By Anna Fish
Through the Leadership Programme ILC is supporting its members to strengthen and renew organisational and leadership capacities in order to build durable, capable and effective civil society organisations. In this breakout session, ILC members and partners learnt about the programme in Africa, Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), and collectively identified good practices, challenges and possible future steps.
Michael Taylor, Director of ILC, opened the session by emphasising the importance of working together in order to make an impact on people-centred land governance. After introducing the pilot leadership programmes in the three regions, Taylor highlighted the programme as an initiative not only made for members, but also led by members—Maliasili in Africa, Pakisama in Asia and Procasur in LAC—, which makes it a unique opportunity to enhance ownership within the ILC membership.
Part I: Interregional exchanges
During the first part of the session, participants rotated from one discussion table to another to interact with their peers and learn from the experience of each region.
Africa Pilot Discussion Table
Cara Scott, Programme Officer of Maliasili, asked a series of ‘hands up’ questions to bring realisation to members about how best they work and learn, to bring understanding of ensuring a team balance within organisations for best results. She explained three layers of leadership: individual, organisational and systems leadership, which is the basis of the 2-week programme in Africa. Cara asked members to brainstorm words on how this is best achieved in their own organisations, and they commonly recognised good listening, communication, clear guidance, respect and transparency as key characteristics of a good leader.
Paine Makko from UCRT Tanzania explained to the group that the programme has helped her to understand her own personality and those of her team’s members, and to recognise her own strengths and capitalise on them. She identified a need to invest more in this kind of programmes for the sustainability of the land rights sector.
Consensus for recognising that gender and management roles should be well balanced was reached. Cara also identified that success will be demonstrated through more collaboration and a change in the wider system.
Latin America Discussion Table
Vice President of Procasur, Ariel Halpern, began the discussion session by highlighting the lack of young leaders, describing them as ‘invisible’ in most organisations. This pilot focuses entirely on young people from local communities by offering a 4 stage programme to develop soft and hard leadership skills. The 4 key stages of this 18 month pilot are: organisational assessments, internships, organisational strengthening plans design and implementation, and a follow up. As part of the diagnoses, they go out into the field and identify two new young leaders, ensuring that one is male and one is female. Self-image and confidence is built by sharing stories with one another. These leaders are sent on an internship programme, involving intergenerational dialogue to enhance their skills from people of a range of ages. Ariel overcame the issue of education barriers by explaining that most of the learning in this pilot is visual and based on experience.
Procasur noted that the leadership programme needs to be sustainable and can remain without much intervention. A focus on the territory is needed, as well as the recognition of the stakeholders diversity.
Asia Discussion Table
Discussion leader Socrates Banzuela, National Coordinator of PAKISAMA, talked about the leadership pilot in Asia, which is aimed to be conducted by November 2018. It involves a 12-day course with a curriculum that runs 3 modules with 10-15 sessions each. It will be aimed at youths under 25, and concentrate firstly on personal leadership with emphasis on the importance of mastering themselves before becoming a good leader. Following this, a focus on organisational leadership will teach the youth skills, such as human resource and financial management. The programme will be complemented by a year-long mentoring.
The programme focuses on youth, pays special attention to women’s active participation, and invites first-line leaders to be mentors of their second-line counterparts. Some members suggested that non-violence and peace should be integrated into the programme. Success can be measured by the trained leaders replicating what they have learnt from the pilot, and training plan should be created to keep their leadership skills moving forward.
Part 2: The importance of working together
Moderated by Fred Nelson, Executive Director of Maliasili, the second part of the session aimed to promote reflection on some of the factors that lead land rights networks to succeed or fail. First to speak was Emmanuel Sulle from the University of the Western Cape. He highlighted that although leadership is key, you need a leader that can also inspire people locally, nationally and internationally. Leadership is not a matter of one person; collective leadership is needed to make real changes. A leader needs to utilise the organisation’s resources effectively to achieve the best results. Resources include people with skills, but also other organisations and networks, and we need them to become stronger. Emmanuel made a key point: do not compete with your members, but articulate with them.
Next to speak was Kathy Reich, Director of BUILD at Ford Foundation, who began by talking about the funding patterns the organisation has seen over the past 50 years, and identified a lack of investment in institutions and building them over time to make them sustainable. What they were funding was not as important as how they were funding their projects, noted Kathy. This lead them to introduce BUILD, a new model which aims to strengthen institutions, reduce inequalities and challenge how to support with funding. BUILD partners work in different contexts over the world, but they all have three common needs:
- A clear and adaptive strategy
- A strong leadership and governance shared and distributed equally throughout the organisation
- Resources and flexibility to deploy them as they see fit best
Kathy made a key point, stating that funding and how it is used and distributed is fundamental for BUILD, and that we all need to work together if we want to change the way the land rights sector is financed.
The final speaker, Aneesh Thillenkery, National Convener of Ekta Parishad, pointed out that communities have an important role in large-scale mobilisations and people have the power to make changes. Everyone can be a leader but not everyone wants to take the role. Aneesh highlighted the importance of bottom-up leadership: “They are making policies for the farmers but they do not farm. They are making policies for the fishermen but they do not fish. This is why we need grassroots organisations with good leadership.”
