Listening Exercises Report from Tamil Nadu Southern India

CDA Collaborative Learning Projects (CDA), a non-profit agency based in Cambridge, MA (USA), supported Oxfam during the January 2012 field visit to Tamil Nadu with its listening methodology2, which has been applied and tested during field visits in twenty countries around the world. CDA brings experience from a wide range of collaborative learning efforts focused on improving international assistance over the last 20 years. CDA established the Listening Program (LP) in 2005 in collaboration with a number of colleagues in international and local NGOs, donors, and other humanitarian and development agencies. The overall goal of LP is to undertake a comprehensive and systematic exploration of the experiences and insights of people who live in aid- recipient societies on the cumulative effects of international assistance efforts. In this process, CDA organized more than 20 collaborative listening exercises to gather feedback and reflections of experienced and thoughtful local people who occupy a range of positions within recipient societies in order to assess the impacts of aid efforts by international actors. A forthcoming book expected towards the end of 2012 synthesizes the findings from this field research.