O0YQ5

Insights on Innovation
12
At Christian Aid we have created our own working definition for innovation
in order to inform our decisions. We have created a flagship innovation fund
called ‘In Their Lifetime’. We have found that individual donors to this fund
come mostly from the private sector and have a higher appetite for risk than
our institutional donors.
For innovation to flourish senior leadership must share learning, model good
practice and admit failure, embracing mistakes as opportunities and investing in
learning from both success and failure. We need to create an enabling environment
with appropriate incentives so that individuals at every level can be honest about
failure. And we need flexible funding mechanisms that promote rather than stifle
iteration, adaptation and innovation.
Development is complex and development processes are rarely linear but we
would encourage piloting programme work where learning processes are truly
embedded to ensure the intervention is appropriate, ahead of any wider roll-out
or scale-up. In reality, there are some types of work where it is much harder to
measure success. Yet advocacy and accountable governance work offer real
scope for transformational change.
" I looked up the
way I was going
and back the way
I come and since
I stepped off and
[found] me a new
path."
Maya Angelou
Here is one example of where innovation has helped Christian Aid to achieve
greater impact. In Kenya, we brokered a relationship between community
organisations, local farmers and the Meteorological Office. The project used SMS
messages to give accurate weather forecasting and market information to the
farmers. This meant they were able to make better choices about when and what
to plant. The result was a 10-20% increase in crop yields for those farmers who
were paid high prices for their crops at the market. This model is now central
to a consortium we are leading with support from the UK government to build
community level resilience to climate change in Ethiopia and Burkina Faso.
We can learn from failure by acknowledging it, being open about it, embracing
it and rethinking how we could work more effectively towards transformational
change. However some types of failure – such as poor financial management – are
unacceptable.
It would be good to see NGOs share their learning from failure. This would involve a
high level of dialogue and honesty. We would also need to have an honest dialogue
with the UK public who donate to us directly or indirectly. We need to bring people
(including supporters) with us on this journey.
I think that the language of success and failure is overly polarised – in reality it’s
important to explore the notion of success or failure from multiple viewpoints,
and many development interventions will have both successful and unsuccessful
elements.
Kate Bingley, Head of Programme Performance & Learning, Christian Aid.