Learning Journal

So the essay was handed in and we now have to wait for the lengthy marking process. Apparently, we don't get the essay back, we just get a typed list of comments. Bah!

Every week we are expected to write a learning journal which we email to our main tutor, who returns it with her comments … I find this quite a useful tool to get ideas and thoughts out of my head and on to paper where you can see if you really understand something or not. Sometimes I use it to develop an idea within the readings or lectures and sometimes to disagree with what has been said.

Here's the one I did for last week, I have added a few comments n parentheses for clarity.

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There has been a thread running through my thoughts these past few weeks that I've been struggling to come to terms with, that is: how can you work in development without being interventionist? We know that the most successful projects are those where the community has a sense of ownership; sets the agenda and takes control. The developmental states we have been taking about; Singapore, Taiwan South Korea, Botswana – and perhaps we should have included Kenya - all progressed because they set a course and had, for the most part, consensus. (A developmental state is one which has a more involved government, possibly authoritarian, which takes decisions primarily to move the state forward)

Yes, they had some support. Open markets for Taiwan and South Korea in the US, and Hong Kong obviously had support from the UK .. but on the whole it was their own path. Even with participatory projects (projects where the beneficiaries are involved in decisions that affect them), we have seen those where it has been an organic development from the ground up are more successful than those where the spaces are invited or imposed. So it has made me think, how, as a foreigner, can I work in overseas development when every project I run, is already at a disadvantage because it has a foreigner running it instead of someone local.

I don't have a skill, I'm not a doctor or an engineer or an architect, I'm beginning to think that the media is the only thing I have.

The Robert Chambers workshop (an all day workshop with the participation guru the previous Sunday) helped somewhat. He mentioned us working as “facilitators”. Of spending more time listening and asking questions. He gave that wonderful example of what did we think a Kenyan sex worker would ask for to make her life better. We all chimed in with noble thoughts; housing, heath clinics, respect, schooling for children … when in fact, what they asked for, he said, was swimming lessons. It's a great example as it really does illustrate that while we, as outsiders, can have the best intentions, we can get things so wrong because we do not listen or ask questions or understand the context.

One of my last jobs in Afghanistan was to help my organisation win a proposal utilising new technology to improve the work of human rights groups. To get the proposal, we needed several groups to agree to be our beneficiaries. We chose women's rights groups and I was sent out to speak to several of them to explain the project and get a signed acceptance of their willingness to participate.

The idea of the project would be that women could text in reports of attacks or domestic abuse and this would go to a centrally held database from which maps (like google maps) and reports could be drawn. The groups would be able to see the locations and types of attacks and generate reports based on this. I visited several different groups, including one which provided refuge and shelter to battered or run away women, an organisation supporting disabled women and FEFA, the Afghan free and fair elections advocacy group.

In my very first interview I realised how ridiculous our project was. The shelter group told me that 99 % of the women who seek help from them are illiterate. What good is a mobile phone?

The internet map was also pretty useless as in the areas it would be most useful, the south and east, mobile phone masts were constantly being blown up by the Taliban, causing disruption to service. One group did not want to work with us as it was a USAID funded project and they thought that the link with the US would put their staff at risk.

Returning back to the office, with only a few signatures of those I had managed to convince, I learned that the project idea had been conceived in California without a singe Afghan voice. I understand that this is how it often works in the development world, but there's my problem, I don't actually want to be part of a project that does work that way.

So I think I came into the Leftwich reading (about how those East Asian Tigers/developmental states all developed) with this in mind, and was shocked to see his abstract about the policy implications. (he said that instead of trying to set up institutions in these countries, what donors needed to do was find those elements within a state that appeared to be capable of achieving development and support them, a process that has worked so well in the past … not! AN argument I made in class)

I did actually find it interesting, the reading, the seminar and lecture. I especially liked thinking about Hong Kong as I grew up there, lived there pre and post 1997 handover and so it's probably the closest thing I have to a home.

Hong Kong is an interesting story. In my mind, the change from pre handover is extraordinary. Hong Kong Chinese have gone from not caring about their home … perhaps because it was never theirs … to being fully involved. The last decade has seen an explosion of community groups and NGOs. I like to think its because they have taken ownership.