Blog Post 2 - Reflections of an 'Outsider' Exploring the Timor-Leste Context

Hello everyone, 

I can't believe I'm over the halfway mark with this research project.  It has been a true learning curve for me and has really reinforced the fact that we are always learning - particularly as practitioners.  When I accepted this project, I had an initial skype meeting with my supervisor from EWB and shared my knowledge around MHM and what I believed to be the foundations for an effective intervention.  He was supportive of what I had to say, which was encouraging but as I began to delve deeper into my project, I quickly realised I had much to learn!  I began to worry that I had bitten off more than I could chew with the research project and began to wish that I had chosen to complete a 40-day placement instead!  

Since that time, I have been on a steep, self-directed path of discovery, learning about the different approaches to development and the myriad of tools that can accompany this process. It's most certainly been a stressful journey at times and has really tested my time management skills.  I've found it so easy to be consumed by the mountains of information out there and at the exact same time, be stumped by the lack of available data on my particular research area.  It makes me wonder how development practitioners deal with this throughout their work and manage to stick to their strict, funding-dictated timelines while still achieving the most optimal development outcomes for the communities they are serving?  I guess the simple answer to this could be that often the results are sub-optimal as projects are cut short due to insufficient funding and approaches change as development staff are shuffled between posts.  NGOs also don't have the same level of access to academic research articles that I do as a university student, and I think this is a real disadvantage for organisational learning.  This was one of the things that was brought to my attention by EWB and why they were excited for me to take on this project - WaterAid Timor-Leste simply does not have the financial or staffing capacity to explore what is written throughout academia on menstrual hygiene management and my completion of this project helps to fill this knowledge gap.  I also experienced this in my internship with One Girl when I was asked to complete a literature review on sexual and reproductive health rights utilising my academic privileges - something that they could not have achieved as thoroughly otherwise.  This has made me question the link between development academia and practice and the utility of academic studies if the people who need and can learn from them the most can not access them.  Is there not a way we could improve access for these organisations to gain the resources they need?  

After appreciating the privileged position I was in - re: access to research articles and resources - I set about trying to understand my research topic more deeply in an effort to overcome my feelings of being an outsider to the research process.  EWB has adopted what is known as the human-centred design (HCD) approach to its development projects.  I had only briefly heard of this term prior to starting this project but have since learned to embrace it with open arms.  To borrow from the IDEO website, "human-centred design is a process that starts with the people you’re designing for and ends with new solutions that are tailor made to suit their needs. [It's] is all about building a deep empathy with the people you’re designing for; generating tons of ideas; building a bunch of prototypes; sharing what you’ve made with the people you’re designing for; and eventually putting your innovative new solution out in the world."   This approach makes so much sense once you understand it, and it’s amazing to think that some organisations don’t follow it!  While at first I aligned this approach with the more ‘practical’ vocations of engineering and architecture, I’ve since come to learn that HCD ties together many of the participatory approaches to development that I have learnt about during this master’s degree and I have found myself using some of these methods in my research, for example, brainstorming problem trees to explore the issues that the community faces and identifying the community’s strengths and capabilities that can be harnessed by a potential solution (Sen, 2004).  This has been really useful for me because I had concerns about my desk-based research not being participatory enough, however, I now understand that this research is just the first link in the chain that will be passed onto the community for feedback and further iteration, which is core to the participatory approach to development. 

I’ve spent most of my time within the first phase of this approach which is known as the empathise phase.  This is where you immerse yourself in the lives of the people you are attempting to help, in order to fully understand their situation.  I think I’ve spent so much time in this phase because I haven’t been able to travel to Holarua, Timor-Leste and immerse myself in the lives of the people I am shortlisting design solutions for and this has resulted in a lot of uncomfortable ambiguity for me.  I think this feeling has stemmed from my learnings in Practical Ethics where it was pointed out that development practitioners are often blind to local dynamics of power and exclusion and I want to ensure that I fully understood the context I was designing for (Uvin, 2004 p. 2). However, this feeling is something that HCD and EWB both encourage, because embracing ambiguity means that you can be more open to potential solutions you may not have thought of before and in this instance, it has forced me to be creative in the way I research – utilising a range of different resources and asking many, many questions of WaterAid and EWB.  Optimism is central tenet of HCD and I’ve come to appreciate that optimism is key throughout this research process because it allows you to embrace all the possibilities rather than focusing on the obstacles in your way.   In a rather serendipitous selection of a final year subject, I have once again found myself immersed in the human-centred design process, working on a WASH project for the Solomon Islands for the subject Urbanisation Issues in the Asia-Pacific Region. This has served to demonstrate the utility of what I have learned throughout this research project to date and has encouraged me engage in deeper learning and think about how I can implement HCD in future projects I will be working on in my development career. 

References 

Sen, A. (2004). Capabilities, lists, and public reason: continuing the conversation. Feminist economics, 10(3), 77-80. 

Uvin, P. (2004). Human rights and development (Vol. 37). Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press.