Tuesday, January 25, 2011
In calamity
You are head of an NGO in Hyderabad. You have sent a team of six volunteers to Kakinada region, which is affected by cyclone. After two weeks of work your team leader reports back saying, local people are hostile to us, while local people cooperate among themselves. You are asked to take a decision on the possibility of pulling out of the volunteer team from the location.
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The volunteer team is perceived as an external entity in this context.For being accepted confidence building is of utmost importance. Pulling out is not a solution as it would not serve the very purpose for which the team was sent.If the team is able to identify the section with differential expression,the basic motive of the NGO in that area could be impressed upon them. We can also identify the rational leader within the group so that he acts as a bridge and helps in communicating our actual endeavor in the area and gaining the confidence of the people.
The insider-outsider dynamics is at work in the present situation. the mechanical solidarity from the volunteers side needs to be transformed to organic solidarity which exists within the community. The volunteers need to stay put and identify the driving force in the community whose decision is accepted widely. The people cannot be forced to co-operate but by explaining the purpose of the volunteer work, their faith can be gained and the intensity of the post-disaster work can be increased. Every time an NGO enters a village suspicion is raised but by forming the bridge of trust and solidarity the purpose can be achieved
This case reflects the insider-outsider approach where my volunteers are perceived as the outsiders. Firstly, I will identify who is the community leader, amiable fraction of locals and the opponents.Team will incorporate few locals who have good rapport or interpersonal skills to win/convince the crowd. It would be unwise and show incompetence to pull out instead join the villagers and let my work speak but it should be done with community and make them feel they have done it rather than NGO team.
No one in a cyclone affected area will be hostile unless they perceived the help as a threat. I will try to find out what is exactly happening between volunteers and local people. After analyzing the situation precisely if I find our side is responsible for the situation we will work on that by empathizing with people and work accordingly. If the villagers don't co-operate then our strategy would be to win their confidence by explaining our intention clearly. This could be done with the help of local leaders and other influential persons in the village.
During such panic situations the vital sense of unpreparedness provokes a response of desperation which has lead to an insider-outsider problem. This reflects emergent norm theory wherein the collective behaviour arises in a special situation. Rather than pulling out the team, I would continue on the same lines with a different approach. A leader will be selected from among these people who will spearhead the activities, which would ensure ready acceptability among local people also.
As the local people are suspicious of outsiders ,they don't co-operate in carrying out the activities.In that case ,instead of working directcly with the different communities,the NGO should work indirectly by employing potential local leaders.The team leaders should motivate these local leaders to execute the work properly in the field.In the process,the NGO will able to win the trust of the people and will be able to accomplish its goal.So it is unwise to pull out the volunteer team from the location.
For any NGO its acceptance at community level is very important.For its acceptance NGO should first identify the leaders and other influential person of the community and express its motive behind its working in this area.Leader of the community will help in gaining the confidence of the local people.NGO should involve the local people as NGO team members. So that the local people will feel that they are doing the work for the benefitt of their own community.
The locals though in need of relief, consider the volunteers to be ‘outsiders’. Pulling out of the situation will be a question on my credibility and will also exhibit my inability to help the people who are cyclone affected. A leader amongst the local people should be chosen as a medium to make the locals realize the purpose of relief work. The locals can become truly friendly and unsuspicious if they themselves are involved in the relief work. Thus, it would be great if they are integrated with the organization at some level or for some form of work.
The problem here is that the volunteers are treated as 'outsiders'. What we need to do is be involved in immediate rescue. We need to empathize with their emotions rather than involving them in rescue operations. Trying implicitly to form a group and a rational leader amongst them to help themselves would be important. Solidarity has to be established to maintain law and order and hence normal routine should be established. We should be working on back hand and we should try to stop looting and selfish actions which may disturb the dynamics of locality.
In this case, the team has failed in gaining faith of cyclone affected people even after working for 2 weeks. This shows that either there might be some fault in communication or the local people would have some bitter experience of some NGOs activities earlier. Trust is the main basis of cooperation. In time of hopelessness and desperation, people are not in position to trust outsiders. Here,I will try to find the reason of people's mistrust in NGO.By identifying the rational leader and convincing the local people to work with my team , we can improve the solidarity of community towards our NGO's endeavour. .
Whenever we interact with anyone it is important to know that how they perceive us. As outsiders we will definitely be under suspicion and in some cases at the receiving end of their hostility and more so if they would have had a bitter experience with the outsiders. We will first have to win their trust. We need to go among them, talk to them and tell them about what we are going to do. We should take their inputs on what should be done and involve them in the activities as well.
As everybody has mentioned, since we have sent a team of volunteers from outside, the local population has turned hostile due to them being perceived as outsiders. The logical explanation to this comes from Emergent Norm Theory.
Outside volunteers are not able to share their concern. Local people are too worried about their family members and intimates that they are not ready to listen to the imposed organization.
In such situations solidarity has to be established and normal routine should be achieved because in it's absence it creates panic among the local people.
People perceive us as outsiders. And they are apprehensive of taking help from us at the time of crisis and they don’t consider us empathizing with them the same way as the members of affected community can do. But if we pull out of the relief operation, we are relinquishing ourselves of the desired goals. Rather, we can identify the key persons who can influence the affected party of our benevolent motives. As the party is at the affected end, rapport building will take less time and the relief operations can be initiated.
The team is inert to the community in need for welfare programs.This deals with the perception of the community regarding the NGO and its work. Every NGO when steps into a village needs to build a repo so that it is able to work in ordinance with the needs of the villagers. Also Repo building enables the villagers to share their opinions in a fair manner so that the NGO can perform in order to subtle the regarding problem.
In this moment of distress, if the community is hostile to volunteers even after two weeks of presence, there would some reason apart from Insider-outsider dynamics at play? The explanation for this could come from Emergent Norm theory. Volunteers might not be able to understand a concern in community, identify such issue and address it while showing empathy. If the situation aggravates out of control, I would rather use the opportunity that “The local people cooperate among themselves” and provide the means by which they themselves can help in community rehabilitation, and order for a pull out of volunteers.
Pulling out is not going to serve the very purpose of the NGO existence. The effort should be made to understand the reason behind the hostility. They (local people) might have experienced some cheating or exploitation by outsiders. And The NGO should also check whether the team is working properly or not. The organisation should keep on helping people. This can change the image of this organisation. Ultimately they will be accepted.
in this context, The problem is that volunteers are 'outsiders' and outsiders mostly perceived as suspicious by local people. after 2week of work shows that volunteers are not able to communicate well enough with the local people, if our team can turn out 2-3 local people as volunteer may be other people also cooperate, pulling out will never be an option. in any new area you face difficulties and in case of natural disasters it take months sometimes years to control the situation. Give them more time and take help from local influential / leader type people regarding what should do next in order to make people’s faith in NGO approach.
This is the natural calamity. Though natural calamity is the time when people really show collective action irrespective of class or caste. But in present context it is external and internal dynamics. My team might not be able to understand the appropriate action which is helpful for community. I will become a link between the community and my team and assure the community that we together can fight with this calamity and get out of this difficult situation. A leader of community can help me do so.
The given case represents an insider-outsider approach where a feeling of external entity digging into one’s territory is shared by the locals towards my volunteers which has to be eradicated and the team should not be pulled out unless the situation goes beyond reach. For this to happen one should not talk to the crowd and rather identify a person in local community as well as one from our volunteer team to negotiate. Immediate targets for the volunteers should be set so that after achieving them we have something substantial to show to the local community and win their confidence.
The insider-outsider discord has obstructed the purpose for which the volunteers were sent to the cyclone hit region. The emergent norm theory explicates the problem, as the volunteers are not being perceived as a part of local community, rather they are being misjudged as outsiders and it has resulted into a hostile attitude towards them. Pulling out is not a solution to this predicament, instead the volunteers should clarify their purpose and try to win trust of the locals. If the volunteers can develop camaraderie, they can help out the locals.
This is a very common situation which one always comes across when one enters a new place or community. One will be treated always as an outsider in the initial days. The hostile response from the local side arouse out of the fear that the outsiders will exploit them. Here in this case organisation should accept the fact and find ways to move ahead instead of backing out from the job As an NGO, they should ensure that the locals get a feel that the NGO workers are there to help them out and not to exploit them.
Most plausible explanation seems to be discontent among locals with perceived outsiders. However considering the uncommon conditions it defies logic that at such an hour of calamity, this be the reason for non-cooperation. It becomes imperative to identify & understand etiology behind local's actions & act accordingly. Insufficient information limits scope for discussion of solutions to general aspects. Thus identifying key figures among locals, attempt to explain the rationale behind their endeavours should be made & examples of similar work conducted by the NGO elsewhere can be quoted. Thus strategy is to gain cooperation through improved communication & self less service.
The need of the hour is to not give in but to try to connect to locals at this time of calamity. To mitigate the disadvantage of being outsider; rapport need to be established with the locals. For this the prominent figures need to be identified & a discourse should be initiated attempting to identify the root causes of the discontent among people. The volunteers need to explain their intention behind actions & a brief regarding the course of action would also be helpful to undermine the doubts & suspicions among the locals.
First of all the root cause of the problem has to be identified that why are the locals non-cooperative. As desperate times call for desperate measures some locals will be willing to take our help and we need to identify them. After getting the support of some locals we can then talk to the non-cooperative locals and explain to them that we are here to help them. Hopefully the improved communication and some inside support can help us in this matter.
A common problem in such relief work is that the NGO workers don't recognize the actual problem that the locals are facing and relief measures are taken which in turn further causes a divide among the locals and volunteers. We also need to realize that the people in the region have had a traumatic experience. The volunteers have to be trained to be sensitive to the people in the region. If the resistance continues, the NGO should remove the volunteers from the region and instead ask the community as to what kind of assistance they need.
Clearly it is insider - outsider situation prevailing in the above context. I would not pull out my volunteer team out of village, rather I would help them to build rapport among villagers so that the differences in understanding can be minimized and overall objective of helping the cyclone victim villagers can be achieved. For this we can identify the influential villagers and help them understand the bigger picture and explain working of volunteers to villagers and get villagers involved so that volunteers can win villagers confidence. Here volunteers need to attain organic solidarity which already exists in villagers. .
The team from NGO is understood as outsider and that is the reason why the local people are hostile with the team working in the area . The local people is not in sync with the frame of mind with the team coming for relief. The option of leaving the area is not a feasible one because it does not fulfill the motive of the organisation. Therefore the team need to buiid confidence among the local people for building rapport which will help them to mix well with them. This can be done by identifying keypeople like opinion leaders who will play pivotal role in this collective action.Thus this will help in gaining trust and achieving the goal of the NGO in the given area.
The Kakinada people are cooperating with each other and seems to be closely knit. My volunteers, in my opinion have not been able to understand the sentiments of local people and adapt to their values and beliefs. The non-conformance with the values and beliefs seems to be the cause. Instead of pulling out, i will advise them to stay there and engage with Kakinada people in the way they perceive appropriate and will advise the volunteers to carry out the operation side by side.
Since co-operation does exist among the cyclone affected, we know that these people are not averse to co-operation. The same readiness to co-operation that they are extending to the fellow affected people can be solicited by us if only we can make them percieve that we are one of them and not outsiders. This can be done by identifying leaders among the co-operating affected people and involving others by working with these leaders.
It is difficult to indulge with the group which is suffering calamities or losses due to feeling of insecurity, as the person approaching for providing help may be considered as an opportunist who derives benefits out of this suffering. The team should not be pulled out as such. Instead they should identify the key persons in the community who can act as the bridge between community and team for convincing the people and also instigate the people that they should move in the direction to get greater help out of their local cooperation rather than restricting it to themselves only.
The problem here is that the team is perceived as an external entity that is looked upon as a threat by the people; insider-outsider theory. My decision would be not to pull the volunteer team back but instead ask them to be there. Instead of directly going out and trying to help the affected people (which is not being successful), the team could identify local leaders and work with their collaboration to establish their ground in the area. Once the people start trusting the volunteer team, work would get much easier and going.
Pulling out of the volunteer team would not be an option. It is natural on the part of villagers to consider the team of NGO as an unknown external entity. Lack of trust would obviously lead to non-cooperation. Consistent and improved efforts from the side of NGO would not go waste and would be considered genuine by the villagers in sometime, especially in times of crisis.
In the situation of any natural calamity the victims are scared and desperate to come out of the situation. They perceive the volunteers as the external entity because currently they fear from any more harm. The volunteers must identify the community leader and clarify their purpose of coming there. They must involve some community members and start cooperating the locals rather than expecting them to come and seek for help.
Since there is a natural calamity so people are not very receptive to the NGO team, asking the volunteers to come back would not solve the probelm. Instead the NGO team should be asked to slowly try to first establish trust among the local people.Involve someone from the community to establish genuineness of their efforts.
The emergent norm theory is at play here, with the perception amongst the locals most likely being that the outsiders cannot relate to their plight. Pulling out at such a stage is not an option. It must therefore be communicated to the locals, through actions and aid provided rather than through confrontation, that the NGO wants to help. Identifying a rational leader among the group could be a good start to this end.
The people may be averse to the volunteer team because they may have had bad experiences with the intervention of NGO in the past. Also the binding force among the people in the time of crisis must be their leaders and it may happen that the volunteers are ignoring their authority , hence the aversion of people. Thus the NGO must involve the local leaders into their workings and extend their support to the community through them. It is important that trust is built among people and NGO.
It is very natural that the outsiders will not be accepted so heartedly always. We can’t bring efficiency to the current relief program if we don’t mobilise local people. Obviously there would be some reservations in the mind of villagers about the outsiders. The challenge that we have in hand is to keep helping them and try to make friends in the village, at the same time we need to make them aware of the fact that we are there to help them and we are not going to gain anything out of it.
Building trust with the community is of utmost importance. the external entity ie the NGO brings in lot of questions about the intentions of actions , would they interfere in the internal matters and all this is multiplied in times of crises. Talks with the community leaders should be held , inform them about the objective of the NGO’s presence and ask the them to organise a general meeting with the villagers. Also its essential that the NGO asks the community what help they need instead of just using their own strategies.
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