By Kate Newman
2024 has been a super election year, during which nearly half the world’s population had the chance to go to the polls. At the same time over 72% of people globally continue to live in repressed or closed civic space and peaceful activism has become increasingly criminalised. The role that INTRAC must play in strengthening civil society ecosystems is clearer than ever. We must support actors, organisations, movements and networks as they navigate their shifting civic space and sustain energy and effectiveness in their struggles for justice.
This year we launched our strategic framework which will guide our practice for the next five years. As part of our wider vision of transforming the ecosystem of support to civil society, it charts our intention for our own organisational change. Over time, we are shifting from being a unitary organisation to becoming network led. Over the next five years we will champion ethical and values-driven consultants who are locally rooted and globally connected, as a key pillar for legitimate, effective, inclusive, and resilient civil society. These consultants will be instrumental in enabling civil society organisations (CSOs) and actors to navigate the complex dynamics that perpetuate injustice and reinforce inequalities. They will support CSOs to keep focused on the long-term changes they are working to bring about.
Change is challenging – for individuals, organisations, and wider systems and structures. As I think back over 2024, I am both amazed by the changes we have been through organisationally, and aware of the challenges ahead – as we continue on our journey and respond to our external environment.
For INTRAC it has been an exciting year
Taking our strategic framework as a springboard, we have been developing our thinking about ethical and values driven consultancy. We are prioritising who the consultants are (the knowledge and lived experience they bring); their approach to consultancy (rooted in a relational approach with values that enable those they are working with the drive the changes they want to see); and their intention through the consultancy (of contributing to resilient, inclusive, legitimate and effective civil society, grounded in anti-racism and feminism).
We have seen an increasing number of our network consultants from outside Europe delivering consultancy, with project leadership from Africa, Asia and Latin America.
We have also launched a series of new training courses. These continue to be designed by civil society for civil society, but we are increasingly focusing on the underpinning analysis and approaches that will contribute to locally led development. These include our Theory of Change (ToC) course, which strongly emphasises locally led development, and our Decolonising Safeguarding offer which challenges and unpacks the unequal power structures which perpetuate harms.
This work has been complemented by our efforts to strengthen local consultancy. We are supporting consultants in their professional development and in their networking, convening spaces for them to learn together and from each other, both as peers and through our mentorship pilot programme. to learn together and from each other, both as peers and through our mentorship pilot programme.
Importantly, our approach is not rigid but adaptive. We are using a test and learn method to navigate our own change pathway.
What we are learning
In writing our strategic framework and agreeing organisational priorities we made choices. We reflected on some of the roles we have played historically, and questioned whether we should continue to do these. As a values-driven UK-based organisation, we considered whether we are occupying the spaces and playing the roles that we should be. We looked at our place in a sector that is reckoning with its colonial history and acknowledging ongoing structural racism and associated power dynamics.
We agreed that we should pivot: shifting the balance of consultancy delivered directly as UK-based staff to facilitating and enabling a network of locally rooted and globally connected consultants. We agreed that we should limit our direct delivery to those contexts where it was appropriate for individuals with our position and specific experience.
However, making the transition is challenging in practice. This is due not only to our organisational constraints (primarily our financial model) but also to the sector in which we work. Too often, those commissioning consultancy follow existing procurement processes that make it more difficult for the locally rooted consultants we want to work with to bring their full selves into their work. For example, their ‘quality standards’ prioritise strong English writing skills above rich, context-based experience.
In our strategic framework we committed to be ‘incrementally radical’. We recognised that we would need to be present for the long term in our journey of change; we are recognising that the process of change is gradual and that we need to work hard to retain momentum through our practice.
Questions we want to answer over the coming year
As we keep focused on being unashamedly for civil society, we reiterate our long-term vision, of locally rooted ecosystems of civil society support. We are confident that these are necessary for a vibrant, inclusive and effective civil society. This leaves us with a set of questions we would like to answer over the coming year:
- Will those who are committed to shifting the power invest in shifting the civil society support infrastructure?
- How can we engage like-minded thinkers in what we do (and what we want to be doing)?
- As we work to shift expectations in the demand and supply of consultancy (to champion an ethical and values-driven approach) what appropriate roles can we play as a broker?
- How can we challenge and support others in their change processes as we pay attention to and learn from our own process of change, enabling both to inform the other?
As we work to gather insight and evidence, and answer these questions, we will continue to pay attention to who we are listening to. We will learn with others rooted locally, connected globally, as we move forward, with our own journey of transformation, and in our contribution to wider change. We look forward to sharing more over 2025.