On this webinar, our fellow Arbie Baguios presents his AID re-imagined model which intends to shift the humanitarian paradigm in order to improve its real scope. Through combining science, systems, thinking, and social justice this fresh and innovative idea aims to argue that a paradigm shift is possible. This webinar is facilitated as well by or fellow Smruti Patel:
We live within a reality characterised by complexity and mired with injustice – from poverty and inequality, to people needlessly dying and suffering from disaster or conflict.
Aid programmes – typically understood to be altruistic endeavours (which may be a single project or a series of projects) primarily stemming from the Global North to the Global South – are one of many efforts that attempt to tackle such injustices. But in many instances, these aid programmes fail because of a flawed logic based on unquestioned or unevidenced assumptions; or mismanagement especially when such efforts fail to adapt to their everchanging and unpredictable contexts; or espousing values that are not transformative and merely reproduce the conditions that have led to such injustices in the first place.
Fortunately there are now multiple fronts in the development and humanitarian aid sector that attempt to change the way we implement such programmes, including those which demand more effectiveness through robust and rigorous designs; believe that we need to change the rigid, linear ways in which we currently implement these programmes; and attempt to give more attention to the political root causes of problems.
But these aid frontiers do not seem to provide a holistic view on their own: many of those focused on effectiveness have largely ignored power dynamics; many who recognise power dynamics can sometimes be resistant to effective designs and methodologies; and many who call for adaptiveness in the face of complexity acknowledge that even adaptation can go the “wrong” way. Aid programmes must therefore be able to address all these issues at once. After all, one would not prefer for their local community’s hospital to only provide either effective treatment, quality care, or efficient management; a good hospital must provide all three or else the community’s wellbeing suffers.
A Aid Re-imagined model advocates for aid programmes that are robustly analysed, relational & adaptive, and radically accountable. Like baking a cake which requires the right mix of the right ingredients, these three components are all essential, but the right balance must be struck to suit the aid programme’s specific purpose and context.
The Aid Re-Imagined model designed by Arbie Baguios
“All models are wrong,” goes the phrase attributed to the statistician George Box, “but some models are useful.” After all, models are merely simplifications and interpretations of our infinitely complex world. The goal of the Aid Re-imagined model, then, is to be useful in shifting the way we think about aid programmes towards a more holistic view that accounts for, and urges the right balance between, a programme’s logic, management and values.
This model is particularly aimed at those in the Global North who typically play a key role in designing and implementing aid programmes in the Global South. And its ultimate aim is to change the way we currently implement aid towards effectiveness and justice.