Richard Richards
  • Home
  • Personal Musings
  • All About "Presence"
    • en Español
  • NON-PROFIT
    • Photos
    • Nicaragua (in English)
    • Nicaragua (en Español)
  • About Richard
  • Contact

Challenging the Current Approach to Development

5/16/2013

2 Comments

 
I am 10 days short of a year here in Ocotal, embedded for the first time in the world of "development". And my loosely-defined, altruistic ambitions have been challenged and I am disappointed. I am trying to work out how to make lemonade from the remaining lemons that haven't been spoiled.
I have been debating with myself for days about how to write this blog, balancing a number of concerns:
  • how to be honest without being brutal
  • how to express my feelings without biting the hand that has fed me for the last 12 months (especially in terms of giving me a first-hand and valuable experience)
  • how to honor the best intentions that people have while recognizing the reality (and shortcomings) of the outcomes
  • how to temper my own glass-half-empty tendency

No more debating! I will dive right in with some random though clearly connected thoughts and feelings, based on my clearly limited experience.

In Nicaragua, there are bucket loads of trainings, forums, talks, investigations, publications...and what seems like slow and little progress.
Picture
Almost every flight I have ever taken to Managua has a religious group with logo´d T-shirts, on its way to an annual "mission" to help or save someone.
Picture
The boundary between providing resources for people to help themselves and paternalism is a slippery slope that only gets more slippery with time.
Picture
The larger the non-profit, the more it feels like just another corporation, only with a privileged tax status and without the ROI expectations of other for-profits.
Picture
Things get done in the non-profit world through sub-contracting that requires endless documentation, oversight and a cost with every contract.
Picture
In delivering services, non-profits in the development chain focus on the demands of the organization above and not on the needs of the people below.
Picture
As we get more "connected" technologically we become more disconnected from realities, manipulated by images...such as these.
Picture
An employee in a non-profit is out to survive just like anyone else in a job and responds to the demands at work placed on him/her by the system in general.
Picture
The current system is convenient to those within the system who work in it and those who give to it. Needs are met and consciences are appeased.
Picture
The current system clearly responds to needs, but what is less clear is to what extent it meets those needs and whether there is another way to meet them.
Picture
It's easy to pick holes, it's much harder to fill them, especially when the holes look so large. Never before did the for-profit world start to look like an attractive option.

Picture
Where do you start when cell phone coverage (provided for profit motives) is wider-spread than drinking water, electricity and health care?
Picture
At what point are NGOs part of the problem if the state doesn't do its part and if people don't do for themselves what thay are able to do for themselves.
So I will try to sit with this discomfort and doubt and be present to today's opportunities, trusting that a loving and thoughtful approach will lead to some clarity.
“At the end of the day, the questions we ask of ourselves determine the type of people that we will become.” 
Leo Babauta
2 Comments
Tim
7/9/2013 01:32:13 pm

You came to mind today and after spending the last hour reading through your blog posts I had two thoughts come over me: 1. You are amazing. 2. Don't lose heart.

I think the work you have undertaken this year is nothing short of inspiring. Sending warm wishes your way and I am inspired to have more impact in my small circle of influence after sharing in your thoughts.

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

William Ernest Henley

Reply
Richard Richards link
7/10/2013 10:18:57 am

Dear Tim,

Thank you for your kind and supportive words. They couldn't have come at a more opportune time. I was feeling sad yesterday and receiving your comments lifted my spirits no end! Your choice of poem and its title reminded me of the 6 years of Latin I took at prep school. I have never read this poem (thank you for sending it my way). I surmised the meaning from the poem (little do I actually remember of my Latin lessons): unbeaten, undefeated. What uplifting words Henley wrote.

In the same vein (but from a completely different genre), I transcribed a part of the closing monologue of Judy Dench in the movie, "The Best Marigold Hotel": "The only real failure is the failure to try. The measure of success is how we cope with disappointment. As we always must. For the person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing. All that we know about the future is that it will be different."

Thank you friend for taking the time and reaching out!

Yours,

Richard.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Background

    I sold house, car and most of my furniture to move to the small town of Ocotal in Las Segovias on the Honduras/ Nicaragua border.

    I planned on staying a year, but ended up staying two years, caught up by the country, its people and the work.

    To visit the place where I was volunteering, follow the link below to ILLS:

    El Instituto de Liderazgo de las Segovias

    Archives

    March 2014
    October 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    May 2013
    February 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Contact

© Copyright 2018 Richard Richards, Bournemouth, Dorset, UK
Picture
  • Home
  • Personal Musings
  • All About "Presence"
    • en Español
  • NON-PROFIT
    • Photos
    • Nicaragua (in English)
    • Nicaragua (en Español)
  • About Richard
  • Contact