What might be wrong with helping the poor? An illustrative zoom

Author:Arrey Mbongaya Ivo

African Centre for Community and DevelopmentHttp://www.africancentreforcommunity.com

Http://youtube.com/user/AfricanCentreforCom

Copyrights2014 African Centre for Community and Development. All Rights Reserved

Introduction

● Helping the poor is humane. However knowing how, when and where to help the poor has got so many challenges and ramifications.

● Do the poor want your help?● Are they poor or have they just been painted as

poor? ● Are your perceptions of help illusive, real or

useless?● Do you know the poor? Are the poor the same

in all the corners of the earth?

Introduction continues...

● Are you more skillful or knowledgeable than the poor you want to help?

● Is the instrument of help considered as an abuse on the person or dignity of the poor?

● Is the help good enough? Can your contributions in the lives of the poor or in a community amount to an effective positive transformation in the lives of the poor?

● Are you driven by gains, fame, paternalism or a single story narrative as coined by Chimamanda Adichie in “The Danger of a Single Story”?

Introduction continues....

All these questions are necessary to consider in order that helping the poor can be what it is and not the imaginations of an unconnected paternalistic individual or institution wishing to do good without the devices, the skills, resources or knowledge to deliver.

Without knowledge, skills or without the right set of mind and understanding of the environments that poor people live in, many well intentioned instruments to alleviate poverty will fail (Gow and Morss, 1988, Cusworth and Franks, 1993).

Introduction Continues...

Without knowledge of the assets and capabilities that poor people have set aside to survive (Chambers and Conway, 1992) overtime, many instruments tend to fail as the poor are looked upon as a passive tribe and which they are not (De Haan and Zoomers, 2003, 2005) .

They fail because the poor are considered weak and without skills via skewed paternalistic lenses leading to provision of services that are top-down, disconnected from the environments of the poor and somewhat without the moral underpinnings necessary for local ownership and support.

Introduction Continues....

These instruments fail because they serve the interests and the single story narratives of their diverse providers and the not the beneficiaries.

They fail because there is disconnection between the intention of doing good and the realities or contexts as intimated by Ivan Illich in “To Hell with good Intentions” or by Jacqueline Novogratz in “The Blue Sweater” page 73, of differentiating what works and what does not. They fail because the single story drilling makes the helpers incapable of understanding local contexts, unconsciously blind to realities and illusive as intimated by this author in a poem : “winged and made to fly in the fantasy of a fly is bigger than an elephant”

Illustration 1: Artwork: Beyond my Colour Fences by Arrey Mbongaya Ivo

Beyond my Colour Fences by Arrey Mbongaya Ivo

Explanation of “Beyond my Colour Fences”

● The artwork reveals that people grow with paradigms of their immediate tutorship. What they are told about themselves, their importance, their histories as well as what they are told of others and their capabilities.

● Therefore people act from a combination of influences including family, schools, television, role models, culture or even propaganda hence function within “colour fences” which might be different from the world and realities beyond.

● As with the art work if you look beyond the colourful stripes or pillars there is much to discover including vegetation, skies and even gloom at the corners. Hence helping the poor may go wrong if providers cannot discard their colourful fences to peep into the lives and needs of the poor.

Illustration 2: Artwork “Life Stories and Tasks” by Arrey Mbongaya IvoLife Stories and Tasks by Arrey Mbongaya Ivo.

Explanation of “Life Stories and Tasks” by Arrey Mbongaya Ivo

The art work is a depiction of various life experiences and the tasks or instruments needed to fulfill these lives. The tasks and the materials are colourful toy bricks which vary in shapes or content from box to box.

Thus even-though men are equal by their humanity they are challenged by their resources and their tools or building blocks. The poor are not poor because they are lazy or choose to be but because in many ways their own boxes have different contents to others. Even when the work is looked as a series of steps to climb to the top there are lanes that have just three steps and others have four. Then there are potentially unseen boxes with contents that are in the dark spaces of the work that reiterate the fact that not all human stories and experiences are known hence we cannot approach things from a single story narrative. The single story narrative is thus not inclusive and participatory.

The Way Forward

● Include the poor in the design and implementation of projects aimed at poverty alleviation not to fail. Inclusion leads to participation and local ownership. Inclusion goes beyond window dressing. They must be equipped with power, authority and resources to be effective partners.

● Separate the intention to do good from the capacity of doing good.

● Separate your single story from the many stories of others in order to approach helping others from an informed and strategic way.

● Most poor people are not victims or poor because they lack management skills. They sometimes lack means but in many instances they are deprived of means by many stakeholders including some apparent helpers.

The Way Forward

● Monetary indicators are not the only determinants of well-being. There are objective and subjective determinants of well-being. Some are culturally based or even subject to climatic realities, needs or geography or even tastes.

● Researching to understand the different dimensions and interpretations of poverty (Hall and Midgley, 2004) is vital in designing flexible, participatory, inclusive and bottom top approaches for poverty alleviation and development. Poverty alleviation becomes based on informed data and needs hence more effective.

ConclusionPoverty Alleviation schemes are humane and moral. They must not be driven by misunderstanding of the poor and their environments or their needs.

They must not be driven by a single story narrative by providers in order to be inclusive and bottom-top.

There is a difference between wanting to do good and good itself and between global values and sometimes specific needs. While it is positive to want to do good, working with people and organizations that understand the poor and local realities is vital. Working with the poor is a bonus in fair-based partnerships. Poverty alleviation is not a trivial device for entertainment nor should it be a window to exploit the poor.

Bibliography and References

Arrey, M.I. 2010 How Africa should approach her Sustainable Development. Published online in

http://www.slideshare.net/ArreyCup/how-africa-should-approach-her-sustainable-developmentppt-by-arrey-mbongaya-ivo-5028298

de Haan, L. and Zoomers, A. (2003): Development geog­raphy at the crossroads of livelihood and globalization. In: Journal of Economic and Social Geography 94 (3), 350–362. DOI: 10.1111/1467-9663.00262

-2005): Exploring the frontier of livelihood research. In: Development and Change 36 (1), 27–47. DOI: 10.1111/j.0012-155X.2005.00401.x

Gow, D. D., y E. R. Morss. 1988. The notorious nine: Critical problems in project implementation. World Development 16(12): 1399-1418.

Toner A, Franks T. 2006. Putting Livelihoods Thinking Into Practice: Implications for Development Management Public Admin, Dev. 26, 81-92 Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/pad.395

The Danger of a Single Story-Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Published online in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Ihs241zeg

To Hell with Good Intentions by Ivan Illich

The Blue Sweater by Jacqueline Novogratz

Winged and Made to Fly by Arrey Mbongaya Ivo Published online in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uN4x8sQ9swc

Copyrights2014 African Centre for Community and Development.