I recently returned from a very intense strategy meeting in Istanbul, where the BOTA Project team met to articulate a targeted approach for supporting child welfare in Kazakhstan. The team includes IREX and Save the Children [12], with oversight by the World Bank [13]. For three days, IREX and Save the Children worked together to develop strategies to achieve common program goals with the greatest effectiveness.
Throughout the course of the three day meeting, it was striking to me how differently IREX and Save the Children frame results. Save the Children tended to focus on providing services and support to individuals, recognizing that positive results for individuals lead to a positive change for communities. Conversely, IREX’s civil society projects work most closely with local organizations, citizens’ groups, coalitions, and governments. Thus, IREX tends to focus on positive results for a community which means positive change for individual community members. Neither Save the Children nor IREX are able to focus on results at the national or regional level to the extent that the World Bank does.
These are different, but not diverging, perspectives; and it was exciting and satisfying for me to see how organizations that conceptualize results differently, and therefore take different approaches to international development, can work productively toward a common strategy [14]. We greatly appreciate the partnerships we have developed through the BOTA Foundation Project and the perspective Save the Children and the World Bank bring to it. Together, we will achieve outstanding results for individuals, communities, and Kazakhstan.
Troy Johnson [15] is a Program Coordinator at IREX