By Sarah Grant*
“Every complexity, we are told, is the process of evolution. Yet our development planners seem to think that they can do better…that they can create complex things at one throw by a process called planning.”
E.F Schumacher offered us these thoughts in 1975 through his book Small is Beautiful (I highly recommend this read). He continues to discuss the natural process of growth that all great phenomena take in the natural world; every creature, ecosystem and social construct has come into being through a gradual process of genetic mutations and adaptations. It therefore follows that any great change in the human condition or development towards a productive and sturdy society is also a process of slow change.
One primary mistake, perhaps, in our efforts at supporting development in poorer regions of the world is to forget that sustainable change is a slow (and I emphasize slow), deliberate process. Planning has its place, however the chances that everything will go according to plan and produce the desired results is quite low. Ultimate success of an effort aimed at helping another group of human beings then rests on one’s ability to constantly adapt to challenges and treat the plan as a fluid strategy that changes and grows with the circumstances.
Unfinished fish ponds dug by FAO
As an example on the value of patience and adaptation in development, I often think about a school that I was acquainted with in Zambia in 2007. The community school was initiated by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. One year was spent on researching the perfect location for the school based on data gathered over several districts on households affected by HIV/AIDS and population of orphaned children. Five to six months was spent training community facilitators and organizing a network of local teachers from the closest town to help teach the children. Before working with the school I read close to 100 pages front and back outlining how lessons should be conducted and what the specific results should be after one year on the children, their families and the community. Needless to say I was thrilled to be working with such a well organized and well thought out program.
The problems started almost immediately. Half of the teachers from the town did not fulfill their committed roles, materials for building the school never arrived on time, income generating activities for the school were hindered by theft and there was a corrupt facilitator to deal with. If you have lived and worked in Africa on development for very long none of these issues would come as a surprise. Indeed (perhaps sadly enough) they should be expected. The real evil however came not in the fact that these barriers to the realization of the school came up, but that FAO and their representatives did not take the time to listen, learn and adapt the program. The result after one year was a disgruntled community who felt that they were not being listened to, students who were not engaged in nearly complete lessons, and an office of development workers who had no clue what was going on on the ground.
This school and their experience with FAO is one of the primary reasons I started Color Me In!. As Schumacher reminds us development and human growth is a gradual process that revolves around the adaptation to challenges and change rather than the avoidance of issues. All I feel we can ask for is the patience and courage to allow for realities on the ground to guide gradual growth rather than aspirations from a Board room. A strategic plan for any development effort should then be a fluid and changing creature of its own with the space to allow ourselves to be wrong, to recognize challenges, and adapt to them. As they say in Zambia all growth is “pangono, pangono” or “slowly slowly.”
It seems that the culture we are trying to help has long been aware of the nature of change. Maybe it’s our turn to listen.
*Sarah Grant served in the Peace Corps from 2005-2007 in Zambia and specialized in forestry, conservation farming, gender, small business and community growth. This is a reposting of an article on Sarah’s blog for Color Me In!, an NGO she founded that supports entrepreneurs and environmental preservation in Zambia through micro-loans and planting trees.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Interesting post and an important issue in development. I think that one of the best things you can plan to do is to 'unplan'. It is difficult as a worker who will be delivering a project to see schedules, program and project outcomes, due dates and deadlines when you know that disruptions and problems are basically inevitable as you say. I think that senior managers, funding bodies and those stakeholders concerned with outcomes would not like to see blank timeslots/spare budgets/additional staff and other resources scheduled in for 'surprises' but I think it is a really practical and useful way to keep a project together when issues arise.
As for your example of the school in Zambia, sadly it is not that much of a surprise or uncommon story. Out of interest, during the one year planning stage of the school and during the facilitator training process, how much of this was delivered and led by the community and how much was driven by FAO?
I think that this lesson should be heard by all people invovled in community work and plannig across every country, it is not just developing countries that face change slowly. In more developed countries the assumption by communities that they have it 'right' now and don't need to change at all, bureaucracy is convinced of its 'expertise' and its desire to make change happen quickly and so the disconnection between the two leads to disgruntlement, disempowerment and ultimately disastrous decisions. Explaining to a community and a funding body that time, although of the essence, is a critical factor in success seems to fall on deaf ears.