CARE Failing Forward

Implementers vs. Allies

Tatiana Bertolucci--CARE's Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean--talks about what she learned closing the CARE Brazil office. We need to engage with curiosity and treat organizations in the global south as powerful allies, not people who merely implement our agenda. We also need to invest in more diverse boards. "There is knowledge everywhere if we will listen to it." Another lesson is "scream for help sooner" when something is not working.

CARE of 1000 Papers, Part 2: Improving the way we work with partners in crisis

Puji Pujiono of the Pujiono Center and Victoria Palmer from CARE Canada talk about their paper based on the Sulawesi response in Indonesia.This time, they talk about what organizations can do once a crisis has already started to have better success with partners, and help them achieve their goals rather than hurt them.

CARE of 1000 papers: How our best intentions can hurt local activists

How do international NGOs create problems when they team up with local activists? It's the CARE of 1000 papers, where our processes are so focused on reducing risk that we bury local groups under the weight of our expectations, and don't give them the support they need. Puji Pujiono of the Pujiono Center and Victoria Palmer from CARE Canada talk about their paper based on the Sulawesi response in Indonesia, where we learned a lot about what we can do BEFORE we reach out to local partners so that we're truly helping response and empowering those partners. Stay tuned for part 2, where they discuss what we can do once a crisis hits.

What's Wrong With Happy Families?

How can using the phrase Happy Families actually hurt women and set feminism back? Jayanthi Kuru-Utumpala and Zainab Ibrahim from Chrysalis--a CARE affiliate in Sri Lanka--tell us lessons learned from the EMERGE project engaging men and boys, and working with feminist groups. Some key lessons: let local groups take the lead, engage with respect and humility, and pay attention to your wording. Concepts need to translate not just in language, but also in ideology. Also check out the paper on working with social movements, and how we can improve women's rights by taking a back seat.

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.