Planning & Navigating Social Change - Tools for Pacific voyagers - Oxfam (2019)

This is Oxfam’s guide for power and political economy analysis in the Pacific. For Pacific peoples, relationships are paramount. At home and in the workplace, our daily lives are navigated with reference to a constellation of family, clan and tribal relationships and networks that span rural villages to urban capitals, across countries in the region and globally through a far-flung Pacific diaspora. These networks permeate Pacific institutions of all kinds, at all levels. Those working to advance social change in the Pacific must understand, work with, and respond to the complex and changing relationships and dynamics of power that exist within such networks, and situate their work in the context of decolonisation and self-determination. But the approaches typically used by NGOs to plan our projects and programmes have failed to give due attention to these dynamics. The result is that our projects fall short of achieving their promise, despite being technically sound and logical. This guide aims to provide a process and tools that prioritise and draw out the rich, often implicit, knowledge that Pacific Islanders have about our contexts to plan and manage social change initiatives in a manner that values and responds to this ocean of relationships.