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Design, Monitoring, and Evaluation

We design solutions to fit complex problems relating to exclusion and discrimination. With global wealth being captured by a small fraction of the population (the richest 0.01 per cent earn 188 times as much as the bottom 90 per cent and when ten men own as much as 10 countries)1 , there are more people excluded from reaping the benefits of modernisation and development than those who are included.

Those who work on gender and diversity issues often have big mandates and small budgets. They have to change their organisation and its structure and policies, the internal and external systems of operation, the biased mindset s of colleagues, the way data are collected and analysed, and the way budgets are allocated. Where to begin? Includovate is here to help.

Programming and policy making for women and excluded groups is often not well designed and/or does not have the desired impact. Usually, such data collection efforts have no people living with a disability as participants, and, at best, only 30% female participants. Data that are collected often consider gender as an afterthought and tends to sample households and communities that are easy to reach. This leads to poor quality data shaping decision-making and furthering exclusion.

Many evaluations of development projects have fundamental weaknesses when it comes to understanding and capturing changes for excluded groups.2 This situation needs to change, or else inequality will continue to increase.

Institutional Strengthening and Reform

Understanding how institutions contribute to gender equality and social inclusion requires an examination of the institution’s outputs as well as the informal and formal aspects of institutional functioning.3 All organisations have ‘rules of the game’ (norms of behaviour or ways of operating) that govern how people are rewarded and promoted and how business is done. Certain rules are institutionalised through policies while others are informal, such as behaviours, attitudes or expectations. Some of these rules may be designed to favour women. 

An example is using affirmative action in recruitment criteria that gives women bonus points so that more women join the organisation.

 Meanwhile, other rules (particularly the informal and unconscious rules) can work against women, such as when the idea of a good worker is synonymous with one who works long hours. While such rules may appear gender-neutral at first, they can promote gender inequality because of societal rules (e.g. women in patriarchal societies are considered primarily responsible for managing childcare).4 A gender and inclusion audit can help to illuminate some of these unconscious biases and rules of the game that work against equality.

There are ways to build inclusive institutions so that change occurs with the least amount of tension and resistance, which delivers more sustainable change. Includovate knows how to complete institutional gender and inclusion assessments and then help manage the change process, so that organisations are equipped with the attitude, knowledge and skills to embrace more inclusive institutional practices.

Agriculture, Economic Empowerment, and Livelihoods

Includovate improves people’s ability to become more resilient by enhancing livelihoods and building assets. In many low-income countries where Includovate works, farming is done on small plots of land and largely involves manual labour. Many of these smallholders live in poverty, and their ability to make an income from their land or livestock is increasingly challenged by climate change. Our food system is unequal: the over-use and dependency on unsustainable farming methods further impoverishes low-income farmers, while consumers in rich countries enjoy near perfect produce, free from blemishes and imperfections.

Within low-income countries, the agriculture sector is also unequal. Many people living in low-income countries are landless, being dependent on those with land to employ them as day labourers. It is very rare to find agriculture research that disaggregates data by disability, and yet there are many people living with a disability who work in the various stages of agriculture production.

It is estimated that Ethiopian women contribute over 65 per cent to crop production, storage and processing. Because women do not plough the land, however, their role is consigned to invisibility.5 Women smallholders produce 23.4 per cent less per hectare than their male counterparts.6 This inequality, or the ‘gender gap’, costs the nation 1.1 billion USD, or 1.4 per cent of total GDP.7 This case is not unique to Ethiopia. In many agrarian societies, women miss out on agriculture extension and training opportunities due to gender norms, including their higher unpaid domestic workload.

The agriculture sector can do a lot more to further equality. Includovate has a database of female enumerators that speak a variety of languages so that accurate data can be collected from women. Our research uncovers adverse incorporation and practices of exclusion that shut people out of empowerment processes and opportunities to earn a decent livelihood from the agriculture sector. Our inclusive capacity building processes ensure that technical agriculture messages reach the intended audience.This case is not unique to Ethiopia. In many agrarian societies, women miss out on agriculture extension and training opportunities due to gender norms, including their higher unpaid domestic workload.

Social Protection

For Includovate, the persistence of extreme poverty, inequality and vulnerability are symptoms of social injustice and structural inequality. Some of these problems can be rectified through social policy initiatives in the form of social protection. Social protection, also known as ‘redistribution’ or ‘welfare’, protects citizens from deprivation and adversity. It usually offers support to the poor and vulnerable and encompasses social assistance, social security, employment assistance and social safety nets. Social protection can be a tool that contributes to rebalancing the distribution of power and resources that keeps people poor excluded. Depending on how it is designed and the national context, social protection can also contribute to a sense of citizenship.

Inclusion and Exclusion

Social inclusion can be considered an international norm because it is widely used in multiple forums, including official policies, laws, treaties or agreements, and in academic literature.9 Most notably, the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have laid out global goals to reform the world’s development processes to be more inclusive and sustainable by 2030. However, many organizations do not know how to become more inclusive. This has resulted in ‘inclusion’ being used as a development buzzword with little substantive change (e.g. SDG 16 calls for building more ‘inclusive institutions at all levels’). But what exactly does it mean to be socially included or excluded?

Some forms of exclusion are unconscious or accidental and others are an exercise of power. Groups with power use various processes, such as monopolising resources or creating relationships of dependence and adverse incorporation, to prevent others from having the same opportunities.10 Thus, exclusion is functionally related to adverse incorporation and exploitation. Social exclusion is particularly intractable when entwined with forms of economic disadvantage such as adverse incorporation.11 Discrimination constitutes a central dimension of social exclusion.12

Different forms of exclusion require different solutions. The economically disadvantaged demand a redistribution of resources (e.g. social protection), whereas the culturally disadvantaged mobilise around the question of identity and demand recognition through affirmative action and other special measures.13 In other words, class injustice requires redistribution as a remedy whereas status injustice requires recognition.14 Those groups that experience economic and cultural disadvantages need both redistribution and recognition, and the right to retain their identity.15

Understanding subjectivity and choices matter when developing inclusion solutions because exclusion is relational. This means the included are not always powerful and the excluded are not always powerless.16 Western normative assumptions about how social life should be organised often underpin social exclusion research and solutions, to the detriment of local ownership.17 The inclusion of poor people into larger relational wholes or development projects may not produce clear, predictable and equitable outcomes. It is not necessarily the case, therefore, that all inclusion is good and all exclusion is bad.18

Includovate develops a nuanced understanding of inclusion and exclusion to understand how to find common ground and develop sustainable solutions to inequality and discrimination.

Empowerment

Empowerment requires agency, the ability to make choices and act upon them (this is similar to autonomy but more comprehensive); structures to enable changes rather than resist them (this is also known as an enabling environment); and relationships of equality, so that power does not corrupt or exploit, or shut people out of opportunities. There are many ‘expressions of power’: power ‘over’, which is the power to dominate others; power ‘with’, which is group solidarity, mutual support and collaboration; power ‘to’ comes from accomplishing something and knowing that it can be done again; and power ‘within’, which encompasses internal beliefs, attitudes and self-confidence.

While power operates externally to individuals, it also operates within individuals in the context of ‘internalized oppression’.19 The reproduction of oppression can be unconscious. Deep within one’s psyche throughout childhood, an individual embodies oppression until she or he becomes a self-policing adult who in turn also judges and polices others.20 Regardless of whether conscious or unconscious, ‘Oppression leaves an imprint on our minds and our hearts, leading to the disciplining, and even harming, of ourselves and others’.21

Women’s empowerment: There are many societies where there is a need to empower women and encourage them to achieve their full potential and ensure their human rights. Women living in low-income countries need greater income, but they also have to be able to turn that income into solutions that better their and their family’s quality of life and opportunities. This requires examining structures, relationships and agency so that space can open up to enable positive change. Empowerment is also required so that women can take risks and embrace new opportunities for growth.

Since gender relations vary across cultures, and across socio-economic tiers, change can be difficult to facilitate. Includovate understands that there is no one framework or blueprint for the ideal empowerment solution, but there are tried and tested methods that can be attempted in each area and then perfected through iterations and experimentation. All of this can be documented so that the next round of inclusion innovations has a robust, evidence-based foundation on which to grow.

Inclusive Systems Change

Systems initiatives are complex, involving multiple programmes and players that operate at multiple levels (individual, family, community, state). Systems change initiatives tackle difficult deep-rooted problems, such as discrimination based on race, income, culture, ability and language, that lead to gaps in services provided and opportunities given.

A systems change approach adopts a long-term view because systems are interdependent. Consequently, boundaries must be drawn around different systems and then changes observed. When one system changes, others are affected, like cogs in a machine; thus, the next intervention is determined by how the system responds to the first change. Includovate knows how to create connections between different components of a system and how to gain support for scalable system change that delivers broad impacts for system beneficiaries.

Includovate believes that interventions can be researched and designed to reshape social, political, economic and environmental systems that perpetuate injustice. Includovate focuses on complex issues that affect the poor and excluded, and adopts an action-oriented approach to change the mindsets that keep unequal systems in place.

Research, Data Collection, and Analysis

The Includovate team has the wide-ranging methodological experience and know-how to design research that fits the question or hypothesis needing to be answered. They work as a team to make sure they develop robust research designs that use appropriate qualitative and/or quantitative methods. We apply inductive and deductive approaches, combining this with our experience using a range of data analysis software, including Nvivo, Stata etc., to produce meaningful results. Includovate also has experience using information and communication technologies (ICT) as part of the research process, such as video and photography research.

Participatory Facilitation,
Training, and Capacity Building

Our team at Includovate are passionate about passing on knowledge, and many have lectured in universities and have experience training researchers from low-income countries and even small holder farmers. They use engaging and participatory methods when they teach. As trained researchers, they pride themselves on their superior facilitation skills. The Includovate team aims for 100 per cent inclusion and 100 per cent participation from those who attend our training and capacity building workshops/seminars. 

This way everyone learns something and learns from each other. Team leaders approach teaching and training as a reciprocal activity – the facilitator role is also that of the learner.

Liberating structures are a package of techniques useful for leading participants through a self-directed systems change approach. Originally created by Henri Lipmanowicz and Keith McCandless, liberating structures aim to get everyone involved talking and thinking about the issue. They are powerful transformation tools that also build trust and enable different views to emerge. Information on liberating structures can be found:

Gender Transformative Approaches

Includovate has experts in various participatory and transformative methods. These methods, which are detailed below, are powerful change processes that adopt the fundamentals of a systems change approach in a way that ensures it can be used by everyone, even illiterate participants. Participatory research methods help participants to reflect on their world with new eyes; build empathy, agency and confidence; develop action plans for change; and adopt their own pace and direction for change. All methods can be implemented as a stand-alone intervention, integrated into existing projects, or even used in baseline surveys and program evaluations.

Reflect Circles

Building upon Paulo Freire’s concept of conscientisation, reflect circles builds literacy and competence in many important and far-reaching aspects of life, for example, knowledge of government processes, what defines a policy, being financially literate, opening a bank account. 

In a group setting, individuals analyse the causes of inequalities, examining social stratification, social conflict and the status quo. Participants discuss the problems they are facing or the inequalities they observe and then brainstorm solutions. 

A reflect circle is an evolving process that recognises the importance of individual transformation and being aware of how power operates.

Community Conversation

Community conversation is an approach that involves a series of facilitated dialogues in which people from the same community have open discussions about what might be holding them back from achieving their development goals. The topics covered include individual and community values, behaviours and sensitive issues (such as gender inequity) that affect their lives. Community conversation is an inclusive approach that uses transformative tools and participatory processes to build the capacity of all members to understand their problems in new ways. A community conversation should take place once or twice a month over a period of at least nine months. Community conversation is a flexible methodology whose primary purpose is to bring community members together to identify and discuss solutions to their own development problems.

Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD)

Asset-based community development (ABCD) is an approach for the sustainable development of communities based on their strengths, abilities, opportunities, potentials, talents and gifts. The ABCD approach addresses ‘dependency syndrome’ that results from large food aid contributions and official development assistance. It embraces bottom-up, community driven development where communities set their own development priorities.

 In ABCD, when communities identify their existing resources they are more likely to be interested in mobilising their assets for their own development needs. The motto of ABCD is ‘start with what we have, build with what we know’.

Gender Action Learning System (GALS) / Participatory Action Learning System (PALS)

The gender action learning system (GALS) is a community-led empowerment methodology that uses specific participatory processes and diagrammatic tools. It aims to give people more control over their lives as the basis for individual, household, community and organisational development. GALS consists of a set of principles relating to gender justice, participation and leadership. A series of visual diagrammatic tools for visioning, analysis, change planning and tracking is used by individuals, households and stakeholder groups, or in multi-stakeholder settings. GALS has three phases, which can be implemented sequentially or in parallel and adapted to specific purposes and contexts.

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