Does Caritas Egypt need reform?

An interview with Reform Program Consultants Lisette Gast and Diederik Prakke …

“If you want small changes, work only on your skills. If you want quantum leaps in effectiveness, work on your beliefs and habits” says management icon, Stephen R. Covey. Caritas Egypt, with its 50 year history of development finds itself at crossroads. Will it become old and die, sticking to the ways it got used to, or will it renew itself and open new doors? To serve the very mission for which it was founded, Caritas Egypt has embarked on a profound organizational reform. Caritas has come a long way, through the love and generosity of generations, and yet today it is limping and needs a transformation to live up to its potential.

Supported by three long-term partners (Misereor, Caritas Germany, and Secours Catholique Caritas France) Caritas Egypt pledged to renewal that should make it as effective and agile as it was fifty years ago. Perspectivity, a Dutch organization dedicated to the transformation in complex situations, has been at the cradle of the reform and supports it with short- and long-term support. I met Lisette Gast and Diederik Prakke in the Jesuits School in Cairo after a “Leadership and People Management” training they conducted for a group of mid-level and senior managers of Caritas. One of the questions on my mind was why they seek employment in development, while Europe does not face illiteracy, sickness, and poverty to the extent Egypt does. My interview with them brought me closer to the answer!

Her name is Lisette Gast, she came from the Netherlands and  works for Perspectivity, and he is Diederik Prakke, He is also from the NL but lives in Cairo and he has a 2-year contract with the reform.

– Can you please introduce Perspectivity for us?
• Perspectivity – says Lisette- is an organization that has 2 main parts… one network that is spread all over the world, and one part is a group of consultants that work to promote dialogue in complex settings on a day to day basis, so Perspectivity is all about promoting dialogue to make this world a little bit of a better place.

– What are the most important achievements of Perspectivity that have supported its responsibility towards Caritas’ Reform?
• Diederik: Here in Egypt, it has been involved in the evaluation of the basic education program at Caritas Egypt, and it helped to formulate the reform, and now it helps to implement the organizational reform at Caritas Egypt.

– How did Perspectivity get to know Caritas? From where?
• There is a long history to tell about how Perspectivity got to know Caritas Egypt, says Lisette: We have been working with CORDAID, and CORDAID is also from the Caritas’ family. Cordaid is in Netherlands and we had been doing several assignments with them, and then somebody else from Germany from Misereor was talking to this person from CORADAID: Don’t you know some people that can help us to do this evaluation of the basic education, and we want people to be participatory and think differently and act differently. Do you know somebody? And this person from Cordaid said: yes we know somebody. You should contact Perspectivity and that is how we got in touch with Misereor and this basic education was basic education from Caritas.

– Do you think that Persceptivity is qualified to manage a very important topic like the reform?  I mean, to do a reform project for Caritas that has a 50-year history..
• I think so, says Diederik, adding: We help from Perceptivity’s side more and more. We are happy that the leadership is taking over the reform by Caritas itself, and we have the different topical expertise to assist with it. Perceptivity has a particular approach of looking from different fresh perspectives (as the name Perceptivity indicates) and so other people could have done it but we give a special angel to it.

– Asking about the meaning of Reform from their point of view,
• Lisette said: it means transformation, so for me, it means that we are not changing the surface, but what is below the surface, so the fundament. Here, Diederik said: I was thinking exactly of the same word” transformation”, so we do practical things (we work on the organizational structure, we work on the financial reporting on the progress reporting), which you could say is at the surface but it is anchored in something deeper. We try to combine it with a new leadership style so that it is embedded both in system and people.

– Is this Reform easy to do in Caritas?
• Lisette (laughed loudly), and then continued: No! Because it is an organization it has a tradition of 50 years, and the world has changed, international funding policies structures have changed, but Caritas has been in these 50 years of pretty much doing it the same way, so, that part is not easy. At the same time, another part is easy because of the people that want to learn. So it is possible but is not necessarily easy, not always.
Diederik: What also has happened over the 50 years is that Caritas has grown to 650 people and there are different departments and programs. So we want to maintain the autonomy of programs and at the same time integrate the organization. That is a sort of massage that when we centralize certain things that people should not feel we are undermining autonomous initiatives. But I think we want one website, one branding, one image for the full organization.

What does culture mean?

– Do you think there is a difference in the concept of development between Europe and the Middle East?
• Lisette: It’s a very big question! My first reaction will be no because we are all human beings and we all developed in the same way, and my second reaction is the Middle East is so diverse that I can’t speak about the Middle East, and my third answer will be I think the way Caritas looks at development and we look at development is pretty similar.
Diederik (laughing): Oh, the same question? I thought I could escape it, anyway, the concept of development sounds very conceptual, the experience of how people look implicitly on their lives, the base of how speed they change, and what they believe that change should look like. I guess culture plays a role there, but finally, I totally agree with Lisette that we are all human beings. I worked in more than 20 countries and sometimes I give a presentation and participants say “oh that sounds so interesting it may work in Europe but not in our country”, and then I am a little bit skeptical. Does the national culture mean that water streams up the mountain?

– Lisette, you say that Caritas is similar to you (Perspectivity) and that is a good thing about it when you were answering the question about the concept of development!
• Lisette: Well, Caritas believes that empowering people is not just to feed them or to give them food, but to teach them how to fish, and we very much also see it as Perspectivity and in development. I think from Europe many people (and that is different from USAID for example), well so there’re difference standards and I think that it connects us. For me, t is difficult to speak about the whole world, but for me, f I look at Caritas in the MENA region here and development at Perceptivity as Europe then I see there is a connection, and it’s about empowering people but make people know that their voices in their perspective are important.

– And you Diederik, talked also about the culture, what are the cultural constraints that you faced in your work?
• Diederik: Yeah, just today we gave a leadership training and one of the concepts we used was about being proactive versus being reactive, and proactive means that you focus on where you can make a difference and reactive is that you focus on the difficulties that you face and both are true but if you focus much on different strains that you have but you don’t make use of the opportunities that you do there. So at some point here, at least in the perspectives of the partners, Caritas Egypt seems to be more on the reactive side focusing on these constraints why we can’t be changed while the donors were expecting that Caritas would more focus on what it can change. So I want to bring this two perspective together, that was the challenge.

– So, accordingly, do you think it is easy for a foreign organization to come to introduce reform or development to a local organization? Is that easy?
• Lisette: It is, it is not easy, it just takes patience and sometimes patience is difficult. The work is not difficult, but it is the patience that you constantly have to play together to find out where we move? And that is sometimes not easy, but if you dance it is a lot of fun!
• Diederik: there is a quote that says something like: “The people thought it was impossible until somebody came along who did not know that it was impossible and he tried it and managed”. Why I am saying that is we bring quite different parties together. Perspectivity has worked abroad but we are mostly Dutch by background. So we bring a different perspective and sometimes it is hard, but it also refreshing. We might bring more change than if you had done the reform with an Arab party that was closer knowing your situation but less thinking out of the box.
• Lisette: There is a Dutch expression that rubies don’t shine unless you rub them. To polish something first you sort of need to rub it together but then it stars to shine.

What do people say about Caritas Egypt?

– What do the donors say about us, then?
• Lisette: Oh, the donors can say that themselves. I can say one thing; I know that they love you. Sometimes it is hard for them because they want to see change quicker, but they are willing to put in so much time and effort in you that one thing is for sure, that they love you.
• Diederik: I thought that Lisette’s answer is perfect, the donors can speak for themselves and I think it is healthy and helpful that we are seen as Europeans. That is true and we have a certain way of communicating with them, but we are not them, so there should no confusion – we are not like ambassadors!

– OK, now what do you say about us? What Persceptivity says about Caritas Egypt?
• Lisette: You have funny questions! What I say, I go up and down because I know the frustrations. I want to sometimes do more or to go faster. So something that I want to say, but I have decided frustration is not going to help. I am in partnership and I think that the work you do in the field is amazing. I really believe that and it has got so much potential that I sometimes wish I had a magic ball to get the potential only.

– What is the methodology used in this project/Reform project?
• Lisette: well the reform project has several parts but the part I am responsible for with Caritas is the monitoring evaluation and the methodology we use is the combination of sense-making through stories of change and outcome harvesting, and we use Sprockler for that.
• Diederik: So the overall reform has some six components out of which Monitoring and evaluation that Lisette just talked about is 1. The overall reform is to take 3 years, but each year we change our plans and plan may be for even less than a year in detail because we take it step by step.

– Are you satisfied with the results achieved until now?
• Lisette: Yes, because there was a result that we have, so that is what we need, there was a delay so I had hopes that we would have been a bit ahead.
– Why is there a delay?
• Lisette: Because there were some unclarity on the contract.

The Egyptian personality..

– When you say I am not satisfied, according to which perspective you’ve evaluated or assessed your results?
• Lisstet: There are 2 things: Many people that were in the recent training were there the first time as well, so that is always a great indicator for me. More importantly was that people remembered very well what we did the first time. They had good questions, there was a curiosity to get more, and they were looking ahead for the next step and that is important to me.

– Tell me, how much do you think you know the Egyptian personality before conducting them some training or applications? Because sometimes I fear that you give them such things, and yes they are so interactive for a while, but they may never continue using it?
• Lisette: It is not Egyptian; that is human and if I start worrying about that I would better stop working.

– Did you meet something like this here in Egypt, in Caritas?
• Lisette: Yes of course because I thought that more stories would have been collected but some stories are there so I accept that. My expectation or my wish is not a command and if people say yes and do no, there’s very little I can do. The only thing that I can do is again offer and see how can I do it and repeat.
• Diederik: I totally agree that is not an Egyptian thing but there is a difference between capacity actual applications. That difference is always there … and then the question is: are we happy with it? If, as a boss or trainer or consultant, I am unhappy it says more about me than about the situation. Yes, there is a limited change at Caritas until now – there is less change than planned. But whether we can cope with that or whether we get angry and frustrated says more about whether we are willing to work with the reality here.

– What are your obstacles in Caritas Egypt?
• Diederik: Perspectivity has a wonderful slogan. It says “for the love of complexity”. For me, it expresses that we want to work with reality. I love that slogan but in reality of course sometimes, I’m irritated that I don’t get people on the same page, that there is no consistent decision-making, that the people do not listen properly to each other. Sometimes it drives me crazy and sometimes I love it.

A tip for success

– How can the reform help in creating new projects/ programs in Caritas?
• Diederik: I think in 2 ways:
1. Of the 6 or 7 components of the reform, one of them is the fundraising and a proposal written and that is a very direct way that we build the capacity for proposal writing and help with written the actual proposal so it is a very direct way, so the proposal was written is very specific
2. In general, we do what is called decentralization support to support the regional offices to think of themselves as an income generating. They may mobilize their own resources, while in the past it was mainly in Cairo who formulate projects for the whole country.
Lisette: I think that there is another way, I think that through monitoring and evaluation you will see new opportunities as well to start thinking of different ways of looking at maybe the same theme maybe it is still about education but also other things said you might be doing.

– Can u give us a tip for an institution like Caritas?
• Lisette: Start implementing the thing that they learn in the training start doing it, don’t be afraid to make mistakes it doesn’t have to be perfect but like this interview, it is a start.
• Diederik: Be willing to see things differently, consider new ideas and you need to learn to accept mistakes.

• Many Thanks to :
– Diederik Prakke for re-editing the introduction, and revising the whole interview.
– Jacqueline Magdy, the interpreter.

Interviewed by Ebtissam Kamel – The Communication officer at Caritas Egypt

This interview was running in The Sacred Family School ( Jesuits School) in the fall of 2017