Hey Peter,
This is particularly for you! I really appreciated the piece of lecture that you delivered last Monday about your company's project activities in different areas like energy, agriculture and environment. It was great. Here I am interested to mention one point from your lecture which left me a bit confused. It was even asked by one of the audiences that day and you gave further explanation. But I am still confused :) It is about the notion of "Community". you said it does not exist in Africa and there is no such thing as a ''community project". I thought we were doing a project for a certain community in Africa such as the rural community. So, could you please help clear my confusion on the idea? Or anyone from the Group?
Thank you!
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Thanks for the prop! It was meant to make people think and not swallow everything that is written in academia about development and models of development.
ReplyDeleteCommunities are depicted is if "people work like bees" all for the common good. It is unfortunate, but the reality is different. If you try to break down their interests, it is a maddening situation. However, if the purpose of the intervention is to provide a service for different people - who are then not expected to take it on as their "owned by us" but a good intervention serving my needs, then you define a new community that has an interest in that intervention. This could be a few artisans, women who do not have access to water, a business person, all looking at the intervention from their own interests. If the interest is covering all the people, then it can be said to belong to the community, but if it is addressing only a select group in a society, then it is a group project as opposed to a community project! ;) extra confusion!!
Thanks Teddy for opening the discussion about the communities. And thank you Peter for clarifying the notion.
ReplyDeleteI see the "community issue" also in a wider scale. Perhaps it is also a question about democracy and power relations. And find the problem in these frames also. Who decides what on behalf of whom. The question about common good is also depending on the person´s own reflections and desires. Ofcourse the communities can have and usually has a common goal, but the ways fo achieving the goals can differ whether your a man or a women, young or old etc. I think that these challenges are global and quite autonomous of cultures.
I, too, find this question of communities in development projects quite interesting. I have to admit that I hadn't really realized how problematic it can be to actually get a community to take a development project as something that is their own. This of course is vital for the success and sustainability of the project.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it is also a question of how people are in general: even if you do have a common goal, the problem can be quite hard to approach if tasks and responsibilities are not clearly defined, (i.e. I could do this, but then again so could my neighbour, or maybe someone is already taking care of it...). I'd imagine this could be a part of the problem when dealing with community development projects. However, if the project is aimed for a household, the few people running it are clearly doing something good for themselves, not just for common good, and at the same time there is no one else who could do it for them. Funny how that seems to motivate people...
Thanks Peter for raising an interesting question!
A bit off the mark but this short film tells a lot about the concept of development http://www.linktv.org/programs/humanitarian-aid
ReplyDeleteEnjoy- who is aiding who!