Given Hapunda

49 Managing for Impact Principles While the six components are important, there are three fundamental propositions that should guide how the six components are implemented. These fundamental propositions or principles include: 1. People centered - the idea behind this principle is to think of people as the center of programmes and that the project exists to serve the values of these people. Kusters et al., (2010) argued that this approach thinks in terms of people rather than of abstract entities such as sectors or regions. In people-centered development, instead of asking ‘what are our targets?’ actors ask ‘who is to benefit?’ and ‘whose interests are being met?’ They do not stop at the question, ‘what are we going to change?’ Rather, they ask ‘how do we believe change will come about?’ The theory of change that projects identify and consciously adopt underpins the strategy. 2. Empowerment - empowerment means allowing people to target charge of the desired future. This means people should be asked to define their own targets, to develop their own tools, and to take their own decisions. 3. Learning - empowerment is useless unless there is Knowledge among the people the project seeks to serve. Through critical reflection and learning, the people can learn lessons that can be used for the betterment of the project. Wageningen UR Centre for Development Innovation observed that learning is crucial to a model of development that does not start out with the answers. In fact, it does not believe that there are fixed, packageable answers at all. Instead, a group of stakeholders sets out together to navigate the realities, using a conscious process of reviewing and reflecting on experience to fine-tune their approach, to generate and share new knowledge and to feed new insights back into the strategic guidance. 4. Responsiveness – a project has to take responsibility for its progress towards the desired impact. This is not an easy thing as it requires change of minds and work cultures. A culture of positive thinking is required to get things done for the people who the project is set to serve is important. This goes beyond meeting targets. This is about responsiveness to the needs of the beneficiaries. As IFAD (2002) puts it, project staff and partners can only claim success when society’s most marginalised or affected people or organisations themselves indicate how they have benefited directly from the intervention ( Kusters et al ., 2010). Diagnosing Organizations Managing for Impact Organisations need to be regularly assessed to determine to what extent their projects in actual operation are managing towards impact. As earlier indicated, most development initiatives are not being