Projects to put hope in

Aid work and community development can sometimes wear a person down.  The intents are so good, but often the challenges are so huge and transformative results are elusive.  That is why I constantly seek new ideas, reports, and stories of projects that are really providing great results in this tough country.  Tonight I want to share 2 great projects with you.  I am currently not working with these projects, but I would like to be!

Terraced, irrigated gardens:  I'm currently gathering results of the yield output change in this project, but it looks very promising.  As roads improve and markets develop, every farmer could increase his livelihood by converting a hillside into gardens like these.  Irrigation is lacking in a lot of places, but as electricity spreads into more and more villages, they have a new option of pumping water up from rivers to their fields, which, if they plant the right crops, would easily pay for itself.

Pistachio forests:  You're going to want to click on this picture below to see the bigger image, so go ahead and do that, then come back and read this..... okay did you see the trees on the top of the mountain, and the thin terraces on the lower half?  The trees up high are the remnants of a great pistachio tree forest that covered the hills here.  During the war years when markets were in shambles and people just needed to keep warm in the winter, they began cutting down the trees, working their way up the mountains from the base.  Fortunately their need for heat did not completely exhaust the forests, and some mature trees remained for a time when their produce would fetch a great price.  Today the owners of these trees are sell 15 lbs of pistachios for close to $40 USD!  That's good money!  Big organizations have taken notice of the economic opportunity, and assisted villages in this area in planting pistachio saplings in the terraces, to recreate the former forested hills.  Pistachio trees take around 20 years to mature to fruit-bearing, which is a long investment of time, but regardless, villages are clamoring to get aid help in planting their hills with pistachio trees again!

Getting to know the big boys

In previous posts I’ve written about the local men that lead humanitarian or development projects on a much bigger scale and budget than our projects.  I like to call these leaders the big boys of the development world, just for fun.  (By the way, when I talk about local people, I mean men or women that rightfully claim this is their native or birth country.)

I have a fair share of criticism for the big boys, often because they’ve done their project planning without the participation of the communities, thrown money around wastefully, or flat out fostered corruption.  In our last term I had almost zero contact with the big boys, and it was much easier to belly-ache about their work.  One of the biggest changes in my new role is that I regularly meet with the big boys to discuss various issues in WASH work (water, advocacy, sanitation, hygiene).  Today was one of those meetings, so tonight I will share some of my reflections with you.

I used to have nothing good to say about the big boys, that is, before I knew them personally.  Like I said, I had a fair bit of criticism, and it was easy to spout it, when I had never met them.  Now that I meet them regularly, I have had to assess my previous blanket judgment upon them.  In the process of this assessment, I have found some unexpected qualities in a number of the big boys.  Sure, some things I outright disagree with remain there, but when I acknowledge the positives I have seen in these individuals, I have had to adjust how I think about and engage with them.  Rather than holding a defensive posture so that these guys will not pollute our project, I think it is much better to let them see that in fact, my guard is down, and I’m interesting in talking and learning.  It appears very clear in our meetings that when I do this, they follow suit.  It’s been a decision on my part to focus more on their qualities than their deficiencies.  It has opened up some really positive interactions, and these boys, as big as they are, are interested in hearing how we operate on values that are very unique to their own.  These guys are probably some of the most intelligent men in this country, so they are already distinguished from the common person here.  They are able to see some of the deficiencies in their own culture, indeed they are sad over the state of their nation and people.  By acknowledging their individual qualities and leaving the critique of their culture to them, they have willingly opened up to us and accepted some of our advice on how to do things differently.  I wish more Americans could make this discovery about people of this religion in general and this country in specific.  I sense way too much fear coming out of America, directed to this part of the world.  Fear causes defensiveness, and that shuts down the whole positive process I have just described.  I pray you have opportunities to face down your “big boys”, and make people out of them. 

On an entirely different topic: One of the agenda items at every meeting with the big boy is giving program updates.  We go around the room sharing what has been good, bad, and ugly in our work lately.  One of the biggest of the big boys shared that they are expanding their work in the most insecure portions of the province.  You should know that the level of security varies widely from place to place.  People here know, generally, where is safe and where is not.  This guy said they were headed straight into the valleys of the province that are controlled by the insurgents.  This is no secret to the government; most of the local government there have been assassinated and replaced with “shadow” government (dark stuff indeed, and don’t worry, we have no intention whatsoever to wander there).  How on earth can this aid organization go there you ask?  Good question.  Another one of the big boys posed this question, and it started an interesting discussion.  It was interesting because the big boys were showing their 2 strongest motives: service to their people, and money.  Perhaps money is the greater of those motives for most people here.  Let’s face it, poverty and war have destroyed so much, all families need income.  Many are corrupt, but many are astonishingly generous, and sometimes at the same time- money works very differently here.  Why is there money involved in going to the dangerous corners of the province?  Because there’s underserved populations there, and big donors (that give grants to big boys) have millions ear-marked for infrastructure, rehabilitation, and development in insurgent zones, with the intention of winning people away from the fanaticism and violence of the insurgents.  The NGO leader that accepts the task of going to these extremely dangerous places will earn a huge salary, as long as he doesn’t get killed.  The payoff is so great that for some of them, it’s a risk worth taking.  I really don’t like this, but I thought it fair to include this part of the story because it tempers the other part.  The other strong motive among the big boys is to serve their people.  They’re sick of their people suffering violence and poverty, and they want to do something.  They believe the projects they run will make a big difference in lives and communities.  The question from one big boy to the group was, “how do we run projects in insecure areas?”  The man who is taking the biggest risks told us what measures he is taking, but the question remains on the table for our next meeting at the end of the month.  Anyone want to offer counsel I can take to the big boys?

Little Fish in a Big, Strange Pond

Last week I was asked to attend a government meeting regarding the environment.  My local colleague Zeke informed me that the provincial government authority on the agriculture and environment sector had months ago requested all NGOs to make plans and commitments for how they would contribute toward improving the environment around us, mainly, by planting trees and other long-lasting plants.   Apparently there was not a very good response from NGOs in the province, because now this government was calling for an “emergency meeting” on the matter.  So we went to the meeting.

The meeting was held at the provincial government building.  Provincial government here might be similar to state government back home.  I could tell right away that they do their best to impress their guests at this building, the first clue was the red carpet they had rolled down the steps leading up to the entrance.  The conference room we met in was also quite a sight.  An oval table perhaps 100 ft long stretched the length of the room, leather office chairs providing 50-60 seats, and a microphone in front of each chair.   The seats were perhaps half full by the time the meeting was scheduled to begin, but where was the government official leading the meeting?  He straggled in 10 minutes late, laughing and joking about how he fell asleep in his office.

As it turned out, this government official was quite a character.  In a western country perhaps he would make a good stand-up comedian, because at times he had his audience- leaders of all sorts of organizations, doubled over in hard laughter.  He was not the only character in the room.  As I looked around I realized that many of the various leaders (all locals, I was the only foreigner in the place) had had different foreign experiences.  Where all of these fellows had been, I could not guess, but they had each brought something back from their experience, something that they must have decided would be the next “it” thing in this country.  In essence as I looked around the room there were all sorts of shoes, coats, briefcases, hats, glasses, and hairdos that are definitely NOT part of the local trends here.  Put all these fellows together and it just looked like a room of misfits.  Though I was the only foreigner in the room, so how I felt like I fit in.

The meeting got underway when the leader make an elaborate speech of gratitude for all the organization’s past efforts to improve the environment.  He said that if we went into any school yard in the province, we would see new trees planted there.  After this beautiful monologue, he simplified his speech when he said, “but a lot of them are dried up.”  As he continued on to his appeal for further donations or contributions for 2011, I wondered to myself, “are we here just to do this government’s work?  Are they doing anything with their own budget, or are they just attributing our work as their own?” 

I came back to attention when I heard the government leader begin to name organizations that had not contributed in past years.  This was shocking because in this culture it is a serious thing to shame people by naming their shortcomings.  I looked around and realized that he was naming people that were not in attendance.  “Wow,” I thought, “this fellow must actually have a lot of power to be able to get away with these criticisms.”  I went on to hope that his next target was not our organization!

When our organization’s name came up, Zeke sort of quivered, then acknowledged the government leader.  To both Zeke’s and my surprise, this leader had only praises for our organization’s work.  He called us the #1 org in this sector, because of the care we put into our work.  Zeke told me later this praise might have just been because 3 years ago they planted a tree in the leader’s office yard.  Whatever the reason, the leader recommended that other organizations, including the big boys, look at our work as the model. 

Well now it seems we have some big words to live up to, and to be honest I feel pretty small about all this.  I have looked at our agriculture and environment work and felt that it has a lot of room for improvement.  But, if what we are doing is better than most others, I guess we can try to help others improve, and continuing moving in that direction ourselves as well.

Want to hear the funniest thing about the meeting though?  It was all videotaped by the local TV station, and broadcast on the nightly news, and the cameraman spent a fair amount of time catching all the angles of me, the only foreigner in the room.  Weird.

Admitting our wrongs (its hard)

Yesterday we hosted a meeting with the big boys.  When I say big boys I am talking about program managers of projects that have coverage over a whole district, or budgets over 1 million USD.  There are a lot of big boys where we live, because we are in the provincial center, and their offices are here as well.  What do the big boys do?  You name it: health, schools, roads, water, ag, military or police training, refugee assistance, drought response, and the list goes on.

So the big boys arrive at our office, and in the small talk before we start they are commenting on how cute our mud office is (they work from cement building, big deal).  We get into reporting on 2010 activities, and I stress the point that our best results have come from consistent monitoring of our projects to provide follow-up support to BSF recipients.  I had mentioned this because our big goal for 2011 is to stimulate the private market for BSFs, and we need to boost the social value for them in order to do that.  The social value is currently lousy in areas where other NGOs have done free distributions without any follow-up monitoring or support to BSF recipients.  I didn’t fully realize that mentioning this would tread on the toes of some of the big boys.  One of them then began a very indirect, round-shaped argument, and after 15 minutes he finally released his bottom line- he was telling us to back off, and belittling the value of the work we had done.  That was not a big deal to me, I’m not here to impress the big boys at all.  Unfortunately, for my local co-worker Zed, whom I am helping to train to become the project leader, this was very upsetting. 

Though my co-worker Zed stayed calm, he did proceed to go into a retaliation argument, customary for this culture.  He brought up examples of mistakes the big boy’s org had committed; he told about broken wells that he had personally fixed for villages.  I gulped as I guessed what was coming next.  For the next 20 minutes my co-worker Zed and one of the big boys abandoned English and argued loud and hard in their language.  The rest of the big boys did not seem inclined to intervene, though some looked at me to suggest that I do so, as the meeting chairman.  I finally heard a conclusive statement from the arguing big boy, and realized that ultimately he was right on the main matter of contention, and my co-worker needed to back off.  I said a quick prayer that my voice and words would be strong enough to break up the fight, because these guys were both at least 15 years my senior, and both twice my weight (I told you, big boys).  I finally did what I’ve seen other mediators in this culture do, and started talking above the noise, and continued until the argument faded and I had the floor.  Then I concluded the matter: our NGO should not have fixed the broken wells, because the big boy’s NGO had laid out a community-sustainable maintenance plan. 

See the story was that the big boy’s org had drilled the wells, installed high quality pumps, and trained a local mechanic to maintain and repair the well pumps.  They had also met with the local council of village elders to set terms on community payment for the local mechanic to do his job.  The community had agreed to pay the local mechanic with wheat grain, so that he would do his job and keep the well pumps working well.  What the village decided to do rather than pay the local mechanic was to approach us, another NGO, and have us fix the wells for free.  We did not know about the local mechanic, but we did not ask, and we went ahead and fixed it.  Not only that, our repairs had been inadequate, especially on a deep well (over 120 feet).  This was clearly a case in which we needed better collaboration between our two organizations.  We needed to know what wells had been dug by this org, and what their maintenance terms with the villages were. 

Today I spent some time talking with Zed about the importance of admitting our mistakes, and seeking to restore relationships.  It was an interesting moment because Zed is nearly twice my age, very competent in many of the tasks of a project manager, but he still needs a lot of support.  Him and I are still working out how we share leadership and work together, but I was really pleased to sense that he allowed my counsel on this matter.  This is reason enough in my mind for me to be here, because if we can continue to train and set apart leaders in this country, leaders in serving the poorest of their own people, leaders of good character, of open hearts, then we will see good change happen here in years to come.