Today I read an article that gave me a lot of food for thought. It was about something very dear to my heart: the availability of basic infrastructure to all. By "infrastructure", I mean roads and electricity, but also schools, health services, and hygiene (tap water, waste removal, etc.).
I was therefore quite glad to read about small town water projects sponsored by DANIDA in certain parts of the very underserved Kwahu North (Afram Plains) District, namely Memkyemfre and Kayere near Donkorkrom.
The following:
prompted me to write this post.
Indeed, it is very commendable that foreign aid organisations help underserved communities have access to clean water. However, the catch in aid is that it comes from outside, is brought, built, donated by people the local community never set eyes upon before the project and will probably never see again after its completion, and communication of the kind shown here only serves to reinforce the alien nature of the effort. There is no local ownership of the project.
What is it all about? For something to work at the grassroots level, that is, where it is needed and will hopefully be used, it must be appropriated by said community. Reminding the recipients that someone else paid for it may have been said with the best intentions. Surely, the honourable Minister wanted to impress on the community how important it is to take good care of a gift. However, this kind of utterance can very well have the very unwanted effect of people never considering it as theirs.
What do we do with things that don't belong to us? The best case scenario is that we keep it very carefully so that if and when the rightful owner comes, s/he find it almost as s/he left it. If need be, we will guard it and prevent everybody from touching it out of fear of it being spoiled.
The other scenario is that we won't care about something that cost us nothing, we'll use and abuse it and when it's spoiled, either we will revert to our previous makeshift ways, or we will go and demand that the donor repair or change it.
Empowerment is what we need to make real progress. Empowerment is about including the local community at every step of the project, from collecting ideas about the actual needs and the best place to install the infrastructure, to constructing the project, learning how to regulate its use, and how to maintain and service it.
Empowerment is the opposite of making the community stand in awe on the sidelines. Empowerment is not tantamount to being ungrateful. Empowerment is about using this aid as a stepping stone for community improvement. Being grateful doesn't mean that you have to go back to the donor again and again when you need something else. The best show of one's gratitude is to be able to display that one can use what is being donated effectively and incorporate it into one's array of tools to go farther and achieve bigger, longer-term goals.
It is unfortunate that this communication seemed rather to aim at glueing the community to a specific point in time (aid) instead of a continuum called 'community development'. Development is a dynamic, evolutionary process. We won't achieve anything of substance if we keep waiting for aid to come to us, no matter how warm our demonstrations of gratefulness are whenever we receive such aid.
(1) Ofosu Ampofo Inspects Small Water Projects, By Samuel Opare Lartey, Afram Plains, Donkorkrom. - The Ghanaian Times, Projects/Developments, Wed, 13 May 2009
I was therefore quite glad to read about small town water projects sponsored by DANIDA in certain parts of the very underserved Kwahu North (Afram Plains) District, namely Memkyemfre and Kayere near Donkorkrom.
The following:
At Memkyemfre, the [Eastern Regional] Minister [Mr. Samuel Ofosu Ampofo] urged the community members to take good care of the project because it was constructed with other people's money. (1)
prompted me to write this post.
Indeed, it is very commendable that foreign aid organisations help underserved communities have access to clean water. However, the catch in aid is that it comes from outside, is brought, built, donated by people the local community never set eyes upon before the project and will probably never see again after its completion, and communication of the kind shown here only serves to reinforce the alien nature of the effort. There is no local ownership of the project.
What is it all about? For something to work at the grassroots level, that is, where it is needed and will hopefully be used, it must be appropriated by said community. Reminding the recipients that someone else paid for it may have been said with the best intentions. Surely, the honourable Minister wanted to impress on the community how important it is to take good care of a gift. However, this kind of utterance can very well have the very unwanted effect of people never considering it as theirs.
What do we do with things that don't belong to us? The best case scenario is that we keep it very carefully so that if and when the rightful owner comes, s/he find it almost as s/he left it. If need be, we will guard it and prevent everybody from touching it out of fear of it being spoiled.
The other scenario is that we won't care about something that cost us nothing, we'll use and abuse it and when it's spoiled, either we will revert to our previous makeshift ways, or we will go and demand that the donor repair or change it.
Empowerment is what we need to make real progress. Empowerment is about including the local community at every step of the project, from collecting ideas about the actual needs and the best place to install the infrastructure, to constructing the project, learning how to regulate its use, and how to maintain and service it.
Empowerment is the opposite of making the community stand in awe on the sidelines. Empowerment is not tantamount to being ungrateful. Empowerment is about using this aid as a stepping stone for community improvement. Being grateful doesn't mean that you have to go back to the donor again and again when you need something else. The best show of one's gratitude is to be able to display that one can use what is being donated effectively and incorporate it into one's array of tools to go farther and achieve bigger, longer-term goals.
It is unfortunate that this communication seemed rather to aim at glueing the community to a specific point in time (aid) instead of a continuum called 'community development'. Development is a dynamic, evolutionary process. We won't achieve anything of substance if we keep waiting for aid to come to us, no matter how warm our demonstrations of gratefulness are whenever we receive such aid.
(1) Ofosu Ampofo Inspects Small Water Projects, By Samuel Opare Lartey, Afram Plains, Donkorkrom. - The Ghanaian Times, Projects/Developments, Wed, 13 May 2009
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