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 Primary reasons NPO activities don't embed/ sustain/ expand in communities.

Economics

Micro vs. macro economic practices

Co-operatives suffer because they do not divide labour or market themselves properly. Individualswalk away because tending rows of cabbages is boring. Standard farming practices, being designed

for large scales, are boring to maintain, while traditional ones produce too little food and variety in

the garden. The purpose of the activity determines the design; simply assuming a much larger model

can be scaled down (or that small models can be scaled up by increasing total quantity) are false

assumptions that increase probability of failure significantly.

Shared risk, no personalisation

There must be a sense of both personal and group risk and responsibility. Most systems assume

group rewards are sufficient, but a visible cost must be incurred for dropping out to discourage

‘tourism’. This can be managed by proper division of labour and rotation of duties.

Teaching

Telling not teaching 

Teaching is the active, guided exploration of a conceptual space; instruction is the passive, precise

transmission of commands. People respond differently to these, and most projects encourage the

latter instead of the former. Properly, this is didactics vs. praxis.

 Applicability / transitivity of knowledge.

If one person knows how to do something, chances are they will be the person that does it all the

time, rather than teaching other people. There must be a clear value to both the use andtransmission of knowledge, rather than simply to acquisition. Experimentalism as an approach, for

example, deals with this issue well

Lack of guidance

Often, people take failure to be total; that is, it is not worth trying if failure is likely. This significantly

reduces trial rates. With correct guidance  – information or advice that gives options, and primarily

enables rather than instructs – people are much more likely to be both creative and experimental.

Making it too easy Pandering to people, though seductive as a method, is by far the worst way to get anything out of 

them. People perform best when given tasks that seem beyond their capability, which they can then

execute. People set, and perform to, internal standards, rather than externally imposed ones; the

task, then, is to encourage higher personal standards in fields of activity.

Personal factors

Daily stress

Day-to-day worries consume significant amounts of mental energy. As such, the primary reward of 

any intervention should be to obviously make life easier for those involved. Notice this is different to

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 improving life, which implies additional resources. Removing existing stresses is a far more effective

motivator than new resources.

Pride

People need to be doing things that they, personally, can be proud of. This means that there has tobe some visible impact of their (as well as than the groups’) actions . Farming in traditional methods

do not emphasise this, and neither do community engagements; rather, they feel like bolt-ons,

things that the community members never really perceive as being owned by them (and therefore

reflective of their own state).

Lack of autonomy 

People are given tasks that are too local, and therefore require little imagination or thought. This

also reduces the task to the mechanical, encouraging people not to think about what they’re doing

(since they’re just following orders). This translates to, and amplifies the effects of, input limitation

(the feeling that the range of possible inputs from a member is limited by more than clever use of their resources and what they can think of to do).

Low ownership

The projects, as a consequence of the above, often feel like they ‘belong’ to external entities. 

Unclear logistics

Weak set goals

People need both proximate and ultimate goals, so they can measure their progress both in the

short and long term. To be meaningful, these goals must be set locally, even if they also must be inline with broader requirements. To support this, they require recognition for their goals, and some

visible reminder of their achievements. For example, each Ark should have media activities; local

newspapers will report things like the Arks, and things centered around them. They should also

produce materials from their activities with the intention of using those materials for training.

Goals at wrong level 

We went to a rural primary school and saw posters talking about ‘being green‘ – the choice to cycle

to school instead of being driven, using less power to reduce global emissions  – written by people

that have no car, and often no electricity. This is ridiculous; people cannot be made to care about

broad, global concerns when they don’t have enough to eat. All objectives should be set such that

the local member sees local value in them, or it simply won’t sink in in a meaningful way. 

No immediate reward systems

See above. People get bored easily, especially when there’s not a lot to do. Without correct guidance

and reward, there’s not much to make them take signif icant action.

No formal routes for expansion or dissemination of knowledge

Specific courses and interactions, rather than voluntary once-off events, need to be the norm for

people to comfortably transmit their knowledge or skills. Notice, for example, that our project runs

in class time, meaning it is effectively obligatory for all students involved.