In my last post I used the word “advocate” in a key sentence. Well, today Ethan Zuckerman writes a phenomenal entry on how the internet (and yes, blogging) is changing how advocacy works in international development.
He suggests that the new model is “recognize and point” – i.e. instead of advocating on behalf of someone, the new role of the advocate is to enable those affected to speak for themselves, point out what they are saying, provide context, and open up conversations about it.
Ethan points out that NGOs are having difficulty adapting to this new model. Indeed, in the Philippine energy sector, the NGOs seem to be phenomenally silent on the internet. The voices of their constiuencies are absent from the net. I, therefore, have nothing to point to – no blog entries, no podcasts, no videocasts, no photo-sharings, no nothing.
Interestingly, Ethan, who has worked on USAID projects, thinks:
It would be fascinating to see what resulted if every international aid project were required to host blogs for their “beneficiaries” – what do the people who are “benefitting” from a program think about the effectiveness or the goals of that project?
Well, guess what? USAID doesn’t have to sanction this. Except that we need many voices and that includes USAID staff, USAID consultants, utility management, utility employees, power plant employees, large corporate customers, as well as the traditionally disenfranchised voices of small consumers.
Can you see why this is so political? It’s terribly disruptive. It requires those traditionally in control of the conversation to hand over the reins to many insightful people and to “loose control of the conversation” so that we can find the conversation.