The Development Dilemma

So, a couple weeks ago, I met a really nice man named Samson (Biblical names abound here, by the way…in that respect, at least, I fit in pretty well as John).  I just found out a day or two ago that he is the brother-in-law of Max (my counterpart who manages the brick business), and that the two of them grew up in the same village, Kajaguzo (where Max still lives), which is maybe 4 or 5 kilometers from Kalisizo.  Anyway, Samson and his family have lived in Canada for the past 10 years or so, and he seems to be doing very well.  He has a doctoral degree, and now he has started up a non-profit organization that does work in this area of Uganda.  He has a very impressive compound that’s really close to my place, and he brings groups to Uganda from North America and Europe, and he’s working on getting a group from Australia sometime next year, I think.  He seems like a very good guy, and I think he genuinely wants to work to improve the area where he grew up.

About a week and a half ago, a group of three young women from Germany came down and are spending a month here to do some work.  I’ve run into them a few times (they tend to stick out…kind of like I do), and we’ve talked a bit about what I’ve been doing and what they’re doing.  A couple of evenings ago, I ran into two of them as I was walking home after buying a couple of avocadoes, and we talked a little bit about what the Peace Corps is and what it does.  Then, as they were talking about some of the schools they had visited that day, they said something very interesting: “It seems like the people need money more than they need help.”  The statement kind of caught me off guard, and I wasn’t really sure what to say, so I just did one of my things where I cock my head to one side and utter a thoughtful grunt, “Huh.”  (I think I do this often when I feel like I don’t completely agree with something, but don’t really know what to say at that moment.)  Anyway, we didn’t really talk any more about that, but I’d like to think it through a bit, so I’m going to take you along for the ride.

First of all, the idea of just giving money is very different from the general approach of the Peace Corps.  The idea of a PC volunteer (very generalized) is not that you’re a source of funding for the community.  Rather, you act as a kind of facilitator or catalyst, trying to help the community to identify its own needs and resources and to figure out how to move forward.  Now, my specific situation is a bit different, because I’m working with an organization that is based in New York, and its primary mode of operation is for its schools in New York to fundraise in an effort to help the schools in Uganda.  So, there’s money that’s being given.  And that money is being used to fund projects like the construction of new classrooms, libraries, and water tanks, or like buying books to fill the libraries.  These are projects that need a significant source of funding, and that money needs to come from somewhere.  Anyway, the question, I think, is: How far does it go?  Maybe people need a bit of money at the beginning to get the ball rolling, but then, how long does the money need to keep coming in to keep the ball moving forward?

Of course, this is something of a microcosm of a much bigger debate.  On the continuum of opinions regarding development work and foreign aid, the two extreme ends of the spectrum seem to be either “We need to increase foreign aid money” or “Foreign aid has done more harm than good.”  I’ve read a little bit in support of the first position.  For example, the first book I read over here was Jeffrey Sachs’ The End of Poverty, in which he suggests that, if the “developed” countries would fulfill their pledge to devote 0.7% of their budgets to Official Development Assistance (ODA), the “developing” countries would be granted enough funding and resources to break the cycle of poverty that exists and to begin steadily climbing the “development ladder.”  The money would function as the “start-up capital” needed to get the ball rolling.

Then, there’s the other side of the debate, which I have not read as much about.  But, I do have two books on my “need to read soon list,” Dead Aid by Dambisa Moyo and The White Man’s Burden by William Easterly (though they’ve currently been trumped by The Teeth may Smile but the Heart Does not Forget by Andrew Rice, which is about some of the relatively recent history of conflict within Uganda…Idi Amin and such).  Anyway, from what I’ve gathered, a big idea on this side is that all of the aid has created something of a “welfare continent,” in which African countries are very dependent on outside sources to provide services.  For example, something like 80% to 90% of the anti-retroviral drugs used to treat HIV/AIDS in Uganda are paid for by the US government (PEPFAR – the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief).  If the US pulled that funding, Uganda would be in big trouble.

I can understand this argument, because I see some people who think that white skin automatically means money (I get asked for money a lot more than the average Kalisizo resident), and because giving out money might be “the easy way out.”  Maybe we’re limiting the natural ingenuity of people when we see a need and donate the money to meet that need.  Maybe, we should remember that these are people who know their own history, their own area, their own resources, and that they might be able to discover a solution that they can bring about themselves.  I think that’s a lot of what Peace Corps tries to do…”helping people help themselves,” or the old standby about teaching someone to fish instead of giving him/her a fish.

But is this fair?  We say that Ugandans should be able to help themselves, and we just need to “build the capacity” for them to do that.  It certainly shows a level of respect for the creativity of the people with which you work, but are we setting the bar a little too high?  A school does not have enough classrooms, or a school does not have enough books, or a school is not able to provide lunch for all of the students…Should it really be the school’s responsibility to figure out how to fix these problems?  Don’t we all have a stake in that school’s well-being?  Shouldn’t it be everyone’s responsibility to see that every child in the world has access to a good education?  The United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “Everyone has the right to education.  Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages…Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.”  Is it right to ask a poor school in a poor village to figure out how to fix its own problems?  Do we ask that of schools in the US?  Are we setting a double standard?  (By the way, I’m not incredibly familiar with all of the workings of the public school system in the US, so maybe some of my assumptions here are wrong…feel free to correct me if you know more about this than I do…which is quite likely.)  Anyway, the point is that maybe we’re asking more of those we work with than we have asked of ourselves.

As we swing back in the direction of giving money, I can also see how this (giving money) could also be seen as a gesture of respect.  By giving a person, a group, or a country money, maybe you’re showing the person, group, or country that you trust that the money will be used wisely and will go to the places where it will have the greatest effect.  By giving money, you suggest that people know what they need and can make it happen if they just have the funds available.  Maybe you suggest that these people could be just as successful as you are, if the same resources that you have at your disposal are also at their disposal.

All that may be true, but it seems that, in the “real world” of flawed systems and flawed human beings, money is not always used as it should be (this is not exactly a major revelation).  We see headline after headline about corruption, about money that doesn’t get to its intended destination.  We hear about the “trickle-down effect,” which can be a terrible side effect of decentralized government.  The national government gets some funding that’s supposed to go to some project at the local level…People at the national level take their cut, and the rest of the money moves to the district.  People at the district level get their cut, and the remainder moves to the county.  Yada, yada, yada, by the time it gets to the grassroots program it was supposed to fund, there’s hardly enough left to pay the rent, let alone to actually improve the community.

So, it seems that, as with most debates, each side has its pros and cons (what a surprise).  But, here’s the real problem: I think that both sides of the debate, at least as I’ve framed it so far, miss a crucial point.  There’s a very important aspect to development work that has, up to this point, been missing in this blog post…I think that, fundamentally, development should be relational.  What I mean is that, regardless of how you approach development, foreign aid, and all of these issues, I don’t think it should be about “us” helping “them”.  It is probably very easy to fall into this trap when we give money, because money is something that “we” have and “they” don’t.  I think we can also fall into the trap when we follow the other approach (“helping people help themselves”) if we see it only in terms of “us” helping “you” to help “yourself”.  In other words, development should be a two-way street.  All of us (including both “us” and “them”) work together for everyone’s benefit.  Sure, “we” have many things that we can offer “them”, but “they” can also teach “us” so much.  Development is about all of us working together to create a more understanding, just, and peaceful world, and we can only do that by building relationships and by learning about other cultures, other belief systems, and other ways of seeing the world and our place in it.

As I come near to the end, I’ll give a quick example.  Although I think it’s very important to work with people and to build relationships, my hugely introverted, Type-B personality sometimes takes over.  Often, I just like to be alone, and to do my own work, on my own time, in my own way.  That way of doing things got me through school pretty effectively, but here, in Uganda, I need to learn to do things a bit differently.  As a Ugandan priest who lives in Tampa told me before I left, Ugandans like to do things in groups.  He was talking about Ugandan students studying at the university, and contrasting them with American students, like me.  I didn’t think much of it at the time, and I continued to study on my own, and it worked out fine.  But now, it’s becoming very important.  Max, my counterpart, wants to do everything together…he gets nervous if he even thinks I might be getting ready to send an email that we haven’t both gone through with a fine-toothed comb, one word at a time.  I think to myself, “Gosh, it’s just an email telling our director that we won’t be able to talk to him on Skype today, what’s the big deal?”  But, maybe it is a big deal, and I just don’t realize it because of my own filters through which I see the world.  So, as I work with Max to help him with certain things, he also helps me improve in certain areas, and, I think, that is true development: seeing the world from a different perspective, and realizing that we can improve ourselves and the world by incorporating that perspective into our own.  Maybe it’s not something on a huge, grand scale.  Maybe it won’t solve all of the world’s problems in a day, a month, a year, a century, or even a millennium.  But it might slowly help us all to develop into better people, it might slowly help the world to develop into a better place, one day at a time.

So, if you decide to give money to an organization, know where the money goes.  Try to learn about the people with whom the organization is working.  Try to come to understand how they see the world, and let it affect your own perceptions.  If you decide to go on some sort of service trip, don’t just see yourself as the “helper”.  From what I’ve seen, most people come away from those experiences feeling as if they had been given more than they gave.  You are not just there to work.  You are also there to learn, to try to understand, and to develop friendships that can cross any boundaries, whether those boundaries are political, racial, religious, or anything else.

Thanks for coming along for the ride!