Generating the Future - To the UN SDGs

Future Generations

Future Generations is an International NGOs working in countries as diverse as China, India, Peru, West Virginia, Haiti and Afghanistan. It is also an accredited University offers a two-year applied Master’s Degree in Community Development and Empowerment. The Future Generations emerged in 1992 as a charitable non-government and nonprofit organization for the purpose of learning from, and building upon the world’s most successful examples of community empowerment and social change. It is complemented by the Future Generations Graduate School, incorporated in 2006 in the State of West Virginia with authorization to provide a Master's Degree in Applied Community Development. In year 2016, the Future Generations Graduate School is promoted to Future Generation University and the Future Generations became a center for research and practice of social change within Future Generations University. At Present the Future Generations is a global knowledge network of practitioners of social change and a center of research and practice within Future Generations University. Members are organizations and individuals who link together to evolve global practice for sustainable, effective, equitable impact. The Center encourages life-long learning by providing educational resources, grant support, and strengthening of collaborative working relationships among its network of members. In return, the Future Generations University derives inspiration for curriculum enhancement through the innovative community-based accomplishments and research activities of its alumni and global partners. The core of Future Generations work is a process that communities and government can use to shape their future.

The Future Generations started its operations in Afghanistan in May 2002, and registered an INGO with the Ministry of Economy of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan in 20 October 2005. The Future Generations Afghanistan (FGA) country office is located in Kabul with a regional office in Nangarhar province, rendering development and humanitarian operations in eastern provinces (Nangarhar, Laghman, Kunar and Nuristan). FGA has successfully partnered with Future Generations in India, China and Peru in the design of training and compiling of lessons-learned from community-managed health care, empowerment of women and marginalized groups and community-based development programs. FGA has also collaborated on a number of community-based development initiatives with the Afghan Ministries of Rural Rehabilitation and Development, Ministry of Public Health, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Refugees and Returnees, National Environmental Protection Agency and Independent Directorate of Local Governance as well as with UN agencies (WFP, UNDP, OCHA-AHF), international organizations/diplomatic mission (JICA, USAID, CIDA, French and USA Embassies) in Afghanistan and academia (Johns Hopkins University and Future Generations University).

The FGA’s early programs began with mobilizing and empowering communities to form locally driven initiatives in literacy, conservation, local governance, and healthcare. These initial programs were developed around the concepts of SEED-SCALE in Bamyan and Ghazni, extended to Daikundi provinces in central region and expanded to Zabul, Urozgan in South in 2005, and to Baghlan, Panjishir, Logar and to Nangarhar, Kunar and Laghman in Eastern Afghanistan 2007. Presently, FGA rendering development program including the government national programs; and involve in relief and humanitarians in food security and agriculture, returnees and IDPs protection and reintegration in eastern provinces.

FGA Structure

The FGA head quarter is in Kabul with its sub-offices in Provinces. The Kabul office covers FGA operations in Central – East & West regions the FGA organizational Structure encompassing of divisions at the central and provincial levels: Center Level: The Kabul office is the headquarter of the country office. It has divisions at the policy level, program level and supporting division. The country director and Managing Directors are the key policy level employees. The Managing Director Operation monitor and coordinate the tasks of Admin HR Procurement & IT Departments. The Managing Director East responsible for provincial offices East Managers activities and Managing Director Program responsible for overall program Management, implementation and coordination in Central, South East Regions, the monitoring and evaluation, and the capacity building managers are working with program development manager for project/program designing, monitoring and evaluation. Administration and Finance Division is the supporting office of FGA. The purpose of this division is to provide administrative and finance supports and services to the FGA management in Kabul and provinces by assists in developing / implementing administrative and finance rules, regulations and guidelines. This division helps to grease the movement of maximum efficiency to all other divisions and thereby the FGA as a whole. A. Regional Level: The regional level structure incorporating two divisions (a) Program development section (Regional Manager); and (b) Humanitarian Program section. The staff at regional level are operational level employees involve in project management and implementation. The Development Program Section comprising of key staff in social mobilization, engineering, management information system, capacity building, women empowerment and project monitoring. This section will be involving in similar projects / programs in other provinces. The Humanitarian Program Sections has been supporting the returnees, IDP and their receiving host communities through implementation of food and cash based transfer program, Food for Asset and food for work programs in Nangarhar, Kunar and Laghman provinces. This unit will be working in similar program and CHF funded program in eastern regions and other provinces. The key staff of Humanitarian section are relief provincial manager, assessment and verification officers, SCOPE Officers, monitors, data entry and food distribution staff. The regional office manages by Provincial / Project managers who are responsible to report to Managing Director East & Program. For more detail, please refer to FGA organogram (2023-2025). Organizational Chart Country Director is responsible for overall management of FGA. He is reporting to the President of Future Generations and Board of Directors in the West Virginia. The Managing Directors are responsible to manage and coordinate their works of their divisions, supervise their staff in Kabul and provinces. The operation staff is work in the provinces responsible for project management and represent FGA at the regional levels. The organizational chart (organogram) of FGA is illustrated below.

No of FGA’s Staff in 2023

FGA’s Governance Policies

1. Administration Policy and Procedure

   This policy has documented the principles, policies and procedure governing FGA’s administrative framework and operating practices. It provides employees with procedural instructions, illustrates the scope of the responsibility and authorities of staff and program divisions and standardizes all organizational rules and procedures in order to create a system of internal control as well as improve transparency and accountability. The above Policy has been revised and updated for 2024.

2. Human Resource Policy

   The document outlines the general principles & standard of Human Resource process that apply in FGA offices. It is intended for program managers to ensure that minimum personnel requirements are met, and for their staff, to inform them in general of theirs working entitlements. The purpose is to ensure that all staff members receive fair & equitable treatment while working in FGA. The above Policy has been revised and updated for 2024.

3. Finance Policy and Procedure Policy

   This policy provides a standardized set of concepts, principles & procedure of FGA financial system to ensure consistent and effective operations throughout the FGA offices in Afghanistan. It standardizes all organizational rules and procedures in order to create a system of internal controls, improve transparency and accountability and help the FGA to safeguard its resources.  As FGA grows in size and complexity, program managers and field staff need to be clear about the extent of their financial responsibilities: the distinction between procedures which are mandatory and those with guidelines: and the way in which their work interacts with the finance division in the country office. The above Policy has been revised and updated for 2024.

4. Security Measurement Policy

   This policy provides a framework to FGA management at different levels to identify and reduce the risk associated with staff, offices, assets and programs’ and to formalize the analysis of the security risks on the basis of the underlying threats and potential future threats rather than on the basis of historical incidents. The policy also provides guidance to all FGA staff members and visitors on security issues. This document contains guidelines for the safety and security of FGA’s employees, office, vehicles and property. This guideline can reduce risks, but does not eliminate them. The purpose of this guideline is to minimize security risks, and vulnerability of FGA staff members working, traveling, and living in insecure environments. The above Policy has been revised and updated for 2024.

5. Anti-Corruption Policy

   The Anti-Corruption Policy aims to communicate FGA policy regarding the deterrence and investigation of suspected misconduct and dishonesty by employees and others, and to provide specific instructions regarding appropriate action in case of suspected violations. The policy provides a framework for all employees in the prevention, detection, reporting and management of fraud and corruption in the FGA workplace in Kabul and provinces. The policy applies to individuals who are engaged in providing services to the FGA or receiving services from the FGA, its partners, counterparts, contractors etc. The above Policy has been revised and updated for 2024.

6. Program Management Manual

   The program management manual helps FGA employees and stakeholders to understand Future Generations approach to self-sufficiency and social change. The manual describes self-sufficiency and social change diagram of FGA, the FGA operational strategy (SEED-SCALE), its four principles, seven tasks and five evaluation criteria. The manual also explains the dimension of SEED-SCALE approach and the scale up strategies. The positive impacts of Future Generations projects and organization operational strategy are mentioned in the last section. The above Policy has been revised and updated for 2024.

7. Program Monitoring Manual

   The program monitoring manual is prepared in seven chapters and aims to help FGA employees with monitoring the different aspects of the projects. Chapter-I explains the definition and the basic of monitoring and evaluation together with result chain. Chapter-II is about the developing the qualitative and quantitative indicators for the projects together with the role of baseline information in monitoring and evaluation of the program. Chapter III to V describe the purpose and elements of logical frameworks, and the role of stakeholders. The Chapter-VI is about participatory monitoring and the Chapter-VII is about the monitoring of projects including monitoring objectives and the processing tools. The above Policy has been revised and updated for 2024.

8. Program Monitoring Tools

   Future Generations Afghanistan uses the European Commission Monitoring Tools Manual, which is prepared for NGOs. The manual contains the communication tools including how to conduct (a) numerous types of interviews (individual, key informant, focus groups, hold a lesson-learned meeting etc.), (b) different analysis (gender, stakeholder, livelihoods, risk, conflict etc.), (c) several assessment techniques (surveys, participatory etc.). The manual also explains on how to carry out a field visit, or set up a complaints and response mechanism. The above Policy has been revised and updated for 2024.

9. Program Evaluation Manual

   Future Generations as learning organization requires to evaluate its program, and regular gather and disseminate new knowledge among Future Generations Global Network including experts of Future Generations University. The program evaluation manual helps FGA managers to design evaluation for donor funded development and humanitarian projects. It will also help the employees in information gathering, analysis and presenting conclusion and recommendations. The manual explains the evaluation reporting template including reporting requirement of AHF funded projects. The above Policy has been revised and updated for 2024.

10. FGA Access Strategy

    The FGA Access Strategy is a policy for FGA to render humanitarian assistance in insecure area. The Access Strategy aims to provide FGA and their partners with the flexibility to experiment with alternative forms of implementation that are tailored to the local context including provision of alternative approaches for inclusion of women as members and decision makers. The policy defines measures to mitigate fiduciary risk inherent to operating in a volatile insecure environment and also establish a framework in which FGA and its donors, and communities can evaluate the successes and failures of alternative implementation approaches and share lessons learned. The access strategy establishes further decentralized mechanisms within the humanitarian program structure that allow local decision-making, timely sub-project identification, rapid delivery of humanitarian assistance and development project implementation as per the outline specification mentioned in project document. The above Policy has been revised and updated for 2024.

11. Procurement Manual

    FGA Office Procurement policies and procedures. Compliance with this manual is effective January 1st , 2023. This Procurement Procedures Manual is applicable for all FGA Offices inside Afghanistan. This manual will change as country office programs and need base, and so it will be reviewed continually through each year. As a minimum, this manual shall be reviewed at least semi-annually for the first year and then annually the year following to ensure it is still fit for purpose. Purpose of the Procurement Manual The purpose of this field office procurement manual is to a) provide standardized clarification on FGA procurement policies and procedures b) manage risk c) reinforce internal controls d) provide material for employee training e) drive improvements and f) reduce waste, fraud and abuse. The FGA Procurement Procedures Manual should be read in conjunction with FGA HQ Standard Operating Procedures (SOP). The Central office Procurement Team ensure that the requirements in this manual align with other distributed SOPs However, should there be an erroneous difference between what you find in this manual and what you find outside of this manual The above Policy has been revised and updated for 2024.

Necessary Conditions for Change

Future Generations researchers and colleagues have been monitoring community-based development and conservation programs worldwide to examine why some programs have succeeded and others have failed. This research concludes that in all cases of success, in which the program has been both sustainable and has gone to scale, four determinants can be found. In all these cases, successful community change resulted from a set of necessary conditions, which the SEED-SCALE process has described as four key principles.

1. Build from Community Success

   People’s energy and creativity expand as they realize that they are capable of controlling the challenges in their lives. One success becomes the stepping stone for subsequent successes and generates community confidence and forward momentum.

   Building on community successes is not the customary approach to social imgchange. Professionals, government officials (and indeed the communities themselves) typically focus on the problems, and a long list quickly develops: poverty, the bad roads, poor schools, political, ethnic, or religious factions, etc. Focusing on the problems emphasizes the deficiencies of a community instead of its existing strengths and capacity. The consequence is to beat the community down through what amounts to amassing the evidence that the community is incapable of solving its problems. The ensuing solution is for an outsider to step in and solve this litany of problems, creating a cycle of dependency.

   Identifying and then building on successes, however, is an approach that focuses on building upon the existing strengths in a community. This is a forward-moving constructive effort that focuses attention on community assets rather than needs. Action is then based on an assessment of what is possible, rather than what “needs” to be done. Costs of development go down when attention turns to building on assets, rather than attempting goals that require massive influxes of resources from outside.

2. Three-way Partnerships

   Community energy seldom mobilizes by itself. Communities need imghelp from officials, who can adjust policies and regulations to facilitate cooperation among factions and channel external resources. Communities also need help from experts who can build capacity by training, introduce new ideas, and help monitor change.

   Our long-term studies of community development worldwide show that success results when communities work from the bottom up, when officials work from the top down, and when experts work from the outside in. All three roles are needed. When governments create enabling policies, change can accelerate in a cost-efficient way across entire regions. When appropriate experts are involved, development ideas are up-to-date, and fit the local ecology, culture, and economy. When communities are true partners (rather than simply being manipulated by governments or NGOs) then these communities can act more effectively to redefine their futures.

   Relationships between these three partners must be flexible, and need continuing adjustment. Many projects start out working well, but then flounder because participants do not understand that their relationships need to evolve. Initially, entrepreneurial leadership is important. In the middle stages, expert-led training, monitoring, and experimentation guide the process, with appropriate midcourse corrections. Later, structured systems will better help communities expand vision and capacity. And to facilitate this phase, officials and experts must shift their roles from control to support of community action.

3. Evidence-based Decision-making

   Action is effective when grounded in objective data. Lacking such data, participants will make decisions on the basis of transitory opinions. These tend to be most influenced by whoever talks most convincingly, or whoever holds more power at the moment. Lacking data from local situations, decisions are made on information from more distant situations—which may or may not be relevant. Factions polarize around differing opinions, but with accurate local data, and thoughtful guidance from officials and experts, differing community factions can find an objective common ground for working together.

   While the principle of basing decisions on local data makes sense, accomplishing this goal is often compromised. The SEED process readily adjusts to local capacity, creating an easy-to-do technique by which every community each year can gather data relevant to its needs. Data gathering (especially using the key indicators of a SEED survey) is a process that can start simply and develop great sophistication over time.

4. Changes in Community Behavior

   People can come together in partnerships; they can agree on objective data; but, to achieve lasting results they must also change behaviors. While changing behavior for the community may start simply by gaining new skills, those in positions of power—community leaders, officials, or experts—face a more challenging requirement, changing their behavior to share power. This means giving up exclusive control, shifting to guidance that empowers rather than acting to foster dependency. For example, at first community members must be trained how to execute their tasks. But very soon, community members must be allowed to make mistakes as part of the developing process. After that, officials and experts must rapidly let go, and not just pretend to do so. This shift is especially difficult, but it can be brought on systematically if the seven steps of the community action cycle are repeated each year.

   When officials and experts show some humility, community enthusiasm becomes contagious. A feedback loop creates new expectations and standards for everyone. As one change supports another, social pressure builds, and those who do not cooperate are generally bypassed or overrun by the community’s momentum. This momentum will eventually redefine the entire community’s collective future.

Four Principles In Photos:

Five Criteria help monitor whether change is positive or potentially problematic. The third SEED-SCALE principle (evidence- based decision making) uses standardized criteria. Without measurable criteria, people in communities are making biased evaluation about progress. But with uniform criteria, comparisons across regions are possible. The definition of a criterion may change regionally based on different values and geographical areas but with criteria that are consistent, each community can monitor its change in accord with its own definitions.

1. Inclusiveness in equity, gender, and ethnicity

   Too often criteria groups, particularly those with privilege, sieve advantages, and the less educated, the poor, and ethnic and religious minorities fall further behind. Consequently, we advance inclusiveness as a goal for more than moral reasons. When criteria organs are diseased, a person’s whole body is at risk; in social change, paying attention to all members of the society is in every one’s interest. Inclusiveness has been conclusively demonstrated to correlate positively with physical health, mental health, levels of social violence, life expectancy, happiness, and almost all indicators of prosperity, with these correlations holding true nationally (e.g., between states in the United States) and across countries.

2. Sustainability in values, environment, and economics

   Communities want positive change to endure, so three aspects need to be monitored: community values, the natural environment, and an economic base. Understanding all three is essential. Tracking cultural, environmental, and economic sustainability will highlight occasions when development is creating short-term gains but not lasting ones. Even if two of these factors are under control and only one is uncontrolled, the community is still at risk.
   Development will always consume resources. Sustainability is not a perpetual-motion machine. Technology, training, and invention can put pressure on development to be more efficient, but they never can make it totally efficient. So each community, looking at opportunities that are before it, must ask if the gains are worth the costs, and assess those costs in terms of values, the natural environment, and financing.

3. Interdependence-not independence or dependence

   Development’s contrast is dependency. Momentum toward a just and lasting life will enhance interdependence within and between communities, which reduces their vulnerability to the victimization that so often accompanies dependency. Interdependency is the goal, not independence. In interdependent relationships, networks strengthen in a complex world.
   Donors seeking results may offer to pay the costs of some service. Government officials seeking votes may promise services. Such assistance may appear to improve conditions, but it actually may not. Long-term sustainability needs to be measured across values, economics, and the environment. Resources will be needed, but they will be truly helpful only if links into as well as out of the community are strengthened.

4. Holism

   Social endeavors typically view people as patients, students, bus riders, consumers, or statistics. But humans are not one-dimensional. People are beings with multiple needs and changing aspirations. A feature typically overlooked in social change is that when progress comes to one sector, peoples’ aspirations shift: a doctor no longer is so important when a person ceases being sick and the recovered patient perhaps now wants entertainment. The need is to track the whole and identify the always-developing gaps. Action that is separated into sectors-such as security, health, education, and transportation-supports professionals, but it ignores a community’s multifaceted aspect.

5. Iteration (application, improvement, and doing it again)

   In life it is high impossible to get an action right the first time-or any time. But it is always possible to make life better. Development matures through continual adjustments. An idea is attempted; on the next try its implementation gets better; in a third trial, outcomes become more useful. Iterative growth is not simply repeating a job. In situation- and time-specific change, the tasks adjust with each trial. The whole is important, but to keep everything coordinated, iterative assessment continually makes adjustments as actions improve.
   When all five criteria are monitored, development comes alive. Getting that energy ignited allows change to blaze forth. Partnerships, evidence, and changed behavior then fit together. Finally, by using the cycle of seven tasks, those possibilities can be acted upon.

Five Criteria to Assess Community Progress

Going to scale refer to a process to extend community level change through:

• Increase in the number of participating communities and
• Increase in the quality of life within each of those communities

SEED-SCALE, A Biological Model

There are several approaches to going to scale. In fact, "scaling up" has become a buzz word within the field of international community development. These approaches differ from SEED-SCALE in the degree to which they give communities ownership of the change process and allow for rapid expansion with adaption at the the local level. These approaches are summarized:

• Additive Approach to Scale: One bottom-up community project is done and then another one is added. Process driven by non-government agencies. Benefits one local community at a time and is often dependent on outside-in support and resources.

• Blueprint Approach to Scale: Refers to a centrally designed project sent to communities to implement. Standardized top-down solutions with little community involvement. Often has poor sustainability and has great dependency.

• Explosion Approach to Scale: Large and temporary focused efforts preferred by donors for crises or single intervention activities such as mass immunizations or food intervention. In this case, both the solution and implementation are brought to communities. The resource and management demands are met at the expense of building infrastructure and community capacity.

• Biological Approach to Scale: The SEED-SCALE process follows the biological approach to scale. It grows from community conditions and adapts to fit ecology, economy and values. Successful communities in one area develop the self-reliance and capacity to be regional training centers for neighboring communities. Exponential growth occurs in regional niches as the network of training centers expands to teach more communities.

Going to scale with SEED-SCALE

SEED-SCALE permits success from one community to expand (or “scale up”) quickly to other communities. SEED-SCALE allows successful development to spread, exponentially, and even simultaneously, across many communities. This process of “going to SCALE” facilitates a rapid yet site-specific expansion of community progress that remains sensitive to local ecology, culture, and economics.

The SEED-SCALE process of going to scale unfolds in three dimensions at the community, regional and national level. The goal is to have all three dimensions working simultaneously. The SEED-SCALE process uses the word “scale” as an acronym, SCALE, to describe this process at different levels. You will see the letters of this SCALE acronym change meaning with each dimension or level of action.

1. SCALE-One: (Successful Change as Learning Experiences)

   Represents the local level. SCALE-One is community specific. SCALE-One refers to the increasing confidence and sophistication of services that occurs within a community as it builds upon its own successes.

2. SCALE-Squared: (Self-help Center for Action Learning and Experimentation)

   represents the inter-community (or multi-community) dimension of our process. SCALE-Squared refers to the way successful communities can share their experiences with other communities in the same region, in both formal and informal ways. Our SCALE-Squared process transforms clusters of communities that have already experienced developmental successes into formal Action Learning and Experimentation Centers to show others how they too can succeed. At the SCALE-Squared level, there is a certain amount of experimentation to adapt existing solutions to each local area, plus the all-important process of one community teaching others through hands-on action.

3. SCALE-Cubed: (Systems for Collaboration, Adaptive Learning, and Extension)

   refers to the large-scale implementation of community-based action, on a national or large-region scale. SCALE-Cubed involves the creation of larger systems to promote the extension of developmental successes throughout whole regions and societies. SCALE-Cubed provides the supportive environment, region-wide, that makes the community change process easier and more efficient. The government plays an especially important, enabling role in the SCALE-Cubed dimension.
   When the right enabling conditions exist, societal change can spread through a region like wildfire, taking hold spontaneously in multiple places. When only partial enabling conditions exist, change will spread but only arithmetically, participating communities joining in but only a few at a time (2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12…). In a more complete enabling context the spread of change becomes exponential (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128…) Simple observation of the world shows that change is occurring at different rates in different communities. As we learn more about how to create the defining enabling environment, the challenge for each community will be to select its desired rate of change, and then to control the direction and limits of this change.

Going To Scale With SEED-SCALE In Photos