An intercultural approach is increasingly recognised as a key element in development, especially for a new and more effective partnership with Partner Countries. But how do you get from theory to making a practical difference to EU cooperation?
Staff at the EU Delegation to Laos participated in a pilot course organised by DEVCO’s Unit B1 (Human Rights, Gender, Democratic Governance) and Unit 06 (Quality & Results) thanks to the Methodological and Knowledge Sharing (MKS) Support Programme. They share their experiences and the impact it’s had on their work.
Background
The learning workshop on an intercultural methodological approach responds to a fundamental issue in development cooperation: “We need to better understand people in their social and cultural context in which we operate,” said Mariarosa Di Nubila, MKS Programme Manager in DEVCO’s Quality and Results Unit. Shortcomings in understanding the culture of belonging (in the sense of cultural roots as a member of a society, family or professional organisation) can prevent projects achieving their goals, as Capacity4dev heard from EU Delegation staff in a previous Voices & Views.
“The intercultural approach is a methodological support - precisely to help colleagues to reframe and reshape the relations we have with Partner Countries, to understand how to work differently, to improve the quality and the results we can achieve,” said Di Nubila. “This is why Virginia Manzitti in Unit B1, who is in charge of intercultural issues, and Unit 06 decided to develop learning activities in this area.”
Following a well-received pilot training on the intercultural approach at DEVCO’s Brussels headquarters last year, the EU Delegation in Laos was the first Delegation to take part in a practical four-day learning experience in the field. This pilot event offered participants concrete suggestions for approaching their work "interculturally" both within the Delegation as well as outside with partners and stakeholders.
Effective international relations management
According to Di Nubila, the intercultural approach must extend into even the smallest interactions, which are the building blocks of professional relationships. “It’s in the way you say hello to everyone, or listen to someone; it’s even in the way you write an email or a note when you invite the local authority, partner or stakeholder to a meeting,” said Di Nubila. “If we are not interculturally competent enough to interact with them, they probably won’t take part in the meeting, or they will postpone the meeting, or they’ll attend without any results.”
“We have learnt how in some countries, oral communication or informal relations are much more effective than some written note for the first contact,” said Di Nubila. “Therefore, an intercultural approach helps develop a specific awareness and sensitivity to precisely catch the way of thinking and working of our interlocutors.”
As Inpone Senekhamty, Programme Officer at the EU Delegation, said after the training, “It made me understand the way to manage the relationships with colleagues, with people from different organisations – and how to interact if the discussion [went off course], and how to go back to my initial place.”
For Bryan Fornari, Head of Cooperation, the learning workshop led him to adapt his style. “I’ve changed my way of working; I talk more with the team, and try to get more inputs from all of them (EC and Local Staff together),” said Fornari. “We’re so pushed to do, do, do, that it’s sometimes hard to reflect on how to be more strategic for more and better results.”
“It did influence my way of trying to be more tactical, for example on how to approach the government on a given meeting - so even just in preparing for that meeting, taking time to have a discussion with colleagues to see how to position ourselves, what are the key points, how we are perceived - and are we aware of how we are perceived, and how should we engage in that dialogue aiming at managing our agreement, programmes and projects," said Fornari.
Sensitive interventions
Another aspect of the learning experience encouraged participants to look at issues from a variety of perspectives and to map the views of different stakeholders before designing a response.
“The intercultural approach perhaps sounds quite abstract, but it has a methodological application,” said Fornari. “You can apply it to the design of a programme, to identification and formulation. And it has potential for application to political economy analysis, and policy dialogue, and negotiations as well as for the whole project/programme life cycle management any time we have an exchange for making any decisions at each phase.”
To develop this more sensitive way of working, participants were introduced to a matrix tool. “Some are grids, with codes of ethics, different interlocutors, different stakeholders, to try to understand different perspectives in a process, and ensure we are aware of how particular stakeholders will be affected by our projects,” said Ignacio Oliver Cruz, Programme Manager at the Delegation. “So we do more analysis before taking action, and see what could be the potential implications for these stakeholders. We are starting to use these tools to reflect more together as a group, to broaden our perspective, and ensure we are working more effectively.”
For example, nutrition is one of the key sectors the EU Delegation works on, supporting the Lao government to eradicate undernutrition. It’s a nation-wide issue, with 44% of Lao children under five stunted, according to 2012 data - a proportion which reaches 61% among some ethnic minority groups in poor upland areas.
An important factor is the low rate of exclusive breastfeeding, with many mothers introducing sticky rice into babies’ diets in the first months of life. It can result in immune deficiencies as well as gastro-intestinal disorders, which lead to undernutrition.
“It looks relatively simple when you look at it from a pure log frame type of approach,” said Fornari. But by bringing in a cultural-social perspective, and understanding the place that sticky rice has held through 500 years of cultural heritage, “you have a much more realistic positioning of what type of response you can actually provide as an EU programme to change that.”
In the following video, Bryan Fornari, Koen Everaert and Ignacio Oliver Cruz explain how the learning exercise has affected their work in the Delegation:
Working dynamic
The workshop focused on development effectiveness with relevance for the whole team, but there was an important by-product, according to participants: a more cohesive office dynamic.
EU Delegations are made up of local or ‘national’ staff, and EU or ‘expat’ staff, so operating across linguistic and cultural divides is part of daily office life. The learning event gave staff an opportunity to unpick and address assumptions about how best to collaborate within the team and even externally in an intercultural way.
“I found it broke some of the barriers there can be between people,” said Fornari, “whether from the nationality perspective, or the administrative perspective of where they stand in the hierarchy.”
As Thatsany Sengphachanh, Operation Secretary at the Delegation, explained: “Lao people think the expats are smart, they are high level, we have to listen to them. But on the other hand it is not like that because we have understood that they also want local staff to share ideas. They want us speak out, but we are not used to it, and it was not clear to us earlier.”
“Now I’m [no longer] confused how to work with them,” said Sengphachanh. “We are the same, equal, whatever our position. I feel that way now, and we had to explain to the European Staff that sharing ideas is quite new and innovative for Lao people.”
As another member of local staff explained, the training helped her to appreciate and better understand her own tasks and those of colleagues. Watch Chindavanh Vonsaly, Thatsany Sengphachanh and Inpone Senekhamty discuss the main changes brought about by the training here:
“So that’s very interesting as a Head of Cooperation,” said Fornari. “When you have a team that’s more motivated, that works better together, it’s better and easier to manage for achieving more results of quality.”
Next steps
“This experience in Laos allowed us to realise how important it is to relaunch an intercultural approach based on dialogue both within our offices and with stakeholders and partners, to improve and enhance effectiveness, to get more, better and different results,” said Di Nubila. “It gave us input and feedback on how to develop further activities for other Delegations, which probably have some of the same requirements in terms of understanding how they can work better, and how they even streamline the effort they have been making for quality and results.”
According to Fornari, “The potential for the training is in the level of commitment and engagement of the staff. If there’s scepticism or not much belief in the possibilities of this kind of work, it’s hard for it to work. There needs to be buy-in from the Head of Delegation, the management, and the team.”
Watch the video to hear Ignacio Oliver Cruz, Bryan Fornari, Inpone Senekhamty and Mariarosa Di Nubila on their recommendations for future trainings in Laos and other Delegations:
“It’s a very good method to equip you with techniques you can apply to development cooperation in order to become more effective,” said Ignacio Oliver Cruz. “To think outside the box, to be more creative in our work, to be less automated, and overall to empower ourselves in the work we are doing, for achieving more and better results.”
“I see the intercultural approach as a methodological support related to project and programme cycle management,” said Di Nubila. “It’s so transversal and important; it touches all contexts, units, topics, all cross cutting issues, geo [geographic] units. I’m really realistic and I’ve seen how useful it can be to bring an important intercultural shift, even inside a corporate culture, to figure out and programme how we spend our money, and how we would like to design new, efficient programmes and projects.”
We would like to keep involving colleagues who attended both the pilot experiences in HQ and DEL in order to share feedback and different ways of applying the intercultural approach in daily work. Moreover, we would like to understand how we could better tailor-make the next learning activity and support the discussion in a practical direction towards using the intercultural approach as a trigger of change for quality and results. |
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