Different meanings of development have been put across but according to Julius Nyerere “Development means the development of people. Roads, buildings, the increase of crop output and other things of this nature are not development; they are only tools for development.
Development brings freedom, provided that its development of people. But people cannot be developed, they can only develop themselves. There is only one way in which you can cause people to undertake their own development. That is by education and leadership.”
In this context therefore, the expansion of NGO and Civil Society is relevant for the development of a pluralist and democratic society.
There are several NGOs for various reasons: promoting human rights, combating HIV/AIDS, advocating and lobbying for pro-poor policies among others. There is wonder, however, whether the rise of such organisations is bad news. In Uganda obviously, the sudden mushrooming is viewed with concern.
The increasing concern therefore calls for improving organisational effectiveness and building capacity among these organisations to address new challenges through Organisational Development (OD).
This is a discipline by which people endeavour towards organisational health by creating and applying processes, which bring about the right balance of organisational structure, systems and ways of working so as to enable the organisation to meet its aims.
There have been limited possibilities for civil society organisations to benefit from OD due to limited exposure of the discipline itself and the general lack of facilitation skills. The east African Support Unit for NGOs (EASUN) based in Arusha Tanzania in collaboration with Community Development Resource Association based in South Africa are responding to this need in East Africa for expansion of both consciousness about OD and its facilitation skills.
Besides facilitating OD interventions for organisations, EASUN enrols and trains organisational change management for staff of Civil Society and NGOs who want to become OD practitioners.
The strengthening of NGOs and the whole of civil society is vital for: internal capacity development, social sustainability as actors in a broad socio-political environment and greater development impact.
Therefore, OD facilitates movement to greater self-understanding by organisations, greater organisational capacity, challenges organisations to confront these areas which are unclear and unresolved and facilitates organisations to learn from best practices in order to control their future.
The writer is an Organisational Development practitioner
