Peer-Driven Change & What it is Not

Peer-Driven Change & What it is Not

By Mauricio Miller ?(… please note the distinction of my work from another agency, ‘Up Together’)

??We just launched the?Center for Peer-Driven Change?which is the virtual hub for a collaboration of everyday people who are leading their own efforts with the underlying expectation of inspiring and helping one another.?In a peer-driven approach engaging?families is our first mile while in other approaches it is the last mile as they are the recipients.

???PDC starts by first learning what groups of ordinary residents in an area are already doing to survive and get ahead and only then looks at what outsiders, including community agencies can do to promote the participants?best practices.?When groups of residents first join we generally spend about 4 months asking what they do to earn, who they help, who helps them and what they do or want to do to help the community.?We ask them to define the projects that they aspire to and to then put those projects or businesses online on our?Mutuality Platform?to attract support or inspire peer families.?

???If there is a sponsoring agency like?Children International?or a small local agency like the?Youth Arise Network?in Uganda,?their role initially is to?facilitate the data gathering and verify the projects that the participants put online.?The sponsors bring no preconceived plans to train, no advice to give and no services to provide.?Sponsors or outsiders are primarily facilitators or fulfillment agents.?And when you experience playing such a role all the staff liaisons come to love watching what the participants do for themselves and for others.

???It is an extremely hands-off approach that has almost immediate impact because it surfaces the skills and best efforts of everyday people.?Others in peer situations then begin to mimic those positive efforts and participants help one another, peer to peer.?Once the participants clearly have control and are leading the change, the role of the outsider is to be supportive, encouraging and to connect local efforts to others who may be doing similar things or who might invest in those local efforts.?Within the community our collaborative is building there is an expectation of helping and so the best practices inspire and spread naturally, peer to peer.?

?What PDC is Not

I’m currently tangentially involved with three collaboratives of large sponsoring agencies that are trying to convince funders and policy makers to fund local agencies, CBOs, on the premise that local agency leaders are more knowledgeable of the needs of the residents in the area.?But if you are going to go local then why not just ask the residents instead of the local CBO staff??As our demonstrations show, technology allows us to get direct feedback every month, every week if we want, from the residents and then see the patterns of the needs and wants of the participants.?Why not skip guessing what is needed on the ground.?Instead go straight to the everyday people we want to impact and meet them where they are.?My work with the Family Independence Initiative, FII, and now PDC has demonstrated how to use technology to do just that for 20 years.??

??If you are an agency that is interested please look at the benefits on our DIY page and contact us.

?Cash transfers are Not PDC

??Besides the local CBOs planning and coordinating their services, there are other efforts like Universal Basic Income, and cash transfer programs like the cash transfer programs being done by my former agency, Up Together, that are popular with funders.?Giving cash to communities facing poverty is good … but not nearly good enough.?Top-down led programs giving cash work?for agencies like the World Food Program or UNHCR because they are addressing immediate crisis situations.?But leading with cash only continues the top-down control that has hampered the natural growth of impact at the resident level.?I learned that from the Iu Mien refugees I worked with in Oakland California that turned down money from my agency because it would undermine the sense of interdependence between the families.?“If I pay some, then the rest won’t feel responsible to also help” was the lesson I learned from those refugees.?What would sustain long term impact was the expectation of mutuality, as they rebuilt their community culture. (full story in my book, The Alternative)

???Doling out cash to those facing poverty does not change the over-arching barriers and oppression faced by people struggling in and around poverty. It also does not strengthen community cohesiveness as the Iu Mien refugees pointed out to me.?Cash handouts are still charity and like so many programs, cash transfers, with a few exceptions, primarily make poverty just a bit more tolerable.?Decades of unconditional cash transfer programs have not closed the gap in wealth and social standing.?

???And like most top-down programs, the ability to scale impact is dependent on the expansion of the organization that is implementing it.?If the agency disappears the cash disappears.?These organizations become?dependent on more staff and more funding each year and the recipients in turn become dependent on that agency and its largesse.

??Some of the confusion over the current direction of my work is that after I left FII the leadership that took over decided to rebrand as?Up Together?and move in a different direction from what I intended.?They have become more focused on cash transfers and UBI.?While their site portrays me as the founder of their rebranded agency that new direction is not what I intended in founding and developing FII for over 15 years.?I have asked for those references to be removed to reduce the confusion.

??Again, giving cash is good, but FII and its evolution to PDC is aiming for a more fundamental change.?Creating an environment, a safe haven much as the Iu Mien did, from which everyday people can rebuild their lives and community by inspiring one another and helping one another.?It is a process that spreads naturally growing from 6 countries in 2020 to projects in 10 countries beginning this Spring with no increase in staff..?

???The lessons from FII and what is shared in my book,?The Alternative, have evolved into the creation of Peer-Driven Change, a new field for social change.?An approach that truly puts everyday people in the center of the change, as we, the professionals, step back.?

??How you can help spread PDC

Our collaborative is recruiting "Ambassadors" that will spread the word about PDC as a new field and get their peers and networks to directly support the projects our families are putting up on the?Mutuality Platform.?All that is required of Ambassadors is a one year commitment to share these postings and share our platforms with friends and with their professional networks.?If you would like to be an Ambassador, contact Marie at [email protected]