INTRAC reached its 30th anniversary in November 2021. During the first half of 2022, we planned to mark this milestone with a number of activities focused on the growing calls to shift power in the international development sector. This project focuses on the first phase, on shifting the power through organisational development, which ran from January to March, 2022.
A series of blogs contributed by INTRAC staff, friends, and members of our network examined the topic from various perspectives:
- In “Shifting the power while strengthening the resilience of CSOs in Ethiopia” (January 2022), co-authors Sosena Lemma from AGAR Development Partners Consulting and INTRAC Principal Consultant Lucy Morris discuss an opportunity to “walk the talk” on shifting the power from the global North to the global South, as part of a capacity development project with Ethiopian civil society organisations.
- In his blog, INTRAC Principal Consultant Rick James argued that “We can’t shift the power without localising consultancy” (February 2022). The piece looks at past INTRAC efforts to build local consultancy capacity, and how the still-existing bottleneck could be addressed in future.
- The third entry in the series, “The tyranny of tools” (February 2022) was written by Principal Consultant Rod MacLeod. It looks at the appeal of tools in development work, and argues that “can be useful provided they are not allowed to occupy centre stage”.
- Guest author Priya Rajkumar contributed the fourth blog, “Learning from OD and psychology in India” (March 2022). This entry focuses on the author’s background in both organisational development and psychology, and how they intertwine in her work with organisations in India and Nepal.
- Then INTRAC’s interim Chief Executive, Peter Sargent contributed the piece “After 30 years of supporting civil society, INTRAC is changing – and will work to support a systemic change to shift the power”(April 2022). This blog looks at INTRAC’s own process of organisational change, with a view to catalysing wider systemic change in the sector.
This phase of our celebrations culminated in an online event which took place on March 23, 2022. Also titled “shifting the power through organisational development”, the event was attended by around 140 participants from around the world. The full audio recording is available below.
Additionally, an extensive written event summary is available as a downloadable PDF, and there is a playlist of short audio highlights available on our YouTube channel. During the event, four speakers gave brief talks on different aspects of the interaction between organisational development (OD) and shifting the power:
- Rick James (INTRAC) on localising consultancy [Audio]
- Angela Zamaere Smith (All We Can) on Integrating OD in partnerships to shift the power [Audio]
- Nancy Akanbombire on feminist OD [Audio]
- Lucy Morris (INTRAC) on digital OD [Audio]
The celebration of INTRAC’s 30th anniversary is continuing in April, May, and June of 2022 with a new series on shifting the power through monitoring, evaluation and learning. This will involve a new blog series, culminating with a second online event in June 2022. To keep up with all of INTRAC’s developments, be sure to sign up to our mailing list and to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.