Introducing a Code of Conduct: seeking a new approach to sharing - Ecumenical Diakonia: New Challenges, New Responses

The ecumenical sharing of resources is a venerable practice of Christian communities. The sharing is done in varying ways -- direct gifts for the other partner to use as it sees fit, gifts given in the form of services, gifts in which the funds are actually spent by the giver on behalf of the beneficiary.

The World Council of Churches has been a major channel through which such gifts have gone to various needy communities. But strict accounting, with checks and balances, has not always been exercised. There was a great deal of trust and faith. Often funds given on the basis of one project proposal were spent instead on areas considered more important by the church or community. Some churches, communities and councils of churches were able to account with a high degree of efficiency. Others were not, but that was understood and accepted within the context of the ecumenical family.

Entry of the donor agencies

This way of cooperating changed with the emergence of donor agencies. They were church-related and development-oriented and often received the bulk of their income from the general public and from governments. Their donors demand strict accountability and adherence to the original project for which the funds were made available. Such demands highlighted visible weaknesses in the ability to plan, report and account for projects. Yet it was difficult for the partners -- agencies and churches or councils, including the WCC -- to be at ease and frank with each other when it came to these weaknesses. A culture of hypocrisy developed among the partners. Rather than being frank about the weaknesses, the giver might reduce funding, stop it altogether or send in monitors. The receiver in turn would try to please the giver verbally rather than to admit the weaknesses and seek a way to address them together.

This dialogue was even more difficult if it had to be conducted through an intermediary like the WCC. As a result, many development agencies preferred direct communication with the receiver, leading to reduced volume of funds passing through the WCC. Some maintained a token contribution to the WCC itself in order to save face, but could not use the WCC to pass on any further funds to partners. This was an indirect way of saying to the WCC that it was not being perceived as having the capacity and mechanisms to ensure efficiency and accountability.

In many cases, the local intermediaries did not have this capacity or technical know-how either. Consequently, some development partners tried to go straight to the beneficiaries by becoming operational themselves. But this also causes problems, since a large staff on the local scene is needed in order to operate efficiently. Furthermore, this approach was seen by local partners as "neo-colonial" or "neo-missionary" and led to problems of relationships with them.

Searching for new ways

At the same time, there were events where positive thinking was happening -- including the WCC global consultations on Diakonia 2000, "Called to be Neighbours" (Larnaca, Cyprus, November 1986) and on "Sharing Life" (El Escorial, Spain, October 1987) and the African consultation on diakonia, "Towards Abundant Life" (Nairobi, March-April 1989). The African consultation resulted in a series of other consultations throughout the continent, out of which a handbook was produced on "Diakonia: Towards Christian Service for our Time". This handbook is now being used by many churches and councils in Africa and is considered very helpful by them.

At the Larnaca consultation it was made abundantly clear that the communities who were subject to charity wanted to determine their own destiny, make their own decisions about their future and live their lives to the full. Nevertheless, the relationship between the deprived and the development agencies continued to be characterized by vast amounts of material and financial aid from the agencies, often passed on through local church structures which had their own diversified agendas and were not full-blown development agencies. The relationship needed regularization.

An attempt to do this was made in El Escorial, where 13 guidelines for sharing were drawn up, in which it was made clear that "relations between bodies at the three levels of sharing (national, regional and international) should be characterized by flexibility, complementarity and mutual power sharing".

The El Escorial guidelines, however, were general, and it was left to individual partners to decide how to go about implementing them. Different forms of genuinely including the South in decision-making have been tried, but the problems of accountability have continued. A more comprehensive modus operandi of implementing the guidelines is therefore called for, a Code of Conduct within the ecumenical family. It should however be emphasized that a Code of Conduct requires a participatory process as specified in the 13 El Escorial guidelines for sharing.

A new proposal

The WCC Programme Unit on Sharing and Service assisted in a process to develop such a Code of Conduct, and a proposal, again fairly general, has been drawn up by some Northern partners in the document "Living in the Ecumenical Community -- Guidelines for an Ecumenical Discipline".