Mary B. Anderson
Former Executive Director of CDA Collaborative Learning Projects
Former President of the Collaborative for Development Action, Inc.
Author of Do No Harm: How Aid Can Support Peace--Or War

Peace Scholar in Residence

February 12 - 25, 2012

"The Listening Project: How Recipients Judge International Assistance"

Public Lecture with Mary Anderson, Peace Scholar in Residence
February 21, 2012
6:30-8:30PM
Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace & Justice Theatre
University of San Diego

RSVP at www.sandiego.kintera.org/peacescholar

Everyday dedicated people who care about the world get on airplanes and fly to distant locations. Their intent is to help people in these places overcome poverty, resolve conflict, save and restore the environment and achieve human rights. These individuals are recruited, paid for and backed up by an elaborate apparatus of agencies, funding mechanisms and legislative choices that enable their work. The international assistance community spans all borders and represents a valued generosity and concern for others. However, poverty persists, conflicts recur, the environment deteriorates and humans continue to experience abuse at the hands of governments and other powers. In spite of the good that is done, the effects do not meet expectations.

Four years ago, Mary B. Anderson launched an international effort to explore how and why this occurs by listening to the analyses and judgments of people who live in societies that have been on the recipient end of international efforts to be helpful. Teams of “listeners” have engaged thousands of people in twenty countries around the word in open-ended conversations exploring how they experience the cumulative impacts of aid. By listening to these people—from the fishermen on the beach to government ministerial staff—our intent was to gain their perspectives on the cumulative impacts of international aid.

Mary B. Anderson will report on what people in recipient societies have relayed and on the implications of their analyses for how we proceed to work across borders more effectively.

Class Visits in KIPJ 215

Research Methodologies: Tuesday February 14 | 9:15 am - 12:05 pm
Post-Conflict Peacebuilding: Thursday, February 23 | 2:30-5:20 pm

Office Hours in KIPJ Suite 113, Room 119

Wednesday February 15 | 10 am - 12 pm
Thursday February 16 | 10 am – 12 pm
Wednesday February 22 | 10 am – 12 pm
Thursday February 23 | 10 am – 12 pm

Appointments recommended. Sign up at: www.tinyurl.com/peacescholar

For assistance, contact Don Trinh at don@sandiego.edu or (619) 260-7795.

Biography

Mary B. Anderson was most recently Executive Director of CDA Collaborative Learning Projects and President of the Collaborative for Development Action, Inc., a small consulting firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

An economist, Mary Anderson has specialized in: rural development strategies that build on local capacities; gender analysis in development programming; the relationships between emergency relief assistance and long-term development; and educational policies as these affect access to primary education in developing countries.

Since 1995, she has launched and directed the Local Capacities for Peace Project to learn more about the relationships between humanitarian and development assistance and conflict. The Project is a collaborative effort of a number of donor governments, international and indigenous NGOs, and multilateral aid agencies. Its purpose is to learn from past experience how aid may be provided in conflict settings so that, rather than feeding into and exacerbating the conflicts, it helps local people disengage from the violence that surrounds them and begin to develop alternatives for addressing the problems that underlie their conflict.

Mary B. Anderson has written extensively on the subjects described above. In 1999, she authored a book entitled Do No Harm: How Aid Can Support Peace--Or War which sets out the lessons learned from the Local Capacities for Peace Project.

Two current book projects:

Steps toward Conflict Prevention (STEPS); co-authored with Marshall Wallace: This book project is based on a set of case studies that describe the stories of fourteen communities around the world that decided to exempt themselves from participating in the civil wars taking place in their home countries. Examples include: Muslims in Rwanda who did not take part in the genocide; the city of Tuzla in Bosnia who refused to engage in ethnic cleansing; indigenous peoples in Colombia who formed peace communities resisting the pressure of the FARC, the para-militaries and the government army; an area in Mozambique who, under the “protection” of the Spirit of a former chief, maintained schools, agricultural production, roads, etc. throughout the Mozambican civil war and refused ever to allow arms to enter the area designated as under the protection of this chief; and others in the Philippines; Manipur, India; Fiji; Burkina Faso; Sierra Leone; Nigeria; Afghanistan; and Sri Lanka.

The Listening Project; co-authored with Dayna Brown: This book project contains a series of open-ended conversations with many people, ranging across different levels of society (from government officials to the fishermen on the beach), in countries/communities that have been on the recipient end of international assistance. The purpose of these conversations was to listen to these people, some of whom had actually participated in projects and others who had simply observed the processes and impacts of aid, as they analyzed and sorted the impacts of international attempts to be helpful in their countries (such as development aid, humanitarian assistance, peace work, human rights work, environmental advocacy). The project talked with thousands of people in 21 countries and we are now analyzing the common themes that emerged in these conversations across countries, contexts, types of aid, etc. The purpose of this project – and the book – is to help international actors who want to “do good” to do better than we have been doing.