Summer breaks always invite for reflection. Often people take summer courses to gain some new insights in a relevant field of expertise linked to their personal or professional life. While there were a few good summer courses around this summer, I abstained and instead share with you what my chicken taught me over the summer break.

First of all, I have to admit, I have a little bit of a personal attachment to our chicken. Not that they are particularly beautiful or treat me friendly (they make a lot of noise in the morning). It is just that I got used to having to clean their mess every other week. Actually, I should do this more often, as I learned that chicken thrive in a clean environment (as most people do). That raises the question why they are themselves creating such a mess out of their water and food rations. The water tower next to the food tower provide enough and the chicken have really no other business but to bend their necks and pick from both the grain and drink from the water. Still apparently they like to trample the edge of the tower, as an inbuilt mechanism to get the worms out of the soil, messing around with the food, and making the water dirty.

I bought these white leghorns a couple of years ago after constructing a chicken run from the remains of a shed. They turn out to be very productive chicken supplying us their 3 eggs almost every day over the last two years. However, despite this welcome addition to our daily diet, I wondered how I could reduce the food and water spills and make the chicken more effective. What did I do wrong? I tried to hang the towers a couple of inches above the soil, so that they could not easily trample the food, to no avail. Not only did their behavior result in food and water losses, but also it causes the soil of the chicken run to be covered with grain, giving me hard time when cleaning up the place. 

Nowadays there is internet pages full of forums with people sharing their passions on anything. Hence I also found some 'friends' and consulted them on what to do. It quickly appeared that I am not the only one trying to make their chicken behave. Failing to take proper care of a couple chicken makes me humbled in judging the commercial farming practice, that is critiqued by many of my fellow citizens today. 

Still there is something weird in trying to make chicken behave. Even the so called pecking order disturbed me to some extend, resulting in the early demise of one of them. Today I was so fed up that I took the dominant one apart, allowing the weaker one to eat first. How come I am trying to challenge the laws of nature? Do we not do the same as people? Why did I make these chicken dependent on my supply of food to a nicely contained chicken run while I could have opted to have them roam around in our garden (having them ruining it and having to fetch them from the neighbors or the street every now and then). It appears we want to model the world to our own liking. Serving us with a steady supply of food while minimizing disturbances to our direct surrounding. 

As I tried to teach my chicken other behavior I realized they may have given me the best summer course I could have wished for. Allow nature to take its course, facilitate people to make their own decisions, and allow maximum space for animals with whom we try to live in symbiosis, and deal with the disturbances this provides to our direct vicinity or turn it into a peaceful co-existence as I learned from the highland communities in Ethiopia. There is no escape from the laws of nature. We better comply. 

International development: navigating power
In this poem, spoken word artist Kyla Jenée Lacey articulates the realities of white privilege in the US and how it ties in with colonialism, slavery, uprootedness, identity and trauma. But also with knowledge. Specifically, Lacey touches upon the colonial politics of knowing: the epistemic violence Europe engaged in through its Eurocentric claim on knowledge and how this still shapes our world today. Reportedly, a teacher from Sullivan County Tennessee was recently fired for showing this poem in his classroom. This goes to show how relevant and dangerous it (still) is to talk about issues of colonialism and race today.
 
Working in the international development sector often means working with underprivileged, oppressed, displaced, or indigenous peoples. The peoples that European history has traditionally trapped in terms of ‘lacking development’ and erased from its pages as conscientious beings. Whether or not this is true, the opposite is most certainly true: development work is about working with (or possibly against) the privileged. Those that keep these complex systems running because it serves them. Development workers are not exempt to this. Indeed, it is no secret that the international development sector is rooted in a violent history of European colonialism, fed by far-reaching geopolitical forces and capitalism, and whitewashed with a problematic mix of white ignorance, guilt and heroism.[1]
 
The not-so-innocent practice of ‘knowledge sharing’
This raises questions about what is arguably one of the most important practices of international cooperation today: knowledge sharing. Now everyone agrees that, at least in theory, knowledge sharing between stakeholders is crucial if interventions are ever to be successful and impact sustainable, and -  you know - not actually disruptive of local cultures, economies and biodiversities.[2] And it sounds so happy and easy, too (and positively orientalistic): like we would all sit in a big circle under the stars, the heat of the campfire drawing us closer together while we, encouraged by the jangling beat of a tambourine, share our insights. And after we’d all walk away joyous and enriched, ready to change the world. But that’s not how it is. Knowledge is power, after all.
 
So you’ll need to ask yourself: historically, who is allowed to share? Or better yet, who is ascribed the status of knower? Similarly, who is deemed ignorant and should really only sit back and learn? What even counts as knowledge? And importantly, who decides? In essence, the practice of knowledge sharing is political. As a development worker you have to wonder how these histories inform our current practices and encounters, and try to find answers to the question: how can we engage in knowledge sharing as part of a decolonial praxis, in which stakeholders participate as ontological equals, as knowers on equal footing? Is this even possible?
 
Colonization and other(ed) ways of knowing
The late Edward Said, founder of the academic field of postcolonial studies, was one of the first scholars to describe how Europe in the 19th century, as a means to justify its colonial conquest, culturally represented the Middle East by orientalising it. Said (1978:1) called the Orient “almost a European invention; … a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences.” Most importantly, it was constructed as a region with distinct and contrasting racial and cultural differences to that of the West. This idea served to elevate the status of white Europe - the Occident - and cemented into its cultural consciousness the imagined inferiority of the exocitized non-white Orient, the ultimate ‘other’. Nowadays this is more commonly known as Eurocentrism: an ideology that takes western civilization as its vantage point, grasping the world with its gaze, and that constructs it as the epitome of human progress in relation to all other, lesser developed, civilizations.

Shifting the power, decolonizing development, localization...  suddenly it is all over the place. And part of me is very happy with this development. Finally we are recognizing the power differentials that exist in international cooperation. Still it is important that we recognize it is a mixed bag with many interests playing up. Localization is not value free. Power differentials are also present at the local level.

When I arrived in Ethiopia in 2001 the country was still dealing with the trauma of a non-resolved bloody war with its Northern neighbour Eritrea. Many Ethiopian port labourers, who had been deported out of Eritrea, had to reintegrate back home in Northern parts of Ethiopia, most of them in Wollo, a region infamous for its hunger crises of the seventies and eighties. To support this process my organization had lobbied the European Union to make funds available for this reintegration programme and I was hired as IDP program manager. Upon my arrival I was told the position was just successfully filled by a quite senior Ethiopian with an esteemed academic career. Subsequently I was asked to be his advisor.

Obviously there was not much advise needed. I felt a bit like the boy in this painting of Ethiopian artist Josphe, taking a cold shower. In the end it turned out that there were serious concerns about misconduct and abuse of power, and I have played my part to address these concerns. But I can tell, it was an up-hill battle. In fact, being a foreigner, being still quite young, and having no prior experience working in Ethiopia gave me a 0-3 disadvantage right from the start. And to be honest, what weight did I bring to the job really? Still my earlier experience as a junior UN official serving a top-level bureaucrat in India, gave me the perfect preparation as also at that time it was made very clear to me, by this senior official, that I had very little to contribute and should be happy with having the chance to learn. This again was not far from the truth.

​Why I am telling you this story in an article about localization? First of all, the people involved have either passed away or are no longer in office. The reason for sharing this experience is to illustrate that a term like localization can be received differently by different people. It is our personal experience that colors the way we see things. When I hear people speak about the need for localization I have my concerns, especially when it comes to humanitarian work in conflict settings. While I recognize the importance of support via first responders who are in and from the community, I also realize that there are also local power dynamics that at times may compromise the humanitarian imperative. Hence, there are roles to play for international NGOs to ensure aid is provided in a fair and equitable manner.

Proliferation of development NGOs
At the same time I have witnessed the extreme proliferation of development NGOs replacing fundamental societal functions of home grown civil society organizations. I am therefore also very happy with researchers (also in Europe) who are increasingly calling into question the contributions NGOs make to democratization processes. To some extend they may also help erode democratic dividend as citizens may turn to NGOs for their rescue instead of turning to their governing bodies. It was shocking to realize that for people in rural Ethiopia there was basically only one word for any official visiting their area. It did not really matter whether it was a government official, a UN official or an NGO employee. They would all arrive in a four-wheel drive, talk to you briefly (often through an interpreter), and depart again and if you are lucky enough you would see them again with some resources to improve your situation al least for a while.

So whose agenda is at work when we talk localization or decolonization of development. I belief still both represent very much the agenda of Western countries, with Kings and Presidents keen to admit wrongdoings of their predecessors while saying sorry. Dialogues start to emerge, different from the 'development briefings' of the past explaining certain agenda's. However, given the past, I wonder how much of a real dialogue is possible in the present. I wonder what the priorities of people really are if we are willing to be a fly on the wall. Not noticed and therefore the speakers not influenced by the presence of potential resource providers. We could be surprised what options they could think of.

Development cooperation 3.0
I think it is high time for development assistance to mature into proper international development cooperation. This new type of cooperation would not focus on 'solving the poverty problem' in 'target countries' but it would aim to address inequalities around the world in the proper use of its scarce resources. It would be based on a respectful exchange of values, characterized by reciprocity with everyone willing to learn. This could lead to doing away with bad practice, improving on current practice while discovering novel practice that might help us making global and local development processes work for the benefit of all people and the planet.

Back to Ethiopia, where currently the international community has difficulty reading the situation and struggled to take a position in the renewed conflict between people groups of which the scenery became the region of Tigray. On July 13, the Human Rights Council adopted a resolution calling for an immediate end to the violence and human rights violations in Tigray and ensure humanitarian access to vulnerable communities, as loosing out on two consecutive production seasons is likely to result in wide spread famine. Apart from this external pressure, crucial pressure is to be made domestically*. There is a silent majority of Ethiopians who want to see this conflict and many other tensions and conflicts in the country resolved and live peacefully together. They can organize themselves and use their civic space to voice their opinion and influence those in their direct surrounding or through social media (which are so often used counterproductively for spreading disinformation, stirring up the masses). They may be able to help society at micro, meso and macro levels to reconcile the present with the past. They have the ability and spiritual assets to shape new identities that are sufficiently anchored in the past, address systemic injustices, and are geared towards a shared future. If the international community is to play a role, whether mobilized by the diaspora or officially requested, it has to respect local ownership over the change process while upholding and defending universal human rights.

* Local ownership is one of the principles embraced in the new OESO-DAC recommendation on enabling civil society, as adopted with unanimous vote during the recent Civil Society Days of the OESO-DAC.

A couple of years ago, I had the priviledge to facilitate learning processes in the context of an international classroom setting. In those years I started a blog space called Walks and Talks, inviting experts and international students to contribute their perspectives. Reviewing some of these blogs I realised how advanced these ideas were and how relevant still today. The last contribution to Walks and Talks came from Mulugeta Dejenu, at the time an expert in Self Organised Learning from Ethiopia. While asking Mulugeta if he would be okay with republishing his contribution he responded: "I forgot how and when I wrote the bove. I read it through and still preserved the warmth it had a few years ago. .Self Organized Learning is an area that I enjoyed and wanted to expand. (...) It is a course that has to be supported in the future to challenge our robotic behaviour of learning."
In a struggle to give shape to learning processes, Mulugeta and his colleagues were far ahead of many of us working in development cooperation. These are voices from the past that are worth reconsidering and put to use today counting on the possibilities of tomorrow. 

What a thought-provoking piece that would sit ery well with today's development debate around localization, shifting the power and decolonizing aid. A refreshing perspective from the so called South, challenging the North not to push their own agenda's when doing capacity development or strengthening civil society for that matter. A plea for self-determination also in terms of what to learn about and for what purpose, which results from actively negotating the individual, social, economical, political and moral. It is aimed at acquiring knowledge that builds on lived experience,  embraces academic expedience and furthers sustainable and inclusive development.

Last year, on this blog I published the CIVICUS civic space monitor. Recently, CIVICUS published an update, with civic space quickly disappearing. And if you are an expert on civic space that is an alarming statistic. However, if you are a civilian in the highlands of Ethiopia, civic space is probably the last thing on your mind. Your worries concern the amount of rain and the changing seasonality of it. Or the presence of a locust swarm that eats away your crop. Or that your labour force to harvest the crop is consumed by an armed struggle for self-determination, for better or worse.

This may be the situation that a lot of people we met on the road last year may find themselves in during this harvest season. During Christmas holidays as a family we traveled through the highlands of Ethiopia and saw the grain being harvested and the oxes doing their threshing work while others were winnowing the grain by hand with help of the wind. In such a context what is the relevance of civic space? Has the current armed struggle anything to do with civic space, or the lack thereof? Or is something else at play? To answer this question one needs to dig deep into the history of people and places to understand first of all whose space we talk about and secondly how it links to the threshing and winnowing of grain. Screaming loudly about shrinking civic space, as many are doing, may not be the best strategy to get the message across unless you have a clear perspective whose space we are talking about; why we should pay attention to this space; how it is shrinking; and how it affects people's lives to finally arrive at the question: What can be done about it?

During our trip last year we took note of the rich history of the Ethiopian highlands by seeing historic sites like Lalibela, Axum and Gondar enjoying marvelous beauty of nature and landscapes and friendly people. I cannot help but share a few pictures below. And though I had heard of the many changes to the road system in Ethiopia (including in its capital Addis Ababa) I was still surprised to find out how a journey from Addis to Dessie that 15 years ago took me a minimum of ten hours over a poorly maintained road was reduced to a six hours journey over a nicely paved road. The drivers were quick to point to all the new factories and/or horticultural farms that had sprung up during recent years and that had significantly influenced the local social economy, bringing a better standard of living for many formerly landless labourers. 

These are unusual times that demand unorthodox answers to the challenges we are facing. Yesterday evening our Prime Minister Mark Rutte made a very clear statement that has been long overdue since the outbreak of the Corona crisis. He first of all acknowledged the impact on children and youth of the crisis we have at hand as a global community. He then praised our kids and youth for their way of coping with the crisis and he ended with a clear invite to youth to participate in developing proper responses to the Pandemic. He also ordered our Mayors in all ciities to ensure youth is involved in thinking about solutions. The picture above, which illustrated youth participation in decision-making only a couple of months ago, just goes to show how their lives have been impacted dramatically.

What a great way to engage the next generation, who have seen their prospects vanish in a very short time-span. Still, what a resilience youth is still showing. In my direct environment I am witnessing pregnancies, births, couples that make life-long commitments to each other, young people buying houses etc. Teenagers continuing their side-jobs in supermarkets and not refraining from filling the shelves while taking precautionary measures as prescribed by their employers while continuing their education online. They still connect with study-mates and take part in online sessions with study-friends while planning for their summer holidays to spend time with each other or doing something useful for society.  In doing so, they signal to us how the world keeps turning though entire nations are held in lock-downs. Live goes on and life-impacting-decisions are taken despite an insecure environment and an unforeseeable future. Possessing the so called 21st century skills in abundance, would they not be best positioned to help us navigate a way out of the crisis? 

From June 1 onward, I have been asked to join a team in our Ministry that will support colleagues from thematic departments and selected civil society alliances to amplify in particular voices of youth, women and marginalized groups and to aim for safeguarding and strengthening civic space for the purpose of inclusive sustainable development. Something I have been advocating for since I have started this blog. What a privilege to be able to do so.

We do witness both a global re-emergence of the state as a health and security provider and science stepping up in trying to bring the evidence to the table to understand patterns of the current pandemic while businesses alter their business models and find ways to mobilize technical support in finding solutions. We also see a vibrant civil society where people are helping each other to stay safe, going about their daily affairs somehow and adhere to rules that have been set and limit our freedom in public places. It is still early days to evaluate the effect this will have on global civic space. However, the pandemic did bring a new togetherness that we have not experienced for a long time illustrating the need to better work together internationally and learn from each other.

Everyone is to give their best to overcome this crisis and also deal effectively with other crises that are still present at individual or communal level or those that are looming around the corner, like climate change. Like our Prime Minister I strongly believe young people can really help us out in developing lasting solutions. If we would only listen and include them in ongoing change processes.

In the past couple of months I had some time to reflect on ten years of working with civil society organizations for humanitarian aid and development cooperation, while getting up to speed with my role at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs focusing on aid effectiveness.

During my time working with civil society I have used Pestoff's triangle to conceptualize civil society space. It consists of three boundaries that separate the public and private domains, the for-profit and not-for-profit domains and the formal and informal domains. I came across this model in a partnership policy document of ICCO while preparing for a grant application back in 2010. It has since been a handy tool in furthering the dialogue around good governance, sustainable entrepreneurship and responsible citizenship.

I discovered that also others have used it to identify spaces where public-private partnerships may emerge and to argue why civil society should be part of the equation (like Avelino & Wittmayer, 2014). However, during the last two years working with Tearfund, a faith-based NGO (FBO), I failed to demonstrate the relevance of the model to the overal theory of change of Tearfund and help them increase their engagement with institutional actors like market players and government agencies.

Models like the one of Pestoff, find their origin in welfare state development policy and practice, with the state responsible for wealth redistribution. It insufficiently pays attention to indigenous institutions and/or faith systems which also deeply influence people's behavior and how they act as citizen, NGO-worker, entrepreneur or civil servant. Public agencies and secular NGOs increasingly realize that the domain of faith contains transformative power and is worth exploring. It is very much part of reality for a majority of people in developing countries (see a.o. contributions by Brenda Bartelink). It helps people to have a purpose driven life. Tacit knowledge, derived from these faith systems or oral traditions, may at times outweigh academic arguments in their ability to support or obstruct change. Observations are expanded from the known physical world into the unknown spiritual world with both worlds carrying competing truth claims influencing people's hopes and fears and giving them a sense of purpose.

Adding science and conscience domains
To accommodate both tacit knowledge as well as academic knowledge, I propose to add a knowledge dimension to Pestoff's model. It adds two domains to the model, the domain of science and the domain of conscience, with a hybrid space in between. The conscience domain has been developed over centuries of human experience and transfers from one generation to the next and stretches out from the known into the unknown. It is enshrined in holy texts and has been codified in declarations like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Faith in whatever form or shape extends the furthest into this unknown territory, claiming a kind of knowledge that is based on a revelation of divine promises and rather validated by human experience than by scientific proof.

Inclusion of both knowledge dimension turns the Pestoff model into a 3D model adding a fourth hybrid boundary between academic and tacit knowledge that also constitutes civil society. Civil society is the space where both people's value systems as well as academic research contribute to a global conscience that leads to negotiated goal setting. In yhis space academic knowledge has a role in validating some of the knowledge derived from tacit knowledge while also exposing flaws in thinking. Likewise tacit knowledge may put necessary restrain on scientific advancement, where research objectives have no societal contribution or where research methods are considered unethical.

Islands of predictability
The Sustainable Development Goals were born in this space and serve as reference points for our global conscience. Especially governments and companies aiming for short-term profits will be quick to question the realism of these promises and would prefer others to deliver on them first. Philosopher Hannah Arendt already stated in her best seller The Human Condition that international treaties serve as "islands of predictability in oceans of insecurity" (Hannah Arendt 1957). in order for the SDGs to be delivered on, civic space needs to be maintained and increased as much as possible aiming for convergence of objectives from the other domains towards sustainable development.

Can we measure changes in civil society space?
Mathematically it remains virtually impossible to calculate the size of civil society space, which has been a challenge as long as the concept exists. Boundaries of civil society remain blurred on each of the dimensions with a lot of hybrid space surrounding it. Hence the model still won't resolve the challenge of measuring civil society space. Nevertheless I hope this adapted version of the Pestoff triangle helps in furthering the thinking on aid effectiveness, paying due attention to the contributions of both academia and indigenous knowledge and/or faith systems and actors while developing common goals that will help shape a purpose driven international development practice.

In the past week leaders met in New York to reflect on progress on Agenda 2030 during the High Level Policy Forum on Sustainable Development. While implementing Agenda 2030 the potential power of purpose cannot be overestimated.

Development cooperation is known for approaches that value goal setting. Many practitioners in development cooperation are quite familiar with the logical framework approach (which was developed by USAID in the sixtees). I got it introduced to me in a Project Cycle Management course by MDF in the ninetees. where it was called Objective Oriented Programme Planning (OOPP). It was introduced to me with its German name ZOPP: Zielorientierte Projektplanung.

I could not find an etymological connection between the German word Ziel and the English word zeal, which originates from the greek word Zelos that is understood as the fervour or tireless devotion for a person, cause, or ideal and determination in its furtherance. The German word "Ziel", which is translated as goal or destination, still pays tribute to what I consider an important contributor to achieving results: The willingness to get there.

Rhineland and Anglo-Saxon features
The Logical Framework approach has been considered too rigid though its planning rigor has been widely recognized. What is often forgotten is that the approach was to be complemented by a proper problem analysis to establish the interlinkages between symptoms, problems and root causes. A so called problem tree is an important intermediate step in developing a logical framework . And according to the German ZOPP it is to be informed by a SWOP analysis. Yes this is not a typo. It is again a subtle difference between the Rhineland and Anglo-Saxon approach in managing for results. SWOP is used in Germany and stands for Strength, Weaknesses, Obstacles and Potentials. Here again I like the German choice of words over the Anglo-Saxon SWOT analysis that uses Opportunities and Threats instead. A preference for flow and energy over a rather opportunistic and defensive winner-takes-all approach. This approach is also favoured by Brian Levy in his book "Working with the grain. Integrating Governance and Growth in Development Strategies" that he wrote in 2014, partly inspired by Douglas North's "'adaptive efficiency". Levy articulates an approach to development that is more considerate to chaos. Levy introduces the book as an exploration on the meeting of theory and action. This is also a critical element in a Theories of Change approach where assumptiona are a more pronounced part of the intervention logic and also subject to monitoring. A "with-the-grain" approach conceptualizes change in an evoluationary rather than an engineering way.o

The deliberations in New York showed that the critical mass has not been mobilised yet, resulting in insufficient progress on many of the Sustainable Development Goals. In Theories of Change assumptions are made a.o. on contributions of others, finances being leveraged, capacity being developed or already in place etc. However, what if these assumption turn out to be false. What if sufficient money is available but not sufficient capacity to deliver? Going with the grain may not always work out well. It may be a good advise in change trajectories that only require minor corrections. However, what if radical change is required? Will the world be able to get their acts together or is everyone looking to each other for making the first move? Increasingly citizens turn away from governments as they no longer belief they are of much help in protecting the public goods. How can confidence in the multilateral system and governments in general be restored and public interest regain its primacy over individual country ambitions or personal gain?

Unified country cooperation frameworks
It is good to see that the UN finally has embarked on unified country development frameworks using a Theory of Change approach. The aspiration is to deal effectively with vested interests of individual UN agencies. Most importantly it should lead to a country-lead results framework that will improve mutual accountability while honouring alignment and country ownership ambitions that were already formulated in Paris back in 2005. If the UN will be successful in doing so, it is up to the bilaterals to follow suit, and ensure that their efforts support country systems and the multilaterals in a common strive to deliver on the Sustainable Development Goals.

In the context of international development cooperation this will require from individual agencies as well as individual countries to put cooperation and collaboration ahead of competition and organizational or national interests. A true recognition of ones own limitations is as important as knowing the specific value add one can bring to the table.

Mobilizing all resources
Despite the efforts to bring different resources and capacities together for a common cause, something else seems to be needed on top of it. This something else may be closer to a common purpose than a common cause. Could there be alternative futures to the doom and gloom scenario's that currently dominate the discourse? This is where the theory of change approach comes in strongly as a tool to formulate desired outcomes. It is not only about the results we achieve, but it is first and foremost to what outcomes they contribute.

A purpose driven development cooperation needs to tap into all people's resources, including abilities, intellect, ambitions, inspirations and hopes. Like the poster of a basketball player my son used to have at the wall of his bedroom with a quote of Ralph Emerson: "The task ahead of us is never as great as the power behind us."

Today and yesterday were the days of Pentecost. The days that many churches around the world commemorate the descend of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles and other followers of Jesus. Though for many development professionals from Western societies this reality is something from a distant past, it represents spiritual capital that many other countries still have in abundance.

I was pointed to the term spiritual capital by a colleague involved in the third SDG status report of the Netherlands. The report mentions having a philosophy of life as an important driving force for action. It was acknowledged that attention to this aspect has long been overlooked in sustainable development policy-making. Interest in spiritual capital is on the rise according to the authors of the report. Religions have traditions of poverty reduction, healthcare and education. Pope Fransiscus and 'green Patriarch' Bartholomeüs were mentioned in relation to their call on believers and non-believers for ecological and social responsibility.

​Back in 2014 the Dalai Lama paid a visit to our country with a message about education of the heart which challenged the way our education systems are wired. According to the Dalai Lama our educational systems are oriented mainly toward material values and training one’s understanding. But reality teaches us that we do not come to reason through understanding alone. We should place greater emphasis on inner values.

Faith may also be an obstructing force as was mentioned in the same SDG report, as women and girls are often denied opportunities for self efficiacy as a result of religious norms. In my own church denomination in the Netherlands for instance only this year functions like pastor, elder or deacon were opened up for women. Though for some this illustrates the slow pace for change within faith systems, it also demonstrates that emancipatory forces do not by-pass the church. Change will come inevitably. The question is: do we have spiritual literacy to mobilise spiritual capital for achieving sustainable development outcomes? Knowing that 80% of the world's population would call themselves religious this seems to me a very relevant question.

Religion and development
The Amsterdam Centre for Religion and Sustainable Development at the Free University will bring out an annual report on religion and development under leadership of Prof. Dr. Azza Karam. Dr. Karam served recently as senior advisor on social and cultural development at UNFPA, where she coordinated the outreach with faith-based partners. The Dutch-Egyptian influencer was also chairing the UN Inter-Agency Task Force on Religion and Development that brings out an annual report on Faith linkages to the UN containing an impressive list of resources.

It seems the Netherlands is just waking up to the potential of its spiritual capital. For long faith-based NGOs were treated with some healthy suspicion as they were known for missions intertwined with proselytism, which remains a key-exclusion phrase in allocating government subsidies. However, what spiritual capital did we lose in the process? Could faith be an entry point for change? Which values are formed and what behavior is learned and what new insights are gained in the realm of faith that can be leveraged for sustainable development?

UNFPA has since long recognized the need to engage with faith actors when it comes to issues around family planning, stigma and discrimination, sexuality education and the like. In 2009 they developed guidelines to help their staff engaging with faith based organizations as agents of change, which they considered vital for implementing the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo in 1994. More recently a new Partnership for Religion and Development (PaRD) has been created, providing for an interface between faith-based NGOs and the donor community.

Putting spiritual capital to use
There is a danger however in mobilizing spiritual capital for developmental purposes. In a sense organizing special conferences or side-events around religion and development could contribute to a siloed approach to faith-based development as a special track, with a separate (often private) funding base and corresponding private accountability requirements. Lack of checks and balances within the church for instance caused religious clergy to exploit their constitutencies for their own material gain or to increase the wealth of the church administration. Many basilics across Europe testify to it. This has turned the church into one of the material power houses of this world. Today this orientation may still be found in Orthodox as well as Evangelical corners of the Christian landscape, from the Ethiopian Orthodox Church collecting from the general public for their majestic church buildings to the Evangelical Prosperity mega Churches in Nigeria that are very influential in West-African Christianity. However, the spiritual capital in most may be burried in the process. Christian communities could rediscover their spiritual capital and put it to use for the community as it has been there right from the beginning from the days of Pentecost: "They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need" (Acts 2:45). The purpose of giving clearly was not the church but were people in need. It is not that they sold everything, but they did get rid of abundance in order to provide for the needy and these initiatives spiraled out of control in the end becoming an existential threat to the Roman Empire.

Praying in spirit and truth
Studying contemporary and historic Christianity through these lenses helps to rediscover the spiritual capital hidden in faith itself. It requires religious literacy which in my case I somehow received in my Christian upbringing (with of course some terrific blind spots for potential contributions from Buddhism, Humanism, Islam and the like). For instance in the gospel story of John, where Jesus speaks to a Samaritan woman at Jacob's well in Samaria. Not only is it quite unusual that he speaks to a woman, it is even a woman from a different ethnic group (the Samaritans) with whom the Jews of his days were not on speaking terms. However, the conversation quickly tells her that she is talking to a prophet, which makes her ask the burning religious question of those days: Where to pray? In Jerusalem or in Samaria? Jesus' answer is even more remarkable and still carries meaning for our days of pentecost: True worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. These words go way deeper than an answer to an obvious relevant question at the time. This answer helps me even today reaching out to other faiths and world religions. In fact while living in India and Egypt and later in Ethiopia I have discovered praying in spirit and truth is potentially available to every human being, even if it takes the shape of a curse or condemnation.

Creation or evolution, a matter of truth or spirit?
In the past year, within our church community, some people had quite an issue with a sermon that our pastor held in September 2017 combining the story of Genesis with evolutionary approaches in helping us to further our understanding of the first chapters of the Bible. Not by comparing and contrasting them to finally point to one option. But to accept both the revealing power of the Holy Scripture confirming God's acts of creation as well as acknowledging years of scientific studies into evolutionary principles and academic insights derived from it. Not so long ago a sermon like this would confront the believer with a choice for either the creation story or the evolution theory. Nowadays, both perspectives may co-exist, with academic insights complementing theological perspectives and even deepening appreciation of the complexity of creation and the evolutionary processes that are part of it. Knowledge and faith going together mutually re-enforcing each other.

How to bring spiritual resources on board?
Having worked with a wide variety of development actors I have sensed the Spirit at work in many hearts of committed colleagues, disregarding their religious background or personal convictions. I have no difficulty in finding common cause with a progressive humanist who would be at the barricades for the acceptance of sexual minorities nor with a Muslim colleague working for a humanitarian aid agency.

I am in favour of a radical inclusive approach. My ideal international development organization would include people from all walks of life engaged both in aid provision or development work, working side by side, each tapping their own personality, intellect, skills and spiritual resources being able to connect to different groups in society. Also on the receiving end I would like to see people regaining dignity and rediscovering their god-given potential and therefore local capacity (from whatever ethnic, social or religious grouping) would always need to receive primacy over external technical support. That support should be indiscriminatory, knowledge driven and culturally-sensitive, value based and implemented in accordance with internationally recognized standards of impartiality and aid effectiveness, in particular when it comes to humanitarian aid. I belief I have recently joined such an agency, that I am happy to be part of and contribute my perspective to while learning from others.

The debate as to how aid is to be provided and how one is to be aided will never end I suppose. In the Netherlands we are blessed with a sector quarterly (Vice Versa) that also brings out special editions. Though media neutrality may be questioned a bit, since these special editions are sponsored by particular aid agencies wanting to spur the debate on a topic deemed relevant for their cause, it helps digging a bit deeper into specific subjects. This Spring's edition is entirely devoted to Change the Game Academy, a programme of Wilde Ganzen (Wild Geese).

​Change the Game Academy is supporting local organizations to amplify their voice in local advocacy efforts, signaling the increased attention paid to local game changing capacity and home-grown civil society development. The question that came to my mind is: "Is the game really changing and if it is, who are really changing the game?". What is certainly changing is organizations advertising each other's approaches. ICCO introduces the Change the Game Academy of Wilde Ganzen on its web site as follows: "Change the Game Academy is an innovative program that helps civil society organizations all over the world, mainly in the global south, to learn to raise funds locally and to mobilize other kinds of support". This is not just a nice guesture of a like minded agency, but it is the result of Dutch organizations working together in alliances as a means to access co-funding from the Dutch government in what is called a strategic partnership. So question is: who is changing the game here?

Global civil society
Civil society is under pressure globally as Siri Lijfering reports in the same edition, as she is quoting the State of Civil Society Report of CIVICUS. Civil society has been understood as the arena between the public, the private (market) and the informal (family) domains where people advance common interests (Heinrich 2004:13). However, it appeared tough to quantify this space, despite attempts with a Civil Society Index. More recently the CSI has been replaced by a worldmap color coding civic space using five broad categories: closed, repressed, obstructed, narrowed and open. It resembles the way in which FEWS-net tracks food insecurity around the world and helps in having a birds-eye view of civic space and where it is mostly contested. The word that features frequently in the CIVICUS report is 'power', fitting the concept of countervailing power that is often associated with civil society. However, as is illustrated by the narrative reporting on the state of democracy, (part 3 of the report) the likelihood of civil society being seen as supporting opposition forces is quite high.