About CDRA

An Overview of CDRA

The Community Development Resource Association (CDRA) is a South African NGO operating as a ‘Centre for Developmental Practice’.

 “We aim to bring about and support authentic, coherent and effective development practice amongst people, organisations and institutions working towards those forms of social transformation that most benefit the poor and the marginalised”. (from CDRA mission statement)

 

What do we mean by a 'Developmental Practice?'

CDRA is highly critical of much that is done in the name of development. But instead of rejecting the concept of development we are committed to building a practice based on a particular and quite distinct understanding of it. We see development as an innate and ongoing life process to be recognised, respected and worked with, to be unlocked and enhanced. We do not see it as something that can be created or delivered through projects designed from the outside. With this as a fundamental orientation, we see a developmental practice as a conscious, facilitative approach to social transformation. Effective developmental practice respectfully accompanies and supports people and their organisations, communities and movements, in their own efforts to realise their aspirations, make their choices and access their fair share of resources. And in so doing adding their contribution, more fully and equitably, to shaping an interdependent world for present and future generations.

 

What do we do? With whom?

We offer an integrated service comprising action research through collaborative inquiry, a range of courses for development practitioners, organisational development accompaniment, and the production and dissemination of perspectives and lessons learnt. This resource is available locally and internationally to organisations, institutions and individuals who are striving to build a practice that better reflects the requirements, constraints and demands of effective social development.

Our ‘target’ – the focus of our attentions – is the approaches, methods and practices of ‘the development sector’ itself. We aim to influence the development sector, towards enabling approaches that are effective, appropriate to the realities of human development and make best use of the resources that have been entrusted to us.

Our years of practice have shown that the development sector risks undoing the very good that it aims to achieve because of the approach and methods used in pursuit of its goals. We aim to help the sector become more congruent with its own aims.

Our experience has shown us that continuous personal and organisational learning is the way to achieving a developmental approach. To realising the goals of development where individuals, organisations and whole communities are increasingly able to exercise choice, to be authors of their own continued existence, in word and deed.

 

What strategies do we employ?

• Collaborative action research – facilitated and collaborative processes aimed at creating the conditions for rigorous peer learning from experience, designed to surface, share and improve practice, to generate a practitioner voice on matters that shape the sector, to develop relationships and culture in the sector that support continuous improvement and to record and disseminate the results of these for a wider audience.

• Courses – a range of courses aimed at supporting more effective and developmental practices and ongoing learning in the individual practitioners, organisations and networks that we serve.

• Organisational accompaniment – an approach to organisational development consultancy that commits to walking with our clients through their processes of change, implementation, review and re-commitment.

• Internal organisational development and governance – maintaining the ongoing health, development and accountability of our own organisation which, as an NGO, is willingly bound by those same commitments to social and financial transparency and accountability as are those we serve.

Our Mission Statement...

The Community Development Resource Association is a non-governmental African organisation advancing conscious and continuous learning about development processes and the art of intervention. We aim to help bring about and support authentic and coherent development practice amongst people, organisations and institutions working towards those forms of social transformation that most benefit the poor and marginalised.

We do this through organisational interventions, training, accompanied learning and collaborative explorations. Out of active reflection on our experience, and through writing and disseminating, we share our insights and lessons gained, seeking to impact on wider development thinking and processes. Our work strives towards a just and civil society; a society in which more people have access to resources and power over choices.

Our work is underpinned and informed by a commitment to enabling individuals, organisations and institutions to challenge socially restricting paradigms and practices. We strive to bring to birth new consciousness, creativity and strength in ourselves, and in those with whom we work, thus facilitating our collective development towards a more human, purposeful and conscious future. We are committed to accompanying these individuals, organisations and institutions through their crises of growth and development towards healthy interdependence.

Origins and achievements

CDRA is a non-governmental organisation based in Cape Town, South Africa, that works with people who are engaged in social transformation with marginalised communities.  We help development practitioners and their organisations create genuine and consistent developmental practices in the field and, through that, the kinds of organisations and leadership that make these practices a sustainable reality.

CDRA came into being in 1987, during a very significant period in the history of South Africa – a time when one regime was in its death throes and another was waiting to be born. Its purpose was to provide organisation development services to non-governmental service organisations, which later became known as NGOs.

Over the years CDRA has pioneered and provided organisation development (OD) services to improve the effectiveness of more than 500 development organisations, both in Africa as well as further afield.  Working with small community-based organisations, through all sizes of NGOs to large international agencies, we have generated and benefited from a diverse range of experience.

Training (and learning from) donors, leaders, managers, capacity builders, OD practitioners and field workers operating at many levels in the aid/development chain has further contributed to our learning.  Our long cultivated practice of organisational reflection and learning from experience has enabled us to deepen our understanding and produce important and provocative publications which have had a significant impact on the development sector.

CDRA has done far more than develop and provide an effective capacity-building service.  It has succeeded in promoting a challenging, rigorous and disciplined approach to development practice, as well as an approach to organisation which can help build social formations that are effective in supporting such practice.   There is a tendency for some development interventions to foster dysfunctional dependence in their recipients, and CDRA works to prevent such bad practice from occurring, as this contradicts our understanding of what is truly developmental. 

Our type of approach demands a new level of responsibility and rigour from those who practise development – as such, it is very important not to ignore the practitioner’s own developmental process, or the relationship between practitioners and their cultures, and those receiving services. CDRA emphasises the interdependent and systemic nature of social process.

More broadly, that means that CDRA sees itself as the purveyors and sharers of an integrated, reflective, nurturing yet rigorous development practice, where authenticity is the key value – and one that subsumes and includes all the others.

Developing Partnerships and Learning

The types of requests we have received have changed over the years. There has been a significant shift away from capacity issues related to internal organisational identity and functioning. Questions of leadership and management have receded.  Questions such as: “What should we as an organisation be doing?” and “How can we best organise and manage ourselves?” are now rare. In their place a much more specific and practical focus on delivery is emerging.

We have worked with organisations who are struggling in a variety of ways to be effective and viable. Some remain consumed by their attempts to become more strategic in the planning and delivery of their services - and more organised in their internal functioning. But increasingly, organisations are becoming conscious of their inability to deliver their products and services in ways that contribute positively to their own sense of what meaningful development is. We have explored with them what they mean by development and how it can be measured, and have tried to assist them to understand why it is so difficult to introduce and sustain developmental practice in the development sector. 

What is clear is that there is a great need to build a developmental discipline and practice – a need which exists at all levels in the development sector, from the well-resourced international agencies to the small local and community- based NGOs. Whilst development theory abounds, a conscious, coherent, disciplined and genuinely effective practice lags far behind.  In order to impact more directly on practice and to promote a focus on developmental practice, CDRA has therefore decided to become a Centre for Developmental Practice. 

Creating the Centre for Developmental Practice

The establishment of a Centre for Developmental Practice indicates an intention to share the work of CDRA more widely, to attempt to disseminate and promote its approach to the benefit of a wider group of people – both practitioners and organisations.

By forming ourselves into a Centre for Developmental Practice we are bringing to the sector a resource to help practitioners and organisations develop their practice, nurturing in them a developmental, and therefore transformational, way of understanding the world and intervening in it.

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