Development with responsibility
Most development vision and practice aims at reducing and eventually eliminating poverty, and more importantly to build a personal, social, and economic capacity to reduce poverty.
In the case of those who are truly poor, good development can bring significant changes to their condition.
Those who are poor are usually described as those who have no or limited access to critical resources, such as education and financial services. But there are those who believe that meeting the essential needs of life – food, water, shelter, employment, education, are sufficient to keep them out of poverty.
Poverty in the Pacific Islands may need to be re-defined. The current definitions which are mostly done by academics and development experts from outside are not only inadequate but constitute a colonial construct that focuses on what people don’t have rather than what they do have to work with.
Furthermore, most definitions of poverty do not take into consideration the thinking and attitude of people about themselves, their needs, and the appropriate solutions to meeting those needs.
We must work on a development approach that calls for responsibility and ownership of the problems and the solutions. We need not only to help bring changes to the physical condition of the poor but also to their mentality.
It is the mentality of poverty that is hard to change. It is what produces and perpetuates a lifestyle of poverty that becomes a life pattern described by some as a “cycle of poverty”, a phenomenon in which poor families become trapped in for generations.
But what do we need to do to help people break out of the cycle of poverty? What are some of the solutions to reducing poverty, and how do we prevent poverty from being perpetuated in society?
How do Pacific Islanders view themselves on the poverty scale? Is their definition of poverty self-defined or are they made by outsiders about them?
In the current approaches to development, is there a shared responsibility being established as a foundational principle in the application of solutions?
Most of the people of the Pacific live in small rural ocean communities. From a local viewpoint, they are not necessarily poor because the essentials of life such as food security, education, health-care, social and spiritual development are sufficiently covered.
Many islanders do not see themselves as poor. Poverty to them is a relative condition. Their social and economic condition may not be as “rich” as their Western counterparts, but that does not make them poor. At least that’s what they think.
There are others however who have accepted their poverty definition because that identity has been imposed on them from the outside.
A certain imaginary economic line of demarcation has been drawn, so to speak, and those who live below that line are poor, and those who live above it are not. Economists, politicians, and academics use this “poverty line” definition to set up a social assigning of everyone in society, whether they are poor or not.
In a society where the majority live under the “poverty line”, that society is described as poor, extreme poverty is the term given to those who live too far down the line.
But despite the millions of dollars of aid that is poured into societies that are deemed poor, there seems to be no or little improvement in the conditions that people live in.
Even when there seems to be some physical improvement, in terms of better housing, better roads, access to education, clean water, etc. the people helped still think of themselves ‘poor’. And as long as they have that mentality they will “behave like poor people.”
Their national development partners tell them they are poor, and “this is what you need” to improve your condition, “in order that you may be described as no longer poor.”
In fact the poor outward conditions people live in have over several generations been translated to a poor inward mentality, and that becomes the “concrete foundation” of a socio-cultural poverty structure that is hard to deconstruct.
A new kind of approach in development is needed in order to deconstruct the poverty foundations in the minds and social lives of people even while the physical assistance is being made.
Those that have been responsible for development over the past 100 or more years, and have seen positive impacts, are also those who have a positive world-view about spirituality, geography, traditional culture, and indigenous knowledge.
Their development solutions are deeply rooted in the people and their needs. They are not dependent on governments, local or international. These development partners who are mostly faith based and missionary in nature, engage the people in determining the kind of solutions they need for their problems.
On the other hand, like “parachute” journalists, “parachute development” experts fly into a country for a short trip. They can only see what the people don’t have, instead of seeing what they have – how they live, and the kinds of resources they develop and methods they use to make life not only tolerable but also enjoyable.
Parachute journalists write stories on what they encounter on short trips. Parachute development experts do the same. Their reports usually create an illusion of an “expert treatise” on brief snapshot knowledge of a country, and worse of all they assume they know the issues that are most important to that country.
Parachute development experts are far more dangerous in dealing with a society than journalists. They are bent on planting long term development solutions based on a short-term misguided compilation of facts and fantasies about development in that country. In most cases they get it wrong.
They arrive with wrong assumptions about the people, coupled with wrong ideas about what the people need, and based their theories on a cultural miscomprehension of the people they are there to develop. They develop practices that engender little respect of the local people and their culture.
This model of development is Western, and aims at changing people to become ‘Western” so they can adapt and enjoy the benefits of Western “things” which they are producing and providing for the locals.
You get the idea that here is a comprehensive development package delivered under the overall plan of colonialism and consumerism, and it is signed off with a ‘treaty’ or ‘agreement’ that puts the developing people in total dependence on the so-called developing partners.
They often produce among the people “a shattered identity” that is based on a distorted and “crushed self-worth.”
No wonder that despite the years of development aid and millions of dollars of investment, we are no closer to eliminating poverty wherever this model of development is being carried out.
Fundamental to a new approach to development is the need for those helped to have a sense of responsibility for their wellbeing and development. They need to develop a sense of self worth and dignity, and a belief system that they are being helped so they can also help others.
Nothing is more important than the right kind of education in deconstructing a poverty mentality and constructing a future that involves self-help and sharing blessings with others, particularly with those less fortunate.
James Tooley wrote the book The Beautiful Tree based on a research he did in Africa comparing private school with public school education. What he found was that poor people were willing to pay for education that produces fruit, and were not impressed with “free education” that did not produce anything.
Tooley tells the story of an African father who was asked why he sent his child to the private school with its run down facilities when he could send his child to the government school that had great buildings and was free. He answered, “When you go to the market and someone is giving fruit away for free it is because it is rotten. If you want good quality fruit you pay for it.”
The lesson here is that even poor people know what is of value, and there is a price they must pay. Just because something is “free” does not mean they want it. Despite the better facilities offered by “free” education or whatever, poor people want to have the final say in how they are going to improve their condition. They want to be responsible, and it is there that the first steps out of poverty are being taken.
