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.

Academia

In less than a week I have a 3,000 word essay to hand in. Two days before that, I have to give a 10-minute presentation on five readings for a seminar on Foreign Aid. So it makes perfect sense that I am sitting here in the library – down in the dungeons where talking is prohibited – updating my blog, staring out of the window at a column of golden trees and an overcast sky and flipping through the pages of Cosmo on Campus (I kid you not).

I sat in this same seat yesterday until 8pm, next to the same woman whose name I still do not know, as all we do is smile our greetings. At least yesterday, I got the last reading done for the Foreign Aid seminar: Judith Tendler's 1975 book, Inside Foreign Aid, a look at the organisational environment of USAID, the US government's development arm, and how the very nature of it being a government agency compromised its development mission.

Quite revolutionary for its time – written just a decade after AID was set up (incidentally, the gov't expected it to close within a decade or two) -- although now there are a raft of articles and a whole shelf of books on what's wrong with foreign aid and aid agencies. One of my other readings, by a UK-based governance research group looks at the strategies African countries adopt in negotiating with donors, what factors lead to strong or weak negotiating positions and how a weak position can often push a country to accept projects/programmes that do not fit within its national strategy and ignore some of the key issues that need addressing in favour of donor “pet projects”.

Its readings like these, and indeed, in researching this essay (yes, I have done some work!), that I question what role or even why I want to be involved in such a paternalistic industry. But it's not even that, it's that there isn't an answer on 'how to do development' and so in the process, we, as the west, are continuously screwing up countries by trying to squeeze them into a model that worked previously. Like Tendler says, development approaches have to be innovative, creative, responsive. Different approaches work in different countries, but because gov't development agencies such USAID, which must be the largest (aside from Word Bank and IMF) donor, has to account to Congress and various oversight committees for its expenditure, often goes for non-risky programmes that may have been effective elsewhere.

What really has shown to be effective in bringing greater freedoms and accountability to people is their own participation and ownership; but how does the US get its name on that?

Anyway, I think this is part of the course. They want us to question why we are here; our 'positionality' as they call it.

The essay title, in case you're interested is: “Development is about making the world a better place, discuss the disadvantages and advantages of this definition.'

When I tell my classmates I am struggling with my essay, they look surprised. “It's easy for you Cassie, you're a writer.”

True, but that doesn't mean I don't agonise over every word and sentence, in fact, having looked at some of their essays, I probably worry about words, rhythm and structure too much.

My biggest concern, and which is probably why I am sitting here flicking through the pages of Cosmo (skimpy shorts over black tights, preferably ripped or torn at the sides, if you are curious), is that I am a bit at a loss when it comes to writing like an academic. When we first arrived we were asked to write an introductory essay on the challenges of studying development studies. I waffled, threw in some of the names of those whose books I had flicked through, added a bit historic context, and mostly talked about my own personal challenges and experiences. I thought that was what we were here to do.

Oh, how wrong I was. Seems I was supposed to present a “balanced argument”, not, as my professor said, with strong statements, and make reference to specific authors and their books, articles and even page numbers. PAGE Numbers!!! Who remembers page numbers??? 

 Surprising how people can assume you are together when deep down you are just held together with bits of frayed string you found at a bus stop.

Oh well, back to the essay.

Back to School

Ok, so I'm using my blog as an excuse to avoid working ... I've always been like this. When I was a teenager, instead of writing an essay on the betrayal of Julius Caesar or memorizing quotes from Coriolanus, I wrote poetry and short stories. When I was at college, I started a journal where I opined about the state of England while avoiding writing my thesis on why women are funnier than men. And in every case, when I eventually knuckled down to work, when I had hoovered every inch of the floor, scoured the baths, rearranged my bedroom and DVD collection and made the necessary drinks and snacks needed to work, I found that I actually enjoyed it and wished I had more time.  

 

But I have been meaning to update this blog for some time – so much has happened – and I need a bit of practice writing again, so here goes.

I left Afghanistan in July after spending my final three months there setting up a training and community media centre in Herat, -which was amazing, and needs a whole entry of its own. And, after 11 years on the road -- almost to the day --  I moved back to the UK, as ever to start something new.

This time, I've embarked on a Masters programme, something I had been thinking of for a while.  I'm at the Institute of Development Studies, in Brighton, on their Governance and Development programme.

Yesterday was the first real day and it started with a four-hour "participation" workshop with Robert Chambers, who if you don't know (and why would you) is THE rock star of the development world. He has been at IDS since the 60s, as an undergraduate, then later as a professor and researcher, and revolutionsed the way in which development was "done". He advocated for a “bottom up” approach to development, in which the marginalised; women, poor, disabled, excluded, were asked to participate when it came to policies that affected them. It's startling really to think that it took until the 1980s for this to be taken seriously … now it's de rigour in development work, with varying degrees of success.

So, yesterday, there he was, Robert Chambers, turning 70 next year, tall, wiry, with a shock of white, untamed hair and a megaphone, encouraging us to ride our bikes to uni no matter the weather. I had had a bit of a heads up that he would want us to be doing some touchy feely type of bonding with fellow classmates, so was not really looking forward to it. Like most Brits, there is only so much bonding I can do outside of the pub.

But, Chambers had a surprise for us, well me:

"I want everyone to walk around the room, weave in and out of people, but keep your eyes on the ground, don't look at anyone."

Oh phew, I thought … I can do this!

Of course we weren't allowed to stay in our own private bubbles for ever; he then had us greeting each other with smiles, elbows, knees and then bums (the bottom up approach?); but it broke the ice and when you've gone bum to bum with a woman from the Congo, you've got nothing left to hide.

So the rest of the time he had us running around, forming groups identified by our MAs:

Governance

Globalisation

Gender

Participation and Social Change

Science, Technology and Development

Vulnerability and Poverty

Knowledge and Power

Human Rights

Climate Change and Development

Anthropology and Social Transformation

And into our previous occupation. Surprisingly, there were a few journalists, but also doctors, engineers, local and international NGO workers, social workers, government officials, think tank analysts, consultants, a sports therapist and those who had come straight from undergraduate degrees.

And then it was outside, where we split into our countries; India, the largest contingent occupying the much of the bottom end of the grassy hill. Snuggled up alongside them; Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and Afghanistan. 

The African continent. Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Gambia, Congo, Zimbabwe, Sierra Leone, Central African Republic and South Africa. 

From the Middle East it was only Iran and Egypt; from Asia, Japan dominated followed by South Korea, then China, Indonesia and Thailand.

From the West, or the Global North in development speak; a smattering of Brits, Americans, Canadians, Italians, Spanish, an Estonian, Germans, Swedes and French.

Brazil was the sole representation from the central and South Americas.And from Mexico (which although is in North America geograhically, it is considered the global south here).

I admit, I did have fun; people have the most amazing stories. I met an English woman with an American accent, who like me turned chameleon to adapt to different school environments, an American journalist my age with a friend in common, an Indonesia woman who I knew in Afghanistan, a Pakistan government official who I spent hours with talking about Haqqani and the ISI, a Canadian guy who spent the last four years working for the UN in Bangkok, an Egyptian who has been working to get youth involved in the reforms there ... and there are so many more to meet. At least I found out  am not the oldest person on the course, in fact, the average age is about mid to late 30s.

I will try to keep my blog updated as it'll be a great reminder of what it's all been about. Let's see what happens.