Enabling Means for Change

Some development initiatives become more self-sustainable by setting up mechanisms or dynamics that enable people to effectively adopt new behaviors the initiative promotes, or actually make use of the opportunity or service on offer.

Fostering social change is not easy. Sometimes, people or institutions refuse to change their behaviors for fear of losing certain privileges, while some other times the difficulty lies in disrupting habits that are really engrained in society. But there are also times when, although the need for change is wanted and accepted, quite simply there are no real means to bring it about. There is little point in asking people to stop using their cars because they pollute, for instance, if these people live in a city where there are no alternative forms of transportation. This is why some initiatives decide to directly enable these changes –effectively and in practice– by setting up the necessary conditions for them to happen. In our example, an initiative that cares for the environment could organize bicycle loans or rentals in the city, offering people actual means to join their efforts and combat pollution. And if it turns out that some people don’t know how to ride a bike, then the initiative could offer free courses, so the opportunity is truly taken advantage of. 

In other words, this strategy is about fostering change by enabling people or organizations to actually take part in that change –to effectively behave in ways that are in line with the project’s goals, or actually take on the opportunity or service the project offers. This helps the self-sustainability of various development initiatives because it allows them to be truly relevant to the communities they work with and make better use of their resources.

Depending on their specific objectives, development initiatives may enable means for change in different ways. Some seek feedback from their beneficiaries in order to identify anything that might prevent them from making the most of the service they offer, and come up with means to actively address these issues. For instance, take an initiative that has set up a school and, upon consulting with teachers, learns that many kids cannot focus during class because they don’t get proper breakfasts at home – perhaps their parents do not have the resources to provide them with a nutritious meal. The initiative may then decide to offer school meals to remove this specific obstacle, ensuring not only that educational services are provided, but that all kids can actually benefit from them. Other initiatives enable the means for certain behaviors to actually take on, such as those that seek to promote teamwork within a community to solve its economic problems and therefore decide to create an alternative currency for local use, which is a concrete way to enable the mutual exchange of goods and services even if people don’t have conventional money.  

Furthermore, when some initiatives –which we could call “creators of demonstration models”– realize that the idea or methodology they came up with to enable means to bring about change works well, they choose to leverage their experience for the benefit of other populations by scaling it up with the support of other organizations or by providing consultancies. This not only helps their self-sustainability by making them relevant to more people, but sometimes allows them to earn an extra income.