To implement a project that is designed from the 50th floor of a building in
The current hot debate in development seems to focus around the conundrum of developing a program that can address the numerous numbers living in poverty complimented with locally appropriate and sustainable projects. “Can demands for generalizable actions be reconciled with location- specific solutions?” - asked simply in The Critical Villager, a fantastic book by Eric Dudley.
Well, what do you think?
I get excited when I read a proposal for a development project. For example, IFAD (the United Nation’s International Fund for Agricultural Development) has proposed a project for
Now to actually achieve this good thing this project is planning to work with MoFA (Ministry of Food and Agriculture, my partner organisation) so I will be able to see and maybe even influence how this project rhetoric is turned into results.
Trying to put development into boxes
On the other side of the coin, I get slightly nervous when I hear of someone who has donated directly to get someone in school or given fertilizer to help a farmer plant more this season. These actions are surely bleeding-heart responses that give immediate gratification. But what about the project plan? How will these interventions be measured? What’s to say these resources couldn’t have been given to a project that will in theory have a broader and more lasting impact?
At this very moment I am sitting in an internet café with a new friend Dan. We are creating a blog that will let the Western world know about his idea for a development project (achievingqualityoflife.blogspot.com). Or rather, his solutions to a situation that he’s seeing in his own community. So while I continue to support his small-scale development project, I still continue to ask: “If we’ve been doing this development thingy for half a century, how come we can’t seem to make things work?”
Dan's best guess - get a girl of 14 years in school (Suraya)
I’ve come across several community leaders finding small-scale solutions but we run away from those since they are perhaps not “sustainable” or “scalable”…it’s almost like the development industry is too good for that kind of work. We prefer to have frameworks and figure everything out before we jump in and try things (sound familiar to those of you who are engineers?).
Iterations of “best guesses” is so not the way to do things, or is it? I’m starting to think so. So while I grapple with my engineering instinct that tells me to figure things out, put boxes around it and analyze everything before beginning, I recognize that small ideas are popping up in front of me almost daily. And to let those go by seems wrong (and I don’t think I’m just listening to my heart).
In an ideal world, community-based interventions that are participatory and big thinker programs can be harmonious components of effective aid. For starters, big thinkers can try harder to put themselves in the shoes (or bare-feet) of the beneficiaries. Secondly, field workers can try harder to inform to the big thinkers and funders of development aid that the aid process should follow the development process more closely by accepting the complex and dynamic nature of people’s lives and the need for iterations of community-based interventions. But don’t get me wrong, these are not my “solutions” to all the problems of international development, just best guesses from my perspective.
Dan and Sarah. My perspective on development is being shaped from inside his family's compound.
.jpg)
1 comment:
Hey Sarah,
I think that if more people were able to put themselves in other people's shoes, there would be a lot more things than just 'development' that would benefit!
I guess the challenge is for the community level to be 'accountable' to the 'big thinkers' without being unnecessarily weighed down by bureaucracy.
By working only with existing projects, I think EWB runs the risk of just making existing band-aids better--more accountable, more effective, or perhaps both. Perhaps in some cases, an unnecessary one might be 'ripped off' to extend the metaphor a little.
What about the private sector, rather than NGOs and governments? I have read numerous times that a significant barrier to economic development is the unwieldy process required to legally start a business in many developing countries. If the 'bottom' doesn't need the 'top' to do anything more than allow them to pursue their own interests, doesn't that eliminate the need for complex 'frameworks', 'feedback loops' and inefficient bureaucracy?
That being said, governments would still need to be involved by providing infrastructure like roads.
I don't mean to say development projects should be abolished! I just see that as one way that the top down/bottom up dichotomy could be eliminated. What do you think?
Anyway, I apologize for not commenting sooner on one of your blogs; I have been reading. I hope things continue to go well.
-Brad.
Post a Comment