August 25th - Do-It-Yourself

As I mentioned last week, Monday was a national holiday. It was Isra’ Mi’raj’ Nabi Muhammad SAW, the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday. I spent my long weekend with a colleague in North Sumatra. We flew to Medan, a city of two million people. Medan is a rather popular weekend getaway for foreigners. Many go there to spend a couple of nights in a nice hotel, enjoy a warm shower or bath, to shop and to enjoy… well, uh… pork and alcohol! Other than that there is not so much to see in Medan; it is a city like so many others. However, there are plenty of nice places to see around the city. So we decided to carry on towards Lake Toba. The lake was formed a long time ago by one of the greatest volcanic explosions ever. There is a large island in the centre of the lake where many tourists go to. We went around the island a bit taking in the scenery; enjoying the views, the traditional Batak houses and a traditional dance performance. The area around Lake Toba is predominantly Christian and it was kind of odd waking up at the sound of Church bells at 9 A.M. rather that the now familiar call to prayer at 5 A.M. from the nearest mosque!

Last week I wrote about Ie Itam, a small village in the sub-district of Panga. If wrote about how heart-warming and inspiring it was to see a whole community come together to carry out projects that benefit them all. It actually is something quite special, especially considering that it is not so self-evident that this might happen in the current phase in the post tsunami context. Let me explain…

Lessons from decades of development work have shown that programmes and projects have a higher rate of success when beneficiaries are actively involved the whole process rather than being passive recipients of aid. Naturally, the local population has a great understanding of the local problems, potential solutions, opportunities and threats, stakeholders, etcetera. This is a wealth of knowledge that must be used and doing so ensures that programmes and projects are better suited to the circumstances and are better able to address local needs. Moreover, active participation and direct involvement create a sense of ownership, which is crucial to achieve sustainability. Personally, I find it intriguing that this was not already clear 30 years ago… but that, of course, is hindsight.

The IRC’s CDR programme is community driven. Community driven development takes things further than simply consulting the beneficiaries and promoteing active participation: it is development that is driven by the target population themselves. It is a process that seeks to empower local communities to assume responsibility for their own development. It does this by building their capacities and placing them in ‘the driver’s seat’. The CDR programme provides grants and training and merely facilitates the rest of the process.

That it is not self-evident that communities pull together and want to drive their own development process has a lot to do with the fact that they have been the victims of the greatest natural disaster that we have seen in our lifetime. To begin with, as a logical response to such an event, there are now many International Non-Governmental Organisations (INGOs) on the ground, each with their own programme, strategy and approach. Furthermore – although I am convinced that the transition from emergency to rehabilitation and reconstruction can be eased by taking some steps towards participation and inclusion during an emergency phase – it should be clear that the phases of emergency, rehabilitation and reconstruction require different approaches and that a community driven development programme is not feasible in an emergency situation. In any case, the reality is that, in the initial phases after the tsunami struck, the beneficiaries were passive recipients of aid and have often received aid in the form of food-for-work or cash-for-work programmes and in some cases were paid per diems to attend meetings.

For these reasons, it has been challenging to convince our beneficiaries of the CDR programme’s approach: all of a sudden they were required to do everything by themselves and even contribute to the costs (usually in natura). However, after speaking at length with the communities, describing and motivating the various steps in the programme, they came to embrace the concept. The subsequent Community Participatory Assessment Workshop (CPAW), in which a number of participative exercises are carried out with the beneficiaries also clearly demonstrated that the methodology is very much appreciated. Community members explained that for the first time they were heard, were taken seriously and felt that a degree of self-esteem was restored to the community. This is why it is so special to see whole community come together to carry out projects that they have identified and worked out themselves.

That is it for this week; I hope to see you again next time.

Take care,

Alex