International Development
CCCS provides expert development consultation services with grounded sensitivity to local cultures, languages, and political environments. In line with international standards, we help both to mitigate adverse social and environmental impacts and to promote project benefit-sharing—especially for projects affecting indigenous groups, ethnic minority populations, and other vulnerable groups (women, children, the elderly, people with disabilities, migrant workers, the very poor). Our consultants are also knowledgeable about issues of involuntary resettlement, land use rights, and cultural heritage protection.
Our project work in international development typically involves:
- Preparing community consultation strategies for corporate clients before, during, and in follow-up to project implementation
- Advising public-sector clients on potential social impacts of proposed project initiatives and analysis of potential alternatives
- Assisting governments to deal with social legacies relevant to project design
- Using “Good Practice” approaches and partnerships to meet and exceed social development obligations under international laws
- Reviewing various forms of social policy and providing gap-analyses between corresponding national and international legal regulatory frameworks
- Drafting guidance notes for social policy implementation and facilitating related training sessions
We specialize in specific forms of project social documentation:
- Indigenous Peoples Development Plans (IPDP) and Frameworks (IPDF)
- Resettlement Plans (RP) and Frameworks (RF)
- Social Impact Analysis (SIA) and Participatory Rapid Appraisal (PRA)
All CCCS reports are guaranteed to be written clearly, and (mostly!) absent of social science jargon.
CCCS can currently provide experts with the following language capabilities:
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For examples of how CCCS has put our services into action, please refer to our projects section.
Social Policy Development
CCCS has served on review teams for many of the institutional policies currently serving as global standards for international social development: the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
Our policy work focuses mostly on issues related to Indigenous Peoples—including exploring questions about the operationalisation of free, prior and informed consent (FPIC). We also have done some preliminary investigations for policy measures needed for broader-level “vulnerable peoples” safeguards and integrated approaches to social and environmental development. CCCS has also been involved with writing, editing, and reviewing MDB Indigenous Peoples Policy Guidebooks for their staff.
Further details about CCCS policy work can be found here.
Cross-Cultural Brokering
In addition to our work in international development, CCCS provides cultural brokering and conflict mediation services. Misunderstandings and disputes between peoples of different countries and cultures is a common phenomenon in many contemporary business environments. CCCS Associates are trained to perform specialized brokering services for situations where cultures collide—to appraise ‘conflict’ situations and to facilitate dialogue, mitigation, and ultimately conflict resolution. CCCS is particularly experienced negotiating the cultural dimensions of misunderstandings (e.g. between senior and middle management) at the intersections between Asian and North American contexts.
Special cultural brokering and conflict-resolution services include:
- Cross-Cultural Communication Workshops: Working with Clients across Cultural Divides
- Diversity Seminars: Appreciating Internal Cultural and Ethnic Diversity
- Corporate Internal Cultural Conflict Resolution
CCCS also provides the following services for multinational partnerships and collaborations:
- Cultural / political / contextual research analysis
- Community-level field research (qualitative and quantitative)
- Community workshop and focus-group facilitation
Meeting and Organizational Facilitation
For companies that intend to expand into Asian markets, CCCS offers “overview services” examining important aspects of the social, political, cultural contexts in the target country.
Our overview services include country briefings and social-cultural contextualization needed for economic development projects.