Giving Compass' Take:

• India Development Review lists 10 lessons in development work that they have learned over the past year that still resonate in 2019. 

• What are the differences between these learnings and ones from the development sector in the U.S.?

• Read about the lessons in international development in 2018 from the Brookings Insitute. 

Reflecting on the year gone by, we put together some of our most powerful pieces – ideas that resonated deeply, and have stuck with us since.

  1. The changing nature of civil society Have we, as a sector, started favouring new-age technological and managerial solutions over old school civil society?
  2.  Research, for whom? We talk about the necessity of making decisions based off it, and of using findings to improve programmes and last-mile delivery.
  3. Addressing caste diversity If you work in the development sector, chances are, people look at you as an example of someone who thinks about access to justice, rights, and inclusion.
  4. What it takes to be truly participatory When we design interventions, how do we define our role vis-à-vis the communities we serve?
  5. The way forward for India’s feminist movement A lesson in how both feminism and patriarchy manifest at the community level; how they have remained constant fixtures across time, but simply take different forms; and how social hierarchies and systems are closely inter-linked.
  6. Put people first, development will follow There can be a different way to fund nonprofits, one that is grounded in trust and invests in people, not projects.
  7. Questioning scale as we know it Our sector has a fascination with scale, and yet our general understanding of what it means can be quite limited.
  8. We need to talk about failure There needs to be greater candour between social entrepreneurs and the philanthropic community.
  9. The development sector glass ceiling You would think that when it comes to having women in leadership positions, the development sector fares better than corporates.
  10. The land, labour, and human rights of Adivasi peoples Think about development work as you know it–who is benefiting from it, who is being left out, and who is it actively harming?

Read the full article about 10 learnings in the development sector from India Development Review (IDR).