Good Practices

Poverty reduction programmes have to take account not only of the specific needs, priorities and conditions of the poor, but also of the rapidly changing conditions in the larger society and economy. Poverty reduction programmes need to be adjusted constantly to new conditions and new opportunities and this challenge forces all those involved in poverty reduction programmes to experiment.

Across the Asia-Pacific region, both governmental and civil-society organizations are developing and experimenting with innovative approaches to poverty reduction. Some of these experiments are highly successful and some are failures.

The identification, analysis, documentation, testing and dissemination of good practices in poverty reduction are the core activities of the Poverty Reduction Section. Through its regional networks and the regional meetings it organizes, the section is constantly alerted to these innovative approaches and their results. The section also commissions papers that analyze innovative practices, for review in regional meetings; this is where a practice is identified as an innovative and interesting practice.

For further information on the Poverty Reduction Section’s methodology on good practices:

Defining a “good practice”
Promoting good and innovative practices
Documenting practices
Sharing experiences

Defining a “good practice”

A possible definition of a “good practice” is “an approach that has shown, through research and evaluation, to be effective and sustainable and to produce outstanding results, and that is applicable in and adapted to a different situation”. When countries request UNESCAP for advice or possible replication it is important to note three key concepts of a good practice: (a) proven outstanding results, (b) applicable in a different situation and (c) adaptable to that different situation.

UNESCAP recognizes that replication is rarely “cloning” of a practice, but almost always “adapted replication”, because circumstances differ from place to place. A practice effective in one place needs to be adapted to be effective elsewhere, and sometimes, only a few core principles of a practice are transferable.

Promoting good and innovative practices

The purpose of a good practices programme in poverty reduction is twofold:

• A good practice that has been successful in one setting may give people who do similar work new ideas about poverty reduction. Replication implies applying a practice in a different setting, but as circumstances differ from one setting to another, it is usually necessary to adapt the practice to local circumstances to make it effective. Replication is therefore almost always “adapted replication”.
• Since many successful poverty reduction practices tend to be small-scale, their impact is usually limited. There is a need to “upscale” a successful practice to reach a larger number of poor.

Sometimes only a few core principles are transferable. Some people argue that replication of a good practice is not possible, only replication of “best principles”. Many good practices address similar problems and use similar techniques, and a database of good practices makes it possible to identify common principles in the practices and develop a series of model approaches to address specific problems. For instance, poverty reduction projects will not succeed unless the poor have a sense of ownership of the activity.

Who decides what practices are good and are worth promoting? A practice usually needs to be adapted to local circumstances and the effectiveness of an adapted replication is always uncertain. In principle, UNESCAP looks at all effective and innovative practices in poverty reduction, but it does not decide which practice is worthy of adapted replication. Eventually, the replicator decides what a good practice is, after having adapted and replicated the practice successfully.

Some conclusions can be drawn from the collection and dissemination of good and innovative practices over the years:

• Lessons can be learned from both good and bad practices;
• Most practices have both strong and weak elements;
• No practice can be replicated in its entirety;
• All practices need to be adapted to local circumstances;
• The best practices are practices that are instructive and useful for others;
• General lessons can be learned from written documentation of a practice; and
• Detailed lessons require interaction between “initiator” and “replicator.”

Practices that are already being applied everywhere require no documentation. Practitioners are interested in innovative practices that do the work in a different way and that are instructive and useful for potential replication. A practice that is effective but only possible because of unique circumstances in place or time does not have much relevance for potential replicators. Because the positive (and negative) impacts become visible only after some time, often after several years, it is not possible to determine the quality of a practice early in its existence. It is, however, important to identify possibly interesting practices and document their progress (including problems and failures) over time so that after a few years there is good documentation of the process.

Important lessons can also be learned from failed practices, but it would be difficult to mobilize resources for the documentation of “bad” practices and it may be difficult to document the details of the process that led to its failure, as few would be happy to disclose their role in the failure. However, useful lessons can be derived from failed practices through the analysis of evaluation reports and commonalities of unsuccessful practices can be revealed without clearly identifying them.

Documenting practices

Identification & documentation

UNESCAP is in an advantageous position to identify good and innovative practices in poverty reduction because of its regional focus and its extensive regional networks. It organizes workshops and seminars around emerging issues that bring together practitioners from different countries to discuss innovative approaches. Examples are the expert group meetings organized by UNESCAP on the use of information and communication technology for rural development and poverty reduction. UNESCAP often invites participants to such meetings with the request to bring new practices that they or their colleagues have undertaken so that they can be documented.

UNESCAP alone cannot be aware of all practices that are being developed in the region. It needs partners to identify good and innovative practices. Ideally, it should have partner institutes in each country that could form a community of practitioners. Such a community would identify good and innovative practices and serve as a partner in other steps of the process, such as review and dissemination. Once an interesting practice is identified, UNESCAP or its local partner would conduct a rapid appraisal for a first assessment of the practice to determine its innovativeness, short-term effectiveness and efficiency, organizational set-up and limitations. Such a short description is also useful for awareness-raising among potential replicators. Based on this rapid appraisal and the interest shown by potential replicators, more thorough documentation can be prepared.

Testing

For replication, it is essential to know the necessary conditions for the success of a practice and this often requires the testing of a practice under different circumstances. Such testing does not mean that people are subjected to approaches that could harm them. The purpose of the “experiment” is to determine what policy environment and external inputs are necessary to make a practice successful. In such an experiment, all or almost all projects succeed, because inputs can be increased to make the practice succeed if there is a risk of failure. The increased inputs (e.g., more money) will not be replicable under normal circumstances and this is an indication that the practice is not replicable.

An example of such testing is the Human Dignity Initiative which is currently implementing projects in 25 communities in five countries. Some communities are poor neighbourhoods; others are non-geographical communities of disabled people or people living with HIV/AIDS. The purpose is to determine (a) what communities can do to develop social safety nets for the weaker members of the community and (b) what policy environment and external inputs (e.g., money, training, advice) are required. The Human Dignity Initiative will eventually show governments and civil society what inputs they need to provide and what policy environment is needed for successful (adapted) replication of the practice under particular circumstances. Documentation of the trials and errors, successes and failures is a key component of the project.

Similarly, a project entitled Replication of Best Practices for Rural Poverty Reduction aims at replicating the Republic of Korea’s Saemaul Undong approach for rural development in Cambodia, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic and Nepal. Conditions in the latter countries are quite different from those of the Republic of Korea in the 1970s. The Saemaul Undong approach may, therefore, not be replicable in those countries in its entirety. The project aims to determine what principles are applicable, what adjustments need to be made and what policy and regulatory environment is necessary to replicate the approach on a large scale. In this project, documentation is also an important component.

Sharing experiences

The third stage in the process of managing the knowledge of innovative practices is dissemination. Dissemination must take place to the right people, at the right time, in an appropriate language, through workable media and in easily accessible formats with substantive, interesting and relevant information.

With the advances in information technology, organizations that collect and disseminate good practices have started to make databases of innovative practices available on CDs and web sites. The CD or web site often also provides contact details of the initiators of the practice so that any interested person can contact them for more information. The purpose of the database is to draw the attention of the potential replicators to a particular practice they want to know more about. UNESCAP is in the process of creating such a database at present.

Another method used by UNESCAP to disseminate experiences is regional workshops that bring together initiators and potential replicators of innovative practices.

For the collection and dissemination of innovative practices, UNESCAP established CityNet (Regional Network of Local Authorities for the Management of Human Settlements) and LOGOTRI (Network of Local Government Training and Research Institutes in Asia and the Pacific). These networks regularly assess the priority concerns of their members and use this information to select the topics of regional workshops where replicators and initiators can meet to discuss experiences.

Dissemination phases

The Poverty Reduction Section distinguishes four phases in the process of disseminating a practice:

Awareness-raising

During the awareness-raising phase, potential replicators access databases of practices to gain an overview of proven practices in poverty reduction. At this point, the documentation in the database needs to give only a summary idea of the practice. With the information, a potential replicator can decide which of the practices look promising for further study and possible adaptation and application. Sometimes, the information suffices to give a reader new ideas on how to develop a new practice.

Information transfer

During the information transfer phase, the replicator seeks detailed information. Now, the documentation needs to be detailed enough to allow the reader to obtain a thorough understanding of the various aspects of the practice and its relevance to the problem to be solved. The practices are to be presented in a standard format and the replicator should be able to search the database practice by practice, but also by model and technique.

Interactive information exchange

No documentation can anticipate all questions that a potential replicator might raise. If he or she decides to try to adapt and apply the practice, it will be necessary to establish direct communication between initiator and replicator, possibly with the active involvement of external resource persons. The potential replicator may need to “see, feel, touch and smell” the practice in order to understand it. This is what makes site visits and face-to-face meetings such powerful means of good practice transfer. During this phase, the potential replicator will ask the critical questions and identify possible problems in implementation.

The more complex the practice, the more interactive and face-to-face the transfer mechanisms need to be. People adopt a practice if they can identify for themselves what will work best in their own circumstances and can review the replication rather than import it wholesale. People need to trust their source of information and the identification of a practice as “good”. They need to see with their own eyes that the practice works.

Capacity-building

Once a practice has been adapted for replication in a new setting, it may be necessary to build the capacity of the replicators. This capacity-building needs to occur at two levels. At the practical level, staff of the government or NGO that introduces the practice need training. If the new practice is radically different from previous practices, it will also be necessary to adjust the policy environment, particularly rules and regulations that may currently obstruct the introduction of the new practice.