As I've mentioned before, I'm in my final year of a BA with Human Rights (I also study history and politics) at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, National University of Ireland, Galway. It's one of the few- if not the only- human rights undergraduate degrees in Europe. One of the best features of the degree is the fact that our entire third year was spent off campus, doing internships. I really cannot stress enough how amazing this is, allowing us to graduate with experience and excellent contacts already in the bag.
Our tiny class (less than twenty) managed to pack in quite a topical and geographical spread during our third year; working with legal firms, advocacy groups, orphanages, large and small NGOs in places like Nicaragua, Vietnam, South Africa, Cameroon, Spain and Ireland. The organisations we worked for covered a variety of topics- women's rights, education rights, the prohibition of torture and the death penalty, freedom of speech to name just a few.
Although still an undergrad and admittedly slightly wary when starting my first internship, I wasn't really that nervous. Our lovely lecturers at the Irish Centre for Human Rights had spent the previous two years telling us how lucky we were to be doing a BA in human rights, what an advantage it put us at. I wasn't cocky by any means but I was fairly sure I would know what I was doing.
I was wrong. I could quote the Universal Declaration for Human Rights but I was unaware of what 'donor reporting' entailed. I could wax lyrical about theoretical debates in human rights such as the divide between civil and political rights and economic, social and cultural rights but update a funding spreadsheet? Nope. Monitoring and evaluation? Never bloody hear of it. AND WHAT THE FUCK IS A LOGFRAME?! (To be fair, that is a bloody pointless invention so I don't feel so bad about that one).
So I wasn't as prepared as I thought I was. It was fine, I learned on the job (I'm a dab hand at the old wikipedia-ing, which helped). I also realised I wasn't alone; other interns with MAs in International Relations or BAs from SOAS, for example, were in the same boat. We had been taught an awful lot of theory but not one practical skill.
I'm not trying to imply that theory is unimportant- far from it. Obviously, you need to know what the issues you're dealing with are, where they come from, the legal frameworks involved etc. But anyone who has worked for any sort of NGO knows about the endless paperwork- fundraising spreadsheets, donor proposals, logframes, monitoring and evaluating reports, strategic documents, etc. It's a major, inescapable feature of working for an NGO. So why aren't we being taught these things?
I also wish to make clear this is not a criticism of my own BA programme, but of development education in general. My degree is pretty awesome to be fair. The eminent Professor William Schabas taught us in first year for Christs sake (although I was they'd warned us what a big deal he was at the time. We may have shown up hungover for class a little less had we known). And I do accept the point that not everyone doing a BA in human rights is necessarily going to work for an NGO- they could be going into human rights law for example. Nonetheless, I think one class a semester devoted to the (admittedly boring) practicalities of development work would be invaluable to students.
Some might say it's unnecessary. After all, it is something you can learn on the job and I'm aware some NGOs do provide in-house training for these sort of things. But the vast majority don't. And think how much more efficient and effective the NGO sector could be if we were all learning and perfecting our proposal writing skills since we were undergrads. Not to get carried away, but these really are vital skills for the third sector so I find it baffling they are not taught to students of development and related topics.
This is based on my own experiences and entirely non-scientific canvassing of opinions of people I know, so I could be completely mistaken. Are there BA or MA programmes out there in this sort of field which focus on the practicalities? Please comment below if you know of any or have any thoughts on this.
Any comments in defence of logframes will be considered massively offensive however and immediately removed. They are actually the bane of my life.
Our tiny class (less than twenty) managed to pack in quite a topical and geographical spread during our third year; working with legal firms, advocacy groups, orphanages, large and small NGOs in places like Nicaragua, Vietnam, South Africa, Cameroon, Spain and Ireland. The organisations we worked for covered a variety of topics- women's rights, education rights, the prohibition of torture and the death penalty, freedom of speech to name just a few.
Although still an undergrad and admittedly slightly wary when starting my first internship, I wasn't really that nervous. Our lovely lecturers at the Irish Centre for Human Rights had spent the previous two years telling us how lucky we were to be doing a BA in human rights, what an advantage it put us at. I wasn't cocky by any means but I was fairly sure I would know what I was doing.
I was wrong. I could quote the Universal Declaration for Human Rights but I was unaware of what 'donor reporting' entailed. I could wax lyrical about theoretical debates in human rights such as the divide between civil and political rights and economic, social and cultural rights but update a funding spreadsheet? Nope. Monitoring and evaluation? Never bloody hear of it. AND WHAT THE FUCK IS A LOGFRAME?! (To be fair, that is a bloody pointless invention so I don't feel so bad about that one).
So I wasn't as prepared as I thought I was. It was fine, I learned on the job (I'm a dab hand at the old wikipedia-ing, which helped). I also realised I wasn't alone; other interns with MAs in International Relations or BAs from SOAS, for example, were in the same boat. We had been taught an awful lot of theory but not one practical skill.
I'm not trying to imply that theory is unimportant- far from it. Obviously, you need to know what the issues you're dealing with are, where they come from, the legal frameworks involved etc. But anyone who has worked for any sort of NGO knows about the endless paperwork- fundraising spreadsheets, donor proposals, logframes, monitoring and evaluating reports, strategic documents, etc. It's a major, inescapable feature of working for an NGO. So why aren't we being taught these things?
I also wish to make clear this is not a criticism of my own BA programme, but of development education in general. My degree is pretty awesome to be fair. The eminent Professor William Schabas taught us in first year for Christs sake (although I was they'd warned us what a big deal he was at the time. We may have shown up hungover for class a little less had we known). And I do accept the point that not everyone doing a BA in human rights is necessarily going to work for an NGO- they could be going into human rights law for example. Nonetheless, I think one class a semester devoted to the (admittedly boring) practicalities of development work would be invaluable to students.
Some might say it's unnecessary. After all, it is something you can learn on the job and I'm aware some NGOs do provide in-house training for these sort of things. But the vast majority don't. And think how much more efficient and effective the NGO sector could be if we were all learning and perfecting our proposal writing skills since we were undergrads. Not to get carried away, but these really are vital skills for the third sector so I find it baffling they are not taught to students of development and related topics.
This is based on my own experiences and entirely non-scientific canvassing of opinions of people I know, so I could be completely mistaken. Are there BA or MA programmes out there in this sort of field which focus on the practicalities? Please comment below if you know of any or have any thoughts on this.
Any comments in defence of logframes will be considered massively offensive however and immediately removed. They are actually the bane of my life.
This is an interesting counterpoint to Rachel Strohm's discussion of development education: http://rachelstrohm.com/2012/01/03/graduate-school-the-development-industry/
ReplyDeleteHeh heh- found your post via AidSource and it totally rang a bell with me. I graduated my MA program in Development from a British university ten years ago now, but I remember walking into my first NGO job six months later with precisely zero clue of what was actually required on a day-to-day basis. It was a steep learning curve- and at times a pretty disappointing one (seriously, who really gives a crap about this paperwork, right?). I did feel pretty underprepared in some ways, and now I know there are a few courses out there that do train people a bit more specifically around program management skills, including the dreaded LogFrame (hurl). Specifically I think there are some in Australia (BAs in Development and such) which have components in NGO Management.
ReplyDeleteThat said, in the long run, I'm actually quite happy for the skills and theory I did learn at Uni, impractical as they may have been in some ways. That high-level theoretical overview has been way more support in my career and development, and my ability to contribute to the sector, than focusing on some of the day-to-day management skills. And let's face it, proposal writing, finicky as it is, isn't exactly open heart surgery. What you need, at the end of the day, is solid critical appreciation skills- something else a good theoretical uni course tends to focus on. As you say, there's chance to learn on the job- like everything else with this line of work, they chuck you out there, and it's sink-and-swim anyway. And the thought of actually spending months learning about this stuff in Uni makes me shudder- it's bad enough doing it in real life.
So looking back, ten creaky years on (how the hell has it been that long, and what am I still doing in this bloody industry?), I wouldn't have swapped a single theoretical lecture for the nuts and bolts of NGO paper-trail management. Hopefully you'll look back with the same feeling a few years from now as well.
And LogFrames are arse. Unequivocably. Although I would argue that Indicator Tracking Tables and Detailed Implementation Plans share a similar platform, which will hopefully someday burn in hell.
Also, consortia are from the devil.
Hey A, thanks for the Link, it's a good read!
ReplyDeleteMoreAltitude- thanks for the comment, I hope you're right! Also, the level of contempt you have for log frames and the like endears you to me very much. We are now friends for life.