Principle to Practice

social dynamics. social change. pattern languages

consulting

Collaborative Learning Library

including Do No Harm

  • A powerful action research and learning methodology.
  • If an intervention has a negative impact on a conflict, how can we work to mitigate that harm? How can we work to help provide space for local capacities for peace? Do No Harm went through two iterations of the Collaborative Learning process. The first was to figure out how aid can support peace or war. The second was to learn how the techniques were being used and adapted.
  • What is effect peacebuilding and how do you know when you see it?
  • How can corporations and communities engage most effectively to their mutual benefit.
  • Some communities in civil conflicts figure out how to "opt out" if the conflict. How do they do this? What lessons can we learn from them about strategies in times of conflict?
  • We went around the world to actually listen to the recipients of aid.
  • The following tabs have links either to PDFs of the full books or to the book on the publisher's website.

  • Do No Harm: How Aid Can support Peace--Or War, by Mary Anderson

    Published in 1999, this book started a revolution. Every humanitarian and development organization and every donor to such organizations uses these ideas in some fashion. The experience shared and organized in this book is written into the policies of every donor and of every major international NGO. There are organizations around the world dedicated to teaching the practical aspects of this book based on training manuals I started writing in 2000, and then endlessly revising in light of new experience.

  • From Principle to Practice--A User's Guide to Do No Harm, by Marshall Wallace

    This book is a pattern language for interventions. Based on the experience of people using the Do No Harm framework developed in May Anderson's book, Do No Harm, it demonstrates the techniques interveners use to be effective.

  • Opting Out of War: Strategies to Prevent Violent Conflict, Mary B. Anderson and Marshall Wallace (Lynne Rienner Publishers)

  • Time to Listen, Mary B. Anderson, Dayna Brown, and Isabella Jean

  • Getting It Right: Making Corporate-Community Relations WorkLuc Zandvliet and Mary B. Anderson (Routledge)

  • Confronting War, Anderson and Olson
  • The Guidance Notes are short pieces answering specific questions about the use of Do No Harm.

    • Guidance Notes

    • Older works superseded by subsequent work, but still holding some historical interest, even if only to see how the process a project developed over time.

    • Edited by Mary Anderson

      This was a stepping stone between Mary's Do No Harm and my From Principle to Practice. It was based on almost ten years of experience of developing and using the Do No Harm Framework.

      • List Item 1
      • List Item 2
      • List Item 3
      • Another list item
      • and another
      another column or something

    • I have a curious skillset, but it all boils down to one thing:

      • I like people
      • I'm a good listener
      • I'm a good writer
      • I'm a good teacher
      • I'm a good coach
      • I want to hear what your problems are. I bet we can tackle them.
      Drop me a line.

    Do No Harm

    The wellbeing of the people we are trying to help must be the focus of our efforts to help them. 

    How do we live our values?

    This question carries special challenges for those who live their lives trying to help others. How do we describe ourselves? “Meddlers”, is what one friend who has been meddling for several decades call us. Another friend calls us the “well-meaning interveners”. Still another uses the term “busybodies”.

    All these terms are slightly self-deprecating, slightly unsure and anxious. The words signal a real concern about the audacity of intervening in other people’s lives, other people’s problems. We are right to be uncomfortable with this role and how it might be perceived, especially by those with whom we are working. What are our motives? Why do we do this? How can we be so sure that what we do is right?

    Most of us would say that our values called us to this work. We could not stand by and watch—or ignore—human suffering without offering a helping hand. Yet our actions do not always the have the effect we intended, sometimes with terrible consequences. The recipients of our assistance question our motives and our presence. Our values seem unattainable.

    How do we live our values so that they shine through? How do we avoid being overwhelmed by complex situations and perceptions that question our interventions, making them appear manipulative and mean? How do we get helping right?

    We form principles based upon our values to guide us toward right action. We look to them to point us in the right direction, and they do. But, at the end of the day—and every day—what we do, what we practice is where we make a difference.

    This Guide is about practice. This Guide is about how to “do no harm”.

    Next Pages
    The Principle
    Where does this Guide come from?
     
    Related pages
    The Practice
    The Project
    Four Do No Harm Categories