Abstract
Both questions are clearly important, for the obvious reasons that if you are not having a positive impact then why are you doing what you are doing? And secondly if you don’t know then you open yourself up to being seen as misleading the public through the assertions made in your public material.
The present catch phrase around the community development sector in Australia and overseas is: ‘what impact are you really having?’ Which is quickly followed by: ‘And how do you know?’
Jamie is the International Programs Director for Caritas Australia and has worked in the international human rights and development field in Australia, Asia and Latin America for the past 15 years.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
David, R. and A. Mancini. 2004. Going Against the Flow. London: Institute of Development Studies.
Eyben, R. 2005. Donors’ learning difficulties: Results, relationships and responsibilities. IDS Bulletin 36(3): 98–107, September.
Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. 1997. Bringing Them Home. Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia.
Humanitarian Accountability Project. 2007. http://www.hapinternational.org/Humanitarian Accountability project.
Invarson, L., E. Kleinhenz, and J. Wilkinson. 2007. Research on Performance Pay for Teachers Australian Council for Education Research, http://www.dest.gov.au/NR/rdonlyres/D477C6A5-C8EF-4074-8619-FF43059445F8/16287/ACERPerformancePaypaperMar07.pdf.
Singer, P. 2002. One World: The Ethics of Globalization. New Haven, CT : Yale University Press.
The Listening Project. 2007. http://www.listeningproject.org/.
Vaux, T. Independent Evaluation of the DEC Tsunami Crisis Response, December 2005. http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWFiles2006.nsf/FilesByRWDocUNIDFileName/KHII-6KZ9HA-dec-sas-31dec.pdf/$File/dec-sas-31dec.pdf.
Wildavsky, A. 1988. Searching for Safety. Edison, NJ: Transaction Books.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Isbister, J. (2010). Whose Impact, and Is It All About Impact?. In: Horton, K., Roche, C. (eds) Ethical Questions and International NGOs. Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy, vol 23. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8592-4_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8592-4_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-8591-7
Online ISBN: 978-90-481-8592-4
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPhilosophy and Religion (R0)