EWB’s direction in more detail – June 1st 2009

In two previous emails, we identified why EWB thinks that stronger connections between Canada and Africa are important, and why EWB needs to move toward a more distributed organisation.

This documents articulates EWB’s new direction in more detail by proposing four new proposed outcome areas and four foundational areas.

These outcome areas were driven by asking two questions: What is needed for positive change? What assets does EWB have (or could have in the coming 1-2 years)?

The foundational areas were identified by asking: What is critical for EWB to continue to be able to better serve Dorothy in the future?

The goal is that with more concrete outcomes, and more space about how they can be achieved, new and interesting initiatives will emerge from members across Canada.

They have been shared with the presidents and the Overseas volunteers, who have provided feedback and are excited. But they are still in proposal form. We need your help to bring them further! See the next steps slide at the end. And remember:

This is your EWB! Where do you want it go?

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Supporting a broader more positive engagement with Africa

Text of Hilary Clinton’s commencement speech at NYU, May 2009, which reflects very well EWB’s new direction:

“Your generation will be up against those challenges: climate change and hunger, extreme poverty, new diseases ...

But these challenges can no longer be seen just as government-to-government. There is a time and an opportunity, and with the new technologies available, for us to be citizen diplomats, citizen activists, to solve problems one by one, and will then aggregate to the solutions we seek.

We need to build new partnerships from the bottom up. But this requires smart people who have opened themselves up to this increasingly complex and interconnected world.

My message to you today is this: Be the special envoys of your ideals; use the communication tools at your disposal to advance the interests of humanity everywhere; be citizen ambassadors using your personal and professional lives to forge global partnerships, build on a common commitment to solving our planet’s common problems. You can help lay the groundwork for the kind of global cooperation that is essential if we wish, in our time, to end hunger and defeat disease, to combat climate change, and to give every child the chance to live up to his or her God-given potential.”

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EWB’s proposed outcome areas and foundational pillars

Social Change Leaders

EWB’s four outcome areas

At the heart of EWB is fostering Social Change leaders

The four foundations upon which our outcome areas stand

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Social change leaders

Social Change Leaders

And so central to “how” EWB works is ensuring that our programs foster and support this new generation of social

change leaders who will continue to drive positive change for many years. We’ll continue to focus on delivering on impact,

but we’ll do so in ways that invest in the social change leaders the world needs

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The battle against extreme poverty is a marathon, not a sprint.

We know that our short term impact will be through our four outcome areas, however in the long term a new generation of thoughtful, passionate, talented and committed social change

leaders is necessary for a better world.

EWB’s four outcome areasWhat?

Improved capacity and space for African institutions to improve agriculture, water and sanitation and basic infrastructure

Why? It’s needed, and EWB has been working in these areas for five+ years and has a strong track record of success

How?1.Organisational Capacity Support2.Donor and sector influence through communicating implementation realities

What? An engineering profession that is serving our global society

Why? We have a widespread membership passionate and able to bring a missing global justice perspective within our profession

How?1.Corporate global citizenship2.Educating global engineers3.Global engineering mindset

What? The Canadian governments policies

and actions have a big influence on Africa – good and bad – and are sadly underwhelming

Why? EWB is unique with strong and

sophisticated grassroots advocates, financial independence, and a good policy reputation/connections

How?1. Grassroots advocacy2. Field-informed policy

recommendations

What? Person to person connections between Canadians and Africans will improve our global community.

Why? EWB’s network excels at global citizenship engagement and our understanding of technology/ business allows us to help to build connectionsHow?1.Generate caring about Africa2.Create opportunities for Canadians to connect and contribute to Africa. 5

Engaging Canadians to contribute and connect to Africa

We envision supporting a broad movement of people who see Africa in a positive light; are able to take daily actions to support Africa; and have a variety of ways to interact with Africa and through these connections learn more about Africa and the interconnectedness of our global world

EWB will work to create positive connections between Canadians and Africans. This will involve simultaneous:

Generating awareness among the public Working with companies or organisations to offer more opportunities for consumers/

constituents to connect to Africa Sample major initiatives:

1. 2% Fair Trade – have 2% of Canada’s retail sales be of fair trade products• Fully Fair Trade Universities • Fair Trade Offerings – work with corporations to increase their fair trade offerings• General Outreach

2. Global Youth• Reach youth to encourage them to think about how science and technology and global justice can be

linked3. www.globalcitizen.ca (or other similar site)

• Identification of actions that Individuals can take to be better global citizensAnd others that members will identify!

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EWB’s does advocacy work because: There are few groups in Canada with the independence from CIDA to be able to provide constructive feedback; EWB has a sophisticated grassroots membership that is able to advocate on complex issues; EWB is connected through our work in Africa to field realities that policy makers and donors need to know to be

able to improve their services. EWB has a good reputation with important development thinkers and decision makers in Ottawa and beyond;

We have had a number of successes in the recent past, including strong grassroots advocacy on Bill C-293 (The Development Accountability Assistance Act) and untying aid (four years of work; new zero-tied-aid policy adopted in September 2008) and selected policy suggestions at different levels.

We would like to build on this to become the strongest grassroots development advocacy group in Canada, meaning:

We would have deepest network of sophisticated development advocates across Canada with a breadth of influence techniques including MP connections, local media op-eds/letters, petition mobilisation, minister letter writing, and other techniques.

We would be a leading contributor of ideas in Canada on three issues: Africa; Agriculture, and Aid (CIDA’s) effectiveness at the micro level.

• Africa is being forgotten-- need to keep government’s commitments (current aid shift);• Agriculture and economic development should be front and centre of Canada’s support for Africa, and must go

beyond Aid;• Aid/CIDA’s effectiveness at the micro (project) level needs to be increased and that will happen through focusing on

implementation, and likely borrowing practices from the private sector; We would be among the most prominent of CIDA’s watchdogs among NGOs and highlight when CIDA or the

government makes decisions that are against the best interests of the billion people around the world who have the least voice.

Improving Canada’s policies toward Africa

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Supporting capacity in rural Africa

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1. Intervention ChoiceImproved understanding of farmer behaviour change leading to

more implementable and sustainable interventions

2. Organisational CapacityEnhanced capabilities for organisations to implement Rural

livelihoods projects

3. Project DesignProjects that incorporate more flexibility and fewer

implementation constraints

4. Donor feedbackImproved ability for donors to get information about field

realities and to have trust relationships with partners

How would a deeper understanding of and focus on field realities and

implementation improve results?

EWB’s focus is on the practical realities of change at the field level – how water pumps are used, how farmers make decisions, or how projects are implemented by field staff.

Our work focuses on working with partner organisations to help them build capacity in particular areas, such as improved management systems, ability to undertake new projects, improve their staff training, or build an improved monitoring and evaluation system.

Our volunteers and their co-workers on the front lines represent a network of smart, independent people who are placed at multiple levels in the development sector. This allows us to get a unique “bottom up” view of development that focuses on implementation realities.

We are also sharing our knowledge of implementation realities with other organisations and donors to help them think differently about their work.

The diagram at the right indicates the four areas touched by EWB’s programs

Helping the Engineering Profession better serve Society

Our goal is to help bring about an engineering profession that that is better aware of its potential for positive impact on the world and is better equipped to bring about that change

We see 4 major outcomes in this area1. Engineers have the foundational capabilities to effect positive social change2. The profession has an internal desire for improvement and feels a strong connection to the

global society & Dorothy.3. There is an enhanced public perception of the engineering profession as a strong contributor

to global development.4. Engineers have an opportunity for Global Impact as an individual, through their organization

or as a profession. We are well positioned to bring about this change since:

1. We have strong connections with Industry2. We have strong connections with Engineering Faculties3. We have strong connection with engineering professional associations4. We have a large grassroots network of student and professional engineer5. We have a reputation of doing ‘good’ work.6. We have a broad breadth of programs7. We engage people through their life as an Engineer

Ex. High school, University, Professional

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Power of

People

Canadians committed to opportunity for Africans

Four Foundational Pillars

Strong community- Strong university chapters whose strength and functioning are facilitated• strong city chapters bringing together interested members.• online community allowing people to track actions and contributions• online community: joint work and stronger virtual community

Strong Capital• fundraising needs to be core to what we do, • Success with gift of opportunity suggests opportunity for fundraising to be distributed – initiatives have more responsibility for fundraising.• better recognition of those who are committed to fundraising!

Strong culture• We need an articulation of our common values• Emphasis on learning about development issues - and associated programs• Emphasis on leadership - and associated programs

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Strong Controls• we need to maintain our permission to operate• EWB must be a well managed and efficient organization•We need to consistently manage and maintain financial health

What’s new, what isn’t?

We’ve done work in all four areas, however we were under-invested in most. Our professional members have been seeking to improve the engineering

profession’s global contributions; we’ll be growing our programs in that area We’ll be expanding our programs on the “connect” side of the contribute and

connect, as well as creating more space for innovation on the “how” to increase contributions

We’ve been slowly adding capacity to our Canadian Advocacy programs; this formally recognises it as its own outcome area.

There is space for more innovation based on what members closest to the action see. A good rule of thumb is perhaps the 80/20 rule. We need to ensure that there is the space for innovations to test new ways or new areas; however, we know that a lot of impact occurs with the repetition and gradual improvement of what works. We imagine that we’ll be focused roughly 20% on innovation, and 80% on ensuring the delivery and continuous improvement of what we know works.

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Some Implications

We would anticipate a number of changes to an online community or set of tools to help this process. This means a different myewb.ca. A few functions:

Opportunities for members/public to identify actions and track their contributions as a global citizen;

Outcome area websites allowing greater sharing of material; goal setting, tracking, celebrating success, and conversations.

Strong ability for individuals to come together to form teams to work on particular issues

More opportunities for leaders to play a more sophisticated role within programs and in conjunction with program leads at the national office

More space for members to innovate on the “how” within programs. Specific creation of the equivalent to an overseas placement but in Canada A deeper sense of outcome area integration and program integration, rather

than just chapter integration Eg. So that, for example, people involved in youth engagement would have a

deeper connection across the country, while still being connected to their chapter. This would enable better bottom-up target setting across programs

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Next steps

This is a preliminary proposal – but to take it further, we need your help!

Between June 1st and July 12th is visioning time. Over the course of this period, we’ll be: Seeking input from members on whether these outcome areas

reflect our common vision for EWB’s work• This will happen through retreats, through online discussions, through phone

calls, and through emails. Working with those interested members to define outcomes in more

detail at the program level, and to define strategic priorities -2-3 year goals for each outcome area (there are a number of myewb posts asking for volunteers in particular areas.

We hope that you are interested in getting involve in some way! In late June, we’ll launch the on-line tools and propose more formal

communication processes.

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