CARE Failing Forward

Learning Backwards: How decisions we need to make should drive learning agendas

Emily Janoch from CARE's Impact and Learning team talks about all the wrong ways she has tried to do learning agendas, why she kept repeating the same mistakes, and the counterintuitive solution that works for her.

What makes dreams impossible: How we can miss the mark on creating programs that last

Hiba Tibi from Palestine talks about her favorite quote: "Fear of failure is the only thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve." Even in crisis and fragile settings, we must programs that create space for women's empowerment and will be economically viable in the long term. We can't let the changing environment prevent us from focusing on equality that will last. Check out the recent paper on how to do that with Women's Economic Empowerment programs, and the thinking on how to approach the Humanitarian and Development nexus for long term change.

Mistake Money, Premortems, and other ways to incentivize talking about failure

Susan Davis of Improve International talks about how we can incentivize talking about failure so we can make new mistakes rather than continuing to make the old ones. She also talks about how we can resolve problems as we find them in the Guidelines for Resolving Problems with Water Systems. Some tools she suggests are the Nakuru accord, pre-mortems, and innovative financing mechanisms—what she calls “Mistake Money”. What's the key? Getting communities involved in the conversation.

Raising our expectations: how our pre-conceived notions cause us to fail

Juan Echanove talks about how we fail at workshops because we have come to expect that most of them will be bad. It's not just a problem for people in the room, these low standards for workshops ultimately cost us in terms of program design, productivity, and local ownership.

A Year of Listening: Why we struck out with social movements the first time we tried

"It's all about being slapped in the face by others" says Sofia Sprechmann--CARE International's Program Director--about how CARE misfired on its first effort into working with social movements in Latin America, and how we had to focus on listening and building trust.

Fourth Quarter Failure: How we got the FY18 budget wrong, and what we're doing now

Michelle Nunn discusses how CARE's FY18 budget missed the balance between audacious goals and operational excellence. She ends with a call to all staff to err on the side of candor and speak truth to power.

The Missing 600: Impact we can't tell you about

In a two year period, more than 600 CARE projects closed without ever reporting impact data. Sofia Sprechmann, CARE International's Program Director, talks about why we've been failing to report all of our impact, and what we're doing to fix it. Two tools she references are the resources on measuring the impact of advocacy and CARE's unique Impact Map.

A plan does not equal progress: Sri Lanka teaching us about new business models

In a moment of transformation and budget crisis, a consultant's plan from completely failed to move the needle. Instead, CARE Sri Lanka's determination and ingenuity built a whole new way of doing business. They call it Chrysalis.

Fences and Cucumbers: Why we need to ask more critical questions

Gideon Cohen from Southern Africa talks about how we need to ask critical questions and give people the space to check in when things aren't working. How do we overturn power dynamics to get more honest feedback and improve our work?

Putting Survivors First: Ensuring that we make the right decisions in tough situations

Laurie Lee discusses what he learned from one of his early experiences responding to cases of sexual abuse, and how we need to balance tensions between power, reporting, privacy, and cultural contexts. In the end, the answer is simple: Put the survivor first.

You are not alone: Learning to apply systems thinking in cocoa projects

Juan Echanove, the Senior Director of Food and Nutrition Security at CARE talks about how we can do a better job designing a portfolio of projects that use a systems thinking approach instead of creating a host of standalone projects that don't build on each other.

How Ebola Taught Us to Take Risks and Make Fast Decisions

CARE International interview on how to learn from failure--what worked and what didn't in Ebola response, and what that teaches us about taking calculated risks.