Why OTI?: Strategic Yeast, and Other Considerations

The mission of OTI is to take advantage of windows of opportunity in countries in crisis to deliver fast, flexible and short-term programming with the goal of generating positive momentum toward peace and stability, and creating or preserving the political space to set a country on a trajectory of success in critical times of transition. While OTI is part of USAID, it is considerably unique from the rest of USAID’s offices in that it has a more flexible financial mechanism that enables it to act quickly and be less limited by bureaucratic regulations. OTI’s mission also doesn’t fall within the traditional definitions of emergency relief or development. OTI does projects that aren’t necessarily based on need, like OFDA or other humanitarian agencies would, but they are more strategic and political. And unlike traditional development, its initiatives are less prescriptive and more flexible and responsive; they are also meant to be short-term, to kind of give a country a jump start and help to create the conditions in which long-term traditional development can be successful.

As for why I wanted to work for OTI: Several years ago I decided to study international peace & conflict resolution because I am deeply troubled by the vast and long-term destruction wrought by war and violence. I wanted to gain the knowledge and skills to contribute to the prevention and resolution of large-scale violent conflict in the world and to build better relationships and reconciliation between people groups and nations. However, during my graduate studies, I began to see that there is a big difference between conflict resolution on an interpersonal or small group level, and what is needed to address the complexity of large-scale political violence and war and to build peace in countries suffering or recovering from the consequences of violent conflict. I care deeply about right relationships between individuals and social groups and I believe in the efficacy of tools like negotiation, mediation, problem-solving workshops, dialogue, and reconciliation activities, but it has become increasingly difficult for me to see how these activities can be scaled up to have a wider impact on a national or international level to consolidate peaceful transitions in countries emerging from conflict.

I have been deeply influenced by the work of John Paul Lederach, and in his book The Moral Imagination, he talks about how what really matters when it comes to building peace, activating social change, and generating positive momentum isn’t critical mass – doing enough dialogue groups, enough problem-solving workshops, enough community reconciliation projects – but finding and activating what he calls the strategic yeast in a society: a small set of the right people involved at the right places. Yeast is the ingredient in a society that has the capacity to make other ingredients grow. When I first read this, I resonated with it, but wondered, “What exactly does this look like? How do you DO it?” Then I started learning about OTI and I saw what it looks like. This is what OTI does – bolstering change agents at critical junctions, taking a catalytic approach, small projects and small injections of funding in the right places at the right times that will have an impact on building positive momentum for peace.

I focused a good part of my graduate work on studying conflict analysis and different conflict assessment frameworks used by various humanitarian organizations. I enjoy analysis and believe strongly that a good understanding of a conflict and context is essential to good, conflict-sensitive programming that will be effective and sustainable. However, I am also disturbed by how many reports are written and how much analysis is produced and yet, how poor the link is between conflict research & analysis and strategies for peacebuilding. For some reason it seems difficult for organizations to do good analysis and then actually use it and transform it into actual programs and projects. I believe conflict analysis, no matter how thorough or accurate, is essentially useless if you don’t actually DO something with it. So I appreciate that people at OTI are doers. They do analysis, but they act fast, they take risks, and they aren’t afraid to make mistakes. One of the catch-phrases at OTI is, "It's better to be 80% right at the right time than 100% right too late." 

I think transitions are critically important as windows of opportunity for incredible positive change AND incredible negative change. I appreciate OTI’s emphasis on strategy, but also on timing, on taking advantage of those critical junctions when a small initiative can make a huge difference at the right time.