Methodology
Listening to people, translating
their point of view
At OIKEIOS we are keen to populate the spaces of development, building places of shared understanding between entrepreneurs and the community, as an essential medium for achieving their goals. We do this by investigating the points of view of the people involved and putting them at the centre of the communication process between the partners.
On-the-ground participatory ethnographic research and community engagement are our key methodological assets, to identify the expectations and worries of the communities in their language and within their value system, and subsequently translate them into the languages of other stakeholders.
This ethnographic approach, complemented when needed by rapid assessments, focus groups, structured interviews, surveys and quantitative analysis, aims at placing at the centre of attention the world-views of the communities engaged, direct or indirect beneficiaries of a certain development initiative or affected by it. This approach ensures both practical gains, such as preventing conflicts and channelling resistance to a project, and wider and more durable benefits, such as building an environment of communication and inclusion that socializes and enriches the intended project. In this way, a development intervention can become a participatory venture from which to substantiate betterments of life and move towards new ideas, allowing the growth of new partnerships and plans.
Beyond networking: an effervescent space of discussion
Networking has become the buzzword for the mechanics of productive work in the development, consultancy and business sectors. Certainly, the creation of webs of connected professionals, information repositories, institutions, business ventures and companies appears as a sign of our globalized times.
We go a step further. In OIKEIOS the network builds into an effervescent team of professionals, adding an integrative dimension of technical discussion to design the key strategies and approaches to deal with each project. The network concept implies a rather static horizontal connection, in which each professional contribution is a bounded node of expertise within the reticule. Instead, we approach each project as a lively connection between spheres of professional expertise, creating new knowledge and practical approaches in an interface of intensified discussion by professionals challenging each other's perspective on the specific matter discussed.
Dynamic Work Structure
Our dynamic work structure is composed of the main team, which receives the requests from clients –Government Agencies, Multilateral Agencies, Private Companies, NGOs, INGOs or Civil Society Organizations—, defines the strategy for the consultancy and liaises directly with the wider team of associated consultants, receiving when needed the input from individual members of an advisory board composed by senior researchers and experts.
Workflow process
Our workflow process makes the best of the "effervescent dynamics" to ensure added value in each phase of the project, in permanent communication between all the parts involved.