Term Project: A development proposal

(Link to resources page)

You’ll be asked to come up with a proposal. This is different than writing a paper. Essentially, you’ll need to identify some problem, explain and describe the problem, explain and justify how you propose to address it, and discuss how you would measure its success. There sections to the paper that you’ll need to include:

1. Identification of the problem (describe the problem, its scope, show why and how it’s an important problem and worthy of attention, and finish with a problem statement)
2. What are you proposing? How will you address the problem you just described? This section should also include goals and objectives (why are you proposing this project, and what do you really want to accomplish?). Goals are usually broad statements, for instance improving women’s nutrition in rural villages; objectives would lay out the ways in which you would do this-awareness/media campaign, vegetable gardening projects, etc. You should justify the choices you’ve made.
3. Methods/approach (What methods will you use to achieve your objectives? For instance, if you proposed a vegetable gardening project, you would have to determine how you would go about accomplishing this task-would you train villagers, send workers out into rural areas, dig wells, provide seeds, etc.? There are many issues to work out). Some things to consider include:

1. 1. Key stakeholders (who are the important people who need to be involved-whether with government  agencies, village chiefs, etc.)
   2. Planning and participation (how will you involve the intended beneficiaries? Who will manage the project?
   3. Scale (nationwide, region-wide, village-wide, working only with women, working with whole villages, certain ethnic groups-there are geographical questions, ethnic/religious/cultural questions, as well as the scope of work)
   4. Time—what is the time frame for the project?
   5. Evaluation—how will you know if the project was a success? What might be important measures?

I would like you to briefly describe at least one alternative method that you decided not to use (or at least one other that could address the problem), and why the method you chose is preferable.

1. Resource implications-this is the nuts and bolts. Do you need vehicles (parts? Fuel? Mechanic? Driver? Garage? Etc.)? Paper? Printers? How much staff? Medical supplies? Buildings? Are these available locally, or will they have to be imported, etc.
2. Impacts/potential barriers-well-designed projects think through how they might impact different groups of people, and what the barriers to their success might be. You’re expected to engage in some informed speculation on these.
3. Design principles-some of the important principles of development we’ll discuss in class include grassroots participation (bottom-up vs top-down), collective action, flexibility, sustainability, leverage, scale, using local resources (increasing self-reliance), transparency, appropriate technology and transformatory potential. You’ll want to discuss which of these, if any, you’ve incorporated into your project, and how. Keeping in mind that incorporation of these design principles increases the likelihood of your project’s sustainability and success.
4. Documentation—you need to cite the sources you use, in the references section at the end of the proposal and in the text, too (Grigsby 2009). Use APA format just to standardize this. I want to know from where you drew your information, and expect you will have done some research—I’ve given you many possible sources of both conceptual and practical information.

Supporting lecture material: You’ll find this page on change, as well as this one, useful for thinking about this project and getting your ideas down on paper.

Stick with some of the design ideas I discuss here, here and here.  Look over the resource page and do some searching on your own–there are hundreds of thousands of resources on the web to help you, refine your search terms.

Some advice

Be on guard for ethnocentric assumptions creeping into your thinking. Remember that people are generally pretty smart and resourceful, and find out what they do before proposing to ‘improve’ or change it. If you’re doing something with the land, see how they currently farm, find out what men do, and what women do. Don’t forget …. this class is women in poor countries. And you need a strong gender component to your project idea.

Now just because you need to understand what people are currently doing, that doesn’t mean you can’t propose something. But avoid tearing down existing practices when you can build on ideas or things people are already doing. People are generally smart and resourceful, why would you go in and dismiss their knowledge bases built up over generations–those knowledge bases are what has allowed them to survive.

In addition, why re-invent the wheel if other organizations are working on similar projects/initiatives? So make sure you check out who seems to be doing what in the area where you’ve chosen to work. Keeping in mind, of course, that sustainability means at some point the projects should ideally support themselves without a great deal of outside assistance–how to make that transition, to meld the external support villagers may need with the local knowledge and resources they can provide?

But that doesn’t mean you can’t propose something–that’s the point. Women pound grain, often with mortar and pestle. How could one address time poverty without changing their food source, or requiring them to learn about small engine repair, maintain fuel supplies, etc. (in other words, are there appropriate technologies that you could introduce, or maybe experiment with)?

In addition, the more things you can address with your project, the better, right? If you teach women how to read, why not think about what kinds of materials should be made available for them to read (sorry–Danielle Steele isn’t translated into many African dialects)? If you propose training women in some special skills areas, why wouldn’t you try to spread that knowledge as far and wide as possible, have women teaching other women? We’ve discussed the advantages of collective action, of women working together–which if you’ve done the reading, you know they traditionally tend to do anyway. There are empowering dimensions to designing projects that allow women to work together (and in some cases, gaining them access to land as a group for instance is much easier–all of the sudden any man who would stand in their way has to deal with all those women, and potentially their husbands who the women are complaining to).

And devise ways to measure whether your idea was a success–be honest about this, the idea isn’t to self-promote, the idea is to learn, and possibly adapt/adjust and improve.

How you’ll be evaluated on your peer evaluations

• Meaningful feedback that makes sense, shows intellectual effort, and that your fellow student can use to improve the paper: 10 pts
• Demonstration of an understanding of concepts from the course in your peer review, as they relate to the draft you’re reviewing: 10 pts

How you’ll be evaluated on your rough draft

• Completeness–you should have all the basic elements there–description of the theory, its application, and the citations: 10 pts
• Intellectual effort: 10 pts

Total 150 points.

• 10 points possible for turning in a topic and justification (due August 3),
• 20 for a draft (due August 25),
• 20 for a peer review (due August 27), and
• 100 points possible for submitting a final draft (due September 1). It should be double-spaced, no less than 9 pages in length, no more than 15. We’ll have multiple discussion threads for students to discuss ideas on this project, and toward the end of the term you will be responsible for reviewing one of your peer’s work. I’ll give you a timeline for having various parts completed (an idea, outline, etc.). The final paper will be due Tuesday of finals week, Sept 1.

Sample papers:

• Agriculture
• FGC
• Climate change
• Trafficking