcomes (especially in messy contents)”. Someone else noted that it was an eye-opener that theories of change are often implicit and should be made explicit.  

How history happens

Rosalind started the session by stating that participants would not walk out at the end of the day with a “tool”. Instead, they would be reflecting on how strategic choices are informed by theories of change (implicit and explicit). The Ice breaker was thus around the question ‘How history happens’. The conclusion of the participants was preponderantly  ‘that society changes through purposive collective action, which would have as an implication for the NGO strategy to support the mobilisation of poor and marginalised people” and “that society changes through new beliefs, ideas and values with as an implication for the NGO strategy to influence and transform ideas and values in society."

Some sessions had the character of a lecture and others were especially dedicated to learning by doing and group work. The contents ranged from concepts of change to introducing 'doing interventions' in a principally complex environment (complexity theories). Given a principally complex environment - so no linear planning model can be applied -  it is essential to define exactly how you think that you can contribute to civil society.

Of course, the concepts of theories of change was not new to most of the audience. Some had a long history of using the term as they explained; others were now engaged in working with the concept, mainly with reference to the upcoming co-financing system.

Unknowns knowns or unknowns unknowns? 

When arriving at the slide titled ‘Where knowledge is partial”, there was an interesting, enjoyable and rather philosophical discussion about ‘’known knowns” , ‘unknown knowns’ and ‘unknown unknowns” (see photo). We even managed to debate about “unknown unknowns” and what is the difference between known unknowns and unknown knowns?

Especially interesting was the session about theories of change. It appeared that without knowing it, we all have implicit ideas about how (social) change comes about. The fact that we had a group of different organisations further increased the diversity of these assumptions about social change.

The personal manner in which Rosalind set the pace during the morning and Kathy took it further in the work sessions lead to a relaxed atmosphere in which experiences could be freely exchanged and mistakes could be made without loosing face. If one thing was clear during the day it was the excellent atmosphere. The facilitation of Rosalind and Katy, as well as the dedication and hard work of participants contributed to this.

There were also some critical notes during the evaluation. Someone felt “disappointment that we did not delve deeper”. Another participant was not happy with ‘so much talking’. In the upcoming session we hope to meet also these demanding expectations.