Thoughts on development work...
I haven't posted in a while so I thought I would talk a little bit about my thoughts on development work here in Togo.
Most Peace Corps volunteers come into their service thinking they are going to make great strides in the development world. But for the most part, at least in Togo that is, most volunteer never do any work that would be considered traditional development work. Sure we do lots of training’s on topics ranging from how to make a natural compost, to why you should wash your hands after going to the bathroom, to how to improve ones small business. But are these ever really making the impact in development that we had hoped for? Probably not. There are the occational volunteers who get things built like school buildings or water pumps or health clincs but there are even more volunteers who do not. Personally, I think I am the exception to this idea. In my village of Koka, there were very few trained development workers. All villages in Togo have a committee called the C.V.D or the community development committee in English. Four years ago, my village separated from its neighbor, Niamtougou. It was consider one of the ‘suburbs’ of the larger town. Because of this separation, very few trained development workers were left after the separation. Since that day, it has caused many problems within the village. A make-shift committee was thrown together out of necessity but no one is really qualified for the job. The certain members of the board are have caused me much stress and annoyance due to their need to be the head of everything, even when not warranted. This has also caused clashes with other members of the committee to the point where meetings have not been held in a month because of their inability to get along. As of this week however, the specific members has been asked to leave and he is making a lot of noise against it, but really has no say in the matter.
As one of my goals in my service, I wanted to be able to leave my village knowing that a properly trained and qualified development committee was put in place and trained. So for the past few weeks I have been working with an individual from my village but who lives in Kara, who is going to do the training for free because he too wants to see his village develop. With all hopes this will make great improvements in the development of the village of Koka.
As volunteers we are not given money directly to do projects in our village. We can write grants to several funding sources through the Peace Corps network. There are a few places in Togo where a village can also go in search of financing. One of these is called PLAN. This is a branch of UNDP here in Togo. They receive their funding through the UN. Last year I spoke to the director in Kara about what I can do in order to get water pumps built in my village. He told me there were several places that I could go to get pumps built. My village simply had to make an official request in writing and in person with important people from the village like the Chief and the president of the C.V.D. We also had to give a copy of the villages Plan of Action. He told me that probably someone in my village had a copy of it lying around and I could just make a copy. Well it turns out that because of the village separation, Koka did not have a Plan of Action. So I went to a friend of mine that own a development NGO to ask if he could help me out and get one written up quickly. Well, it is now almost a year later and I am still working on getting this document written. It’s a lot longer process than I had originally thought. It took several months of getting people finally to agree to do the job without the big bucks they usually get when foreign NGO fund the project. (They wanted to be paid on an American scale and get almost $3000 out of me, assuming I was the one personally paying. It is generally assumed that because we are white, we are therefore loaded). So after many tearful breakdowns in front of my homologue, they agreed to do it for a very small cost. It took about 3 months to do the meetings with all of the villagers to get information on the issues in the village and how they foresee going about improving them. That has been finished since around the beginning of February. Since then, I have been given the unlucky task of typing the whole damn document because I type faster than anyone else working on the project. They are still at the hunt-and-peck stages of typing abilities. At first I didn’t mind it that much but I really didn’t think I would be spending so much of my time in Peace Corps, sitting behind a computer, pretty much being a secretary. But we hopefully will be done with the document by next week and can then send it off to all of the places it needs to go to.
A colleague of mine recently went back to PLAN to talk to the same director I had spoken to a year prior. She is doing a similar project, but has had some up hiccup[s in the process. The director told her that the format of the program was changing in the near future. They were going to have teams move into different villages for about 5 years at a time and remodel the village in a sense. They are going to bring in tons money on various issues in the village. This includes even bringing in electricity to villages that would cost tens of thousands of dollars to electrify. I checked on getting it connected in my village at it was $40,000 just to extend the line, not including the cost to individual families to equipped their houses with sockets and light fixtures and such. Very much out of my price range, but I guess PLAN is going to be able to try and do it.
Part of me thinks this is a great idea and makes me really want them to come to Koka. But the other part of me thinks this is the worst idea for development. Where is the sustainability? Where is the involvement of the community in the development of the village? Many people in my village like in many others, think that some foreigner is always going to sweep in a save them with gifts and money. That’s was what their colonial powers did years ago, it surely will happen again. But this practice has made the Togolese lazy and not motivated to do things for themselves. The concept of pulling oneself up from their bootstraps doesn’t really correlate here. I think that having organizations like PLAN or other development groups come in a ‘’save the day’’ reinforces this terrible idea. For my clinic project, it is required that the village pays 25% of the total cost of the project. This is to enhance one the idea of sustainability and two the idea that they (the people of Koka) had a hand in opening the clinic. They will be more likely to respect the clinic and be proud of it existence. I hope my village will learn from this practice to know that they can do things on their own.
Most Peace Corps volunteers come into their service thinking they are going to make great strides in the development world. But for the most part, at least in Togo that is, most volunteer never do any work that would be considered traditional development work. Sure we do lots of training’s on topics ranging from how to make a natural compost, to why you should wash your hands after going to the bathroom, to how to improve ones small business. But are these ever really making the impact in development that we had hoped for? Probably not. There are the occational volunteers who get things built like school buildings or water pumps or health clincs but there are even more volunteers who do not. Personally, I think I am the exception to this idea. In my village of Koka, there were very few trained development workers. All villages in Togo have a committee called the C.V.D or the community development committee in English. Four years ago, my village separated from its neighbor, Niamtougou. It was consider one of the ‘suburbs’ of the larger town. Because of this separation, very few trained development workers were left after the separation. Since that day, it has caused many problems within the village. A make-shift committee was thrown together out of necessity but no one is really qualified for the job. The certain members of the board are have caused me much stress and annoyance due to their need to be the head of everything, even when not warranted. This has also caused clashes with other members of the committee to the point where meetings have not been held in a month because of their inability to get along. As of this week however, the specific members has been asked to leave and he is making a lot of noise against it, but really has no say in the matter.
As one of my goals in my service, I wanted to be able to leave my village knowing that a properly trained and qualified development committee was put in place and trained. So for the past few weeks I have been working with an individual from my village but who lives in Kara, who is going to do the training for free because he too wants to see his village develop. With all hopes this will make great improvements in the development of the village of Koka.
As volunteers we are not given money directly to do projects in our village. We can write grants to several funding sources through the Peace Corps network. There are a few places in Togo where a village can also go in search of financing. One of these is called PLAN. This is a branch of UNDP here in Togo. They receive their funding through the UN. Last year I spoke to the director in Kara about what I can do in order to get water pumps built in my village. He told me there were several places that I could go to get pumps built. My village simply had to make an official request in writing and in person with important people from the village like the Chief and the president of the C.V.D. We also had to give a copy of the villages Plan of Action. He told me that probably someone in my village had a copy of it lying around and I could just make a copy. Well it turns out that because of the village separation, Koka did not have a Plan of Action. So I went to a friend of mine that own a development NGO to ask if he could help me out and get one written up quickly. Well, it is now almost a year later and I am still working on getting this document written. It’s a lot longer process than I had originally thought. It took several months of getting people finally to agree to do the job without the big bucks they usually get when foreign NGO fund the project. (They wanted to be paid on an American scale and get almost $3000 out of me, assuming I was the one personally paying. It is generally assumed that because we are white, we are therefore loaded). So after many tearful breakdowns in front of my homologue, they agreed to do it for a very small cost. It took about 3 months to do the meetings with all of the villagers to get information on the issues in the village and how they foresee going about improving them. That has been finished since around the beginning of February. Since then, I have been given the unlucky task of typing the whole damn document because I type faster than anyone else working on the project. They are still at the hunt-and-peck stages of typing abilities. At first I didn’t mind it that much but I really didn’t think I would be spending so much of my time in Peace Corps, sitting behind a computer, pretty much being a secretary. But we hopefully will be done with the document by next week and can then send it off to all of the places it needs to go to.
A colleague of mine recently went back to PLAN to talk to the same director I had spoken to a year prior. She is doing a similar project, but has had some up hiccup[s in the process. The director told her that the format of the program was changing in the near future. They were going to have teams move into different villages for about 5 years at a time and remodel the village in a sense. They are going to bring in tons money on various issues in the village. This includes even bringing in electricity to villages that would cost tens of thousands of dollars to electrify. I checked on getting it connected in my village at it was $40,000 just to extend the line, not including the cost to individual families to equipped their houses with sockets and light fixtures and such. Very much out of my price range, but I guess PLAN is going to be able to try and do it.
Part of me thinks this is a great idea and makes me really want them to come to Koka. But the other part of me thinks this is the worst idea for development. Where is the sustainability? Where is the involvement of the community in the development of the village? Many people in my village like in many others, think that some foreigner is always going to sweep in a save them with gifts and money. That’s was what their colonial powers did years ago, it surely will happen again. But this practice has made the Togolese lazy and not motivated to do things for themselves. The concept of pulling oneself up from their bootstraps doesn’t really correlate here. I think that having organizations like PLAN or other development groups come in a ‘’save the day’’ reinforces this terrible idea. For my clinic project, it is required that the village pays 25% of the total cost of the project. This is to enhance one the idea of sustainability and two the idea that they (the people of Koka) had a hand in opening the clinic. They will be more likely to respect the clinic and be proud of it existence. I hope my village will learn from this practice to know that they can do things on their own.
posted by Alia at 12:14 PM
1 Comments:
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