Raising consciousness

Participated in a fund-raiser for Myanmar yesterday, organized by Farrukh Chistie, a first year doctoral student who is doing work around sustainability education. SUch an excellent event! I was glad to add my two cents to the discussion around international aid. I talked a bit about my experiences in Rwanda last year, telling the group some of the questions it raised for me around development - wondered at some of the motives of the people who went there or provided aid - was it coming from a good place, or were they there to 'save' the Africans? Were they truly providing services that could not be provided by locals? How important is it to aid agencies that their workers understand or learn what works and what doesn’t in different cultural settings? How helpful is the culture of “handouts” (aka checkbook development) that we as western nations have cultivated in far too many places?

Money to small business, or to NGOs does often help – while money to governments hurts as it often gets lost in a never-ending spiral. Too often, when one nation aids another it is based on a massive infusion of financial capital in return for the implementation of new policies. They often provide the right advice, but there is a trade-off, too. The nation with all the money often assumes the decision rights; but the responsibility for a nation’s future must always reside with the citizens of that nation, not with foreign advisors, and certainly not with its creditors and donors.

This sort of checkbook development confuses compassion and generosity with over-responsibility for fellow human beings. Explicitly or implicitly, the donor is telling them how to run their country, and in the process, without meaning to, can rob citizens of emerging nations of their most precious assets — dignity and self-reliance.

The disappointment I felt for many weeks in Rwanda was real. I was disappointed in CIDA for not ensuring that our skills would be taken advantage of, I was disappointed that the host institution didn’t recognize their opportunity to take that advantage, but moreso, I was disappointed by the lack of belief in the ability of the Rwandese…maybe instead of providing travel opportunities of a life time for us lucky grad students, CIDA could have activated the brains of a couple of young Rwandese and planted seeds for their future. Missing from the project and true of so many aid projects was any notion of sustainability. And so we keep having to provide the aid, provide the workers.

We often fail to acknowledge the value of those among us for whom we need to provide aid. We do not see in them their infinite possibilities. Instead we set them up for failure, we tell them until they believe us that they are not good enough and only we can provide what they need. I came back to Canada with a better understanding that homegrown economic and political freedoms are needed to allow Africans themselves to solve their own problems, and get them to a place where they don’t have to wait for us to figure out which western bandaid to apply to a very non-western context.

Other speakers addressed their own experiences - Nazia talked about working for 10 years in development in Pakistan, Luke Brown talked about his experiences in Malawi, Farrukh talked about the role of colonization and the west in deforestation among other things which are now leading to "natural" disasters, Alfred expanded on the notion of the unnaturalness of some aspects of natural disasters, and Dorothy talked about our guilt and complicity in making these things unfold, the importance of recognition and acceptance, but most importantly, healing. The talks were followed up b y some local poets doing their work, and the evening was wrapped up by the wonderful folk group Isabelle Gunn. I think we raised some decent coin, and the event was well attended and I think people had a good time and learned a great deal. Photos to follow.