Breaking the silos: From vertical to horizontal ‘siloing’
Despite the difficult take off, the Nigerian WhatsApp platform is currently thriving, and new grantee partners hear from former grantee partners how they came to appreciate Linking and Learning, sharing examples of unexpected collaborations, peer-to-peer learning, and capacity-strengthening to apply new tools and methodologies, which would not have occurred without the Linking and Learning spaces. And, to our great delight, the person leading this reflection has joined the Voice team as Linking, Learning and Amplifier Officer, ensuring the continued use and operationalisation of the learning. Both in East and West Africa, we chose to have one Linking and Learning facilitator cover two countries. While this resulted in increased cross border exchange and learning, it also proved to favour one country more than the other. In West Africa, the facilitators were based in Mali, and it took a long time to effectively start in Niger. This led to a lack of clarity on the process and the value for the grantee partners in Niger. In Tanzania on the other hand, which shared a linking and learning facilitator with Kenya, the grantee partners felt the need for more contextual linking and learning, different from Kenya. Even though having the events in Kenya supported the active participation of rightsholders highly discriminated against in their own country, it also was a burden
and time consuming for those who needed to travel from Tanzania to participate. The perception towards the Linking and Learning component evolved over these five years. Not only for the grantee partners, we as Voice teams were also linking and learning together! This allowed us to find different ways of supporting the grantee partners to see and understand its potential value. The first phase was more exploratory and focused on trust- building, particularly in countries with large numbers of grantee partners. One of the greatest learnings is on how to shift the perception on Linking and Learning from an activity-based perspective to a process-thinking perspective. The latter makes sure that all initiatives are based on consultation and founded on co-creation, weaved together in such a way that it organically flows within the grantee partners’ organisations and rightsholders groups’ projects, and ways of working. Now linking and learning is part of what we do, a connecting and reflective way of working, involving more external actors and other programmes. It is growing through all of us, from looking inward to looking outward, without losing the need to root it over and over again in the reality of the participating rightsholders.
Although and necessary, thinking and working in vertical silos, separating groups and actions based on predefined criteria tends to separate rather than unite. It leads to focus on differences rather than similarities and looking inward. Working in siloes has generally become entrenched in development practice. How to break through this was one of the questions we grappled with in the first in- person meeting of the Voice Linking and Learning team. How do we work in a way that would create horizontal connections between everybody in the learning spaces, between the different rightsholder groups, between the organisations working on empowerment, influencing and innovation, between informal groups and national Non- Government Organisations (NGOs), between donors and all intersecting combinations? at times useful
“Voice has inspired the project team to be more acutely aware of intersectionality. Hence, the project team purposively included and encouraged the participation of women and the youth during the conduct of activities ... In fact, the women of the Manobo communities affected by the Tinuy-An Waterfalls Protected Landscape particularly challenged the men to include them in decision-making processes and asserted that their advice would be critical to balance out the Datus’ “masculine approach” of armed demonstrations with more collaborative and unity-building actions to be led by women and youth leaders.” Importantly, one of the first things participants discovered on engaging within the Linking and Learning spaces is that experiences of marginalisation and discrimination faced by them in society are similar in many ways. The specific vulnerabilities might differ, but the systems that oppress the powerless are the same. They are all fighting for space to be themselves, to live a full life in safety and dignity, and to have the same rights and possibilities as others within an oppressive environment. While we have been able to document several instances where an intersectional approach has fostered greater connection and understanding among grantee partners, we have not fully analysed if the spaces convened by Voice also resulted in non-acceptance and exclusion. This can be a guiding question for further learning.
Intersectionality
lntersectionality became a keyword in this reflection- within the rightsholder groups, within the grant types, and within the reasons for exclusion and discrimination. Why was our first tendency to organise working groups and communities of practice by the five predefined rightsholder groups? What made us as facilitators as well as the grantee partners think that they would learn more and feel safer in ‘their own group’? For instance, young domestic workers are as much a group of vulnerable youth as they are women facing exploitation, abuse and/or violence. LBQ (Lesbian, Bisexual and Queer) women are faced with discrimination not only as LGBTI people but also for being women. We had to realise that within social movements too, there are those who more are visible and those who are less visible.
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