Episode 25: The middle Road interviews Dr. Helene Clark Founder and Director of ActKnowledge, and Board Chair of The Center for Theory of Change

Episode Transcript
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(00:05):
Welcome to another smashing episode from the Middle Road.
Today I welcome dr Helen clark in today's podcast,
I chat with a leading global export and social change maker within the international development sector.
This is Mission Melo throw the sole founder of the Middle road platform,
a thought leader enabling social change and impact within the global ecosystem.

(00:30):
It's basically a fusion of media and ethic and do logon to www.
The Middle Road dot org was a brief introduction.
Dr Helen Clark is the founder and director of acknowledge and both chair of the Center for Theory of Change.
Our Global Thought Leader in enabling social change and impact within the social impact sector acknowledge,

(00:58):
is a social enterprise that connects social change practice with rigorous study of how and why initiatives work acknowledge is the founder of the Center of Theory of Change,
a nonprofit focusing on outcome driven interventions and we'll look at what we mean by interventions.

(01:18):
Was based strategic framework tool called Theory of Change.
Now,
Theory of change is very important and very widely used within the international government sector.
Now,
negative changes are valuable to to understand the impact of policies interventions programs but these are measures which are connected to understand the outcome linked to these measures.
Creative changes to the ubiquitous within the international government sector which talked about it's used to analyze plan and implement long term change through backwards mapping of interventions.

(01:49):
A theory of change technique which also program logic can be implemented in any organization or within our lives.
To bring about a more holistic for the better.
Dr Helen.
Thanks a lot for taking out time for a fabulous chat about your work.
I'm always excited to talk about social impact and how to do it better and smarter.

(02:11):
So I appreciate the invitation.
Thanks a lot.
And you know,
it's very interesting because Theory of change,
you're being at the forefront of the Theory of Change framework,
so it's going to be very exciting to understand the whole part,
you know?
And thanks for joining.
So it's been very it's lovely to have you you know,
for a conversation you mentioned you're a leading authority when we talk about theory of Change.

(02:35):
Now it was of course also made famous by aspen roundtable for community change and acknowledge was one of the major played a fundamental role within this segment.
So when we start before and we'll talk about how the whole process came in,
you know,
through the multi stakeholder community driven outcome which have implemented and you could take us,

(02:56):
you know,
right through the early nineties but before for my audience,
you know,
we'll just come first in your own terms,
you tell us what does interventions me and we'll also elaborate on the definition of strategy.
So,
would you like me to begin on describing interventions?
Yeah,
interventions and strategy and then you can,
you know,
take us through every hole part of although terry of changes and then go back to the history.

(03:21):
Okay,
well you could do anything,
you could go with the history and then,
you know,
you can talk well,
I'll answer your question on interventions which are very fundamental part of TOc and then we can move into telling the whole story.
It's a good question.
We use interventions.
Um,
and we don't want people to get hung up on terminology when we teach and implement theory of change.

(03:49):
We use interventions to represent anything from very specific activities up through broad strategies depending on how the group defines it.
And I'll say what each of those means.
So to us,
and this is just to us,
people can adopt the language they agree on to us.

(04:10):
An intervention is anything that you the creators of the the people desiring the long term outcome and creating the theory of change.
Anything that you have to do to bring about an outcome is an intervention and an intervention is not at the finite fine level of every single activity that it takes,

(04:35):
but nor is it as grand as a strategy which explains more about why the interventional work.
So let me give an example in a education program where the long term goal is for all students to graduate high school or college,
ultimately to lead productive lives with good jobs.

(05:00):
One of the interventions to students doing better academically,
maybe an after school program.
So we would call that an intervention,
the school,
the school,
the needs to develop an after school program.
An activity could be defined it as all of the things it takes to develop an after school program.

(05:23):
You need to identify the curriculum that will help bring students up to their best level.
You need to have teachers in place,
you need rooms to give the class in,
you need parental permission.
So all of those activities together,
you probably don't want to list in your theory of change.

(05:43):
You want to wait until you've moved it over into a theory of action and a work plan.
So it's good enough in the theory of change to say the intervention is the after school program and wait to develop the work plan on every single activity it takes to develop the after school program until you're developing a work plan.

(06:06):
Is that part clear so far?
Yes,
ma'am.
And then to move on to strategy.
Strategy is now people that we work with you strategy to mean so many different things.
But in the context of how does it different from an intervention as we use it.
A strategy would be explaining why the intervention is actually a strategic intervention designed to lead to an outcome.

(06:38):
So the intervention is an after school program.
The overall statement of the strategy might be providing students with the tutoring and out of school time support that they need in order to improve their grades and test scores.
So the strategy is a fuller statement.

(07:01):
Um we're doing this in order to bring about that.
And um often people will talk about their overall strategy.
Their overall strategy might be to do everything through the lens of diversity and inclusion.
Uh so people talk about strategy as something broader than a specific intervention.

(07:27):
A specific intervention is a set of activities that you need to take to bring about an outcome.
And the activities are the very fine tuned every task needed.
So that's how we use it.
But I don't want people to feel these are rigid,
people use them in their own organization in different ways and as long as it's understood within everybody working together,

(07:54):
it's fine.
That's how we differentiate them.
I got it.
That's a very good example because through the history now,
I mean I came in through the 90s,
the collaborations with aspen,
what about how to try to put this in a nutshell for people because You know,

(08:15):
this is my lived history over the last 25 years and I can probably spend just as long explaining it.
So I'm going to try to condense that into the key key points.
The aspirin roundtable on community initiatives first began disseminating theory of change in the 1990s.

(08:36):
The aspirin roundtable was a think tank.
They didn't go to work in the field very much they were funded by any E.
Casey Foundation for several years to disseminate the concepts of theory of change and they did a three volume set of books called voices from the field which are still very foundational and important and understanding patient theory of change concepts and why theory of change was necessary in complex social initiatives.

(09:09):
They didn't invent theory of change but they really disseminated it and tailored it to social initiatives.
It goes back to being based on kurt Lewin theory of action which we won't go into,
but it has historical roots in uh people being participatory and acting on their own environments and being agents of change and they're being spirals of learning as you do that.

(09:38):
So Aspen really um defined and disseminated a theory of change and I coincidentally to them doing all of that,
I was beginning to realize in my own work that if I was going to be doing being a good evaluator,
I needed to understand what people for what they were doing rather than just test what kind of outcomes they achieve.

(10:06):
I needed to test it against some idea they had about why something was going to work.
Then I discovered Aspen's work and that was my first Aha moment which um,
I think was probably the biggest one when I,
when I read their work and I was just said,
well this is what I've been doing except they've actually,

(10:29):
they,
they have a theory and a system and a concept for it.
So I became a very big fan of Aspens work and within a couple of years acknowledge became partners with Aspen,
which was very good for aspen in that we worked exclusively in the field with real clients,

(10:51):
real initiatives and real projects which they as a think tank couldn't do And so we brought back tons and tons of lessons which allowed us to with them work to develop theory of change concepts and how to really doing it in real life is so different than learning it,

(11:11):
you know,
in school or from a book.
Um,
early in the two thousands,
the Aspen institute finish their work on disseminating theory of change and they moved on to structural racism through which they continued to use theory of changes,

(11:32):
the lens to which they develop their structural racism project.
But they were done officially with disseminating theory of change and they passed the baton to us and acknowledge to take the legacy of all of their work and what theory of change really was and what what it meant and how to do it correctly.

(11:52):
And we became the keepers of the flame,
so to speak.
We in the following years really learned a tremendous amount of what goes wrong and what goes right many are are moments and we had acknowledged were able to add a lot of tweaking and some new elements into doing theory of change that made it more specific and more usable for people during this period of time.

(12:24):
I trained a lot of people around the world in theory of change.
I trained keystone,
I went to Tava stock.
I have been to the USA I gave many times in the early part of the Of the 2000s.
So I was out training and training and training and at the and so many of those organizations now do their own trainings and their own consulting around theory of change and put out some great materials at the same time,

(12:54):
organizations like the Kellogg Foundation and the Asia Foundation put out some very good theory of change materials um that as far as I know I had nothing to do with and acknowledge and nothing to do with.
It was just starting to get in the water and some people were doing some very good work about it.
So um the only one significant development I think for the field is that in 2007 we launched the first and still only web based tool to draw theories of change online so that people who are in different places geographically can work on a web based system together and work on developing a theory in a participatory way no matter where they are.

(13:43):
Uh and and keep archival records and show the growth of their knowledge.
So where that brings us to today,
where as you said at the beginning of our talking is I guess the biggest satisfaction Is the theory of change which we thought 15 years ago might be a fad.

(14:06):
And I remember talking with aspirin about should we call it something different or people not gonna want to use something with the name theory in it,
they're going to get you know,
by 2005 no one will have heard of it anymore.
And of course it went quite the opposite way theory have changed now is ubiquitous.
Every NGO large and small requires that every foundation uses it.

(14:29):
Um It really exploded to be absolutely core in social impact planning and evaluation.
So that has been a huge satisfaction.
It gives me great hope that social change in the future is going to be more successful than it than it has been in the past.

(14:53):
Almost some great work has been done.
Um So I think that's that's where it is,
everybody is doing it now.
But dad,
there is one downside to the,
to our history which is a serial change became Really a bad everybody by 2010 or 2015.

(15:14):
Everybody in the world requires a theory of change says they do a theory of change and all,
no idea what theory of changes.
You will have foundations who have demanded that their grantees develop a theory of change for a grand.
And when they get the theory of change,

(15:35):
they have no idea to read how to read it,
they say what is this?
This is so complicated,
what you know,
and then other foundations or Ngos will say our theory of change is youth need to be empowered in order to be engaged in school and do well,
that's our theory.
Well,
it's a nice sentence and it may be true,

(15:57):
but it's not a theory of change.
So the fact that theory of change is bandied about by,
you know,
to mean almost everything that is problematic,
There's too much misunderstanding and bad information out there.
But that's the downside of it having become so ubiquitous and important.

(16:18):
More and more people are doing good work.
I think to this podcast will actually,
you know,
at least try to make sure that people come to number theory of changes and I think you're the best person to do that complicated.
And I think a podcast like this,
whether it's with me or anybody else who knows what theory of changes.

(16:39):
Um these kinds of podcasts that you offer really educate a broad audience and it doesn't mean it teaches them theory of change,
but they begin to understand what to look for and where to look.
Um,
and and how it's really used.
So,
uh I greatly appreciate that.

(17:01):
You're doing these podcasts.
Thank you.
Thanks a lot.
I appreciate that.
And you talked about,
wrote about partnership so we can do it with no much more specific questions.
You have your paper you've written with others.
You have a theory of change.
Technical technical papers.
Now I suggest everybody restart.
It's a fabulous state on theory of change will come to know a lot about it.

(17:23):
It's been written by a doctor Hannah to plane by yourself,
wine Collins and David Colby and this which also got these basics are primer on theory of change by Dr Donald chaplain and by yourself.
So these two papers I would highly recommend you know everybody to read it based on these two papers I came out with a question and you know,

(17:46):
you mentioned the importance of long term goals and it's even you look at theory of change is basically back back back mapping a series of interconnected interventions in the short medium and long term to achieve outcomes.
Now this concept was very revolutionary and contrary intuitive to the prevailing thought at one point in time when,
you know,
people wanted wanted to look at a change,

(18:08):
they would sort of look at forward looking indicators,
you know,
and then you come out to the long term change rather than going backwards now,
please to explain the process and you could initiate a simple example,
you get this idea better.
Yes,
it has turned out to be um one of the most difficult part of implementing a theory of change is that none of us really tend to start,

(18:38):
we start with where we are and many people are particularly visionaries or act out in the world making changes there thinking about what they're doing.
And theory of change requires you to step back and say why,
why are we doing this?
What change needs to occur in the world.
And it's a very,

(18:59):
very simple logical concept which is that if you don't know your your destination is going to be hard to choose.
The very best effective means to get there.
So if I want to come to India,
I need a very different set of conditions and activities then if I want to go to Alaska or if all I know is that I want to travel,

(19:28):
so if all I know is is I want to travel with no destination in mind,
that's fine if the fun of the travel is what I want,
but social change is something that we don't just do for the fun of the experience,
we actually have goals in social change,
we want to end poverty,

(19:48):
prevent climate change,
increased social justice and on and on.
So knowing the destination allows you to say what does it take?
Just as if I know I'm going to India instead of Alaska,
my preconditions are going to be,
I need to know the weather,

(20:10):
I need to know the flight schedules,
I need to,
there are a lot of things um you know,
I I need to arrange the time away from work or find out if I'll have connections to work.
So you don't just walk out the door and go to the airport and satan which flight will I choose,

(20:33):
You have to make it as a sense that we do this in our daily life all the time.
Theory of change is just bringing something out into the open that we do very implicitly,
even if we just want to cook dinner,
we know implicitly that we have to have certain ingredients on hand.

(20:54):
But in social change it's so important to be able to actually articulate this and get the perspective from the different stakeholders who were involved.
Whether they are the participants,
the beneficiaries,
the target group will change the staff,
the funder,

(21:15):
uh these perspectives bring so much information about what's needed to understand the problem that will help you reach your destination.
So while it is counterintuitive to work backwards,
it is very,
actually an intuitive from people to understand that knowing your destination is crucial to being able to plan a good way to get there.

(21:44):
Not let me you know,
come up with a follow up question.
How does the quality,
the framework of the theory of change facilitated changing that would cause,
relating interventions and then they which all have an outcome and then you want to reach a final outcome.
What would you talk about that?
Yes.
And I'm going to challenge your question a little bit in describing it as a qualitative frameworks,

(22:10):
you are right that the hypothesis and the narrative that describes how you will get from here to there to reach a goal is a qualitative description,
but it is impossible to have a theory of change without having measurable indicators which are usually or often quantitative to tell you if you are reaching your goal.

(22:37):
So it's both qualitative and quantitative.
The explanation of it in plain language sounds qualitative but underlying that is a layer of water or exact targets who has to change,
How much do they have to change.
So if I want to change um graduation rates and I have a precondition of students are able to read at grade level so that they will graduate.

(23:07):
Um I am going to have very quantitative indicators of that Is the indicator that they read at grade level is the indicator simply that they improved by 10%.
Well that's not going to be good enough.
So there is a very every outcome has a quantitative definition to it and it's okay to have qualitative definitions as well.

(23:33):
It's good to have both ways that you see something and know it's true,
but numbers are very important.
Um A simple example um A causal chain again can be seen through um a work a lot of people around the world are interested in is improving education and getting more students engaged and properly trained for jobs and advancement and being positive citizens.

(24:07):
So if the goal is um student becomes a positive contributing member of society,
A precondition to that may be considered to be graduation from college or high school.
This is why you bring a lot of people together.
Someone may say,
well no you could be a very contributing member of society without graduating from anything.

(24:30):
There are other ways to do it.
So then you start identifying what are the other ways.
Um,
so let's say you go with the route,
you know,
just for the sake of simplicity that students need to go through school.
Well,
what's a precondition to getting students to go through school?
One is that they have to be attending some geniuses who could skip school all the time and still graduate,

(24:55):
but we're talking about a general school building and a general city,
you need students to be attending us.
And again,
this is quantitative what percentage of attendance time Has been found in the literature to be required for students to do well in schools and they need 95% attendance,

(25:16):
80% attendance.
It's generally about 95%.
So,
how are you going to get students to attend at that level?
Then you go another level down.
And the precondition is one,
the student has to want to come to school.
And another is that parents have to actually understand that getting their child outdoor and into school is important.

(25:42):
Both of those things are very difficult to achieve.
So that's where the interventions come in.
You can have into a school of school group creating the initiative may have interventions where they have workshops with parents that explain to parents that taking your child out of school for a month to go on a trip to your home country means they will miss a lot of work or that taking your child out of school to go help you translate when you have to go to doctors or court appointments or whatever actually will hurt your child's education.

(26:19):
Um,
so getting parents on board and understanding that attendance is a precondition to their child succeeding is a place where interventions and can come in because you can do lots of work with parents about understanding attendance.
You can also do work on the school side.
Students may not want to come to school because their teachers are completely culturally,

(26:44):
um,
incompetent into understanding their context and they feel very turned off.
They're not treated as an individual,
They're not treated with respect that makes so the school atmosphere may need to change.
Students may feel like failures do not want to come to school because they're not doing well.
So you can have interventions around bringing each student up to recognizing and achieving successes in one school we work with,

(27:14):
we found the reason that there was very low attendance in a grammar school,
a great tool is that it was across the street from a high school and the little kids were being picked on and beat up by gangs from the high school.
So it wasn't their parents thought they weren't going to school,

(27:35):
it wasn't that their school was bad.
It wasn't even that they didn't want to go to school.
It was that they were terrified to walk by the high school.
So you have to understand what the problem is and then you can develop an activity that will bring about the precondition of attendance.
In that case the activity was to change the times of day that the smaller Children came to school so that they didn't have to come to school when any of the high school students would be out on the grounds.

(28:08):
So understanding the context and setting.
So the precondition is attendance in in any school setting?
Pretty much.
But what will create that one intervention will bring about that attendance depends on why the attendance is poor.
And once you understand that you can develop the intervention and then that's where people begin to talk about it as a strategy.

(28:32):
Our strategy is to make it safe for Children to come to school or our strategy is to work with parents to understand they can't take their kids out of school all the time.
So that's how these things work backwards and are and are causally linked.
Is that an adequate explanation,

(28:52):
Helen Yeah,
that's perfect.
You know,
that was perfect.
And just to sort of add here,
you know,
to take care of when you're talking about contradict,
of course you're looking at indicators when you're saying is when you want to map your outcome or what indicators that will be concentrated in terms of,
we're looking at and the process could be also contemplative,
it could be a simple statistical evaluation,

(29:13):
like how many students have started coming to schools.
Very simple or you could also have a randomized control trial for a number of years to see whether intervention has worked or not.
Am I right here?
Yes,
that's correct.
There are many different methods that you can use in the evaluation and some qualitative methods are perfectly good in learning how parents change their attitudes and how students and teachers change their attitudes.

(29:41):
But ultimately,
there will have to be some things that you can do statistically and say,
well,
yes,
this school now graduates more students who go on to further education or this school's reading scores are going up.
So,
uh you you will want to have ways of measuring and there can be many different methods used.

(30:06):
It's good.
You pointed out here the qualitative measures right?
That we,
you know,
could be just a survey to see how much right?
So I should have also mentioned that very important part of most theories of change.
Is it very often to bring about anything climate change or do I mean reducing the harm of climate change,

(30:27):
public health is changing people's attitudes,
right?
And you can't really directly measurement a quantitative way of people's attitudes are changed.
You can survey people on their attitudes,
but most of us actually lie when we're asked if we put their famous studies where people are asked if they believe in recycling because it's important for the planet and almost all of us say we believe in recycling.

(30:55):
And then when you look at the people who actually recycle,
it's a fraction of those of us who believe in it.
So measuring that people change attitudes,
is it really that useful?
But qualitatively you may want to go talk to people to gain an understanding of health and why their attitudes are shifting.

(31:17):
And are they through talking to peers helping to change the attitudes of others?
But it won't prove to you that your fury is on track because you can't really quantitatively measure an attitude.
You have to actually measure the behavior.
That's that that's an example.
I mean,
you know,
the sort of uh change and building on that.

(31:39):
Now,
I have a fantastic question for you and you know,
there's a paper plays theory of change which is prepared by Xabier A Heart and Orrin Collins,
which highlights the importance of driving the long term outcome driven change within the civic society is now specifically through universities.
Now,
you talked about,
you know,
recycling circular economy,

(32:00):
which is United Nations educational Scientific and cultural Organization has identified ways in which universities can engage in sustainable weapon goals.
Now,
circular economy is a part of the United Nations sustainable goals.
How,
and you talked about qualitative change and you know,
we'll go a bit more in depth how in what ways should universities?

(32:21):
Now this is a very critical part.
Use theory of change,
I think it's very important as a tool to implement the holistic mindset change among students.
Were looking at long term change and how can,
you know,
theory of change,
engage sustainable development goals as a part of our curriculum and education institute.
So there's two things like,
you know,
how do we put it in the curriculum and how do you think that curriculum or any other,

(32:44):
you know,
interventions could change the mindset of students?
Well,
that's a very important question,
because universities are in a way the last frontier people who really have no idea what theory of changes and rarely use it.
And as you,
as you mentioned,

(33:05):
two of my colleagues did a study with Macquarie University in Sydney Australia about developing outcome driven change around diversity at Macquarie and that went very well.
But in order to answer this question,
I I actually interviewed yesterday the leading person for training and implementing theories of change within universities,

(33:32):
she's a member of our board dr Belinda bosco disco,
I'm sorry,
and she's a vice president at University of Oklahoma for diversity equity and inclusion,
and she has been in the forefront of implementing theory of change within the university and everything that she has learned resonates with what I've learned outside of universities,

(33:56):
but they are specific environments.
One thing that's very important is not to begin with trying to change the mindset among students for a theory of change to be transformational within a university.
It's very important that educators,
faculty staff administrators really embrace the idea.

(34:20):
Um,
thinking about outcomes.
She has found that most educators really focus on outputs saying we had 100 people take that course,
but the outcome is different,
what did they learn and how do they implement what they learned.
So she's first trained educators in the different colleges of her university to understand what an outcome is and how it's not an output.

(34:50):
Teaching a certain number of people doesn't change anyone's condition.
Another way she's made the transformation in her university is at the University of Oklahoma.
They now put a theory of change in every grant the university writes so than any project they undertake,

(35:13):
they have a theory of change for it.
She recently,
in the last recent weeks convened 100 educators internationally around developing a theory of change for the area of diversity,
equity and inclusion,
which is what our specialty is.

(35:33):
And she expected a lot of pushback from people,
but she found that they immediately understood the idea.
Um,
the importance of understanding what their destination was and what a precondition was.
But what she found was difficult and I guess it was her aha moment.

(35:54):
And I good attest to the truth of this is that as well as they bought into the idea and were eager to begin as people began,
they really started still talking about what they were doing because everybody starts with where they are.
And so the actual doing of the theory of change is more difficult than selling people on the idea of it that once people do it,

(36:21):
she had the math department work on doing it.
And once they understood the idea of mapping things backwards,
what will it take for this to happen and what will it take for that to happen?
They very successfully developed a theory of change but other departments then wanted but it's very important.

(36:43):
One thing she found to be very important is to make sure that you don't just teach theory of change but that you emerge the people you want to have become transformational into theory of change.
You emerge them in the training and in the doing of it,
it's really an immersion process that you have people actually do it,

(37:05):
not just hear about it and that you understand that you have to work with people where they start.
So if they're starting with I do this and I do that,
you always were theory of change have to say,
but why do you do that?
You do that because you want something to happen.
So the music teacher comes into the room and says,

(37:26):
my long term goal for the school is to not cut music out of the curriculum.
Well that's very that's very important and particularly from her point of view but all of us can agree music should be taught but it's not the long term goal for the school,
but she's not going to stop saying her long term goal is music education shouldn't cut.

(37:49):
So therefore in a school setting,
in a university setting,
you'd say to that music professor,
but why shouldn't music education be cut?
What's so important about having musical education?
And then the music professor can state the outcome,
which is obvious in her mind?
Well,

(38:10):
obviously an understanding of music leads to X,
Y Z.
That,
you know,
changes cognitive ability and perception in so many ways.
But you have to push people into from where they are.
You can't just say to them,
no,
you're wrong.
Don't tell me about your activities.
You have to say,

(38:30):
okay,
I understand why you're doing this as an educator or I understand you're this important for you to do this as an educator.
But why,
why is it important?
What do we,
when we say diversity equity and inclusion in this college?
What do we mean by it?
So she's worked with international educators and within her university and it took a little while to get people to understand it.

(38:55):
But through total immersion and actually doing it and having some hand holding as they do it.
She got the faculty,
the administrators of staff and the students to really decide that they needed docs across colleges and they have some remarkable outcomes from this.
Uh,
one of the educators she worked with moved on to a university in new york and she's bringing theory of change into her university in new york,

(39:25):
it's not just with students,
but with the idea of transforming the institution.
So her cake away and she was hoping that I would actually quote this in the podcast and since I,
I will quote it because it's so true and it's not just for this part of the,
our discussion,
it's for theory of change in general,

(39:47):
a takeaway when thinking about theory of change is that people think it's very complex and it takes a while to do it.
But when you embrace theory of change for very complex initiatives like like world peace or ending poverty or you know,
long term things like that,
having a well understood sense of what the context and barriers are actually saves a lot of frustration was going wrong and a lot of time.

(40:17):
So her take away within the university is,
don't start with the students start with being transformational at the level of faculty and administration immerse people train,
people hold their hands through it and they will get it and they will love it,
but it will take time to do it and universities as far as I know,

(40:39):
Belinda Biscoe is the only person working in the university at that level of transformational change.
Macquarie did a good job in the project Owen and zombie with them,
but I don't think they're taking it to this level,
but everything she is found with a university while peculiar to academia,

(41:00):
which has its own logic and timeframe is true in general for theory of change.
So I share with you the benefit of her work being really the premier person bringing theory of change into university settings,
which is an area of great need.

(41:21):
Here's an example when you're talking about,
I really appreciate this.
You know,
you had a chat yesterday only and you were talking about an example to cautions come to my mind when you're talking about long term change.
Uh what sort of,
what is the optimum level of long term?
What do you think?
It's good when you're implementing uh strategically like a theory of change?

(41:45):
Say that again.
Are you saying,
what is the good,
what's a good time frame?
How far in the future?
Yeah,
how far,
how far do you think it's good to,
you know,
if I want to look at a change,
but in long term it should be five years.
You think?
How long is that really depends on the area and I'll speak from some current projects I'm working on right now.

(42:08):
I'm working with one organization International NGO that is looking to change the financial markets of how people buy bonds so that they only buy bonds that support green activities and their goal is to reduce carbon emissions worldwide.

(42:28):
So that climate only changes by 1.5 degrees where we're on a road to change climate by maybe double that with current strategies.
So their long term goal Could be over 30 years.
They want to see some movement.
They have goals for this year and next year.

(42:49):
They're they're indicators their quantitative measures and meeting their short term preconditions are within a year,
within two years,
within three years.
But their long term goal is really Where will we be in 2050 now that's appropriate to climate.

(43:09):
In another case,
I'm working with a mentoring organization in Birmingham England and they are trying to get students to not get involved in youth crime and they have a lot of preconditions about what it would take for kids not to go down a path of crime.

(43:31):
Uh certainly parts of Birmingham that they work in.
Their long term goal is very short,
it's within one year.
They want to see a lot of their preconditions met and a lot fewer.
A lot of youth having mentors and having alternatives to crime and having alternative ways to make money,

(43:55):
not the kind of money they might make by dealing drugs,
but something that they will see will lead to a better future.
So their long term goal is just in the next year or two,
maybe this year,
it's to change involvement in youth crime in Birmingham and by year two or three it's to have replicated the program into other cities and that's more usual.

(44:19):
The long term goal is most usually between one and five years out,
But in something like climate change,
which is going to play out over decades.
The long term goal may be something that will not be ever measurable by the people doing it today.
They will have to measure that they're on the right path.

(44:41):
You mentioned.
What is the difference between an outcome and output output?
And this question between outcomes and outputs has been was one of the biggest changes as I went particularly to small organizations that they did not realize that they were reporting on outputs.

(45:03):
So so many youth programs that I went to or public health programs or food pantries,
they reported.
How many meals did we give out?
How many students attended our after school program.
How many parents showed up on parent night.
How many parents attended training on financial planning.

(45:25):
These are all very important.
Outputs should be tracked.
I don't want to say that they are less important.
Outputs are on the way to an outcome.
But if you stop it outputs,
all you know is that you implemented your program which is good,
but you don't know that you led to the change in the world and the outcome is to change in the condition of somebody else.

(45:50):
An organization,
a person,
you want to see their conditions change.
That's the outcome.
The output are things that you can do on the way that show that they are actually coming.
two things where they could learn or change in some way,
but outputs are important to track.

(46:12):
But an outcome is an actual change in condition.
So the planet not blowing up is an outcome.
That we not all burn up.
That's an outcome.
An output would be that we now put 50% of the cars on the road or electric cars come to your course.

(46:35):
Now you have a flagship cause the certification course in theory of change.
How does the coast educate people on the theory to talk about that and to talk about also how the certification is helping in,
you know,
catalyzing a successful effective career.
Ultimately,
that is also a major part of why people do certification,
especially a career in international development,
space or social sector.

(46:56):
I'm appreciative that you bring up the course because I think it's a very important.
Um,
and really one of its kind offering of the center and I do want to say this isn't an advertisement.
The center is a nonprofit and don't make any money by promoting the course.
But I find it very,

(47:17):
very important.
And it's the only course on theory of change that exists that goes into the level of detail on different topics,
uh,
that people need to use theory of change in a correct and rigorous way and learn it well enough to own it so that they can be creative and change it.

(47:38):
If somebody who doesn't know it as second nature starts making changes.
It can be a disaster if you learn it well,
you can be creative and come up with different ways of getting information.
And um you know,
people show me ways of doing things graphically,
which isn't a talent I have,

(47:59):
so when I can train someone to understand it perfectly and then they can show me something better than I could have presented it.
Uh this gives people an enormous leg up in their ability to affect social change and in their career,
because everybody requires theory of change.
If you can go in and show that you really know what it is and you got your certificate from the,

(48:24):
you know,
the legacy organization that began Theory of Change.
Um and and there's just a tremendous amount of learning that goes on in the course.
We try to draw from examples of our own work over the last 20 years and bring in a lot of the articles and papers and chapters that have been written by others that are good from around the world and to provide as many examples as possible.

(48:52):
Every module in the course requires a student to do an exercise because we don't want this to be just,
we teach you,
we want people to be doing learning by doing is still,
it's not in the course as much as if,
you know,
you train,
you're doing the project yourself,
but the exercises help get you the practice and then there's an exam and I'll just run through very quickly that what the course entails is taking four mandatory courses on basics And taking four electives and the mandatory courses of fund our fundamentals of theory of change.

(49:32):
What are the components of a theory of change?
How do you decide on the scope which gets to your question of how far out is your long term outcome?
How broad do you need to be in your preconditions?
How deeply down you have to dig into activities and then Theory of change in evaluation and strategic planning.

(49:53):
Those courses are required then the student can choose from and I'll read them more quickly.
The history of Theory of Change.
The difference between toc and log trains,
logic models and theories of action.
That's a very popular one.
There's great confusion in the difference among the models.

(50:13):
Then we have topical areas.
Theory of Change in international development,
Theory of Changing education,
Theory of Change for social enterprises,
Theory of change and policy advocacy.
Theory of change in health and theory of change in strategic planning versus strategic plans.
And then we have a set of courses on methodology,

(50:35):
how to use T.
O.
T.
Is communication tools,
how to use online surveys and other methods to get a theory of change started,
tips for facilitators using theory of change online and theory of change in assessing grant applications.
So those are and we can we will probably add more courses.

(50:57):
Those are what are available now.
Um every student gets an advisor who is available by email or zoom 24 7.
They don't necessarily get an answer the very day they write because there were so many students,
but they get answers.
They have a person that they can talk to and get an answer pretty quickly.

(51:19):
So any questions that come up either about the process of the content,
we have a lot of,
a lot of personal 1-1 going on and um,
it's a terrific course and there are some other toC courses out there and I've taken each of them to see if they offer something that we're missing,

(51:40):
but they're,
they're much water down.
I again,
it sounds like an ad,
but the center really has put a lot of thought into being comprehensive and allowance for practice and being practical in terms of the fields that people will be working in.
So that's the course.

(52:00):
Um,
it does cost,
it is pricey For a student depending on where they come from.
Its $2,000 itself based.
Most students take 4-6 months to complete it,
but they can do it in any period of time they want to,
They do get one on 1 attention and in most cases the students,

(52:24):
the organizations pay the course cost of the course.
Uh we have one organization now where 15 students from the same organization are taking the course and they all got funded,
nobody had to pay for it out of pocket and we give to be scholarships per year and um,

(52:45):
one One that were given for 2022.
And I wanted to,
I thought she just gave a perfect example of why we give a scholarship and why we learned from our students,
um,
as as well as um,
us teaching them.

(53:07):
And I think this describes theory of change media better than I've said it so far.
I'm going to quote from our,
I won't use your name because I didn't ask our permission.
But this is what,
how she described,
why she wants to do the course,
working as a Gandhi fellow in government school in Gujarat India and talking to a student and asking him about what he hasn't come to school for the past five days.

(53:33):
He said because my brother wants me to go so that I can become a learned teacher of Islamic law.
And I stood there trying to comprehend how to convince his family to send him to school And achieve my output,
my output of 100% attendance in schools.
But then my experience pushed me to understand the construct here.

(53:57):
Why don't they want to send their child to school?
The simple activity of a teacher going to the house and getting the child to school is not the solution,
which ensures that a family will send their child back to school permanently with having many experiences at a grassroots level.
I realized there are so many underlying assumptions that we take when we prepare solutions without conducting actual assessment with the beneficiary,

(54:26):
my several experiences like these in the development sector has matured my thoughts about problems,
statements and solutions that we design.
I have experienced in my journey sometimes solutions do not result in the expected results and sometimes incentives and value propositions that we offer to the beneficiaries are not true for them.

(54:51):
I have recently learned that while designing a model causal relations need to be in place before implementing the solutions on the ground.
And this experience she offered to us as an example of why she felt she really needed to learn theory of change because focusing on getting 100% attendance was not digging deep enough to get to the kind of education outcome she wanted and I thought that was just a succinct quote,

(55:23):
the chief put together about how she would use this work.
I mean this could apply anywhere,
you know,
a lot of people,
exactly whatever reason,
you know,
this could be acting will do across a lot of religions or context.
You know,
you talked about theory of change,
you also have a talk of,
you have an online system.

(55:45):
That's right,
we can think about it,
there's also,
you know,
that becomes much more easier for anybody or you to set up the whole damn pathways to theory of change online.
Am I correct?
Yes.
Theory of change online is web based so you can log on from anywhere.
You can save old theories of change so you can go back and see how you're thinking about but it's a canvas that allows you to draw your outcomes and arrows and your graphic,

(56:13):
it has areas for you to put in the description of your outcome,
all of your indicators including who's your target,
how much change do you want and went by because there may be one set of changes in six months and another in one year and you want to track all that.
It allows you to put in your hypotheses about why an intervention will work or water precondition is necessary.

(56:39):
It allows you to put in your underlying assumptions.
So it's it's a database and a visual picture of your theory.
It allows commenting by others so you can tell somebody log onto this and use the comment feature and put a little comment box that says,
I don't understand what you mean by this outcome or this precondition is not enough.

(57:01):
It won't help people get jobs.
So we eventually developed theory of change.
We began in 2004 with a seed grant from the um foundation and we develop it for ourselves.
We were inundated with work and going crazy and drawing and redrawing theories of change in word or in power point and we were just going mad.

(57:25):
You couldn't keep track of more the versions,
you couldn't have layers of the database of indicators,
outcomes,
some reason people could understand.
So I couldn't live without it now.
I couldn't function if I didn't have a theory of change online for all my projects,
We have about 30,000 users worldwide signed on for it,

(57:48):
I would say at any given time,
you know,
maybe a small fraction of that are using it actively for a project.
Um,
but there's nothing else like it out there.
So I probably say this is an ad.
I think the theory of change online is while it takes a little bit of practice to get good at how to use all the features because it has a lot of features.

(58:13):
It's basically very simple,
an intuitive and we have learning videos and opportunities to talk to a tech person with questions.
But theory have changed online um is tremendously useful and it's not perfect.
It's growing and growing all the time.
We're always adding to improve it.

(58:34):
Um I I highly recommend it.
It's not necessary,
nobody has to have it to do a good theory of change.
It's just handy.
It just makes life simpler.
I want to say that the theory of change online,
the web based tool and the course are both described and available at www.

(58:58):
Theory of Change dot org.
Theory of Change dot org is the home of the center and again,
that's a non that's nonprofit and we're not speaking about my work and doing consulting with acknowledged or anything.
We're talking about a nonprofit with an international board that's really aimed at education and dissemination.

(59:22):
So um the website I'm giving you is for the nonprofit and those tools are available through the nonprofit when you talked about a lot of models.
Uh I think I missed or would you like to also comment how it's going to be very effective?
I know uh you know,
it's widely used in the development sector to sort of specifically,
you mentioned there are various courses courses for measuring social impact and a social entrepreneur or if you are in healthcare,

(59:49):
but we looked really specific to say how it could make somebody very successful also or how it could help a transition into this insertion sector from a different sector.
Our theory of change certification could help you think that that's going to be a value out.
Right?
I I do I have seen in the students so far um that it depends on the students position for an independent consultant that enables them to get more work because they're,

(01:00:16):
you know what they're doing very simple for an NGO.
It enables there to be a court staff that can really take on leading a theory of change process within their own organization.
And although they pay for the certification then they don't have to pay to have an outside facilitator like myself or someone else come in and develop it.

(01:00:37):
They can they learn it well enough.
they have a core staff that can develop a theory of change internally.
Um They might need need to want some coaching but there's lots of money to be saved in your career by not costing your organization.
They need to hire an external person.

(01:00:58):
Um One of our former staff,
Zahabi who wrote the co wrote the Pace project at Macquarie University.
He was hired um from acknowledge by Mckinsey consulting firm and he was hired,
you know,
aside from his own personality and talents which were considerable,

(01:01:21):
it was the fact that he knew theory of change from acknowledge that really convinced them to give him quite uh cushy.
Well I shouldn't say cookie.
It's a hard job but uh prestigious job at Mckinsey.
So I think in well trained in this has a lot of currency.

(01:01:42):
There were some governments that are requiring that the centers method be used.
The dutch government has a pamphlet at that requires anyone applying for funding to the judge.
Government must use the center's version of theory of change.
So if you come forward and go to an organization and say well I was trained by the center and theory of change.

(01:02:05):
Well they're going to hire you if you're in the Netherlands.
Uh Not every country requires using our particular formula but U.
S.
A.
I.
D.
Has developed a checklist for a theory of change in international development and it's an excellent checklist.
We use it in the international development module.

(01:02:26):
And when I look at that checklist I think well this is all our work.
But actually what they did is they took what they learned about the theory of change probably from from our work.
But they made it something their own they developed something we don't have.
Which is a checklist for users that's very practical.

(01:02:47):
That lets people know how they're proceeding through it.
And someone who can go to a U.
S.
A.
I.
D.
Or a dip it and say well I have a certificate in Theory of change.
They are going to be hired.
So I think it's a tremendous career advantage and it's a tremendous personal advantage to see the groups you work with actually succeed as a as a leader as a thought leader and as an expert leading export and theory of change until you change has got much broader use rather than international global or sustainable development sector.

(01:03:22):
When you're looking at it,
how do you think it's going to evolve as a tomb?
Not only in the development sector?
When I'm talking about also in civic societies or other businesses in the long term when you're talking about futuristic thing,
especially during the time of the pandemic.
You know things have become much more critical,
how do you think this is going to evolve as a part of mm.

(01:03:48):
Well I think I am on the good side,
positive development I see is that you said it at the beginning.
Theory of change is such an important part of understanding social impact now 15 years ago.
That would have just been a dream of mine that that such a thing would ever come to pass.

(01:04:10):
So I see theory of change becoming more and more used by everybody.
Local tiny programs you theory of change now.
And they often do it quite well very very well as well as large international development projects.
What lands behind and I believe we'll catch up.

(01:04:32):
Is that for the most part government agencies do not know of or use theory of change.
Well,
usa I.
D.
Has this terrific theory of change checklist and yet they still use log frames and you go to different departments with the U.
S.
A.
D.
A.
I.
D.
And they don't even know that the checklist exists.

(01:04:55):
Um The EU requires that all projects include a theory of change.
But do the people at the eu reviewing the theory of change fully understand what they're looking at yet.
Not yet.
So this is evolving.
Um But there are places universities as you asked about very importantly and governments really are behind the curb that the Ngos and foundations and small groups are so there is room for growth which I see happening but slowly.

(01:05:32):
So I think that that will happen and I think that on the down side the more and more people who know you know who hear the term theory of change and know that they need to have one because everybody does,
everyone has that pair of Nikes,
I better get them,
I don't even know that they're comfortable but I better get them is that there's a lot of misinformation which will continue to mushroom out there.

(01:06:02):
So it's so important that organizations like yours like the center like Kellogg like Asia foundation are putting out very good examples have used theory of change creatively but rigorously not just doing something loose and doing a logic model and saying I have a theory of change.

(01:06:26):
So I do see the misinformation continuing to proliferate but I see inroads more and more of good work being done throughout all foundations all countries.
Um,
we have an affiliate in Japan who about five years ago asked us to become affiliate and morrow southern they could introduce theory of change in Japan,

(01:06:53):
they are the first to do it in Japan.
So I I see this becoming,
I can't say more global.
It's already global but having more tentacles into more organizations so that everybody is doing it.
My concern is that everybody do it right.
Um,

(01:07:14):
and I'm a stickler for people doing it right,
which isn't to say they shouldn't put their own stamp on and I'm all for that.
I learned so much from people by coming up with a new suggestion or a new way of doing it.
But if you're not rigorous with the logic and the con and understanding the context and getting enough perspectives and voices in the mix that that's not negotiable,

(01:07:40):
you have to really understand context and perspectives and logic and do it properly.
So I think that is coming along,
but it's mixed in with a lot of people doing it in a,
in a looser,
inaccurate fashion,
But there's a lot of terrific work and it has exploded beyond my wildest dreams of 15 years ago.

(01:08:05):
Um unfortunately I as you say,
I'm an expert in the field only by virtue of longevity.
I began with Aspen in the mid nineties at the very inception of this and have kind of the institutional history because I've aged into it.
Um So it's not a special talent,

(01:08:26):
it's that I've been doing it for 25 years from the very originators and uh I am an expert,
but I learned every day that there are new and creative things that I don't have a talented,
that other people do.
So it's always very important to make sure that we're open to learning from others.

(01:08:48):
Um and I'm sorry that my expertise came at the,
At the downside of happened to be 25 years old.
Oh,
nothing happens overnight.
Got started in this particular field.
Was there sort of a nudge or something which you came across,

(01:09:09):
which you thought,
okay,
this is really something which I want to do was that story behind this.
Yes,
there is a story behind it.
I worked for a very small community development organization in my 20's and I had to develop a plan for them on how to prevent arson in along their business commercial strip.

(01:09:32):
And I Drew out,
sketched out on a piece of paper,
a theory of change.
I never heard of it.
It was the furthest thing from my mind.
This is mid 80s.
I sketched out on a people a piece of paper how I understood why these arsons were happening and what it would take to prevent these arsons with the role of bad landlords and insurance fraud and all of that war.

(01:09:56):
And I sketched it all out on a piece of loose leaf paper And I get the project and I got paid and I moved on and got my doctorate and 10 years later I'm doing evaluation and I discovered the work of Aspen,
which was my real ah ha moment um,
discovering that,

(01:10:17):
oh,
people do understand that you have to know what it is that people wanted to do before you can tell them they succeeded or failed.
Maybe everybody didn't graduate from high school because they only Had mentors for 10 students.
They're not looking at things,
but maybe they did great work for those 10 students.
So we have to understand this better.

(01:10:38):
So I discovered the theory of change and I began realizing that we could not possibly work with people as evaluated if we didn't really understand their thinking and then we realized,
well,
wouldn't this be better if we understood their thinking when they're planning it rather than when we're looking back to see what they thought five years ago.

(01:11:01):
So we began using it for planning and one day I was cleaning out my file cabinets and I came across this sketch I did for the uh commercial arson project and the sketch was a theory of change.
It was pre conditions and activities that were required to understand what and I was like,

(01:11:23):
I brought it to work and I showed all my colleagues and I said look at this,
look at this,
I do a theory of change when I was 24 I had no idea and I've saved it to this day because the kana logic behind the theory of change is really just common sense,
what I was doing at that young age in a small local project was just doing a common sense map of how I understood the problem and that's all theory of changes as as Belinda.

(01:11:56):
This guy will say the devil is in the doing,
it's taking complex problems and actually figuring out what's causing them and what it will take to change them.
That is so difficult.
The concept of using common sense to understand the problem.
I was doing it before I ever knew anything about the field.

(01:12:19):
So I think that it's important for people to understand that this is not rocket science as a concept.
It's common sense.
You do it in a way every day,
as I said,
when you plan dinner,
I did it in planning to reduce arson on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn.

(01:12:42):
Um,
but being able to do it in a group of people with very different viewpoints and actually understand problems not as simple as commercial arson,
which was bad enough,
but as ending poverty or or not having the planet destroyed or these are changing healthcare systems in the US.

(01:13:07):
These things are very,
very complex.
So this is the theory of change that's complicated.
It's the problem that's complicated.
So don't blame the theory of change when the work you embark on.
It's very hard,
it's very,
very difficult problems.
Theory of change helps sort through that and make a pathway so that you can see from here to there to path in the woods basically.

(01:13:33):
That's,
yes,
that's what I would.
And and there with that,
I'm happy to take more questions,
but that's how it came to me,
Interesting story.
Before I go to the last question,
like to share any message,
a lot of time with the development sector,
you've seen it evolved from 80s to now.
I mean there was no concept of sustained development goals,

(01:13:56):
which,
you know,
the United Nations in 2015,
but before that there's million development goals,
which the United Nations had come in.
So if you look at the sort of,
uh,
you know,
focus,
which we have today,
it's tremendous that wasn't there,
it's more impact driven,
it's more very global.
What sort of message would you like to give to people as an export,

(01:14:18):
as somebody who has seen that transition happening,
development sector,
uh,
to the youngsters,
to people who want to comment or people who want to transit into a career in social impact.
I keep coming across people.
And and this could be a very strong message which could give to them and he advised anything.
It's really my messages is so simple,

(01:14:38):
which is people should really focus on the destination.
What is the change you need to see in the world.
And if you can articulate that and then understand why that problem needs changing.
You're,
you're halfway there really don't focus on outputs,

(01:15:01):
don't focus on what activities you do or how many people attended,
focus on the change you need to see in the world and understand what it would take to make that change happen no matter who had to do it.
Maybe partners,
you don't even exist,
but focus on what it would take to reach the destination.
And that's all people really need to understand two,

(01:15:26):
decide the theory of change,
approaches something they have to do.
It's not just one among many methods.
It's a concept of a way of thinking of starting with the end of the destination because that's the only way you can plan,
how you're going to get there.
And it's so simple,

(01:15:46):
but when you get in the weeds of doing it,
everybody finds it very,
very scary and complicated.
But it's just common sense and it's starting with the goal,
understanding your goal.
We come now to the last question and that's a very good voice I think you know the best part is like how to articulate it and articulation.

(01:16:10):
Sometimes it's so difficult.
The devil in the you know in details or you know when you really want to do,
you're going actually right down to the nitty gritty is and coming out and that's when you realize actually what you want to change and which part was to take that message.
One thing you just said is very true.

(01:16:31):
People can name a long term articulating what the long term goal is can be very difficult and people tend to want to stop with something generic empower women or end discrimination or something.
It's when you look at what the indicator is that you really understand and you really develop what you mean by this outcome,

(01:16:54):
empower women doesn't mean anything but saying women will have access to credit and loans in Ghana From 2022 on that's empowering women.
They now have an economic stake and can get money and start businesses.

(01:17:14):
So it's when you develop an indicator,
it really helps you articulate the long term goal in a way that people might have been dancing around by just saying,
well,
we just want parents to be empowered,
we just want people not to be poor,
well,
what does that mean?
And it's those indicators that will end the details there,

(01:17:39):
Yeah,
and I really appreciate you,
uh you know,
taking,
you know,
talking so much now we come to the last question and I think,
you know,
you talked about a lot of our moments,
but I would hear,
would you like to share something very specific,
uh you know,
in this space are moments which comes to your mind,
something very recent,
something very profound coming up with something very profound has proved,

(01:18:06):
proved my aha moment was that I'm not profound.
Uh no,
I,
I,
but seriously,
I will say one Aha moment for me was to,
is to realize that this has gone from something that was used by a very small group of people and community development to something,

(01:18:32):
there is now an international phenomenon,
there's a downside to it with the misinformation,
but it's a tremendous,
it takes my breath away that this has been so successful,
so there's that another Aha moment for me,
is when a student that I'm teaching asks me questions or makes a suggestion And I hadn't thought of it before and I've done this for 25 years and I say,

(01:19:02):
oh that's,
so that,
that would solve that problem had to represent sustainability,
that's brilliant.
So the ah ha moments come across every day,
well,
they don't happen every day,
but the ah ha moments when someone brings something new to something in the field,

(01:19:22):
so that's about me and about toc but the real ah ha moment for the field is that its strength is growing and it has not led yet in my view to real systems change and I have recently had a ha moments where I see groups that are fighting for systems change so that when it makes that leap to systems change,

(01:19:51):
we could really see a transformation,
transformed world.
So that,
that's kind of the aha moment is the,
is the potential of what I was doing,
God scraps of paper When my 20s is now something that people really embrace in a much more sophisticated way and can lead to not just good programs and initiatives but to transformational system change and that's an aha moment that I'm I guess I'm in the middle of having,

(01:20:27):
I haven't quite had it yet,
I see it happening,
I mean the uh I want to live long enough to see it happen and be able to say that's the uh we change the world.
No,
And you know,
I know it's just,
it occurred to me,
you know,
when you were talking about,
you wrote that in piece of paper at the age of 25 and you're finally in,

(01:20:51):
after a long time again,
you'll connect you think it was like destiny that brought you out,
there do you think there was a sort of providence there that you know,
there was some sort of connection in,
in this,
in the sense that this was always very,
very much my way of thinking implicitly the way my mind works as a teenager,

(01:21:14):
as a college student in a sort of analytical and logical way,
but really very much wanting to see social change and social justice.
So I think it was destined in the sense of,
that's where my talent and interest lies.
So I don't know that it was any grand destiny,

(01:21:35):
but it was my destiny.
Um,
and now I see that is now I see that it is other people's destiny.
Maybe that's the greatest Aha moment of all when I see it's other people's destiny.
I think this in the subconscious mind and you know,
the nature brought you out there and I think you kept on taking those steps and you and you made your resting.

(01:21:59):
I mean,
that could be one way of looking at small interventions which led you to the long ambulance.
Yeah,
thanks a lot.
I really appreciate.
It was a fantastic conversation.
It was very descriptive.
We talked a lot about,
we talked about theory of change.
We looked at examples and we looked at what we're really doing at this point of time and theory of change certification course.

(01:22:21):
I think that's a fantastic cause I saw it and I'm,
I still wanted to do it.
I mean,
I mostly want to do it and it's going to,
I'll put a strong foundation,
like you said,
there's a lot of misconceptions for a lot of strong foundation among,
you know,
people who are practitioners who go subject that exports,
who want to take this field.
Thanks a lot.
You took time very,

(01:22:41):
very in depth and very descriptive conversation.
Thanks a lot.
I really appreciate.
Thank you.
I appreciate it.
I love to talk about this.

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