Learning Curves
The Evolution of Our Annual “Learning” Reports
Last week, I was in Bali, Indonesia with a group of nonprofit and development sector specialists who are keen to shift focus from ‘reforming how we measure impact’ to ‘transforming how we learn’ together. Walking the talk of ‘measuring what matters’ is tough — not just because of compelling pressures from donors, communities, and staff, but also due to the dilemma of whose story is it anyways, and whose voice influences the narrative?
There is widespread dissatisfaction — “We often do not measure what is done on the ground in a way that is context and culture relevant, or important to the communities we work with. We cherry-pick stories that strengthen the donor’s confidence in our ability to work within communities and deliver services,” is what I heard as some pain-points and challenges. This resonated with me, as I have been part of teams where, as a storyteller, I was responsible for cherry-picking the choicest stories that showcased the ‘ideal’ or the ‘model’. I began to dive deeper to understand the source of the frustration amid rich seas of cherry-picked stories of impact and achievements.
Unlearning Storytelling
In my earlier role as the Communications and Learning Facilitator at UAF A&P, my first assignment was to shepherd an alternate approach to monitoring and evaluation that was accountable to the communities of women, trans, and non-binary human rights defenders we worked with in Asia and the Pacific. At the same time, I had to ensure that, as a fund, we were relatable and understood not just by defenders and their communities, but also the donors who worked with them through us. As we began unpacking frustrations, the process of unlearning commenced.
Unlearning development jargon that was only understood by a few; unlearning the ways of representing stories of movements as stories of our impact; unlearning the need to focus on just the outputs and outcomes, but interrogating what steps in the process deeply impacted the results.
We experimented with new approaches of measuring and sharing our impact within our team. And as we progressed, we saw how we often invisibilise the perspectives of those who don’t make it to the finish line, and because of that, invisibilise the work that went into it. Instead, the narrative often showcased or highlighted is what guarantees more resources being invested in our work. The catalysts that produced results, and the activities that did not yield the desired results, were left out of official documentation.
For instance, security and confidentiality is the bedrock of all our operations as a feminist rapid response fund, but when we struggled to identify and establish systems that were nimble, user friendly, and safe, we were often in a dilemma over how to ensure safety and confidentiality. A mountain of work and protocol drafting followed. We realised the effort and the intent would barely be visible if no one told these hidden stories. In a society where only successes are celebrated, we fail to recognise failures as the learning curves that foster innovation and out-of-the-box thinking.
In a society where only successes are celebrated, we fail to recognise failures as the learning curves that foster innovation and out-of-the-box thinking.
As we transformed our approach to monitoring, evaluation, accountability, and learning, we recognised the need to share our stories differently too.
Transcending Boundaries Through Art
We leaned towards art, which offered us the medium to speak beyond the confines and boundaries of English — the adopted language of our fund as a result of being the best understood (or most used?) language across Asia and the Pacific, thanks to our shared history of colonisation and globalisation. Art transported us to contexts and concepts imagined but difficult to articulate or explain within the confines of one language that is not our native tongue.
Art transported us to contexts and concepts imagined but difficult to articulate or explain within the confines of one language that is not our native tongue.
Apart from changing the form we adopted, we recognised that our stories need to change too. To better reflect the people that we are, of our roots within the movements we work for and with, of our shared feminist visions, and how we collectively shape and share new ways of working together and sharing our stories.
Our annual reports became our annual sharing of our organisational learnings. Learnings that we gleaned through individual and collective reflection and sense-making. We experimented internally with whose stories made it to our reports, and how to visibilise the work and contributions of team members who were often invisible but critical catalysts. Our annual reports are not progress reports but progress markers of what we were doing, how we practice and test our feminist values, while innovating, and pushing the boundaries of what could be possible. And when our experiments failed to take off or land in the place we intended, we shared what happened and our reflections on why it did not work, so that those who follow in our paths could be aware of the challenges we faced, and can do better.
Our annual reports are not progress reports but progress markers of what we were doing, how we practice and test our feminist values, while innovating, and pushing the boundaries of what could be possible. And when our experiments failed to take off or land in the place we intended, we shared what happened and our reflections on why it did not work, so that those who follow in our paths could be aware of the challenges we faced, and can do better.
Embracing Transparency and Authenticity
We chose transparency and authenticity as hallmarks of our storytelling, and art became the added dimensions that explained the milieu and the emotions our work is steeped in. We spoke in our voice so that the activists and defenders who read us could interpret and translate our work and learnings into theirs. And each time they responded to our learning reports and told us what they most resonated with, we knew we were on the right path.
We are about to launch our sixth annual learning report and we want you to expect the unexpected. Each year, we lean into emergence, the stories that our team frames, which dictate the form and shape the annual report takes. Emergence takes the shape of not predicting or visualising the final shape or form of our report till we have collected and curated the report. The visualisation becomes another layer of deeper sense-making, and in many cases, shape-shifting, so that the designed reports are not merely aesthetic, but prod the reader to think and respond deeply.
The visualisation becomes another layer of deeper sense-making, and in many cases, shape-shifting, so that the designed reports are not merely aesthetic, but prod the reader to think and respond deeply.
Words that I recently read resonate deeply with why we do what we do, in the ways we do:
“Every time I tell a story, I am putting out a call to community. A story presumes a community of listeners who will recognize some experience that they have lived or can imagine living in the narrative. It is a call and response (what in Haitian storytelling is known as a Crick-Crack) where the teller tosses out a community-gathering, a community-presuming device, in other words a story, in the hope that the group of listeners will respond by becoming “we.”
— Christopher Maier
As you make your way through our reports over the years and read our upcoming 2023 annual learning report, you will notice how our storytelling and language has evolved — how it understands and represents the diverse and multi-layered contexts we work in. How it represents our feminist WE.
Read our past annual learning reports here and watch this space for our Annual Learning Report 2023 — releasing soon.
This blog is written by Deepthy Menon, Strategy and Narratives Facilitator at UAF A&P.
