Competence areas: Communications & Teamwork - Knowledge Translation - Listening Attitude - Skills

Communication with and participation by stakeholders is essential in the problem mapping, option generation, decision making, and implementation of solutions.

Where need-perceptions and solution-options meet, either stakeholder often has inflated expectations with vague terms of reference: "my problem needs this solution" or "my approach solves your problem".

Too often, a low literacy level of a stakeholder, implies little attention being given to his or her views.

In this tutorial you will acquire a critical attitude regarding the impact of literacy levels on development decision making, the match of development problems and solution ideas, the articulation of problem chains and solution claims, and techniques for collecting evidence and producing answers that are acceptable for more stakeholders.

The use of content commons and the awareness of literacy levels helps to become clear about the terms of reference for statements, for all stakeholders.

A stable classification framework such as COFOG¹ is instrumental in reducing cognitive hurdles for many stakeholders whose views are often excluded, or only indirectly represented in development initiatives.

In the systematized content components COFOG is used to map the knowledge that is relevant to certain development initiatives.

Alongside using the content commons as a means to support rising literacy levels, development stakeholders' attitudes must take to heart these observations from the The Listening Project and Development Effectiveness:

1. People in aid recipient societies want more ownership and to have a greater say in their own development.
2. People say that donors still provide assistance based more on national agendas and priorities than on local ones.
3. People are more concerned about “how” assistance is provided than how much is given.
4. People say donors should trust local people more but also monitor and verify what has been reported.
5. People say that accountability (especially to aid recipients) is still weak.
6. People in aid recipient societies talk about how a good process is intrinsic to good results.

Listening to more stakeholders should enable us to achieve collective decision frames, and based on them collaborative diagnostics and collaborative therapeutics (which is development).