Friday, August 16, 2013

There is no alternative to infrastructure, unless your aim is to fail.

I watched a story on the news in Ghana a few days ago that simultaneously saddened and angered me: a clear example of foreign development work performed with complete disregard to existing infrastructure.  A 17 year old girl was thrown out of her home by her parents when they found out she was pregnant.  She had no place to go, but was eventually taken in by a foreign human rights agency in the country.  Under their care she gave birth to a healthy baby.  However, a few months later the agency's facility closed.  They pulled out of the country, I'm assuming due to lack of funds or the termination of a contract.  The young girl is now living on the streets again-- this time, with an infant.

While the agency's intentions to aid the the girl were noble and justified.  Ultimately, they were unable to help her at all.  They had no long-term solution to her problem and this is by no means a situation in which a short-term solution will suffice.  And I wonder if the short-term solution provided will even  prove to make it harder for the girl now that she's been further alienated from her family.  This is the saddening part of the story.

The infuriating part of the story is that this agency supposedly dedicated to human rights took no real actions towards ascertaining this girl's rights.  We have laws in Ghana that prohibit parents from abandoning their children.  And, we have court systems to enforce these laws.  We also have an entire ministry dedicated to issues such as these: The Ministry of Women and Children Affairs.  Now, I am willing to admit that these institutions do not always (dare I say rarely) function as they should; however, this is the infrastructure the agency should have been working with to ensure a sustainable shift in women and child rights in our country.  This is the infrastructure needed to prevent this situation from happening in the future, after the foreign agency's funds have run out.

While this is a very specific example, I think it pertains to much of the development sector.  Our projects, whatever they may be, will amount to nothing if there is no infrastructure in place to maintain them after we've concluded.  It may be more time-consuming and costly to ensure this infrastructure, but there is ultimately no alternative.

Thursday, August 1, 2013

Sometimes, It's Who You Are That Matters

From a very young age I learned that when you hear the three letters: N, G, O, it means someone is coming to give you something.  Maybe a mosquito net, a community tractor, or a t-shirt.  I came to learn how outsiders defined our underdevelopment as if I read it in a text book.  Later, when I actually read it in a text book, I couldn't help but laugh.  If someone from outside asked, "How can we help?" or, "What problems do you see in your community?"  Any one of my neighbors would recite as if reading from some shared list: malaria, water, fertile land, electricity, etc.  However, if I were to ask any of my neighbors these same questions, I wouldn't receive any of these responses.  And in that discrepancy lies much of what plagues development initiatives today.  We know what you want to hear, and we will tell you what you want to hear.  Why?  That's far more complicated.  I think it's partly a trust issue, partly a matter of fear, partly a desire to appear "smart," partly for simplicity's sake.  It's not a phenomenon unique to the developing world.  I believe it happens in every country or situation where there's a population or individual comparatively under-served.  It's human.

So what do we do as development workers?  I think we need to be more sensitive and spend more time.  More than we probably think.  I believe we also need to be honest with ourselves.  Solutions to community-wide issues are not going to come strictly from the individuals who happen to speak the same languages as us, or the same language as our interpreters.  They are not only going to come from the chiefs or communities leaders.  They probably won't come in weeks or months; they may not come for years.  If we can see that a project is far less effective just because we (the one initiating it) are who we are.  We need to step away, even if it means the project will "fail."  Development can't be about deadlines.  Miss the deadline, find people who you believe really can implement the project because they are who they are, and set a new deadline.  Easier said than done, of course.  But what is more important is the reality.