Case Study: Rethinking Community Engagement in the Global Southeast

Doug Downs (00:04):

It was the 1970s and across Southeast Asia a revolution was underway, not with armies or protests, but with seeds and machines. Western experts arrived in Indonesia and the Philippines promising farmers a future of abundance. They brought new high yield rice varieties, chemical fertilizers, and mechanized tools. It was called the Green Revolution, and it was supposed to end hunger. At first, it seemed to work yields skyrocketed. Governments celebrated the world, watched as fields once struggling to produce enough food now overflowed with grain. But something was happening beneath the surface, something the experts hadn't foreseen. The new rice varieties bred and laboratories required more water than traditional strains, but many small scale farmers had no irrigation systems. Fertilizers made crops grow faster, but they also stripped the soil of nutrients. Over time. Pesticides killed pests, but they also killed the natural predators that had kept those pests in check for centuries.

(01:13):

As costs rose and profits shrank, the poorest farmers fell into debt, unable to keep up with the demands of the very system meant to help them. Meanwhile, in a small village on the island of Java, an elder farmer resisted the change. He watched his neighbors struggle with these new methods, their soil turning to dust, their once thriving ecosystems collapsing. Instead of following the experts, he returned to what his ancestors had practiced. For generations, planting a diverse mix of crops using natural fertilizers from volcanic ash and rotating fields to preserve soil health. The yield wasn't as high as the new rice, at least not at first, but over time, his fields remained fertile, his crops resilient. This was all documented in James C. Scott's seeing like a state which sought to critique large scale, top-down development projects. It was also outlined in Vandana Shiva's, The Violence of the Green Revolution. Years later, agronomists came back to Southeast Asia with a different approach. They started listening instead of prescribing. In some communities, they help farmers integrate traditional methods with selective modern innovations using local rice varieties, but improving irrigation, reducing chemicals, but increasing composting techniques. The lesson here, development doesn't always mean adding something new. Sometimes the real progress comes from unlearning. What doesn't work today on stories and strategies, community engagement in the global Southeast, the first step might be to unlearn the global Northwest.

(03:07):

My name is Doug Downs. My guest this week is Professor Anne Gregory, joining today from Huddersfield, England. Good to see you again, Anne.

Anne Gregory (03:15):

Good to be with you. Doug

Doug Downs (03:16):

And I, when I think of Huddersfield, I think of the Midlands, but you think more north of England, Midland of the UK. Is that right where you're situated?

Anne Gregory (03:26):

Well, if we take the UK as including Scotland, which it does, then we're in the middle, but it's the north of England. It's all often called the north because the North starts, as you know, just outside London.

Doug Downs (03:40):

Yeah, exactly. Pretty much does. Rather than read your long list of credentials, Anne, I know it's kind of the cringe part for you and for the listener. Ann's credentials are just ridiculously long and extremely impressive. I want to tell you about my t-shirt.

Anne Gregory (03:55):

Oh, please.

Doug Downs (03:55):

It's a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King, "The time is always right to do what's right." And the way I came across this quote was four and a half years ago when you and I did our first episode together, and it was on the ethics of public relations with the dawning of AI on the horizon chat. GPT hadn't even come out yet, but a fantastic episode with Jean Valin In doing the research, I came across this quote because I didn't study Dr. King in school the way a lot of people do, and I absolutely loved it. And from that episode, this is what has stuck with me. So I appreciate that life-changing quote for me.

Anne Gregory (04:34):

Well, he was a life-changing man, wasn't he? So it's such a shame he was with us for such a short time.

Doug Downs (04:41):

Yes, absolutely. I don't actually remember anything you said in the episode, Anne, but I do remember this quote from Dr. King. Okay. Can you walk us through the case study that you conducted in rural Indonesia? What was the community engagement exercise and what were you hoping to learn?

Anne Gregory (05:01):

Okay, well, maybe I just should give you a little bit of background first, Doug, and then I'll answer your question directly. So the Indonesian government is on the mission to bring sustainable energy to rural communities. You think about Indonesia, we think one country, but in fact it's 17,500 islands, 6,000 of which are inhabited. The idea of a national grid stringing wires all across those islands is just not doable. So quite a lot of the rural communities, particularly in the less inhabited parts of Indonesia, have no electricity or they have a very intermittent connection even on the mainland to the grid in the island of Java. So they've been on a mission to bring sustainable energy to these communities. Why sustainable because of climate change, and Indonesia is very prone to that. But also it means that they can put in little local systems that are not dependent on the government once they're up and running.

(06:09):

So there are three types of systems, dog. One is biomass, and I won't go into the detail of that because I think we know what it is. One is solar and one is micro hydro where they put little power plants in the irrigation channels for the rice fields, which are often on steep terraces, and it works incredibly well. So our project was with three villagers who've got micro hydro projects. And the government, when it installs these micro hydro plants, they regard it very much as an engineering project. So the facility is installed by the government and there's no really consultation about that and there's no communication about it, but it puts the plant in and then it lets the community get on with it basically. And its motives are excellent, as I said, to provide electricity and development opportunities for these communities, but without a communication plan to go alongside it, these projects are not going to be well adopted by these communities and they're not going to get the best out of it.

(07:15):

So that's the background to the project. And if you think about it, these communities have a lot to offer. They've got local knowledge. They would know the best place where to put these plants in the first place. The way they're structured means that a number of people, even when government does talk to these hamlets villagers, they talk to the leaders who are mainly men. So women's groups, youth groups, all sorts of groups who are not heads of households, are not involved in the discussions. And they've all got perspectives that are really valuable. The women often bear the burden of work. So if they're talking about economic development, they need to be involved in this. And so their view about what resources needed, what power the turbine should be, they wouldn't be able to say X votes, but they could say, this number of households need connecting and we want it for this and we want it for that, and we want it for the other. And there's no training. They don't talk about training so that they can get the best out of these facilities. So this communication blueprint is really, really important because they'll get all that as part of the package with government.

Doug Downs (08:30):

The thing that was striking me as I went through your book, and you've written this in your book, strategic Participatory Communication and Development, also available on Amazon. Put a link to that in the show notes. The entire case study is captured in the book. One of the things that stood out to me was you took solid public participation or what's known as P two principles and applied them to an area of rural Indonesia in the southeast. And what stood out was I thought, were we applying Western ideals empowerment to an area that doesn't have that expectation or maybe even that want or need? And I was proven wrong because the empowerment was something that definitely registered throughout the communities that you met with. Do you agree with that?

Anne Gregory (09:21):

Absolutely. And you're right Doug. And one of the biggest questions in my mind when we started this project is how are we going to do this? Because I'm a westerner and I might be sympathetic,

Doug Downs (09:35):

We do focus groups here, right? Focus groups, surveys.

Anne Gregory (09:38):

Absolutely. I might be empathetic, see, but I dunno how to engage with these communities. So I actually worked with a partner university in called up Maja University who are based in Karta in Indonesia, and they were the people who did the groundwork. And that's really important, Doug, because there are all sorts of barriers as you can imagine. It's different culture, different traditions, the language a huge issue. Rural communities have a very special character. They don't welcome outsiders, and they have their own ways of doing things. They're very communitarian focus. So I worked with this group of amazing colleagues from at Maja, led by my co-author there, Dr. Professor. Now she's been promoted, Yudarwati. And so they had already spent some volunteer time in one of these villages and got accepted by the community. And so we thought long and hard about how are we going to engage with them and how are we going to give them a voice. And we talked to the leader of the hamlets and we came across this method. It's called Appreciative inquiry.

Doug Downs (10:54):

Yes.

Anne Gregory (10:55):

And I'll tell you about the stages of appreciative inquiry if you like, but you have to, it's based on listening really, and it's about listening to the community in a way. They want to tell you things. So how do you allow them to tell you things in ways that are meaningful for them? I mentioned the culture dog there in Indonesia, particularly in rural communities, it's very community orientated, individual. Second community first, they're very deferential. They want to live in harmony. They don't want confrontation. And therefore this sort of jabbing way, we sort of go in and question people question and answer. We've got a problem, how are we going to solve? It doesn't work there. So using appreciative inquiry, which says, well, what do you like when you're at your best? What do you enjoy when you have this electricity? How good do you think you could be? And then how do we discover the best in the community? And then how do we go on to design something that's going to be right for you? And we don't go in and say, we need a plan. We say, right. So imagine where you want to be in three or four years time. Don't forget, these rural communities are under stress. A lot of the young people are leaving so they know that they have to change and develop to retain their young people and get them to tell you stories. Doug

(12:28):

And the stories that came out were incredible. So you get elderly women telling you about how they'd use this electricity for chicken incubators. And some of the younger women say, we spend half our life washing. We'd like the laundry. And some of the young entrepreneurs saying, I've got a woodworking little business. Wouldn't it be great if I had a lathe? And just really ordinary things like we want street lighting so the kids don't get bitten by snakes at night. I mean, it takes you right back to basics. And the way they told those stories, I mean, sometimes they draw things on the earth, sometimes they've moved things around. This is me. This is where I want my little business to be. So you just need to give them an opportunity, give them a structure which maybe they're not even aware of, but which fits into their culture of storytelling. And tell us what you see our future to be like. And then how would you like to get there? And then, well, who needs to do these things so we can get there? So it's not at all right, we're going to do quality flow research and we're going to do this. Absolutely not. It's fitting in with their culture. They have village meetings regularly. You go to those village meetings, you join in and you just build your research into the life that they've got already and you honor the traditions that they've got.

Doug Downs (14:00):

You mentioned this in the book as well, that there is a global economic shift from the northwest, which I take to mean Europe and North America to the southeast, the population centers. So it's happening. It's not controllable, it's happening naturally. More and more Western corporations and multinational corporations are looking to do work in the Southeast. And we're developing plans with KPIs and return on investment, somewhat western ideas. What aspects of Western planning and engagement methods do you think need to be unlearned to effectively work with rural Indonesian communities? In other words, how do we learn or unlearn the telling that we've mastered and start to learn the listening?

Anne Gregory (14:51):

Yeah, that is such a crucial point. And actually the unlearning goes on both sides, Doug, because they are being told for so long by the west, this is a way you do things

(15:04):

That they also have to rediscover their own ambitions and their own way of developing, not that development is not wanted. They want to improve their lives. They'd like to drive a car, they'd like roads, they want schools. But it is so that they unlearn that they have to be deferential to us and believe that we have the right way of doing things. And we have to unlearn the habit of telling them what to do, which replicates what goes on in the west. And this is really about dialogue, Doug. This is about stepping in their shoes and trying to live their lives and their ambitions with them. And it's so different. You have to rip up the textbooks and you have to say, I'm just going to try and imagine what it will be like to be them with their ambitions, with their resources, with their culture, and go on a journey with them.

(16:01):

Now we set our KPIs and they may coincide, and often donors say, well, we have to demonstrate to the people who fund us that we've met all these objectives, and it's really, really hard. And so I think there needs to be that shift in that these things have to be negotiated because you might meet your objectives in the short term, we'll install a hundred turbines, but lo and behold, nobody wants to use them or they're not used in the way that you wanted them to be because you haven't talked to them about how they want to do these things. So things like timescales have to be thrown out the window and the time invested in dialogue and in actually finding out what their aspirations are. And then once you begin to meet those aspirations, you can then introduce, well, the what abouts have you thought about?

(16:58):

But unless you gain that trust and unless you meet their ambitions as well, and maybe we get rid of some of the timescales because to say in the long run, you won't get there. You'll get in the immediate quick wings, but you won't get there because you haven't got hearts and minds with you. And you also don't release the huge potential of these communities because your KPIs may be pretty small ambitions as far as they're concerned. And I was absolutely amazed by the ambition of some of the tiny little loos, Doug of a hundred households saying, we want to be an eco tourist center. So they don't lack ambition. They need some help. They might need some training and they might need a bit of funding, but tell you what, it comes back in bucket loads, but do it with them and not onto them.

Doug Downs (17:57):

Great words. That's a great quote. Definitely going to use the quote in the promos, but let me push back a little bit. I love that you argue that we need to unlearn the northwest to succeed in the southeast when in Rome, but ultimately you're pitching a concept empowerment that the people you spoke with and experienced, they appreciated the empowerment. And you've also talked about how they want to be more like us. Why don't we spend our time instead helping them be more like us instead of trying to figure out how they want to be themselves? If everybody wants to be us, why don't we just help them be us?

Anne Gregory (18:38):

Yeah, absolutely, Doug. And that's a very legitimate question. I think it goes to the heart of what do we mean by empowerment? Empowerment means that you hand over decision-making to them and you allow them to make the decisions for their own lives. Now, they can continue as subsistence farmers if they want. There's no empowerment, takes away coercion. And if there's coercion there, then we are not empowering them. And therefore, I think this thing about don't be like us, but be like us in being able to make choices, but don't necessarily be like us in what those choices lead to. And that's a hard thing for governments to learn as well.

(19:26):

So empowerment is about them deciding the future for themselves within a structure. Of course, that doesn't mean right, we'll all go off and start murdering our neighbors. That's not empowerment. But within the shared set of values that we all agree, and the shared set of values will be, we will respect your traditions. We do honor the fact that you've got ambition. Let's talk about that ambition. Let's find joint ways of trying to work towards that. There are legitimate objectives that the Indonesian government want. How are you going to contribute to that? And we find that through dialogue, then the way forward can be found. So being like us, no, they should never be like us. I wouldn't want them to be like us. We make far too many mistakes. And if we put our mistakes in their context, there'd be even bigger mistakes. It is like their local knowledge, their way of doing thing has to be the way that is brought to the fore. But as I said, they want to develop. Their notions of development might be slightly different, but hey, if it works, who cares if it works for them? And if we are moving forward, if we have progress, however you define that, and that's an interesting word to define, then we can say that's empowerment.

Doug Downs (20:57):

I do love that The more we get to know people around the world, the more commonalities we find. There's so much more that makes us the same. It's amazing. We focus on the things that make us different so often. Tell me about the key real short if you could, Anne, the key elements of the strategic participatory communication framework that you propose.

Anne Gregory (21:21):

Okay, right. Really quickly then. So five stages to putting in a micro hydro plan. First of all, they do a feasibility study and the community's not involved in that. And the government makes a decision about whether or not a project is viable. So the blueprint, the communication blueprint says you've got to harness that local knowledge, find out the best place to put things, find out what they want it for, understand what their ambitions are. Then you'll put the right sort of plant in. Then they put the plant in. And again, if you bring the community with you, so they're part of that, they already supply some volunteer labor. The women cut the meals for them. But if as that plant is being installed during discussion with them about how are we going to maintain it, how do we get the money so that if any parts get broken, all these things are learned afterwards, do it well, it happens.

(22:15):

And then the whole process is owned by the village and the whole installation becomes more effective, then they adopt the plant. So it's built and they start using it. So talk to the community then about what their initial ambitions are are meant. I said street lighting, lighting of the schools, everything shuts down at six o'clock. There's no lighting, and adults are out in the field laboring all day. So they want education as well. They want to learn about the internet, they want to learn about social media. So initial ambitions. And then after a period of time goes through a transition of ownership. So there's a transition stage where the village then becomes responsible for this plan, teach them about financial management, teach them about the good exploitation of these resources, help them begin to realize some of their own ambitions, make sure that the government is listening to them because if they don't, all that knowledge about what the installation problems are, what the potential opportunities are, what the extra economic growth all lost, and just dumping them with this thing and leaving them to it is not good management from the government point of view.

(23:32):

And then when they've owned the plant and it begins to become sustainable, they will have plans about maybe having a second hydro plant. They may have plans about creating a tourist village, or they might need to work with a regional development authority then. So then they need communication and support for actually realizing their ambitions. So all along, if the communication is embedded with the way that the micro hydro plant is adopted and becomes owned by them, the government benefits because it gets that backtrack on what's going on, how to improve installation, become more effective, get more economic development. And the community benefits because it gets the power it wants, it is able to develop as it wants, is able to keep its young people and it's able to thrive.

Doug Downs (24:26):

Terrific book, Anne. I'd call it like a weekend read. There's an awful lot of info packed into a short number of pages. Thank you so much for your time today, Anne.

Anne Gregory (24:36):

Thank you very much.

Doug Downs (24:38):

Oh, hey, Anne. In our previous episode, our guest neuropsychologist Michelle Beatty, left a question for you.

Michelle Baty (24:46):

What is one belief you have about your industry that most people would disagree with?

Anne Gregory (24:54):

That's a tough one, dog. So I think we can be a force for good in the world where professional communicators, our world now is stuffed full of misinformation, disinformation, malformation, and we can be a source of truth that requires us to be at the table with decision makers, making sure they make good decisions, but also helping to transform our own organizations into good organizations. And that way we can be a force for good in the world.

Doug Downs (25:27):

That's exactly where I would come at this question from. And the sad part is you're saying it because we both feel the majority of people outside of our discipline don't believe that. Do you think we're going to go the way of mainstream media? For years, the mainstream media had the same words to use for what they did. Is there going to be a point in time where people are just pointing at us and calling us spin doctors?

Anne Gregory (25:52):

Absolutely. They do it already, Doug. And we're there just to wear the pretty sa if you're a girl and drape ourselves over cars and do trivial things and spin the line. And that's the perception of the industry, unfortunately. And we are going to change. I think the threat of disintermediation of our industry is very real. And I think therefore we need to move into that governance space. All the content's going to be generated by AI into the future. Well, the vast majority of it, somebody has to control and monitor and make sure that what's going out is good on is and true. And they have to make sure that use of AI in organizations is good on it and true as well. And that's our space for the future. And there'll always be a role for that sort of individual. But we need to step up to the plate

Doug Downs (26:43):

And using everything you just said in this episode, maybe we need to start listening a little better and a little more effectively to what these voices are saying. Maybe we are missing something.

Anne Gregory (26:54):

Couldn't agree more.

Doug Downs (26:56):

Okay, your turn. Anne, what question would you like to leave behind for our next guest?

Anne Gregory (27:01):

Oh, right, okay. Well, I've tried to think of a stinker, so

Doug Downs (27:06):

I'm sure they'll appreciate that.

Anne Gregory (27:09):

And just reflecting on what we've been talking about in this episode, doc. So here's my question. Okay. Do you think it's ever possible for there to be a balance of power in communication?

Doug Downs (27:23):

Expand on that for me.

Anne Gregory (27:26):

Okay, so because somebody normally has power in communication, don't they? The government speaking to the people, big organizations speaking to consumers now got social media influencers to others, and they've got a lot of power. We've got politicians vying for this space all the time. So is it ever possible for there to be a balance in communication from between those who are communicating and those who are being communicated with?

Doug Downs (27:59):

Wonderful. Because theoretically I would say democracy is what ensures that balance of power. But the reality is our democracy is substantially influenced. Good marketing and good messaging has impact on the way people think, at least temporarily.

Anne Gregory (28:18):

Absolutely. And we just have to observe what's going on around us, as you mentioned in that political sphere, but also in commerce and us as a profession, we're learning more and more about our stakeholders, the masses, amounts of data that are now crunched to understand people like you and me and we are being influenced without us even knowing it. Doug,

Doug Downs (28:41):

And that was the real mark you made on me four and a half years ago in that one episode. The reality that we are influenced and we like it, we want to be influenced.

Anne Gregory (28:52):

Yeah, we do. We love it, especially if it coincides with our own passions and beliefs. We just want more, more, more please because we want to be reinforced all the time. And that ability to actually cut through and for us to even begin to consider an opposing point of view without saying that's absolutely irrelevant, that's rubbish. But to actually take it in and think about it, we're losing that ability. I think

Doug Downs (29:20):

That sounds like a lot of work, Anne, that's a lot of thinking. There's only so much glucose for my brain. Thanks for your time today, Anne.

Anne Gregory (29:27):

Thank you very much, Doug. It's been great talking with you again.

Doug Downs (29:33):

Here are the top three things I got from Professor Anne Gregory in this episode. Number one, the importance of participatory communication. Successful development projects require more than just infrastructure. They need active community involvement. In Indonesia, the failure to communicate with locals initially led to under utilization of micro hydro plants proving that engagement is essential for long-term success. Number two, unlearning western approaches to stakeholder engagement. Western frameworks often prioritize efficiency and predefined outcomes. But in rural Indonesia, true empowerment means allowing communities to dictate their own development paths. And number three, the power of storytelling and engagement. Instead of relying on Western style surveys and focus groups, the project and spoke about used appreciative inquiry to tap into community wisdom through storytelling. If you'd like to send a message or tell a story to my guest Anne Gregory, we've got her contact information in the show notes, Stories and Strategies as a co-production of JGR Communications and stories and strategies, podcasts. If you like this episode, please leave us a rating, possibly a review. Those do wonders to help the podcast grow. Thank you to our producer Emily Page. And lastly, do us a favour forward this episode to one friend. Thanks for listening.