A Personal Reflection by Gord Cunningham

A PERSONAL REFLECTION by GORD CUNNINGHAM

It is hard to believe that it has been 25 years since I walked through the doors of the Coady Institute for the first time. Over that time, I have seen many changes, both on campus and around the world. One of the privileges I have had is the opportunity to go back and forth to certain countries as many as 20 times over a 15-to-20-year period. Recently, I had the chance to return to Bangladesh after a 32-year hiatus. In every place the changes I have witnessed have been far more positive than negative. The infrastructure in every country has improved, even smallholder farmers and street vendors have cell phones and thus more access to information. Children are on the whole healthier and more young people are getting a higher quality education than ever before.

I have also noticed positive changes in the community development discourse over the years. In the late 1990s, the prevailing community development paradigm was a focus on community needs, problems, and deficits and how to fix them. The solutions were often programs and projects led by organizations external to the community. Over the next two decades there has been a marked shift in the language and approaches of development organizations. Today, it is more common to hear development practitioners speak of starting with community strengths, assets, and agency. There is now even an international Movement for Community-led Development consisting of more than 80 non-governmental organizations large and small.

I am proud of the fact the Coady Institute has played a significant role in helping bring about a change in the community development discourse around the world. The three main vehicles Coady has used have been education programs, actionresearch, and publications. Coady’s courses, workshops, and webinars (on campus, offcampus, and online) have exposed thousands of development practitioners to citizen-led and assetbased approaches to community development. Our work on the ground with partners in several countries over many years has allowed us to jointly test innovative new ways of promoting and supporting citizen-led community development. Publications such as the article From Clients to Citizens: ABCD as a Strategy for Communitydriven Development, published in Development in Practice in 2003, has generated thousands of reads and led to the development of a book by the same name published by Practical Action in 2008. The Compendium of Methods and Tools for ABCD Facilitation (2013) is now available for download on multiple websites. And specific tools developed here at Coady such as “Leaky Bucket” continue to be adapted and used all over the world every day.

Today, the Coady Institute has more than twice the number of staff and annual budget of the Institute I joined in 1997. When I reflect on the work Coady colleagues are engaged in I am struck by both the breadth and depth of that work. From affordable housing, employment innovation, and women’s leadership in Indigenous communities in Canada to social accountability and ward-level planning in South Africa, to rethinking human capital and innovation in livelihoods resilience in India, to social enterprise in Ghana and Malawi, to youth leadership in Haiti and gender equality and the rights of women and girls in Tanzania and Zimbabwe to producer-led value chain development and climate change in Kenya, the range of Coady’s work is breathtaking.

I am proud of the fact the Coady Institute has played a significant role in helping bring about a change in the community development discourse around the world.

GORD CUNNINGHAM

But it is the deep relationships formed with key partners and funders over long periods of time that really sticks with me. Some of our relationships, such as with the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) in India span four decades. Coady has several dozen graduates and five different initiatives currently underway with SEWA. Or the Comart Foundation and the relationships we have formed together with SEWA in India and ICRAF in Kenya and the amazing small producerled innovation that is happening in both places. Others, such as with the Centre for Educational Exchange with Vietnam (now Stronger Together) or Ikhala Trust in South Africa have led to nationwide networks of Coady graduates. In both Vietnam and South Africa those graduate networks have organized their own training programs as well as national and international conferences. What I have learned is the value of relational rather than transactional partnerships. The value of a partnership is not in the size of the projects you hold together. It is in quality of the relationships between key people in each organization and the ability for either organization at various points in the relationship to put a new idea forward for potential collaboration.

If I had to pick one highlight of my time at Coady it would be attending the ABCD Imbizo (or “gathering” in Zulu) in Port Elizabeth, South Africa in 2018. This event attracted close to 250 participants from more than 20 countries including nine Coady colleagues. I am sure it was the largest gathering of Coady colleagues outside of Canada in the Institute’s history. What was magic about it for me was that it was organized by a network of Coady graduates in South Africa many of whom had met each other through their engagement in a Coady course or workshop. Everyone at the event was drawn together by a very simple idea – that communities could and should be driving their own development. As I absorbed the energy and sense of “movement” at that event and watched the participants become the presenters and workshop leaders and then transform back to participants as others presented and led, I could see a connection to another movement and to the origins of the Coady Institute itself. In my mind I could draw a straight line between what was happening at that moment in South Africa and what had happened during the Antigonish Movement in northeast Nova Scotia almost a century ago. In both cases, people came together to bring about change in their communities motivated by what they had and could do, refusing to be disempowered by what they didn’t have and couldn’t do. I have to admit that I cried that day, and it will be a memory that I carry with me for my next 25 years (Inshalla!!!).