Designing social development interventions

This lesson brings together the theory covered so far, harambee, the African Social Development approach, Midgley’s model, and Developmental Social Work, into a practical question: how do you actually design an intervention that qualifies as social development, rather than a well-intentioned project that stops short of it?

Start with the societal purpose, not the activity

Under the harambee model, design does not begin with a list of activities. It begins with a societal purpose. Before choosing what to do, ask what benefit or development this is meant to bring to society as a whole. This is the reverse of how many projects are designed in practice, where an activity is chosen first, a training programme, a grant scheme, a construction project, and its societal relevance is only described afterwards, if at all. A properly designed harambee intervention states its societal purpose first, and only then works out which activities, at whichever level, will serve it.

Locate the intervention across the five levels

Once the societal purpose is set, map the intervention across the Ubuntu based systems view: individual and family, including clan and tribe, community, society, including Indigenous leadership and laws, environment, and spirit. A well designed intervention does not need to operate at every level, but it should be able to say, for each level it touches, how that level’s activity feeds the societal purpose identified at the outset. An intervention that only ever operates at the individual and family level, however well run, needs a clear account of how it connects upward to society, or it risks falling into the disqualifier.

Apply the three part test and the disqualifier at the design stage, not only at evaluation

Lesson 7 introduced the three part test, does the intervention contribute at the societal level, is it carried out at the societal level, does it develop society as a whole, along with the disqualifier, that an intervention benefiting only an individual, a family or a specific group does not qualify, however worthy it is. Practitioners often apply this kind of test only at the evaluation stage, after a project has already been built. Designing for harambee means applying the test before a single activity is written into a plan. If a proposed intervention cannot pass the test on paper, it needs to be redesigned or reconnected to a societal structure before implementation, not adjusted retrospectively to sound more societal than it is.

Design economic components around justice, not only around output

Following the harambee view that economic growth flows from economic justice and collective effort, the economic component of an intervention should be designed by asking what structural unfairness is being corrected, land access, gendered exclusion, unequal access to capital, rather than only asking what output or income increase is being targeted. This is where Developmental Social Work’s core characteristics become useful design tools: maximising productive capacity, securing access to the means of production, and structuring assistance such as start-up capital as a stepping stone rather than an end point. Designed this way, the economic and justice components of an intervention are the same piece of work, not two separate workstreams bolted together.

Build in the macro level from the start

The African Social Development approach identified a historic pattern in which interventions are designed at the micro and meso level and never reach the macro level at all. Good design corrects for this pattern deliberately. At the design stage, ask what policy, structure, or institution this intervention needs to connect to, or help build, in order to become sustained social development rather than a single project. If no such connection exists, the intervention should include, as one of its own objectives, the work of building that connection, whether that means advocacy, policy engagement, or formal recognition by relevant authorities.

Check the intervention against Midgley’s integration principle

Midgley’s social development model requires that social and economic policy be planned together, rather than as parallel or sequential tracks. As a design check, ask whether the intervention’s social objectives and economic objectives were actually planned in the same process, by the same team, at the same time. An intervention where a social component and an economic component were designed separately and then joined together afterwards has not met this integration principle, even if both components are individually well designed.

A short design checklist

Before finalising a social development intervention, a designer working within this course’s frameworks should be able to answer the following.

1. What is the societal purpose, stated before any activity was chosen.
2. Which of the five levels does the intervention touch, and how does each connect upward to that societal purpose.
3. Does the intervention pass the three part test, and does any part of it fall into the disqualifier.
4. What structural unfairness does the economic component correct, and how does that correction generate growth.
5. What policy, structure or institution does this intervention connect to, or aim to build, so it becomes sustained rather than a single event.
6. Were the social and economic objectives planned together, from the outset, by the same process.

Now, you should be able to take a proposed development activity and redesign it so that it states a societal purpose from the outset, is mapped across the five Ubuntu based levels, passes the three part test and disqualifier, treats its economic component as an outcome of justice rather than a separate target, and is built with a macro level connection in place from the start rather than added afterwards.