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I work with the Community Development Resource Network (CDRN), which is a Ugandan NGO. CDRN was started in 1994 and is now ten years old. It was set up in response to the apparent waste of development resources when participatory approaches first came to Uganda. At the time, participatory approaches were the role of technocrats and expatriates who did not understand the local context and who tended to take people through rather half-baked participatory processes which were not all that helpful. Ugandans thought, 'we have all these skills, we have all this experience, why don't we come together and fill this gap? We understand the local context and we can help community development workers in this country, both from the government and from the NGO sector, to do development work in a bottom-up and culturally appropriate way which reflects the local context.' We met with considerable success in training developing workers. However, we realised that if we did not intervene in the organisations they were working for, we could be wasting our time, so we started working with government and development organisations to help them to try to transform their own culture, structures, thinking and practice so that they could become more participatory and better able to deliver participatory processes.

We underwent an evaluation in 2001 and people told us that that they had seen CDRN moving forward and would like to see us taking on the role of a pace-setter for civil society in Uganda. They did not want to see us doing participation work when we had trained others to be able to do that. They wanted us to be the lead agency in civil society and to set the direction and promote the efforts of other civil society organisations to help to create a vibrant civil society sector in Uganda, one which is value-driven with a common world view, of course allowing for diversity, but with a common basis from which we can engage the powers that be. From this basis, CDRN still does capacity building work and training in participatory approaches, but we also do policy research and research to understand and critique current development trends and assumptions. We use that research to influence the way that civil society thinks and to act as a stimulant. We do not have a constituency per se, nor a mandate to be a platform for civil society. There are other organisations in Uganda such as the NGO Forum and network organisations, so we aim to act as a stimulant for thinking through the issues which emerge in terms of knowledge and development thinking.

We have done a series of research projects, one of which is called 'biting the hand the feeds you', which looks at the role which has been assigned to NGOs, at the relationship between receiving funds from government on the one hand, and playing a role in holding the government to account on the other, as well as at the reality of this discourse on the ground.

We have covered a lot of issues in our research. We have conducted research looking at the assumption that working with groups equates to working with poor people and have come up with a number of issues and reflective points to guide development actors. We have carried out research which looks at leadership, particularly within civil society organisations, and why leadership change is often difficult. We realise that in developing countries, many civil society organisations have poor leadership and lack political consciousness. Whilst they are clear about working for development, they are less clear about the precise direction. Coming from a capacity-building perspective, our major challenge in the arena of research is to translate research more seriously into influencing work. This is the stage we are at at the moment and we are trying to design a programme that will help to enable us to do that. We have decided that we will not conduct more research this year or even during the first half of next year. We need to look at what we have in-house - we have so many publications. We need to sit down and think seriously about what we want to achieve with the evidence available to us. This, I think, is our next major challenge.

What is your experience of using research-based evidence to influence development policy?

If I framed my own question at this point, it would be about how to influence the development process as a whole and to look at that process more broadly. We are aspiring to use research-based evidence to influence development policy more directly. In the past, we have tended to focus on using research around key development assumptions, and have tended to assume that working with groups is equal to working with poor people in the development process. What I would like to do is use research evidence not just to influence development policy in the conventional sense but to influence policy in all senses, looking at all stakeholders, government and civil society organisations which are working with and targeting groups, to try to influence their thinking and encourage them to be more critical about who they work with and how they work with them. Without this, they may not actually be contributing to the kind of development scenario that they had hoped for.

What do you think are the most important tricks of the trade?

First of all, there has to be a need for the research - it has to be about a topical issue and address things which we are all struggling with. It is important to know that there is a need for the research in the immediate term - even though this need may not be on the part of those who are responsible for policy, it should be arising from our target group and the efforts of civil society. When we create a need and some degree of discomfort, it becomes possible to advocate for policy change. I see that as being important.

Another important factor is the quality of the research. Research need not be quantitative, but the qualitative aspects must seek to express the voices of the victims and help other people to appreciate the problem.

In my experience, it is also good to invest the necessary time. We are not going to succeed without investing time, knowing who the gate-keepers are and making friends. There are two kind of policy change: one is quite neutral and factual and is relatively easy to change, but there is another policy process which is more political and which means that there are people who are going to lose out if any change is made. This latter kind of policy change requires a different kind of approach. It requires pressure and dealing with people's fears.

Do you have any case studies or examples of using research-based evidence to influence policy?

There is one case study which we have been thinking about for a long time but where we have not quite succeeded. We have carried out research to better understand community-based organisations (CBOs), which are our constituency. We realise that the policy framework which would guide the operations of civil society organisations in Uganda is completely absent. We have been thinking about how to raise the profile and legality of community-based organisations so that they get resources from donors. Currently the lack of policy framework means that there are questions for donors about how to ensure the accountability of CBOs.

What we have been struggling with for years, and doing research into, is the question of how to define the issues and develop an advocacy strategy around them, as well as beginning to see what our entry points should be. We have not been too successful as yet, in part because we have been struggling with our own survival as an organisation. We know that if there is policy change as far as CBOs' existence is concerned, there will be a fundamental impact on the landscape of poverty reduction. On the other hand, as an organisation, we need to survive and to a certain extent we need to go where the money is. There are certain activities which are easy to do, such as capacity-building of NGOs and existing projects. This means that, although we started this research in 2001, up to this point we are still gathering our energy to see how we can move forward.

We have participated in other forms of policy change processes like the Poverty Eradication Action Programme which emanates from the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) process in Uganda. We have been working with other civil society organisations in Uganda participating in the review process and working groups. We are had done research to understand how the programme was moving and how pro-poor the Poverty Eradication Action Programme (PEAP) process actually was, and we felt that the PEAP itself was focusing on a liberal development agenda, rather than focusing on issues of social justice, equity and so on, so we have tried to include these issues in the process. We have seen the issues which we raised reflected in the documents and we see this as a success story for civil society organisations in Uganda. Recently, someone from the Ugandan Ministry of Finance tried to evaluate our participation in the PEAP process (which I take as a policy change process) and found that there had been a fundamental input from civil society organisations, not just CDRM, but together across the board.

What I am not clear about is how this change in the way that PEAP has been framed is going to be reflected in practice. This is our greatest challenge - where we have struggled to contribute to the use of evidence to facilitate policy change, does it actually make a difference to what happens in practice? To me, as a civil society activist who works with communities, this is what I am most concerned to see happen. I think that the way we work with policy issues should go beyond influencing policy change processes to ensure that that change is reflected in terms of practice.

What three things could CSOs do to increase their policy impact?

Our greatest challenge, based on the lessons of our own experience, is to create the space to develop long-term strategies and involve the right people. Without this, we will only talk about evidence-based policy change. You can have good intentions, but if you do not actually sit down to design this intervention and think about how to carry through a protracted process with adequate resources, you may not be able to succeed. The few donors that we have tried to approach with our policy change work have asked what impact it will have on the poor, how the community in northern Uganda, for example, will benefit from this. We realise that some donors (actually many of them) do not see the benefits of attempting simply to influence policy change. These efforts need to attached to a long-term strategy which involves the right people.

Secondly, because policy change is such a huge task (I am sure this is why we have not done very much in this area), it is important to work with other like-minded people and organisations with different comparative advantages. If there are NGOs, civil society organisations and research organisations working in the same set-up, perhaps we do not need to do the research ourselves, for example. We tend to assume that we each need to have all the skills, but I think it is important to recognise the different contributions of different organisations so that we can specialise. The second key point, then, is about working in partnership.

Thirdly, there is the question of whether we have the necessary commitment. Is it simply a donor agenda, or do we strongly believe that through our interventions we exist to contribute to policy change so that we can dent poverty in Uganda? Do we have the conviction and energy and rigour to get there? This is a very important aspect. Once you have all three of these things it is definitely possible to achieve something.

What three things could policy-makers do to increase their use of research-based evidence?

Earlier on I mentioned that there are two types of policy process, or ways of looking at the policy process: either technically, which makes it an easier process and one which people do not think will change much; or as a political process. In reality, the policy-making process does not happen in the formal spaces, but happens in various ways. The most important thing is that the policy-makers have the poor at heart and are not only thinking about their own positions. They need to have the right attitude, values and thinking. This is crucial, but policy-makers themselves also need a lot more information. They need to understand the current policy trends and poverty trends in their own contexts, and they need to be able to monitor the implementation of policy and see it through.

Do you have any examples of times when things have gone wrong or any 'horror stories'?

I remember one international organisation in Uganda that was trying to look at the impact of the World Bank funded nutrition and early childhood development programme in Uganda. The international agency felt that something was going fundamentally wrong and that resources were getting lost along the way, so they undertook research in order that changes could be made. However, the quality of the research, which was published in the newspaper, was questionable. When we first saw it, we were happy, but then the implementing institution came up with evidence about who they had worked with, where they had worked, and what they had done in each area, suggesting that the research was fundamentally flawed. That made me think that we needed to be more careful as civil society organisations. We have limited capacity in undertaking research. We do it in a hurry and often based on emotions, rather than as a search for facts followed by a process of careful analysis. Perhaps it was not a good idea just to call in the newspapers and perhaps it could have been dealt with differently. There was a need for information triangulation.


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