ICCO Programmatic Approach

Over the past three months I have been busy with an evaluative study for ICCO about their so-called Programmatic Approach. This approach has been introduced in ICCO since 2007 and radically changed their way of development programming. As one of the key Dutch development agencies, ICCO has worked through local partners in developing countries for decades. However, this was mainly through projects or institutional funding. In the Programmatic Approach ICCO has started to look at development challenges in a more holistic way, and tries to deal with complex issues in development through local coalitions of partners. These programme coalitions go through a process of programme development in which they define common goals, both at the level of interventions, but also at the level of joint learning, capacity building or lobby and advocacy.

Below is an interview with me from the http://blip.tv/search?q=icco website.


Together with consultant Erica Wortel I did an evaluative study of the Programmatic Approach of ICCO, in which we consolidated the experiences with the approach. In October and November we studies a lot of literature on the approach, interviewed staff, management and partners and conducted a survey.

The study showed that a lot of progress has been made by ICCO in developing the Programmatic Approach. The approach is well appreciated by both staff and partners. Obviously, introducing a new approach has not been easy, in particular because ICCO has also gone through other important changes over the same period. On 15 December we presented our findings and conclusions to ICCO in Utrecht, which was well received.

More information about the ICCO Programmatic Approach can be found on https://proglearning.pbworks.com/ and http://www.icco.nl/delivery/westafrica/doc.phtml?p=programmatic-approach .