Identifying Opportunities and Obstacles

As a self-sustainability strategy, many development projects devote efforts and create spaces to identify those opportunities and obstacles that either currently impact their self-sustainability or could do so in the future.

When planning their projects, many initiatives come up with different dynamics, spaces or mechanisms that allow them to better identify what resources, ways of working or situations work towards their self-sustainability in the short and in the long term, as well as all the possible threats it may be facing. What these practices often show is that identifying opportunities and obstacles helps make the most of available time, efforts and resources to adapt projects in order to actually eliminate those obstacles that work against self-sustainability goals. 

If a community does not have access to drinking water, for instance, in addition to bringing clean water pipes, it might be worth identifying why wells in the area are being contaminated in the first place, and whether these causes can be addressed. An initiative will be more self-sustainable if it tackles the source of the problem even if this sometimes means a greater initial investment because, in the long run, it will stop spending all its resources on water pipes that depend on a constant output of time, money and effort. This is why, in the long run, a development project’s resources are often better spent when opportunities and obstacles are identified and conditions for self-sustainability are fostered at the very root of the initiative’s approach to the problem at hand.

Initiatives that devote efforts and create spaces to identify obstacles and opportunities to their self-sustainability will sometimes choose to map out and document how all their participants and resources are being put to use –this helps them make the most of what they already have and plan for new sources of support. Others use evaluation mechanisms, design pilot projects or create organizations, dynamics or activities (such as workgroups or associations of people impacted by their projects, diagnostic meetings, surveys, etc.) to identify actors or situations that may either support or undermine their work, the relationships they have with donors, their level of dependence upon sources of funding, the problems that could arise in their programs or the measures that could be taken to avoid them, the areas of development that they have yet to cover to ensure solutions that solve problems more systemically, the channels they have or can create for everyone to participate in decision-making, etc. When these mechanisms include the voices of local communities, participation is more equitable, solutions more comprehensive and the project more relevant to all.