Episode 108: Designing for Change in International Development

 

Applying a learning-centered approach within the context of international development comes with its own unique set of challenges. In this episode we talk to Julia RosenbaumGLP Board Member and self-described midwife of change, and Dina ShafaqoujCertified Dialogue Education Teacher from our Dialogue Education hub in Jordan. They share insights on navigating the tensions between funder goals and learners’ needs, and tips for shifting traditional education practices and power dynamics before the learners even step into the room.  

Follow us on Twitter @GLPconsultants for the latest updates about the show and resources available for businesses and individuals alike. You can also find us on Instagram @GlobalLearningPartners, Facebook, and LinkedIn!

You can find the show on Apple PodcastsSpotifyvirtually anywhere podcasts are found!

This show is produced by Global Learning Partners and Greg Tilton Jr.

Theme music: ‘Pretty Face’ by Una Walkenhorst.

Like what you hear? Consider leaving us a rating on your podcast platform of choice!

 

Read transcripts for the episode below.

Hello and Welcome to Shift the Power: A Learning-Centered Podcast — where we talk about the revolutionary power of a learning-centered approach. Through this podcast we hope to inspire creative thinking and provide practical tools and techniques to deepen learning through dialogue. We’re your hosts, Meg Logue and Peter Noteboom. In this episode, we are joined by two experienced leaders in the international development sector. Both of whom have extensive expertise in designing for behavior change Julia Rosenbaum and Dina Shafaqouj.

MEG

Welcome! To begin, I’ll just ask each of you to briefly introduce yourselves and describe, in your own words, what is your work in the world?

DINA

I’m Dina Shafaqouj, I’ve worked with the civil society for more than 26 years. If I might, my work in this world, I look into myself like civil society strengthening specialists. After all these years, I worked with one of the biggest NGOs in Jordan, which is the foundation for 23 years. And then after that, I worked with different projects as a consultant for a civil society strengthening for capacity-building. And I am one of the first CDEPs in Jordan and one of the first CDETs in Jordan and, and I’m looking forward to spread over this Dialogue education in the Arab world and in the region, not only in Jordan. In Jordan, we have now more than 200 CDEPs who practice and keep practicing the Dialogue Education.

MEG

Thank you. Dina we’re so glad to have you here and for our listeners who don’t know, CDEPs are a Certified Dialogue Education practitioners and CDET’s are a Certified Dialogue Education Teachers, and we are so thankful to have Dina here from our, our Jordan hub. It’s such an incredible Community of Dialogue Education Practitioners that you have created and we are so excited to have you here with us. Julia I’ll kick it to you.

JULIA

Thank you. I’m Julia Rosenbaum. I live in the heart of Washington D.C in a hideaway. Until recently I’d jump on my bike and ride down the road to a large NGO FHI 360, just blocks from my house, or I’d be flying 36 hours to Bangladesh or Eastern Southern Africa. My work is through U.S development assistance as a health behavior change specialist. And I work primarily in Eastern Southern Africa and Southeast Asia, but also do work right now on the street in Washington DC or throughout the U.S my formal training is as a medical anthropologist then in public health and probly as I’ve been out of it for a while.

JULIA

My most important training has come from my interactions really in with colleagues and counterparts in DC and in the remote corners of the globe. I was early on radicalized through the ideas of Paulo Freire, the school of thinking and interaction, which really was coupled with some profound political awakening and activism in Central America. That was my early start, and we all have bifurcated pathways, but that led eventually to Jubilee, which is the Global Learning Partners predecessor organization. I currently sit on the GLP board, which is something I’m quite proud to do. I’m a grandmother and a fairy godmother, and a really I’m committed to be what I say is sort of a midwife of innovation and change.

PETER

We’re, we’re so honored really to have you with us, both of you Dina and Julia to share some of your experience with us, whether that’s in civil society is strengthening like you mentioned Dina or, and the behavior is a behavior change specialist in the public health world. I wonder Julia, could you unpack that just a little bit for us? Could you maybe paint a picture of a group that you’ve worked with recently where a learning-centered approach was, what is important for the work that you were doing?

JULIA

Sure. It’s probably important to set us back a bit of a stage because a lot of my comments really relate to working through my NGO, but on U.S development projects. So there’s a, is primarily the U.S.A. There’s a U.S donor and a counterparts that work through the official, usually through the official government of a country. Sometimes it’s directly through civil society as Dina was mentioning and in NGOs. And we’ll usually work through some kind of stream. So a lot will be already set in place. It will be a nutrition activity with a certain goal to reach a certain number of people in often with certain outcomes. So within that space, we work for a sustainable behavior change, and that means not only behavior change as it relates to the direct health behaviors, but we also try to strengthen cadres of different kinds of facilitators and actors, health, extension workers, folks at the, at the local level.

JULIA

So again, many, many experiences over the years and probably a more recent one that we can unpack a bit more was I work in Southern Africa and Zambia in Uganda, and we tried to work on school, water and sanitation in school wash, but that plays out in many ways. And the focus might be something like menstrual health and we’ll work to really create using I’ll be using many of those principles of Dialogue Education to try and directly address an issue that has, if you will, some really concrete outcomes along the line with that broader objective of course, improved lives and people really living to their, their full potential and, and the country really moving forward just off in a complex technical and also political environment.

JULIA

So all that comes into play and it’s as true in, in rural Zambia as in working in Washington, D C as well, while I may use a lot of international references, it’s really not tremendously different working in the U.S.

PETER

So interesting. I really want to hear from Dina too, but before we go back to Dina to hear a story on the ground there, and I want to just ask you to say a little bit of more about what I see may be intention in your work. What I mean is you’re working on behalf of a large U.S donor agency, which has some goals that it wants to advance. And at the same time you’re working on the ground in local communities and promoting a learning-centered approach, which would suggest that the learners are the ones who are setting their own goals and deciding what to do. Do you experience that tension, or how did you experience that tension?

PETER

What’s your experience with that?

JULIA

Yeah, the intention is the right word. Absolutely. It’s not an open book, as I was saying in, and often all have very prescribed goals of what has to be achieved and it’s a five-year project. So that may mean that someone in Washington, DC wrote something seven years ago, and that’s sort of the path that was laid. There’s always some, some wiggle room, luckily, where we can have a certain flexibility in, in working through the lenders. I’ve found for one being very transparent with my learners in my, my colleagues and my counterparts about what is set. And what’s not really helps in that discovery process. So if we’re, you know, we were working on a sanitation activity, it’s really not the sky’s the limit, but within that, we might address menstrual health or women’s safety at night, or people needing water because the girls are fetching water instead of going to school.

JULIA

So usually we can still, within certain parameters, have the discovery process, and then some projects are better than others. Also, it is a project and environment I work in and some, as I mentioned are really proscribed and others let you do the Learning and then writes different kinds of project papers or, or your more concrete goals after you’ve gone through the discovery. And those are the, those were the lucky ones left to say the obvious. Those were the ones I much prefer working in, but it is a tension and it’s always the tension. And I just find for one that the transparency with my learners is the most important first step.

PETER

That’s for sure resonates for me, that importance of being open and clear and transparent and accountable to the learners makes it can make all the difference. What about you Dina? Does that sound familiar to you? Do you experience those kinds of tensions? What, what, what’s your day to day working in context look like on the ground and the community.

DINA

I was hearing what Julia was saying, and I’m facing the same tension, but in a different level, because I work in the level of the implementer and not from the donor level where we set the criteria, the plan, we were contracted more like me. I was contracted to do some learning programs, some training programs, and I faced the same tension of, we called it the, again, the tension is the donor or the program management and the beneficiaries or the target group and learners themselves. So this is very difficult to find what is everybody has his own objectives, his needs.

DINA

And when we look into things, most of the time that the needs of the learners are generally assessed, not in depth assessments. So that became a challenge to bring all these objectives or needs together. In one pot, we always asked the question of, okay, who this specific with who or the learners, then again, after going back and forth on defining who exactly and then go, okay, why everybody has his own holes?

DINA

What bring us all together? His what for, what is the answer? Is it Change? What does the impact, how are we can see that evidence of learning what impact we can do. So for me, I always look into the personal change how these learners, well, you really have impact on their lives, how it will be learners centered process. I’m not looking into the product. If these donors or program management always looked into the product. Why for me, I’m looking for the process, which it is, this is not a priority for them, but it is for us.

MEG

Thank you both Julia. And Dina for sharing some of the challenges that you’ve experienced with kind of the competing interests of the donors, the project managers and the learners. It’s very interesting to hear how you’ve responded to that tension each of you, and in your own way, of course, I wonder if you could share some of the other challenges or difficult environments that you’ve faced in your work, and maybe how a learning centered approach has helped you address those challenges.

DINA

I work with NGO’s in Jordan, in the region, Gulph Yemen, Egypt, and lately in Turkey. That’s everybody is looking into the traditional teaching and traditional training techniques or ways in developing the material or into, into the Learning itself. So they need something quick direct. And this is, this is something that, is it a challenge when you are looking into learners-centered approach. And when you believe in the thing that you do and you are looking for in a real impact and real change.

DINA

So at that is really one of the challenges. It is easier when we look with one client, if we say that we have the time to practice it once and twice in order to believe in the dialogue education, and to believe that the learner has an input, and he is the major part of the learning process. So this is one of the things that challenge that I’m facing these days.

JULIA

I can really endorse that Dina and some of taking a slightly different facet of that, that just in general, I’ll say post-colonial Education is a tremendous obstacle and challenge where learners or a very set and teachers are very set in how things happen, what we traditionally call some to the banking Education, but, you know, good learners sit and take notes with a smart of snippets Teacher is giving to them, and then they set it back. And as we know, that’s counter to the full array of principles that we all embrace, but yet we were, we, we also embrace respect and respect for the context in which we’re working, but I do call it a post Colonial Education.

JULIA

I think there’s different names for it, but where there are still is a very traditional set way of teaching and learning.

DINA

Hmm. Yeah. And setting even the accountability, which is a major thing we learned with the Dialogue Education who’s accountable. It’s not only the trainer or the material developer, everybody is accountable, which makes it kind of have Learning is different.

JULIA

Yeah, absolutely. And just cause I know we, we want to bring in as many sort of stories and anecdotes as far as we can, but along that one, I also have certain patterns as a, as a trainer or our habits as a trainer, beyond the, the principals. But as far as preparation things about having to order before we start our training and having all the supplies and equipment there and things like that that are, are very good practice, but just don’t always happen in our environments. And I, early on in Ethiopia, while we were doing some work up in Hora and my Ethiopian co-trainer just kept on safe and we trust the farmers, trust the farmers.

JULIA

And this was in a specific, we we’re trying to build out hand washing stations at schools and we needed equipment and we needed supplies. But as much as I’ve internalized, that solutions are within and that people are resourceful. You can self-manage. I still was sort of imposing my very organized training mode of, you know, here’s my list of supplies and what we need. And I still, it, this is probably 15 years ago, but that’s become one of my personal mantras, which is like trust the farmer. Who is that also when you make the task, when you make the task clear and make it a medium and make it relevant, people rise people, rally and rise. And it’s a beautiful, and it’s creative and it’s great surprises, but it’s not a surprise anymore.

JULIA

People will rally.

PETER

It’s so interesting. You know, it’s so clear that you both just naturally are learning-centered practitioners usually naturally draw on these principles, but I don’t think I want to underestimate a challenge that you’ve raised about how to bring this kind of Learning revolutionary Learning to a traditional system or to a highly structured bureaucratic system or to a colonial system. Can you tell us a secret or two, because there are so many people who, who struggle in those situations and they just don’t know where to start.

PETER

How do you even begin a conversation to Shift the Power or Shift the Conversation to trusting the farmers or listening to what the alert learners have to say and letting them make some decisions about what the outcomes are? What do you, what’s your secret? How do you, how do you change that conversation?

DINA

I can jump in if you’d like, for me, I think is looking into the trainer himself is, is it’s the passion. My secret is the passion to what I do. I love what I do. So everything will be easier later on if I do believe on what I do. And I really would like to the learners eyes sparkling, why? Well, after, after the training or during doing the, the, the tasks and the training, and even trust the farmer’s and prepare things before I, or I make learning fun and enjoyable, not even very close to the, the learners atmosphere, we have some traditional dance.

DINA

Sometimes that makes it something different. And I prepare the room earlier with, which is part of the respect for the learners. I show it from, from the design to the preparation, to the training, to the last evaluation of the training. So I prepared a nice, neat visuals. I said, the room is in a very special way. So even the learners where they can, they fit, this is OK, this is different. You can build even the respect and trust even from setting the room itself.

DINA

And I work hard on the tasks to make it, to make sure that I’m utilizing all the other learning principles. I do utilize all the resources, the learners have. This is something I remember. And I can jump in when Julia also a put her input.

JULIA

Yeah. Just, I think to add a lot of it is because we have so internalized the principle’s. I will in those situations though, we need to be very mindful and use. I mean, you can physically use my body and use my actions also to rake some of the patterns or to set certain tone so that I won’t be from one of the time, this is our district head walks in the room, my attention. Doesn’t just go to him. I’ll sit down with my health extension worker and I’ll touch her. And if that’s appropriate, like, and I’ll have, you know, what seems like in an intimate and respectful exchange for all to see, I’ll often put out vulnerabilities, you know, I’ll do something that does involve, I’ll be training.

JULIA

We all do experiential training with a local dance and I’ll make myself look sort of stupid. And I am looking stupid, but fun and enjoy it, but to put out my own vulnerabilities and not in any way, write the white far in a doctor privilege, that’s too often sort of handed to you, which starts setting certain things. And, and I’ll, so I’ll get I’ll, I’ll put out my vulnerabilities. I’ll also explain often to my, if it’s my counterpart, I’ll explain to my counterpart, this is going to be different, and it’s going to be a little hard for you too. And what’s so important is that we discover this together. So I’ll still, if you will sort of play into their importance, but their importance is to try it this way because we’re, we’re committed to certain outcomes.

JULIA

So I think most important of all is, is just to try and use my actions. And of course my design to try and, and encourage the principle’s rather than to endorse inequalities. But it really is just the bottom line.

DINA

And do not assume us, this is the, this is again, going back to the trash, the traditional way we know everything. I know for me, I do not assume any more. I keep asking and going into details too. The, you know, to know out my learner before to know the environment, to know the institution, and again, balance between the process and the product. Sometimes we go into the process, wants to do have a chance to practice more of the principles, but again, do not forget the product and keep that focus on the learning and learning outcomes with the process of a way of learning education and in their nurse centered approach.

MEG

Thank you. Both of those such a helpful tips, I’m sure. For all of our folks who have encountered similar challenges, you knew the importance of, of modeling this approach, especially for those who might not be familiar with it, doing things like, like Dina you mentioned even just the way that you set up the room can make such a difference in communicating and conveying to people that we are going to do something different here today. So thank you both for, for sharing those examples that I’ve heard a lot of the use of some of the principle’s that we have in Dialogue Education in a learning-centered approach. I’ve heard you name, respect and relevance. I wonder.

MEG

Do you feel like those are sort of the most important principles in your context of working in international development or are there some other principles that feel particularly relevant to you?

JULIA

I feel like all eyes are at play and often at once. And I think you also did here for me, I’m an issue of safety and inclusion. I would actually probably put those in, in the forefront and inclusion can mean so many things, but it often is gender inclusion. There is also a route position and education, and often in my situations it will be also around ethnicity. And so again, giving a voice, and this is all kinds of things we do to, to make sure that there’s inclusion and then safety and safety, as far as what you can say around people, safety, literally around making a change. I think there’s some really interesting issues around saving, even asking sort of open questions. That’s, that’s not a safe thing for many participants when you ask people sort of their opinions about dreams and futures and planning and things like that.

JULIA

And then there’s some things that we can do. And I go in prepared for this. I was reading some older GLP material and there is one blog that even so we have about questions, like what do you do to make the question safe? And it seems like, so, you know, what dreams do your, the, your, as people have for their futures, that that’s not safe in a place where you’re actually not supposed to speak out. You’re not supposed to change things or supposed to do, but if you say something like, tell me about the dreams of your village. So still keeping things open. And I, I, I was very sort of struck by the, some of the nuance, but profound nuance that we can do with our, our words to provide safety.

JULIA

So we can go through all of sorta all of them. I would say a few, inclusion of course, engagement. Should we talk about it too? For me, they all have prominence and priority and are at sort of at play. Although one may come in to the forefront at a certain time, they’re all at play.

DINA

Yes, for me, respect and safety came and may become in the first thing. ’cause, this is something that not, everybody’s looking into this as a main principle. So I take care of respecting everybody, the stakeholders, the, the learner’s from the beginning and sharing the, the design with them, the eight steps, everything, and the safety, of course, that Julia mentioned from the front point of view. And maybe I would, Like again, to, to mention the accountability I’m maybe in the last four years of working with, on developing trainers.

DINA

So these principles, I found it very important for any, any trainer to understand and believe. And also the practice with the learner’s-centered approach.

PETER

You know, we’ve come so far in this conversation. You both have extensive international experience. There’s so much there to reflect on. I wonder if I could take us just a little further down this journey. I think I heard you use the phrase a couple of times Dina learning outcomes. And I think I’ve heard you Julia is say, you know, that the donor has some goals or some impact or some change in mind. What I wonder about that whole question about Designing for behavior change. I wonder if, if there is a particular experience that you have working with a particular group of people where the light bulb went on?

DINA

Well, maybe I can, I can have one example, cause this is an experience that I feel it was a little bit strange, or at least going into a different area. Not only NGOs. I was, I was Designing in a training program for a health promotion and health care supervisors and the ministry of health in Jordan, but it is the program was funded of course, by U.S.A program. And there was a middle program management, but that was something strange that they asked me that they prepare a manual for all of these healthcare promotion supervisors, two, all of them use it in their short sessions and these training sessions or awareness sessions they are providing in the healthcare centers, in their communities in 28 health centers around Jordan.

DINA

It was like an old manual. I felt all of them, Oh my God, it is all, it has all contents. And the session plans. It is like if we did it before 10 years ago, the old traditional session and techniques. So I said, okay, just give me extra four days. And I would do it differently in order to prepare them like okay. Basic training of trainers in order to introduce them to the techniques before using this manual. And it was hard, but I did it and I I’m still in contact with some of these learners.

DINA

And they sent me some of their session plans and some photos, and there, I see some promotion items on apps on their Facebook. They changed a lot in doing their sessions. It is totally that to be learner-centered their way of doing their session was shifted 360 degrees.

PETER

Dina, what was the key to that change?

DINA

First, well, it is the principles that I’ve mentioned earlier that really affected me maybe when, when I started the Dialogue Education with you, Peter, about maybe 15 years ago, it was the first session. And I said, what they are bringing new to us in the first day. And then I understand that is, it is deeper. What happened to me and how I changed. And now I’m leaving this change in the training community. And Jordan, that is, it is learner-centered. If you know what the learners need.

DINA

And with the healthcare thing is the attitude that we need to change. You talk, you talk about diabetes and the test, the children’s level went to test out how to test it. This is easy. You can read them anywhere and you can read from the internet. You can see it on TV, but what is special again, it is the affective learning how to, this is the heart. Learning. This is, we focus a lot. If this Learning reach our heart, where are we different? It is a rather than to let me know how to do this sugar level of the machine, how it works.

DINA

It is just, you need to encourage me to use it and how it is important for me to use it. Then it’s easy to know how to use it. So this is, this was a key, a key point for, for them to chef. They practice the sessions on themselves and they find that they, everybody find his own key. And another part it is, it is very important if we need to really succeed. And in this change is to have to make sure that it is institutionalized. You cannot work with individuals.

DINA

If you do not work on it is a full package to institutionalize these changes within the institution, make them believe in it, accept that to try this and see the results of it. This is something I, I shared with you. And if you have any question or something I’m ready,

PETER

That’s a really great, you know, a diabetes it’s a life or death kind of thing.

DINA

Yeah. This is an example. Also breastfeeding, some other things, which is, it was just information that anybody can provide. But now they are looking into themselves like, okay, I am, I’m spreading Learning, but not, I’m not a teacher. I’m not a microphone carrier who, you can just say the words without, without looking into the eyes of people, without the talking to their heart’s, to their needs, and without saying an impact on their attitudes, toward their health issues.

PETER

Wow. What a great image of a microphone carrier without looking in their eyes. Wow. What about you Julia as you got to one of those aha moments that you’d like to share with us?

JULIA

I, I think of the time years ago now, but in, in central America, when we were trying to train small NGOs to do more effective HIV prevention, and we brought out a method that really was applied behavioral science, and it was graspable. And we had, you know, a week long experiential training and people were asked to go through a four step questioning process in, in order to, to help the streak, who they were working with, speed kids, one group, and, you know, in order to help the kids, well, what’s the behavior. Cause we had a behavior change focus. And even though we say social and behavior change now in the field is it’s really often individual behaviors that we’re looking to change. So in order to help street kids, and we had our method and it was like sorta help, help the child too, use a condom every time they engaged in sex for survival.

JULIA

And then we would go through behavioral science of what are the determinants of that behavior. And then finally, what activities, so you don’t rush to your tactics of street. Kids knew this, we would break it down into a, a thoughtful process of four questions. Well, the groups I was working with was like, they were just fundamentally opposed to doing this. They’re like, I don’t want the kid on the street. I don’t like, I don’t wanna name the behavior of using condoms. You know, they shouldn’t be having the sex to survive. So they have a place to sleep at night. And I think, again, some of my big ahas are when you have real paradigms, I want to say a paradigm clashes.

JULIA

And then the aha is when you actually can make some of the bridges to have those very different operating systems work at one time. And those are for me, I think some of the most exhilarating moments, but the most profound challenges to,

PETER

Wow!

MEG

I’m just thinking how powerful it is to hear straight from the learner’s. You can really feel that through the training that they’ve done with you, you’ve kind of shifted the paradigm. And of course, Dina, you mentioned at the beginning that, that you are a part of this community of now over 200 Certified Dialogue Education practitioners. And I, I wonder if you could share a little bit about how that came about for you in and what role you played in, in really establishing that, that community.

DINA

Again, Julia maybe we have something in common that it was really a good start from FHI 360 in Jordan. They were leaving a program and there was a lot of trainers in Jordan who really do not have a real standard for the training process in Jordan. So this was a need. And if we worked on this and they searched for a program that is a special, and one of the graduates from the Education, he suggested going to the GLP and bring the Diolouge Education. And we started it. And this first group of daily Education practitioners, they really believe in it and felt that it is different from any other programs that we have.

DINA

And it is a full package, which make a different, that is a, it’s not the only training of trainers after this project and that we adopted into main NGO’s in Jordan, it was one is my organization and another organization. And we decided that we need to continue with this, of course, Peter and Jeanette helped us a lot in building our own capacity to spread it into this. To NGOs, we develop a training for building the training capacity of civil society and Jordan and one main parts of this was built into the capacity of the trainers through having the certificate to be a practitioner and through developing training material that is unified within this organization.

DINA

We have some WhatsApp groups and Facebook groups that we keep following up between each other, in order to keep this knowledge spreading and to make sure that really we are practicing at the, the Dialogue Education process and everybody in the call that the GLP are you GLP trainer, do you know GLP, it is rather than they are a good education. So everybody know GLP in Jordan, I hope that this one day it will be spread over all over the Arab countries.

MEG

Thank you, for sharing that, the kind of origin story that’s so exciting. I know for all of us at Global Learning Partners to have such a lively hub started in Jordan is now extending beyond that. It’s fantastic. And I thank you for the part that you played in making that happen and continue to play. You share the passion, like you said, for this Dialogue Education and learning-centered approach, and it really shows in everything that you do. Thank you as always, we like to close out with kind of a, in a way, a question for our listeners to invite you to think about how you might apply some of the many tips and practical suggestions that Julia and Dina shared with us today.

MEG

So you’re a way for today. What principles will you use when you design and facilitate for change? How might you apply some of the practical tips and techniques that Julia and Dina shared with us Well, Julia and Dina, I want to thank you so much for joining us today on this, on this episode of Shift the Power, it has been such a fantastic time, you know, hearing your, your personal experiences, hearing about the, how you’re applying a learning-centered approach within your context of international development. So thank you again for joining us and for sharing all of your stories.

JULIA

Thank you really a pleasure to be here.

DINA

Thank you for giving us this opportunity.

OUTRO

[OUTRO MUSIC] Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Shift the Power: A Learning-Centered Podcast. This podcast is produced by Global Learning Partners and Greg Tilton, with music by Una Walkenhorst. To find out more about Global Learning Partners, whether it be our course offerings, consulting services, free resources or blogs, go to www.globallearningpartners.com, we invite you to sign up for our mailing list, subscribe to our podcast and find us on social media to continue the dialog. If you enjoy the show, please consider leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts or your preferred podcast player.

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE