Unleashing Potential

One of the most progressive aid organizations is Ashoka International, founded by Bill Drayton. It’s been around 25 years or so, and it’s certainly a contender for a Nobel Peace Prize. Bill figured that the best and fastest way to change the world was to identify people in countries who are getting started in socially innovative projects, and supporting them so that they can dedicate themselves to their cause. There is a worldwide “search” committee that consists of thousands of people in local communities who keep their eyes out for these sorts of people – the single-minded, almost fanatical idealist, who has a vision of something great. And every year, the foundation selects “Ashoka Fellows” who are given financial support so that they can pursue their dream, until the dream can get funding from other sources or become self-supporting. The financial support usually lasts about three years. As Bill says, “we’re investing in the person, not the project.” Over the years, they’ve supported 2,000 fellows.

I like the premise – find people who are change-makers, who know their communities and their problems, who are creative in coming up with solutions, and support them so they can make it happen. It’s a beautiful concept.

I do have a little bit of a different perspective, though. I think that more attention needs to be given to the average person, who doesn’t see himself or herself as a social entrepreneur. I think that the kind of change that the world needs will happen when every common citizen starts to recognize and unlock their own potential. My visit to Hopwood junior high still haunts me – all that potential, hidden even from the eyes of those who possess it. I wonder what are the keys to unlocking that potential. It has to be some combination of attitudes, insights and skills, both practical and spiritual.

Any ideas on unleashing this potential in the common citizen?

Carl Talk and the Folly of Aid

I had a chance to sit down with my favorite French-Canadian general surgeon yesterday, and just chat. Carl is finishing up his stint at CHC, and his departure is a loss to the people of the CNMI. Last week Carl gave a presentation on his year in Ethiopia, his last post of service before arriving in Saipan.

Carl was there with an international aid organization. He was part of a three member team that consisted of a surgeon, an anesthesiologist, and an OR nurse. The project aimed to identify local people who would spend a year with them, get trained in how to be a surgeon, an anesthesiologist, and an OR nurse, and then head back into their provinces to provide service. The aid organization sent 21 of these teams throughout the country. Ideally, by the end of the year, there would be 21 local teams prepared to provide services to their people.

Carl had planned on spending his life doing humanitarian surgery. But his experience so disillusioned him, that he’s taken a break from pursuing that as a career.

He told me about how much difficulty he had when he was applying to various international agencies. He was offering his life to them, for free, and only one agency could accommodate him.

He told me that throughout Ethiopia, there were many international aid organizations, all in competition with one another, refusing to cooperate or pool their resources. The agencies were more concerned with making their annual reports look good and getting more funding than making sure their work actually made a difference.

He told me that the organization he worked for failed to take the local situation into account. They sent these fancy autoclaves to sterilize instruments – fancy because they had microprocessors with them to control the sterilization process. But the chips were set for sea-level, not for the elevation of Ethiopia, so they were useless. It would have been better to simply send pots and teach the people how to sterilize their instruments by boiling them, because that technology would always be available and repairable.

He told me that they used sutures at the central training hospital that would never be available in the provinces.

A year after his departure, of the 21 teams that were trained, only three were still functioning. That’s better than nothing, but it doesn’t make for a success story, especially considering the talent and dedication that poured in the way of the volunteer surgeons, anesthetists and nurses, who gave a year of their lives for this project.

It again points out the need for development projects to be decided locally, on the ground. For people to become empowered to identify their own problems and create their own solutions and seek the assistance they need. Development projects imposed from the outside are simply folly.

Human Potential as Development

As I've been delving into the area of sustainable development and poverty reduction over the past couple of weeks, a few themes have emerged.

1. Development projects work best when individuals at the grassroots set out to identify and solve their own problems, not when outside agencies and individuals come in to identify and solve their problems.

2. The most meaningful forms of development projects are those that unlock the capacity of the individual at the grassroots to do exactly that -- to believe in their own potential to address their own problems, and to develop the moral capacity to do so in a just and honest way.

3. Lack of money is usually not the biggest problem. There is lots of money and international aid available. The challenge is spending it in a meaningful way, and again, it goes back to having individuals within communities identify the meaningful ways to address their social and economic problems.